Bitcoin Forum

UPDATE:

I'm in the middle of adding columns for Variable difficulty and Stratum/GBT to the Mining pools list. I'm a bit short on time this week, so I be ever so grateful if you could post whether or not you currently offer variable difficulty and if so whether it's User defined or a target of shares per minute (including the target number). Also please indicate whether you use Stratum or GBT or neither.

I know many of you plan on offering Variable difficulty shares and Stratum or GBT in the near future and if you post here when you do offer these options I'll be able to include it in the Mining pools list sooner


Hello Pool Ops!

Would you each mind having a look at the Mining Pools List (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0) and checking to see if anything I've written about your pool is incorrect?

I've done as much looking through pool threads as I can, but I'm aware some details are wrong - for example HHTT now has a variable fee, which is not listed correctly yet.

Also, if you're happy to have your pool listed in the thread, could you post there when you change details about the pool? I'll get the OP edited as soon as I can after you post a change to the pool.

Thanks all!

have done
looks fine
will do
thanks for taking the time to do this for miners  :D
good work
Graet

We pay for "orphans" in both Prop and PPS modes.

It's strange that you say "No" for most PPS pools on this matter. I think there is only one PPS pool that is not paying for orphans (and I'm not even sure about this).

Most people think Mt.Red doesn't pay for orphans because of the 120 confirmations, but orphans are actually paid... though I don't know if that's the pool Tycho talked about ;)

BitMinter pays out orphans for a 1% donation. Maybe that doesn't fit easily in the tables, though. :D

Yes, I know. I started out with "Yes" but then I read something about a pool not doing this and then I noticed hardly anyone mentioning it in their initial thread post. Sorry! Will fix.

Thanks for letting me know.

Edit: Fixed!

No. But what I would like to do is add another column which would be a short message from pool ops promoting one aspect of their pool they think is it's best asset. Like "BitMinter pays out orphans for a 1% donation". Short enough to fit on the page in a column.


Anyone think this is a good idea? If you do please post a short message that you'd like to go in the promo column.

They pay out only when they find a block though don't they, which is a bit unusual for PPS pools. What happens when the PPS payment is more than the block payment?

The wait for 120 confirmations is a residue from the time when Mt.Red was a prop pool. (The change prop->PPS was done with minimal changes to the software.) And yes, this is unusual.
Beside that Mt.Red is a "normal" 0-fee PPS pool, which pays for orphans and even pays out TX fees.
(Only downside is the rather mediocre uptime...)

You get always paid PPS, no matter if sharecount<difficulty or the other way. Mt.Red is "pure PPS" even if the block statistics may suggest other things...

Nice, thanks for the clarification!

Thanks for the feedback Luke-Jr. I've fixed the Eligius listing. I agree that it would make sense that all *PPS and PPS variants would pay orphans, but unfortunately this is usually not seen in the intro post on this board - unless I see it stated specifically I've simply written "No" and hoped pool ops would correct me as necessary.

I'll only have room for one of your promo lines - which one would you like? And would you be able to post a quick explanation in the Mining pools list thread?

Thanks Luke-Jr!

Those weren't promo lines, they were corrections to your reward system graph...

You mean Meni Rosenfeld's  Summary of mining pool reward systems (https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_summary.pdf)?

Why didn't you bother to read the definition of the terms?

"Maturity time" means the time until the reward is received. If an SMPPS pool has a very negative buffer, it will take a long time for miners to get the reward for current mining.

"Hoppable" means that some times are more attractive to mine than others (considering all metrics, not just expected reward). In an SMPPS pool it is more attractive to mine when the buffer is positive due to having no maturity time in this scenario.

"Instability" includes the severity of a collapse. If a PPS pool collapses nothing happens. If an SMPPS pool collapses miners can lose a lot of money.

I did.

That's not the definition used in the table.

No, if a PPS pool collapses, miners lose their due balances. If a SMPPS pool collapses, nothing happens, and nobody is out any money due.

But have done work you never get paid for. Of course, no one promised you that you WILL get paid because everyone should know that's possible with SMPPS + large negative buffer.

BUT

What's more painful? A PPS pool shutting down and losing some balance (I think no one keeps more than ~5 BTC on his pool account, at least I do) OR a SMPPS pool shutting down with negative buffer and losing everything you had in your buffer (which was as much as 30 BTC for some people on arsbitcoin IIRC)

OF COURSE the SMPPS pool op isn't "scamming" anyone when closing the pool and not paying out the buffer. But in the end miners can lose WAY more on SMPPS pool compared to a PPS pool. And I think more miners care about *that* fact instead of who is technically right...


And that's why I would never mine on a SMPPS pool [with negative buffer].

EMC pays for orphans with a 100% donation.  Just sayin'

SOLD!

But really, there are many users who keeps more than 100 BTC on his pool account. May be this wrong, but they don't care.

You are free man, so you can do whatever you want, even if you want compare incomparable things. But why should we worry about that?

P.S. I can think that I'm Julius Caesar.  :D

No need to. There are even people still mining on prop pools - it's their decision, I don't care. (I guess the same persons keep >100 BTC on their pool accounts...)

Pay Tx reward? Depends, we're "reusing" them for our Wallet-service, but we're not crediting users for the TX-fees.
Pay stales? No, we don't. Unless you count orphan blocks (and their shares)

Thanks Jine, I must have misunderstood some posts in your thread. I'll fix it up before (or more likely on :( ) Sunday.

UPDATE:

I'm in the middle of adding columns for Variable difficulty and Stratum/GBT to the Mining pools list. I'm a bit short on time this week, so I be ever so grateful if you could post whether or not you currently offer variable difficulty and if so whether it's User defined or a target of shares per minute (including the target number). Also please indicate whether you use Stratum or GBT or neither.

I know many of you plan on offering Variable difficulty shares and Stratum or GBT in the near future and if you post here when you do offer these options I'll be able to include it in the Mining pools list sooner

planning to have stratum with vardiff by 1st November :)

Great! What sort of vardiff are you planning on?

a target of shares per minute - details to come :)

P2Pool does local work generation and uses variable difficulty— and thus should be compatible with very high speed mining. It would be a bummer to see this list promote more centralization with the launch of ASIC miners as people look for new pools that can keep up.

I agree that it would be best to ensure the new list prefer decentralized pools (GBT and p2p) over centralized ones (Stratum).

Eligius should be ASIC-ready as soon as we switch to the new CPPSRB reward system, hopefully before November.
I plan to use a target of 20-30 shares per minute, but might make it miner-configurable.

The *new* list should provide objective information.  The preference should be left to the user.
Sam

BTC Guild:  Stratum with variable difficulty.  Current SPM target is 15 (10~19 depending on a miner's proximity to a difficulty adjustment).

Thanks for your input, gmaxwell. I think that's an important point about p2Pool. The reason for the extra columns in the list is to make it more obvious which pools are ASIC ready and which are not. I'll work on renaming headings so that p2Pool won't be left out.



Thanks Luke-Jr. I'll list Eligius as "TBA" under vardiff.

As far as list preferences goes, the list is completely agnostic - I want to provide objective and verifiable information about the pools and let miners make up their own minds about which is preferable.

Thanks eleuthria. I'm interested in the method you use to calculate the SPM target and how it's affected by difficulty changes - is the algorithm posted somewhere?

EMC is GBT and has automatic VARDIFF on all three servers. 

US1: 20 SPM over 3 minute target window
US2: 24 SPM over 3 minute target window
US3: 28 SPM over 3 minute target window

The full SPM is based on a 5 minute average.  If they are 20 SPM or higher, the difficulty is doubled.  There are extra adjustments during shorter time intervals to catch extremely fast miners in under 5 minutes.  Additionally the difficulty is halved if no shares are submitted after a minute, or if SPM drops to 6 or less (which would only happen if the miner leaves the server/turns off miners behind a proxy).