Greetings Whalesburg Community!

While our main R&D team is busy developing version 0.3.0 of the Whalesburg Smart Mining Pool, our maintenance team has prepared security and stability update version 0.2.3. This update is a necessary step to meet the high security and stability standards we’ve set for version 0.3.0, which is coming soon.

Security

In preparing this latest update, we had a comprehensive security audit conducted by Metascan. We passed the audit and implemented their recommended Disaster Recovery Plan. The plan consists of a set of predefined behaviors that are designed to stop a disaster ASAP while saving related data that can be used for further investigation to prevent future problems (kind of like an aircraft’s “black box”). The audit also uncovered a couple of issues that might have led to pool unavailability. Our maintenance team was able to fix those issues by changing the code and configurations. We additionally kicked-off the process of reorganizing the network in order to ensure maximum pool security.

Security Improvements Summary:

Disaster Recovery Plan implemented.

Code and configuration changed to eliminate potential pool unavailability.

Reorganized network to ensure maximum pool security.

Stability

This update also made some significant stability improvements. Firstly, we’ve added client-agnostic refactoring. This means that now both parity and geth are supported for seamless transition in the event of an emergency. Adding to that stability is the increased database performance and reliability included in this update.

We had been experiencing some Bittrex interaction stability issues. Thanks to the help of our community, the maintenance team were able to identify and fix them.

Stability Improvements Summary:

Client-agnostic refactoring added.

Increased database performance and reliability.

Bittrex interaction improvement.

Additional Improvements to Stability:

Update codebase to work with changes in API.

Increased limit for malformed packets.

Infrastructure

In addition to the security and stability improvements included in this update, we’ve also added some hardware scalability improvements. First off, by adding more RAM for coin nodes we have reduced the chances of producing uncle blocks. This also means we have the ability to add five more coins to our quiver without any performance degradation. The second major hardware scalability improvement is the addition of a much more powerful CPU, which enables more miners to connect to our pool. This is great because, particularly in the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of interest from miners looking to join our pool. This update is a crucial step in giving us the ability to safely take them on in the upcoming version 0.3.0.

Main Infrastructure Improvements Summary:

More RAM for coin nodes

More powerful CPU

Additional Infrastructure Improvement:

Multiple minor infrastructure configuration updates that add overall stability and scalability to the system.

User Interface

We also made some UI improvements. These include:

BTC balance display fixed.

Bittrex transactions monitoring improved.

IE11 app crash issue fixed.

Policy

Now possible to unban a miner almost instantly.

Payouts

More transparent transactions reasons.

We want to thank the Whalesburg community for helping identify issues in need of improvement and for continuing to provide other useful feedback. We see this update as a significant milestone on the path to producing the most secure and stable mining pool in the business.

Start mining with MVP 0.3.0 at https://pool.whalesburg.com

Stay tuned for the next update!