FAQ

Coin launch / structure

Why is RVN any better than <insert coin here>?

Some thoughts about the potential future direction of RVN have been captured in The Fenton Files (I'd personally really recommend a read through of that to help understand the background)

Where's the whitepaper?

A paper describing the intention for Ravencoin is available on the Ravencoin.org site here

What's the roadmap for Ravencoin?

https://github.com/RavenProject/Ravencoin/blob/master/roadmap/README.md

Are there Masternodes?

No.

When is the ICO?

There isn't going to be an ICO. Ravencoin is a fair launch, open source project focused on building good code with a good use-case.

Was it pre-mined?

No - it was announced on twitter and discussed at a few meetups prior to that. There's a timeline of some of the events here

The devs should do <insert topic here> / Why aren't the devs doing <insert topic here>?

This is an open source project. You can do whatever you want with it. Read The Fenton Files for more thoughts about the coin. The devs are focused on the code development inline with the roadmap. Members of the community can build tools and websites around the coin that they think could be useful.

How come some people have 100,000's if it wasn't premined?

There were people that started when difficulty was well under 100 rather than where it is now. Some people rented hundreds of cloud CPU's to mine it before the GPU miner software was developed for the community. Some have still have huge gpu rigs pointed at pools. All coins in circulation have been generated the same way, fair mining.

What's the max supply?

21 billion

What's the halving rate?

The same as bitcoin so every 4 years or so. 2100000 blocks (1block / min * 60mins * 24hrs * 365 days * 4yrs)

When will all be mined?

Tron one of the core team devs explained it on Telegram on the 30th March 2018 as follows:

"Half of Raven will be mined over the next 4 years or so.  Then another quarter over the next 4 years.   Then an eighth over the next 4 years, etc.   Most will be mined over the next 24 years, but it will continue for another 120 years or so.   Mining fees should support the Raven network as the block reward decreases."

Trading Questions

When will RVN be on an exchange?

It's on the following exchanges:

Crypto Bridge

Nanex

When will RVN be on more / better exchanges?

At the time of writing: when the exchanges decide to list it, or someone pays to list it. It's an open source project so anyone can pay for it's listing on any exchange.

There's an exchange liaison group on discord with a number of people talking to exchanges. The group has a working document Exchange How To and an Exchange FAQ on this wiki.

What's the going rate for RVN?

Check the exchanges above.

Mining

How do I mine Ravencoin?

There is dedicated mining page, including links to the opensource mining software for both nVidia and AMD cards.

Can I mine with my CPU / CPU or GPU mining which is better?

Yes you can mine with your CPU however you're unlikely to earn many Ravencoin. The net hash is now pretty large so a single CPU isn't going to contribute much. Obviously, if you've got a lot of CPU's or high-end ones you may earn more. Generally, people are running GPU's in one of the Pools.

Which miner is best?

Enemy vs Suprminer comparison of 2 versions of Enemy miner and Suprminer

Which pool is best?

All the Pools are pretty good, and as with most things tech, they all have issues from time to time. On average you'll get a larger share of fewer blocks with the smaller pools and a smaller share of more blocks with the larger pools. There are support channels for most of the pools on discord. The pools can be compared here.

Mining on a big pool will give us many tiny payouts, vs mining on a small pool will give us fewer large payouts. Over time it will average out and we will earn the same amount of coins.

A good recommendation when choosing a pool is any pool not in the top 3 highest hashrate, but any other pool with at least around 0,5% of network hash rate so the pool will hit some blocks each day. Or if we want to help build up a tiny pool, go for an even smaller one.

The reason we want to not go for the pools with the highest hashrate is to spread the hash and secure our network. Read up on 51% attack here.

When do we get paid

Payouts come from a block found by the pool that we have valid shares on. After a block is found it needs to be confirmed by the 100 next blocks, and since block time is 1min for Ravencoin this is about 100 mins. Coins are called immature while being confirmed. Once the coins are confirmed they are spendable, and will be paid out by the pool on the next payout cycle. Coins are often called matured coins at this stage.

I just started mining 30mins ago, why are my rewards so low

Pplns vs pps, is often the answer. In a pool with pplns - Pay Per Last N Shares - we build up over rounds(N) our share in the reward(block). Suprnova uses 20 - 25 rounds for N. Threeeyed is another pool that also uses pplns

PPS - Pay Per Share, the sum of our submitted (accepted) shares divided by total submitted shares on the pool by other miners, gives us our percentage of the next block.

yiimp based pools (such as ravenminer.com, yiimp.eu, cryptopool.party) by default use a custom approach to rewards. Each time a block is found: 1) rewards are divided proportionally among valid shares. 2) Valid shares older than 5 minutes are deleted. Source: https://github.com/tpruvot/yiimp/blob/next/web/yaamp/core/backend/blocks.php

Pplns will give us more rewards in long term mining. Read more here

Why is the difficulty going up / down?

The network tries to maintain 1 block being solved per minute over 2016 blocks before retargeting difficulty. If miners have found more than 1 block per minute during the previous 2016 blocks the network difficulty will go up to bring the average block time back to 1 per minute. If miners are solving blocks slower the opposite will happen.

Why is my hash rate going up and down?

The X16r algo consists of 16 different algos, and the order is based on the last 16 bits of the last block. We can get a better displayed hashrate on ccminer/nevermore by adding the following to the end of the bat file:

-N 600

What hash rate should I be getting for my cards?

These are average hashrates (from multiple cards) from Nevermore 0.2.2 and Suprminer 1.6 with -N 600 (and more than 600 accepted shares):

Nvidia 1060 6gb pl 80%, core +125, mem +200  =  7-7,7MH/s
Nvidia 1070     pl 70%, core +125, mem stock =  9,5-10,5MH/s
Nvidia 1070ti   pl 80%, core +125, mem stock = 11,5-13MH/s
Nvidia 1080     pl 85%, core +125, mem stock = 13-14,5MH/s
Nvidia 1080ti   pl 80%, core +125, mem stock = 17-18,5MH/s

AMD sgminer avg since started (right column) 6 hour runtime, -X 512 -g 2 :

Amd 7950 3gb stock BIOS, pl 100%,  950 core, 1450 mem = 2,0-2,2 MH/s
Amd 570  4gb stock BIOS, pl 100%, 1256 core, 1750 mem = 5,6-6,0 MH/s    
Amd 480  8gb stock BIOS, pl 100%, 1303 core, 2000 mem = 6,7-7,1 MH/s

bitsbetripping table ccminer 2.2.5 stock cards.

Community type questions

The community page links to a lot of the resources available.

What's the link for Ravencoin Community Discord?

New Discord - original discord link is here (original server appears to have been deleted - 3rd April 2018)

How do I do <topic here> with the wallet?

Many questions about the wallet can be answered by searching the same question for the Bitcoin wallet. The Bitcoin wiki and Bitcoin on StackOverflow are two great resources which might already have answers to your question.

Best practices for how to keep your coins safe.

where is the wallet.dat file?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Data_directory

Troubleshoot page has a wallet section.

How do I backup my wallet.dat file?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Backingup_your_wallet