Bitcoin Forum

I'm really shocked about how many people still mine on deepbit: big fees, no 8-decimal pays, no particular clear interface, no repayment after leaving, risk of deepbit getting more than 50% hash power... with the result it is the most powerful pool.

On the other hand, somebody could think they are using the income in good DDoS-reluctant counter measures, so those disadvantages are a worthy price for security. But the early catastrophe proves this is not true.

That is why I launch the poll, because I'm really curious about the matter of advantages mining in deepbit, even as a backup pool. Feel free to answer here, if your option is not in the poll.

They payout 8 decimals... 3% isn't that big of a fee if you factor in invalids being paid out. The interface is alot easier to figure than some of these smaller pools. And for the most part its a stable pool.

I declare this "try a smaller pool day".

sure is a good time to look around at options :)

dunno why....  I'm addicted   :-[

and there is an iphone app or smth

RFCpool has iphone, android & windows apps.  FWIW.

Why do you eat at McD?
Why do you watch TV?
Why do you buy an Iphone?
Why do you use Google?
Why do you drink?
Why do you smoke?
Why do you vote for a mainline party?
Why do you use Facebook?
Why do you code in Java?
Why do you still use USD/EUR?.....

... all different instances of the same phenomena if we were to understand that the world would be a so much better place. :)

For those who PPS mine, BTC Guild's PPS Pool is by far the best in terms of performance, stability and payout options. I don't understand why more people don't use it.

- Instant payouts (no waiting for a block to end, no confirmations...just a running total of your earnings available at any time).
- Insanely LOW Stales etc.....like INSANELY LOW (4/4000 shares ON A BAD DAY, for me anyways...closer to 4/40000 most times).
- Established Pool with history.
- Standard 7% PPS Fee.

...and still only 80-90 GH/s for the most part. Where is everyone ?

For the reasons given above, noone should be PPS mining at Deepbit any longer and move their rigs to BTCG immediately, even if only for the 3% increased earnings immediately.....and in this BTC Economy, every %% counts.

I am not affiliated with either pool....I'm just a cheap-ass miner who is happy with BTCG.

http://pps.btcguild.com

This is an insane big fee.

Compared to the 10% PPS Fee @ Deepbit ? ....... What PURE-PPS Pools offer a lower fee with stability and under 1% Stale count ? ..not to mention, paying out for bad blocks.....IMMEDIATELY, no wait.

BTC Guild PPS is unbeatable in that respect.

abcpool.co (http://www.abcpool.co) has 0% PPS AND they pay for stale shares. It's remarkebly stable and my invalids are always a quarter of a percent. I've been mining there for over a month and its a dream pool.

0% Fee, Pays for Stales......In this Difficulty ?
Be realistic, how long can you expect a pool with that payment model to be around for ? ....till the owner starts having to support it out of his own pocket ?
With it's current hashrate and not using difficult math to explain things, that pool needs to find 2.5 Blocks per day just to stay alive and pay it's users, not to mention the overhead.

Even established pools such as MTred have felt the 'pinch' as of late, but then again, ABC might not offer multiple payout methods....

Not to say anything bad about the pool, but, I just can't see the longevity in it.

What is ABC's current payout per share ?

I mine on deepbit (less at the moment than I used to) because it worked when I was setting up, the relative size helped with variance of block discovery rate, and the 3% fee was fairly modest.  I have mined in other pools on alt-chains for fun, but nothing serious.

I notice that deepbit has its share of detractors and it might be an easy target because it is large and mines the largest share of coins.  The latest events don't mask that other pools have had problems in the past.

No, compared to 0% fee of arsbitcoin and eligius, 7% is infinitely big.

About waiting: I'm not hurry.

About stability: BTCguild has a black past managing DDoS.

Must I really say P P S once again ?

Ars and Eligius are not PURE PPS.  There is no payout buffer involved with the PPS pool as there is with SMPPS.

And a black past managing DDoS?  The first major DDoSes were in June.  Deepbit was down longer than BTC Guild.  In July we were specifically targetted, and I took my vacation days at my day job to manage the situation as best as ANY pool admin could.  This time?  We've had the most uptime of the big 3.

Not to mention the post was referring to our PPS pool, which has only had downtime when a planned upgrade to the pool server software was done (and that downtime was measurable in seconds).

P U R E - P P S makes no difference at all with SMPPS, except for payment delay. I don't want to pay a 7% tax (or 10% in deepbit) for some hours waiting for my BTCs.

There is a big difference with SMPPS.  With SMPPS it is laid out ahead of time that your rewards won't be paid out at full rates (delayed/backpay) if the pool has extended bad luck and eats through the buffer it built up from good luck.  You will be waiting on your rewards until the pool has enough good luck to end up positive again.  Pure PPS makes no such arrangements.  Either the pool shuts down when it can't pay out its stated rewards, or it pays it out of its own pocket.

SMPPS is just proportional with capped rewards, unless the owner puts money from their own pocket in during bad luck.  At which point they may as well have been pure PPS to get rid of the fine print.

I never mined at deepbit.

Only slush and eligius so far.           

And, yes, thos 7-10% taxes are craaaazy :D

In a world where 0% PPS is available, I don't know why you would mine at a 7% pool.  Longevity is irrelevant.  Why wouldn't you take the 0% and then move to a different 0% pool if/when it collapses?  Or move to your 7% pool.  Just seems illogical that you're giving away 7 points.

50 / 1689334.4045971 = 0.0000295974555801 per share.

0% means they take no portion of shares. Longevity is largely irrelevant, you can do auto-payouts so they don't ever hold a meaningful portion of your coins.

The difference between PPS and SMPPS... with SMPPS, there's some delay/risk if the pool's buffer runs dry; with pure PPS, if the pool's "buffer" runs dry, the pool shuts down and your miners are idle ;)

Besides, with Eligius's buffer usually about 1000 BTC (and only ever hitting 0 for very brief single rounds), there is no practical difference unless you're so broke that you need that 0.00001 BTC right this instant to pay for your kids' food.

i thought bigger Mhash are bigger payout. but i was wrong  :(.now im mining on biggest PPS pool like abc or arbitcoin

You do understand paying invalids in a proportional pool is simply a marketing gimmick.  The pool isn't giving you anything.  Your invalids are paid but so is the entire pools invalids.  Thus your share of the block reward doesn't change.  i.e. if you had 1% of pool's hashing power w/o invalids and your invalid rate is similar to pool average than you have 1% of pool's hashing power w/ invalids.  Either way you are getting 1% of the block (minus 3% fee).

The only time that paying invalids is a net positive is for people who can't get it together and have massively high invalids.  If your invalid rate is significantly higher than the pool average you are coming out ahead.  Conversely if you are like me with <0.05% invalid rate then you come out behind.

Pretty sure Deepbit and he mean invalid blocks. Ie, if their block is invalid, Deepbit still pays 48.50 BTC out to miners

^This.  I think invalids and stales were mixed up.

DOH.  Total and complete brain fart on my part.  Then again I am on some pain drugs right now.  Yeah I think I will blame the drugs.

In that case I guess the value of the feature would depend on how many invalid blocks deepbit has had (as a %).

Well, I will end by saying this:

My comparison (ON TOPIC AT THAT) was between Deepbit and BTC Guild ONLY..... 10% vs 7% for PPS payouts.

Frankly, most other pools mentioned in this thread, with the exception of Luke's pool and Slush's Pool, do not even belong in the same sentance, let alone the same thread as either 1.....especially being compared to.

These are the 2 largest Pools and are 2 of the oldest/most established pools.

Now, let's see a 0% Fee PPS Pool rack up the stats that either of these pools has done regardless of their fees, then we can talk.

BTC Guild - FTW ! .....Currently paying 0.00003167154226788676/share after the difficulty change...and I am FINE with that.

While Eligus and Ars aren't PPS I have never had a significant fraction of my total earnings in the buffer.  If either of them went bankrupt tomorrow my lifetime loss rate would likely be <1% far cheaper than a guaranteed loss rate of 7% or 10% (in fees).

I mean if someone is so broke they absolutely need every single bitcent paid within seconds of earning it well then maybe Deepbit or BTCGuild are worth it but honestly if you are in that boat you likely shouldn't be mining anyways.   ::)

Both Ars and Eligius have positive buffers right now, and have therefore paid 100% of PPS to every miner on them. So 0% loss. Since at least Eligius's buffer is huge, the chance of being paid less than 100% of straight PPS is extremely small.

Well, considering it's the BROKE PEOPLE who reign supreme (or so the Total Hash rates say for the network as a whole) while mining Deepbit & BTCG, I'd say it's a safe bet that anyone who says anything bad about them is either a jelous pool owner themselves, or far too rich and shouldn't concern themselves with the lowly miners to begin with  ::)

maybe that's the reason?

How about THIS:

The 1 Month Challenge......

I feel comfortable enough to mine for an entire month long WITHOUT A WITHDRAWL and feel confident in my funds still being there after 30 days. How about we both try this with about 3 GH/s using PPS....me on BTCG and YOU on your 0% Fee Pool.
Let's see who can sleep at night after the second week and who can not (while pretending BTC=$25 USD/BTC.....LOL).

I don't think most deepbit miners are broke.  I think many are simply uninformed.  In a proportional pool size certainly matters and proportional is where mining pools began.  But with PPS/PPLNS/SMPPS reward systems size isn't important thus paying a huge premium to be part of a big pool is a non issue.  

Many miners are simply uninformed.  I mean look at all the data on proportional pools and how much 24/7 miners lose to hoppers yet many people still mine on proportional pools.  Hell people keep forming new proportional mining pools despite the evidence.  

The broke reference was tongue in cheek.  I doubt anyone is that broke that they need 0.03 BTC NOW, not 3 hours from now, not tomorrow but absolutely NOW and is making an informed choice to pay the 10% vig to get that $0.12 RIGHT NOW!

I challenge you to eat dogshit for an entire month and see if your health improves.

Seriously what benefit does a miner get for leaving money on the pool for a whole month?  Given the volatility in exchange rates even if mining pool accounts were FDIC insured I wouldn't leave funds on there for a month.

Eligius won't even let miners do this, despite being one of the oldest pools around. ;)

(Mere) pools have no business carrying balances.

Deepbit miners obviously are the lazy type who do not look around for better possibilities. You could also see that during DDoS. Instead of looking for alternatives the miners went idle and lots of hash power was lost causing the diff to drop pretty heavily in the most recent hours before retarget.

Perhaps you might want to create a Java app for that ? .....but then again, with it, I might be forced to eat only your dog shit and not have a choice in the end......  ::)

Are you sure? Don't you remember your own words?


So, even if English is not my mother language, I understand the best to be different from better than

Sorry, you've got owned.

I mine on Deepbit when all the other pools I mine on are down.

This Sums it up.  And the Longer you are on a pool like that the lower the total percentage loss would be in case the buffer goes too negative and collapses ( only if the users have no patience) .

Hmm...

Each of these can be rationally argued as a valid choice in certain circumstances although I'm surprised by the undue popularity of many of these options.  It seems popularity itself is an attractive quality for an choice or activity for most people.  Perhaps people like the safety in numbers which reduces their need to think critically about such choices and focus on more important matters in their lives.

This ^^

It's just human nature.  Many people don't like change or switch.  It's hard enough for most people to setup something like guiminer in the first place, much less cgminer.  Once they got it working.. you want them to go back and switch stuff around to mine somewhere else??

I don't eat at McD. I don't watch TV. I don't have an iPhone. I don't use Google (I use Bing). I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't vote either. No, I don't use Facebook and I detest java. To be technical, I also don't use USD or EUR.

Maybe I'm just different.

You had me till Bing.  :o Shudder.  I tried, I really tried but when a search engine doesn't find things I mean watcha gonna do?

"Why do you mine on deepbit?
 Because everybody mine there
 Because I thought it invests the earned money in good anti-DDoS firewall
 Because my friend told me
 Because it has sound name
 Because Tycho is a good man
 Are there more pools!!??"

the poll is very biased. how about cause it is fast, no prop bs (anti hopper,) automated payout.

Also, it Deepbit doesn't partner with criminals to DDoS it's competitors...kidding...just breaking balls...

MT. Red and Eligius also has merged mining which pays more than Deepbit, BTCG!

Eligius is the most profitable *PPS pool hands down.  Deepbit, Simplecoin, Masterpool, NMCbit and Asspennies if you use proportional pools.  Slush for scored mining (kind of sucking atm, not sure why.)

Merged Mining is a biggest factor!

"pool" should be "poll" and deepbit offers both PPS and Prop.

Honestly though, deepbit seems to be a solid pool and is a wise choice for a backup pool.

Thanks for the correction

Eligius is the best backup pool atm, Ars would be if they merged btc/nmc...

The faster the pool (Deepbit, Ars) the quicker you can profit on the diff. drops....

No you can't.  Every share has equal expected value.

More hashing power reduces variance. It can't increase the value of a share.

people mine on deepbit the same reason anikin skywalker joined up with the emperor..

http://dosan.skku.ac.kr/~sjkim/icons/Hobby/Figure/DarthVader(Medicom)_03.jpg

there is no way deepbit is more profitible, I have mine extensively on almost every single pool and I have lost everytime I mined at deepbit



thats a myth

I was to post the same, the situation is totally ridiculous,

I began at Slush but got too annoyed giving away 2%, And all of you at deepbit give away 5-7% ?
 WTF ...
Why not downclock your GPU by 75 mhz while at it !!!

There could be a number of reasons to mine at a pool with a 5-7% fee:
1) Low variance
2) Reputation
3) Server reliability
4) "They change a fee, they must be good!" thinking
5) Plausibly sustainable business model implies future planning.

It's not anything like downclocking.

Which one?  The one with Sigourney Weaver?  Or the Avatar: The Last Airbender.  The latter, the animated series, is far and away the better choice.

But I don't see what that has to do mining at deepbit.
Sam

Deepbit has cool uniforms?  I haven't gotten one yet. :(
Sam

2 reasons for me:
1. compared to all other pools I tried, that's the one earning me the most, even considering the 3% fee
2. there's no correct PPLNS alternative IMO. There's an okay PPLNS pool, but I find its N too small: by the time I used to mine there, I could only mine during the day, and the small N meant that even though it was PPLNS I still wasn't paid if a block was found during the night. Plus it went down a couple of times. So, too much variability (paradoxically, much more variability than with deepbit).
The only pool I'd consider trying now would be a stable enough (uptime) PPLNS pool with N=at least 24h worth of shares.

Additionnally:
Slush has higher fee if you factor invalid blocks, and I really hate that score-based system that was terrible when I was mining with a very unpowerful GPU.
BTC Guild has a history of suspiciously terrible luck. Okay, now that's outdated since they enforce PPS. My new reason for not going there is thus: I just don't like PPS, pool owner takes away the "risk" of bad (and good!) luck at the cost of a huge fee: I prefer keeping the luck for a much lower fee.

Why choose? You get the reduced risk of PPS without a huge fee at Eligius ;)

If you like the idea behind PPLNS but dislike the high share-variance inherent to using a small value of N then perhaps consider trying a pool with using the double-geometric method such as eclipsemc.com or yourbtc.net.  Both of these pools have merged mining and 0% fee.  I can't speak for eclipsemc.com but yourbtc.net has been enjoying good luck in the last few days on both blockchains.

Why are you all so Anti-Deepbit?
Just wondering,
Sam

^ this.

It is a threat to Bitcoin, since it is close to (and has at times even attained) the 50% required to compromise the security of the network.

So you think Deepbit is plotting to take over the Bitcoin network?  To what end?
Sam

Just because Deepbit may have had the ability, which has not been proven, it doesn't mean it has the intent to compromise the network.  If one really wanted to do what you suggest they wouldn't do it publicly, they would do it stealthily.

Anyway success doesn't equal nefarious intent.
Sam

There are 0% PPS pools like abcpool.co which means you have zero risk as well as zero fees.
If you don't mine in such a pool then you either support other models for ideological reasons, or like to earn less money for some masochistic reason.

With PPS, fee or no fee, you mine at a flat rate.  So if, so called, luck is good you loose if it is bad then you win or least break even.

What do you call "ideological reasons"?

You get what you pay for.  There is no such thing as a free ride.
Sam

this simple, just habbit, people don't like change.

What os2sam re-explained about PPS and keeping luck to oneself. On a side note Eligius really has some really messy site.

I think Eligius is really cool, different taste.

From the eclipsemc.com FAQ: "We are currently employing a modified proportional system with a score based system coming online very shortly." They don't say how that proportional system is modified. And then score-based looks just like Slush.
From the yourbtc.net FAQ: they explain that the value per share decreases progressively over time. That's just like Slush, except that the decay is over a set number of shares instead of a random one. What I like with PPLNS is that shares don't decay, they either count at their full value or don't count at all if we're past N.

I started to mine on deepbit, but quickly realised that there are many pools who pay more and use advanced methods to calculate your reward. Just look at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

why this http://pool.itzod.ru/ pool did not found on your link?(

Looks pretty localized. Is there a support thread on this forum for it ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44024.0 ... guys do not read/write on eng topic....and information can be old.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25127.0 ... rus topic.

support can be found in jabber. cool )

^^ translate current page to English ;)

?main of pool?.... if yes.....switch languages ​​on top (RU/EN) Google translate do not need.

http://pool.itzod.ru/faq.html

The FAQ...a pretty important section, has no English version.  Google translate = win.

I have some health problems at the moment. I'll translate this page, when I'll feel better.

P.S. GT is the generator of nonsense, and is not an option. ::)

The law of large numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers) means that in the long run, you will never have consistently good "luck" anyway. The only potential gain from non-PPS is short-term good "luck". Also, you don't lose it by using PPS-- you simply don't get paid an unfairly high amount. PPS pays you what is "fair" for each share. Do you complain because blocks only pay 50 BTC, and not more when you're "lucky"?

Feel free to improve it. Eligius is a community pool.

Admittedly, I found that yourbtc.net doesn't have as much information on the site about the reward system as I'd have liked.  I cannot speak for eclipsemc.com.  You can often find more information on the forums.  The first page of the main yourbtc.net thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42631.0) for example links to much more information.  The fact that this thread contains positive posts from respected and knowledgable members of the pool mining community (Inaba and Mein Rosenfeld) is a good sign in my book.

It is true that, when a block is found, more recent shares count for more.  You get a smooth descent rather than a clean drop-off.  I only suggested it because the parameters of the current implementations of DGM are such that they almost correspond to PPLNS with a relatively large value of N.  If the clean drop-off is important to you then DGM is not an option, there are advantages and disadvantages and it largely comes down to a matter of taste.  Personally, I prefer the clean drop-off too and have used PPLNS a lot in the past but I fancied a change and, as far as reward systems go, DGM (with non-trivial parameters) is a close second for me.  Anyway, it was just a thought.  Happy mining!

Note: My choice of reward system and pool is driven primarily by ideology.  If the only options were Proportional, SMPPS, and PPS+10%, I'd mine solo.  I'd happily pay 5% for PPS or 4% for a good PPLNS/DGM pool.

You say that as if there were a significant difference between PPS and SMPPS. (there isn't)

Here's another pool comparison link.

http://pastehtml.com/view/awb1vg03r.html

Sam

I have no problem with PPS model/pools.

A person was making a point that it is somehow wrong to use anything but a 0% PPS pool.  I was just trying to explain that PPS is just a flat rate payment.  A proportional type payment varies from round to round according to how many shares were contributed.  There is nothing "wrong" with using either method.

Good Luck just means that your GPU got some hash's in on short blocks so your pay per share is higher.  There's nothing wrong with that.  No I don't complain that there is only 50 BTC pay per block.  But I guess some people do because some pools pay out more than 50 BTC per block.

How do some pools plan on staying in business?  I prefer to use pools that have a clear and disclosed plan for maintaining sustainability.
Sam

But horribly wrong/outdated...

That's the difference between PPS and SMPPS: the latter has a clear plan for not going under in extreme bad luck.

According to the horribly outdated chart that is what your pool uses, I assume?

What is your reasoning for operating a pool?  For profit? or for some other reason(s)?

Just curious,
Sam

Everything I do with Bitcoin is for the sole purpose of promoting the Tonal number system.

Edit: and the glory of God first, of course.

Hmm, OK.  Just picking up after Nystrom I guess.
Have fun with that,
Sam

As I said, Ideology is the primary motivation in my selecting a pool and/or reward system.  Both 0% PPS and SMPPS pools are doomed to collapse and, therefore, unattractive to me.

Also, there is a significant difference between 0% PPS and SMPPS.

With 0% PPS the risk lies with the pool.  With SMPPS the risk lies with the miners.

From a miner's perspective, a share submitted to a 0% PPS pool has the same value as one submitted to a SMPPS pool with a positive buffer.  However, with a negative buffer, the miner must accept the risk that the pool will never again achieve a positive buffer and that they will never be paid for their work.  When the buffer is just below 0 this risk is small (because there are so many irrational miners) but the further from 0 the buffer goes, the larger the risk.  Even if you owned all of the shares submitted after the buffer became negative and were the only one left at the pool it would be rational to give up on the pool and move to solo mining.  If you don't own all of the risky shares and/or there are other people are still mining with the pool the incentive to hop away is even greater.

No. You need to review the law of large numbers again.

No, with both systems, the risk lies with the miners. Mere PPS will simply go bankrupt, while SMPPS has a defined rule on survival in such a circumstance. (As a reminder, the only risk is someone cheating by withholding valid blocks.)

No. The law of large numbers means there is no chance the pool will never again break even, so long as it continues to function.

Ok, I'll bite.  What is the plan?

... it's well documented, too. (http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Shared_Maximum_PPS)

If you have access to a 0% PPS pool then it is "wrong" (as in stupid) to use a proportional pool.  Pool hoppers will reduce your share of the reward to less than PPS value.  So in the long run (even ignoring the variable payouts) you will earn less.  The only reason to avoid PPS pools is if they have a high fee.  

In the long run you can't earn more than 0% fee PPS unless you are pool hopping.

Firstly, the issue of arbitrarily long delays in payment is one level more subtle than that described by the weak or strong law of large numbers.

Secondly, It seems to me that you are thinking within a mathematical model of a SMPPS pool.  I put it to you that your model is making one or more very unrealistic assumptions.


Here's one such faulty assumption.  One can easily argue that a pyramid scheme is a win for everyone "so long as it continues to function".

While I have a certain respect for a pool that goes into sufficent detail on it's reward system to include pseudo-code, this page tell me nothing about how the pool intends to stay in business in the long term.  What would you do if practically everyone left the pool and the buffer was large and negative?

It's impossible for the buffer to go negative.

Doing something wrong=immoral.  Being stupid isn't the same as being immoral.

How does a 0% PPS pool make a profit?  Or stay in business/service?
Sam

No, there is no luck in pure PPS. In fact if you look at the site of abcpool.co, there isn't even a round history.
You only get paid for the shares you submit, hence your risk is 0 as you earn the same amount every day.
Your earnings are not based on any blocks being found or not because all earnings come from a private wallet.

Since the site has had a 0% fee for months, it is also the best possible way to mine bitcoins.
Mining at non-0% pure PPS pools is therefore done either out of idiocy, lack of logical capability or for ideological reasons
(supporting a certain pool owner, supporting proportional models, etc.)

P.S. I do realize pool hopping prop. pools and taking advantage of gullible newbies is the most profitable option, but that's not a 'pool model'
that's just taking money from those with limited information on how mining works.

Well it could be.  I think it will take a 110% payout PPS pool which hops other pools in order to make people realize the stupidity of proportional based pools.

Adding to this slightly.  Sometimes pool operators add a promotion to attract miners.  Thus, sometimes you can mine more profitably elsewhere for a limited time.

Also, if you are willing to stretch "bitcoin mining" into "earn bitcoins for hashing" then there are merged mining pools which convert NMC->BTC automatically (see sig) and so can offer 9% more income (soon to drop to 7%).  Things have improved a great deal in the past week or so thanks to shads' work.

There are lots of things to consider but if you want an excellent rate with practically no risk or variance, abcpool.co's 0% PPS is highly recommended.

+1

Actually what I'd prefer to see is a pool which gave out 0% PPS + half of anything extra the pool operator is able to make with that hashing power, be it merged mining, alternative blockchains, taking advantage of weaknesses in existing reward systems.  Provided the server was reliable and I could withdraw all of my income at any point I'd definiely send it hashing power!  They would be providing a useful service to miners and accelerating the evolution of mining.  Of course, the business model of such a pool would be based purely on irrationality of miners and pools but I doubt this is going anywhere anytime soon.  Unfortunately, the meager profit is not worth the work of setting up such a pool so it's unlikely to happen.

Sometimes I do things for non-economic reasons.  I thought the rise of pool hopping mining clients would be sufficient to drive people out of "unfair" payout methods.  Maybe a hop-pool could do it.  I like your thinking of 50% cut of the "bonus".  Since determining all the bonus amounts could be challenging (no way to know hop "bonus" other than after the fact and that is subject to variance) then maybe pay 100% PPS and at end of the month issue a "bonus" payment based on the pool's revenue -  PPS payout.  It would be less risk to the pool operator and worst case scenario it is a 0% PPS which isn't bad. 

Yeah, sounds good.  How would the bonus be divided between the miners?  Would it be "fair" to distribute it proportionally each day?  I expect this way that if the difficulty changed in the middle of a day that you'd have to split the day into two parts and distribute proportionally on each part.

Not sure need to think about that. One idea off the top of my head would be to track number of shares in the month and the difficulty of each share and divide any bonus proportionally to overall work for the month. 

I think better in formulas so something like:

Total Work = SUM(Work Done = (shares) * (difficulty)) 
"Monthly Bonus" = (total revenue of the pool) - (PPS payouts) - (Pool cost server/bandwidth). 
Miner Share = (50% of Monthly Bonus) * (Miner Total Work) / (Pool Total Work)

That may well work but, as you say, it needs some careful thought.  If this does work properly then it is a rather graceful way of handling difficulty changes.

Ah well, we can dream.

I heard BitMinter was off to a splendid start with merged mining!  Good stuff.

You guys could really care less about why anyone mines and deepbit or any other pool.  You just want to belittle and be condescending to those make a choice contrary to your exalted and obviously superior intellect.  If you really don't like the big three pools and/or their payout methods, then just start your own pool with your own methodology and I'm sure you will lay deepbit and the other big pools to waste in no time.  Otherwise just shut up and let folks make their own decisions and/or mistakes, for that is how we grow.

I for one am through listening to your childish diatribe.
I wish you all the best.
Sincerely,
Sam

They wont be ever laid to rest because people like you feel honoured to give up 3-10% of their earnings for no good reason.

Better pools (like 0% PPS) will show up and grow, but it will be a long time (if ever) until they surpass the big proportional dinosaurs.
It really does seem like some people want to mine for "fun" no matter how autistic that sounds.

They either don't care about their profit margins, have no electricity bills, or enjoy dedicating a proportion of their mining capacity to strangers.

They prevent the large scale evolution of mining into most efficient possible forms.
Proportional shouldn't even exist anymore at this point in time, yet it continues to draw in new suckers whom predatory pool hoppers can profit from.

One could even suspect you are advocating such inefficient mining forms because you are one of these predators,
who wants to discourage these proportional 'suckers' from working for you for free.