Bitcoin Forum

Here's something to add to the speculation over Claymore's income:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x726653b871b5a3010441e0dec37e08afceb2fb05

It looks like he's getting about $10K/day, which is about 0.7% of all ETH mining rewards (about $1.5 million per day).

yeah old news  and he truly has scored a fortune.

I have told him time and time again  drop fees

he could do 1 and .5  he does  2.5 and 2.0

I don't mine with his software that much.

Claymore charge 2% fee, so 0.7% per day means more than half of etherum miners are not using claymore's miner, don't get pissed off, because when you use his miner you agree to pay this fee , so he is not stealing anything he earned it.

he charges 2.5 or 2.0 and lets you go fee free with a slower version.

you need ssl  to get 2.0 % fee rate some pools don't support it.

He also sticks it to you if you dual mine 2x fees so you are better off using his  no fee option and mine slower

I don't hate him and Have made money with his software.

but his xmr, zec and eth  should all drop to 1% flat with a .5% ssl option.

my reasoning is if he does it sooner then later it makes him a hero over a bum.

But it is hard to leave money on the table so he takes what people will pay .

the problem is there is no good competion , other devs rather do private kerneals and probaly charge a fortune to large farms for a no fee version , etc , at least claymore lets the average miner use his software unlike wolf and other devs
the whole dev ecosystem for altcoins is a clusterfuck of greed and disfunction.

Even if you use EBF zec miner or another one you will always pay a fee.  Back in the day you could use cgminer for everything and devs all opened sourced everything greed has taken over etc its capitalism i guess.   

What really surprises me is that there is probably a dozen or so miner devs that can make similar software and charge 0.5% less and take a huge portion of his revenue; however many choose not too.

not true zawawa is making great progress but no one wants to help contribute or donate claymore been watching his progress and have been taking his ideas such as asm and using it but when your making what claymore does you can hire a team of coders so if ppl want to stick to claymore help out with the open source

Claymore makes the best miners, so I have no problem with the fee.

You have several options.

* Pay the dev fee and use it at 100%
* Use a miner without devfee
* Use the commandline switch to disable the devfee and lose some % optimization
* Use a little transparent proxy to change the devfee destination to your own addresses.

I'll probably get a shitstorm for this, but I use option 4.
2% (or more) is just overkill. One-time fee, sure, but a constant 2%?! Hell no.

cK'

Don't blame you in the least,but maybe that why he thinks 2.5% or 2% is okay.

To me  when zec came out and he made  many versions all a little better  I could stomach the high fee.  Now that he does not make a new one every 10 days or so and the software has peaked.  the 2.5/2.0% is too high.

Hey I have my angles  I fast sell cards  only 25-45 days old  at an okay discount.   this allows me say 10% profit per card.

Does not sound like much  but 5 to 7 times in a year  and one card nets 70% profit.

Its the free market at its best.  If you think you can do better and charge less, then do it.  Don't want to pay the fee?  Don't think its worth it?  Use a different one.  The decision is with you and you alone.  Why get butt hurt about someone else being super successfully?  I applaud him for his work and skills to produce something so valuable and successful in the market that thousands of people use it.  I'm envious sure but also inspired by what he has done and I'm constantly looking for my own angle to do what he's done, in my own way.

Its silly to think that any of us have any business telling him how much he should charge.  Competition is the best and only way to reduce cost, simple as that.  You are not entitled to his work just because he makes more than you do or was more successful.  There are plenty of alternatives that do not charge a fee.  Anyone circumventing the fee and still using the software is not a moral person.  Plain and simple.

Hey this last part made me curious, if you don't mind telling me - why do you "fast sell" cards? Do you mean to say you buy a brand new GPU, mine it for 1 or 2 months then sell it used? Why? Some of the cards in my rigs are over a year old and have been mining 24/7 and some of them were used when I got them. Do you think it's worth all the buying and selling just to always have brand new cards? I just wondered what is the benefit you see in doing that? Do you gradually upgrade over time, in terms of what cards you are buying and re-selling? I'm also wondering who buys them? If I saw an ad for a used card that was 2 months old I would wonder what was wrong with the card. Are you doing this because you are dual mining with Claymore so you know you are frying the cards? I never dual mine because I can see how much it over-uses the GPUs resources - but I guess if you are dual mining with a new card every two months it isn't so dangerous, but I pity the people who buy your cards and find out that they will probably die within a year from the stress dual mining put them under.

I have sold some cards when they are no longer viable - like I sold a bunch of 280Xs because they used so much power (before anyone knew they could mine zec really well) - but I always find it such a pain in the butt to go on Ebay, wait for 10 days, etc. I think My cards have done ROI many times over because I was also lucky enough to trade a lot of the coins I've mined into Dash because Dash is so obviously the best one out there - and it's price is starting to reflect it's potential.... but I digress.

If you are using Claymore for Eth mining you can always invest the time to learn how to use sgminer-gm (at least for AMD cards) and you will get same or better hash-rate, lower power consumption (with the right tweaking) and no fee.

I don't think the fees are outrageous when the people who charge them provide the best miner (like if you want to mine ZEC/ZCL with Nvidia GPUs EWBF is probably best). I do agree though that if they stop innovating and providing extra value it becomes a bit much to keep demanding 2% or more. One reason I have used Claymore in the past is it's simplicity - it's very easy to use compared to some other miners. I have found sgminer-gm really great but pretty confusing.


I don't understand this at all but if you have the skills to use the software withgout paying I have no problem with that - Claymore is already making way more than is really reasonable from people who don't have those skills.

Its this kind of thinking that is outright wrong.  You are not entitled to someone else's work!  Even if you have the skills to circumvent their pay scheme.  It is just plain wrong and immoral.  Do you think people are entitled to a carpenters work? A plumbers?  Most people don't have those skills either?  This type of mind set is whats going wrong in the world.  The amount of money someone is making has NOTHING to do with you.  You have the freedom to NOT use his product.  You do NOT have the right to use his product without compensating him in the way he requires for his work.  No matter how much he wants to charge.  If you don't think the product is worth the 2% fee then don't use it.  There are many alternatives as people have pointed out.  Its ridiculous for people to justify their wrong doing with "well he makes enough so I can steal his shit".

A year ago the ethereum foundation was saying we'd have PoS now.  I'm pretty sure Claymore lives in Russia or one of the former Soviet states, where even the prospect of earning $200/day was enticing.
With the recent jump in price, and the prospect of PoW continuing for another year (even with a lower mining reward), there's certainly more incentive for people like me to dedicate more time to developing a competitive closed-source miner.  However I don't think it will be enough to match Claymore's mining performance and just charge 0.5% since he can easily match it.  My intention is to write a slightly faster (~1%) eth-only kernel that uses 5-10% less power, and probably charge a 0.5% dev fee for the public version, and also do a fixed-fee private version.

Yes, but to be a good outfitter, it helps to know how to mine.  So I'm going to keep mining with a few rigs not because I expect to make a lot of money mining, but for testing.

the money is out there...go miner devs! competition is healthy.

it is some what feels good running claymore, optiminer and ewbf on my different rigs..the more the better.

Oh get off your high horse. I do what I want, when I want and how I want. If you want to talk morals, Claymore took OPEN SOURCE miners, tweaked them a little and released them as closed-source. Depending on the licenses of the original works it might not even be legal for him to release it without the source and without containing any copyright notices of the original works he made a derivate of. Where's your outrage there?

cK'

Your analogies are pretty sketchy. Of course if I need a plumber's or carpenter's particular skills to get something done or fixed I would pay. And I use miners with fees on them and DON'T circumvent their fee payment mechanism. I just meant that if you a smart enough to know a way to get something for free that other people have to pay for then more power to you. That is called a competitive advantage. It appears in evolution all the time.

You could even say it's somewhat like what Claymore is doing - he doesn't actually do any mining, he gets other people to do the mining and takes a small percentage. He was smart enough to get something for free (hash power) that other people have to pay for.

Software just isn't the same thing as the traditiional notions of "goods and services" because if you are smart enough you can change it to suit your own usage scenario. Using your analogy I would have to be able to call a plumber and somehow brainwash him/her into doing work for me for free. Maybe if I was charismatic or intimidating or I could hypnotise people that would be possible - but it isn't.

If Claymore were smart enough (or it made enough difference to him to be worth it) maybe he could write his miner in a way which would stop people from being able to circumvent his fees, but then someone would always find a way around it. That's just the world we live in. People who don't know enough have to pay and people who do know enough do it their way - to suit themselves. Information wants to be free.

And?  Again, are they inherently bad because they made more money?  If the miners chose to be there, then I don't see the issue?  No one is forcing anyone to use Claymore's product, yet thousands choose to because they accept the fee as being worth the price.  The market decides what is reasonable and fair.  If people truly thought the fee was too high, they wouldn't use it and he may be forced to reduce it to compete.

Old story.
It's a little too late for a 'new' eth kernel, but that's my opinion. :)

This isn't a high horse, this is basic social behavior that should be the norm.  Exactly, you can do what you want when you want, right up to the point you violate someone else rights. Stealing their work because you think they have made enough off of it is ridiculous.  You can try to justify it all you want, but in the end you are wrong and immoral for thinking its ok to do.

You obviously didn't follow that copyright situation to completion.  He included the license statement he was required to as soon as his mistake was pointed out.  Case closed.  That's how that copyright works, and copyrights are only worth something if they are defended, which it was, and both Claymore and the dev came to amicable terms.  People like you were the only ones outraged about something that had nothing to do with you.  You sound like a social justice warrior and its pretty sad.

I am not outraged at all and to be honest didn't even know about any previous copyright disputes.

Calling me names really isn't nice, you should be careful not to get banned.
But go on with your hissy-fit, it is quite amusing to me. Maybe I will release my proxy with a 0.5% fee just to make you wet your pants even more. ;)

cK'

his fee is actually 1% with -mode 1 (eth only).
EWBF fee on zec is 2% for NVIDIA miner, but that miner is very stable, I like it the most.
Optiminer/Linux on AMD is good/stable as well when you find correct pci-mode, fee 1% or so.

Glad you are amused.  I'm enjoying the discussion; its really the best way to see where people stand and what their principals are.

I didn't really see any name calling though, just descriptions of what I see, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Ah so an insult is no longer an insult if you preface it with "You sound like a ...", good to know.

But really, I'm done with you, this is not a discussion, this is you throwing a fit and calling me names.
You don't like me, I don't like you, 'nuff said.

cK'

The problem is the lack of morals between closed source and open source devs.  That is to say open source devs are trying to develop new ideas that will benefit everyone, while closed source will only benefit themselves by finical gain.

Closed source miners can take those ideas and use them or improve them then sell it in their own software, while legal is still a big moral problem.  People won't benefit from this kind of function and it will impede growth or force people to depend on the work from the most successful closed source.  So you end up with a situation where people no longer want to contribute to open source being they know their work will be used by someone else for greed.

It's stupid to say that claymore took open source miner, modified it a LITTLE, then released his own.
He proved that he is good at what he is doing a million times.

So let me get this straight, someone gives away their work for free and expressly for anyone to use (within the license they release it under); and someone uses that work, adding their own work to it, that allows thousands of people to profit from it; but its wrong for that person to want some compensation for their work?  One chose to work for free, the other chose to charge a market based fee?  A fee that people willingly pay because its worth it?

I'm not sure if you know this but Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to the open source community, including to Linux.  That pretty much proves your premise wrong.  You CAN have it both ways, people can make money from closed source as well as open source.  There are massive company's that make money based on open source software as their core.  Greed doesn't even enter into this.  Its simply good business.  There is nothing stopping any of those open source developers from making their version better than Claymore's and releasing it for free (or for a fee).  They chose to work on the project for no compensation; someone else profiting from it has zero effect on them.  They can continue on as they wish.

Good for miner devs having a valuable skill. If you have monopoly over a product, in this case the fastest mining software, why wouldn't you set your price such that you have maximum gain? The fee should be as large as possible without causing public outcry, and small enough that only a low percentage of users bother finding workarounds to avoid fees.

Next, creating the fastest miner is difficult work and requires years of experience in specific roles, not cookie cutter info from programming books. If claymore includes his miners in his resume , the right employer will pay him a lot.

However I am surprised very few developers try to make their own miners. The monetary incentive should be enough. Either large farms are paying them more, their job pays 7 digits ,or they know they can't beat the current miners.

Oh get off your high horse. I do what I want, when I want and how I want. If you want to talk morals, Claymore took OPEN SOURCE miners, tweaked them a little and released them as closed-source. Depending on the licenses of the original works it might not even be legal for him to release it without the source and without containing any copyright notices of the original works he made a derivate of. Where's your outrage there?

cK'
[/quote]

Your argument is lame for several reasons. In the big picture, CM and all mining software providers, provides a service:

0) For miners, the mining software is a mission critical requirement. Even with free open source software there is a maintaining cost.

1) If you bother to read any of the CM miner threads, CM frequently incorporates suggested user changes/requirements. In a normal S/W development effort this would require some sort of costed out change order(s).

2) Unlike the real world, you don't pay extra if the mining software you need is ported to a newly released card.

3) It's in CM's financial interest to keep the mining software competitive with what is offered to large commercial installations.

4) I can't even imagine what the hourly cost would be to contract out to this software development to someone who needs coding + GPU assembly language + crypto coin programming experience.

5) People are already paying pools for providing a service as well as companies such as nicehash.

6) The cost of going from BTC to fiat is something that you really should be complaining about.


There is the opposite tack, I would like to see more features for the money:

a) I like Nerdralph's idea of mining software focused on energy efficiency. I'm always on the lookout for such solutions.

b) I would like to see an open market on GPU bio's instead of this hush/hush PM stuff. I would have no problem paying 1% for a top energy GPU efficient bios that was validated by mining software. Why can't the bios and mining software be an integrated system.

c) Finally, with summer coming, I would like to see some sort of option in the mining software based on time-of-day use for individual GPUs. There would be many good things about this:

i) Instead of trying to do this through the O/S, doing it through the mining software makes this feature platform independent.
ii) Energy hog GPU's could be shutdown during the hours of day when the electricity rates are high.
iii) It's probably more efficient to completely shut down/idle individual cards to limit heating/consumption than for all the GPU's to throttle back.

Your argument is lame for several reasons. In the big picture, CM and all mining software providers, provides a service:

0) For miners, the mining software is a mission critical requirement. Even with free open source software there is a maintaining cost.

1) If you bother to read any of the CM miner threads, CM frequently incorporates suggested user changes/requirements. In a normal S/W development effort this would require some sort of costed out change order(s).

2) Unlike the real world, you don't pay extra if the mining software you need is ported to a newly released card.

3) It's in CM's financial interest to keep the mining software competitive with what is offered to large commercial installations.

4) I can't even imagine what the hourly cost would be to contract out to this software development to someone who needs coding + GPU assembly language + crypto coin programming experience.

5) People are already paying pools for providing a service as well as companies such as nicehash.

6) The cost of going from BTC to fiat is something that you really should be complaining about.

[/quote]

I'm not a big fan of this whole software as a service, it's the modern version of rent-seeking. Basically getting paid for breathing instead of just selling the software for a fixed upfront price.

As it is now, everybody is rent-seeking from miners. In addition to the upfront cost of the mining equipment and the running costs in electricity _AND_ pool fees, miner devs now also want in on it. You guys are aware that without miners there's no PoW coins, right? So either sell your software for an upfront price or don't whine if people work around it. (btw, I'm not a freeloader, I paid fees for months before I decided it was enough)

I'm not saying CM did a bad job or that he doesn't deserve fair compensation for his work, just some people have a weird interpretation of fair.

cK'

Couldn't agree with you more, jwarren88. Everyone wants a free lunch. People like coke are a big part of what is wrong with society.

And who the hell are you to decide what's fair for claymore?  ::) You're just trying to justify being a shitty theiving person. No one's buying the bullshit you're peddling.

Ah here we go again with the name calling and temper tantrums.
I decided what's fair for ME, don't like it? Well tough cookies, suck it up buttercup.

I'm not trying to justify anything, not peddling anything. I replied to the OP, it wasn't really an invitation for trolling but keep it up.

cK'

I'm now wishing I made this a self-moderated thread...  It's too late for that but if the trolls do keep it up I'll lock it.

Regarding b), I've released my strapmod utility and and made an online version available.  The next step as you've suggested is integrating the timing mods into the miner (I've been experimenting with this idea for about a week now).

Regarding c), I think it's more the domain of mining management software.

why you don't use sgminer-gm that it is open source (then you can edit and upgrade it) if you dont wanna pay fee to claymore ?

If you paid attention to my other posts you'd know I'm already using sgminer-gm.  For Hawaii, it's faster than Claymore.

Any reason for that?

And about last 470 / 480 who much it is difference? maybe it fee it is same performance.

Wow, talking about morals, decency and good social behavior is now trolling?  That bar really has been lowered I guess, and its amazing the acrobatics people use to justify their wrongdoing.

Calling out somebody or something that is wrong, is never trolling and should always be encouraged.

As has already been pointed out, you're full of yourself, or stupid, or both.  Not that it has anything to do with the discussion, but intelligent and rational people can tell the difference between tangible theft (depriving someone of something they own), and unauthorized use of some non-tangible right.

Anyway, now I know next time to self-moderate in order to keep your drivel out of the discussions I start.  And for this one, as promised, I'm locking it.