Bitcoin Forum

Hi I've been mining with bitminter since about 11 last night it is now 11 in the morning (12 hours) and according to my account page I've earned 0.00483886 BTC, I've been mining at about 367 Mhs... when I plug 350 Mhs (for a round number) into http://www.alloscomp.com/ it tells me I should be earning 0.05 BTC a day. In my calculations I should have earned about 0.025 BTC already, is there any reason for this five factor discrepancy?

Variance can easily lead to many times above your expected earnings, 1/10th your expected, or even lower in such a short time frame.  Judging earnings on a non-PPS pool is a pointless exercise because of how much variance can swing results one way or another.  Even a 2-week comparison can lead to a wide spread of possible earnings.

oh snap I thought it was PPS, will switch pools thanks!

Bitminter is PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares).  PPLNS is very similar to the old proportional method, but it expires shares after enough newer shares have been submitted, and instead of resetting the share counter with a new block, they remain valid until they expire.  It is because of this expiration of old work that the method becomes unhoppable, making it far superior to proportional.  However, it still has very Proportional-like variance.  

Using a higher value for 'N' reduces per share variance.  However, you are still always subject to general pool variance, which is why short term comparisons are generally just a matter of luck, rather than hard data about who pays more/less than expectations.

If you want to earn as many bitcoins as possible over time, go with a pool like BitMinter which pays out income from transaction fees and namecoins, and is also without mandatory fees.

If you worry about payments varying from day to day, you may feel that it is worth paying fees, and losing namecoin and transaction fee income, so that you know in advance what you will get every day. You will get less in the long run. But if you are on a tight budget and need those coins to pay the bills every month, you may need PPS to stay safe. As they say, "it's expensive to be poor."

When it comes to PPLNS pools, be aware that it takes some time before you have your work among all the last N shares/shifts. You don't get max pay for a block until then. After you leave the pool you are also still getting paid for a while until there is none of your work in the eligible shares/shifts.

In other words, if you already left, be sure to check back in case we found some more blocks before your shares dropped off the last 10 shifts.

IMO, BitMinter is the best pool to mine at for maximum BTC for your hash power over time, but the variance of non-PPS also tends to be like an emotional roller coaster.  Some days suck beyond measure, some days are about average like PPS, and some days are absolutely amazing.

yup!  bitminter makes the most "bitcoins per Mhash" . it constantly changes because every pool is evolving, adding features like stratum, or lowering fees.
i check top 5 pools once a day or two, and top 15 once a week - and I can confirm that in theory, its currently the most efficient pool.

I was on bitminter for a while, and I have to agree, when the pool goes on a lucky run, it is amazing and far outpaces what I would have earned on pps -x%

I've been thinking a lot about how the (soon to be) rapidly increasing difficulty will affect the earnings of different pool payment schemes, at different periods during the difficulty cycle, and posted a question to all pool operators. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144459.0)

I realize this amounts to nothing more than shameless self promotion, but with 2 pool operators replying in one thread? I just couldn't resist  :-*

-edit: forgot to mention, bitminter incorporates the easiest mining interface ever - AND, more importantly, when the 7970's first came out the bitminter miner was giving me the best hashrates I could find (was possibly due to my inexperience with cgminer, but it took months before I could get an equivalent hashrate - DrHarribo deserves great credit for this, and I nearly forgot)