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This question gets asked by every miner at the beginning when they are testing the waters with bitcoin mining. A lot of great pools are out there and at the end of the day it boils down to your personal choice. There is really no single best pool, but there is most likely a pool that is right for you, based on _your_ requirements and preferences. This guide won’t tell you which pool is best, but it will help you choose one according to your own liking.

(This guide is more suitable for miners with a limited hashing power, those who are at the beginning stages of their bitcoin mining commitments or those who consider themselves to be casual miners. Hardcore miners, especially those with multi-GHash rigs already know all there is to know about different pools and have already figured out what works for them.)

Before I go into more detail, please note that there are at least two pretty comprehensive lists of pool features available to you (at least that I know of):

• The mining pools feature table (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12920.0)
• Comparison of mining pools (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools)

You should read up on the above information before you go through this guide. While these places are excellent sources of information, they can be a bit overwhelming for the beginner, hence my effort to ease things a bit by providing a subjective guide below.

I found that the following factors were most important for me in choosing the right pool:

• What is the reward method – Proportional/Pay Per Share/Score Based/PPLNS
• What fee they charge for mining and withdrawal of funds
• How frequently they find a block (means how frequently I get rewarded)
• How easy it is to withdraw funds
• What kind of stats they provide
• Do they offer BTC + NMC merged mining?
• How stable is the pool?

What you need to do is sort the above points according to importance as per your personal preference and then use them to prune out the pools that do not meet your required criteria. For example, my top requirement at the moment is merged mining, since it offers 10% to 13% more reward at the moment without any extra effort on my part. So pools that do not offer merged mining automatically get pushed to second tier in my list no matter how well they do in other areas.

Important: _Always_ set up one or more backup pools in your mining software (all major miners offer this option, please consult their respective threads for instructions if you need help). Even the most robustly setup pools can experience downtimes for various reasons, so your miner will be left without any work if something like that happens when you are AFK.

So here goes…

• Pool Reward Method: Different pools follow different reward methods (note: ‘reward’ is what you earn when you mine with a pool, as opposed to ‘payout’, which is the amount you withdraw from the pool after you have generated some reward). Different reward methods are discussed in the above link for ‘Comparison of mining pools’ link provided above, so go read up. The most common are :
      o   Proportionate – where you get paid an amount proportional to the number of shares you submitted compared to the total number of shares in that round,
      o   Pay-per-share – where you get paid a fixed amount per share you submit regardless of the length of the round,
      o   Score-based – where your rewards are calculated based on the score the pool assigns you, which quickly diminishes as soon as you stop mining,
      o   PPLNS – where only the last N shares are considered to calculate your reward
  
  There are other variants as well, notably the SMPPS method used by Eligius.  What you need to know in reality is how the above methods impact your rewards. If you are a casual miner who mines occasionally or if you run a rig that for some reason cannot maintain a stable connection with the pool (bad internet, hardware problems, miner freezing up, etc. etc.), then score-based and PPLNS pools require special consideration on your part. Score-based pools punish the miner who, for whatever reason, does not or cannot maintain a stable mining operation at the pool for the entire duration of the round. If mining with slush, for example, getting disconnected for just 5 minutes will reduce your score to virtually zero and if they find a block at that time, you get paid nothing, even though you mined with them for the last 4 hours. On the other hand, you get paid in full if you are lucky enough to join slush just 5 (or maybe 10? I somehow feel that it takes longer to build up score than to diminish it) minutes before they solve a block even if that round has been running for several hours. The average reward will even out over the long run, but that also means you will need to stick to that one pool over an extended period in order to reap the expected reward. A key requirement for intermittent miners is knowing how much reward they are getting for whatever length of time they do manage to mine, which score-based and PPLNS (and other fancy variants) do not allow. It is better, in my opinion, to stick to zero-fee PPS pools in this case since you get the expected reward whenever you mine.
  
  Pay-per-share and proportionate pools do not have the intermittent issue and you can mine with them on and off and get paid for whatever work you have done for them. Proportionate pools have higher variance than others, meaning that for short rounds you get paid a lot, but for long rounds you get paid much less. Since you get paid in proportion to the number of shares you submitted, if your hashing power is 1% of the pool, you get paid 50 cents for an hour-long round (less any pool fees). You also get that same 50 cents if the round lasts for 10 hours, so you get the picture. Proportionate pools are also a prime target for pool hoppers, which can reduce the actual reward you earn.
  
  
• Pool Fees: There are zero-fee pools and there are pools that charge a fee for mining with them. Pool fees are not necessarily a bad thing – it’s usually worth it to pay the fee in exchange of the benefits they offer. Deepbit charges 3% fee for proportionate mining, but they pay for invalid blocks. But if you are adamant not to pay any fee, you can still find pools that charge nothing or almost nothing to mine with them. Please note that not all pools clearly declare their fee structures, especially Pay-per-share pools that only declare how much they pay for each share, and you have to calculate the pool fee from that information (this is fairly simple, btw, you just find the current theoretical value per share by dividing 50 by the current difficulty, then subtract the pool’s declared pay-per-share value to find the pool’s fee). You can find summary of pool fees in the links provided above.
  
  
• Pool Speed: The more GHash the pool has, the faster they will find blocks. Deepbit, with their current speed of 3328 GHash/s, seems to find 2 blocks per hour in average. Smaller pools can take days or weeks to find a block. You will roughly get the same total reward over an extended period from faster and slower pools, but whether you will have the patience to wait for days for your reward (especially if you are a sub-GHash miner and your rewards are small), is completely up to you.
  
  
• Fund withdrawal/Payout: Do you want your rewards to be automatically sent to your wallet? Do you want an option to send out funds to your wallet as and when you feel necessary? Different pools have different payout policies that you may want to review from the ‘The mining pools feature table’ link provided above. Some pools, like slush, only give you the option for automatic payouts once the confirmed reward crosses the payout limit you have set. Eligius automatically sends your payout when your reward crosses approximately 0.67108864 BTC or after one week of inactivity. This may be a deal breaker for miners with small hash-power, as with a 300 MHash rig mining continuously you will have to wait 3 days before you get a payout. On top of that, once you do receive a payout from eligius, you have to wait for 120 confirmations (takes about 18 hours in my case) before your bitcoin client will let you spend it.
  Other pools let you withdraw funds whenever you feel like it once you have enough confirmed rewards in your account. They usually impose a minimum amount of reward, which is generally very low, like 0.01 BTC, but for NMCBit the minimum is 0.10 BTC. These limits are not usually declared and you find out only when you try to withdraw funds. Some pools let you withdraw the full amount in your account, but some, like Bitcoins.lc, only let you withdraw up to two decimal points.
  While some pools let you withdraw funds as soon as a block is solved, others make you wait for 100 or 120 confirmations of the block before you can withdraw those funds. More details about this can be found at the links provided above.
  
  
• Pool Stats: Some pools provide awesome graphs and statistics of your mining records with them. Others provide very few stats, the rest are in between. ARS offers fantastic stats, ABCPool offers great stats as well, but for a fee. Eligius is very frugal with stats. Slush and deepbit are somewhere in between, although slush offers performance graphs where deepbit doesn’t. How important detailed stats are depends completely upon your personal preference, so you need to shop around a bit in this regard.
  
  
• Merged Mining: At present this is quite a nice addition when a pool offers merged mining. What this basically means is that you continue mining like you always do, but the pool gives you extra Namecoins for the same amount of mining and you can at the moment exchange those namecoins at an exchange (the going rate at bitparking is ~0.0104 BTC per namecoin). Since current Namecoin difficulty is much lower than Bitcoin, you essentially earn about 10% extra with the same hashrate, which is a big plus. Some pools like NMCbit even offer the option to directly convert namecoins to bitcoins without having to go through an exchange, but they (seem to) charge a fee that is not clearly declared (i.e. they were offering 0.01 BTC per NMC when the going rate at bitparking was 0.011 BTC per NMC).
  
  
• Pool Stability: You (naturally) want to get the most out of your mining. Some pools offer better stability, less stales than others. This status keeps changing as pools keep improving themselves. On the other hand, great pools can temporarily become unattractive due to factors like DDoS attacks and server migrations. You need to find out more by reading up on the most recent posts in their own forums or in their respective threads in this forum.

At some point after you take mining seriously (or maybe just browsing the forum), you will come across the idea of pool hopping. It’s basically a technique used by some miners to reap extra rewards by exploiting ‘flaws’ in reward methods, especially the proportionate reward method (although other reward methods like score-based have been proven hoppable, proportionate is claimed to be the easiest to hop). The extra rewards they collect come from other miners that are not hopping. Whether this is ethical or not is beyond the scope of this discussion (you will find quite a few discussions regarding the ethics of pool hopping, feel free to make up your own mind about it). Many pools these days actively discourage, or even ban pool hoppers. Others implement hop-proof reward methods like PPLNS or Pay-per-share. I am not going to tell you whether you should or should not become a pool hopper, it is entirely up to you. But you should avoid proportionate pools that do not take adequate measures to deter pool hoppers, since it will reduce your rewards.

So, that’s some of the things you need to consider while choosing the right pool for you. As I have mentioned before, it all comes down to your own personal preferences. I have just tried to make it easier for you to make sense of all the info available about the pools in their websites as well as this forum. Good luck and happy mining.

Comments, suggestions, corrections are highly welcome.

[Edit]: I have modified the pool reward section.

Nice guide, spotted one error though.  Deepbit does not pay for invalid shares, they pay for invalid blocks.

Hm, I see "slush" 4x in the text, so I feel I should reply.


*headdesk* *headdesk* Why you don't write that I *benefit* those who connect before round finish? That you can earn much more just for few seconds of mining? Texts such this are one-sided and I really don't understand why all those people are so much concerned about this point. This "feature" of score based systems is not here for punish anybody for unstable connection or whatever. No matter when you disconnect and connect to the pool, your average payout will be the same. It's fact and a lot of text has been written about it, not just by me.


Only? So typical case - "setup wallet, threshold and forget" is worse than need to clicking every few days to manual payout? Pool allow you to withdraw even 0.01 from your account, to 8 decimal places. Payouts are done every 15 minutes, if you are really hurry, just setup threshold 0.01 and wait few minutes.

Edited to reflect corrections/comments from Eleuthria and Slush.

@slush, I simply love your pool, man. You're among my top three, especially since your heroic efforts during the DDoS and server migration problems  ;D

I mention 'only' for the payout method because i would like to have both options  :D

Well, that part about rewards in score system still isn't perfect, but better than original version, thanks :).

Good info kislam, thanks!

Nothing about security? I think that should be a high priority for everybody.

Nice guide, thanks!

One thing I'd like to add on the backup pool section is that when choosing 1st backup pool it's worth considering one of the PPS pools out there. At least for me when I'm mining on a stable pool for a day I still get up to 40 or so shares submitted to my 1st backup pool, for some reason or another. And if that pool was score based or proportional, I'd get diddly squat for my shares, but on PPS pool I'm getting at least something. And given time it all adds up. =)

Before considering a payment method, one should find a pool that they can actually connect to, work with well....with a high submitted share rate, as well as low stales.

A pool can pay out 2x as much as another, but if you can only submit 70% total shares to that pool vs another...and your stale rate is double digits, then you are not doing yourself any favors.

Why I use the pool that I use: (all points SPECIFIC TO ME, YMMV)
- highest hourly submitted share rate (for my setup anyways, total shares submitted. YMMV).
- lowest stale share rate.
- incredible uptime.
- history (been around a while).
- charges a fee (yes, I am a FAN OF PAYING A FEE as I know the pool will be taken care of and will be around in a month).
- transparency (lot of data, past, present).
- stable performance.

I have tried so-called FREE/NO FEE Pools and made LESS...FAR LESS than I do at the Fee-Based PPS Pool that I currently use.

In short:

Take care of your own stats (and know them) before you go shopping for the 'best mining pool rate'.

Out of curiosity, what pool do you use?

How do you verify that a pool has good security? And by security, do you mean whether your money is safe with them? Pooled mining largely depends on the trust people put in pool operators. You should, no doubt, only mine at pools that are well-reputed. It's fairly easy to read up on the comments about a certain pool in this forum to get a feel for that pool's integrity.

That's a myth. PPLNS and score-based are perfectly fine for intermittent miners, their average reward will not be affected.

The only countermeasure is using a hopping-proof method like PPLNS, geometric and double geometric. Other proposed "countermeasures" generally hurt honest miners more than they do hoppers.

For correct information about reward systems, please see Summary of mining pool reward systems (https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_summary.pdf) and Analysis of Bitcoin pooled mining reward systems (https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf).

eligius.st

Yes, can this part of the text please be revised?

I use PPLNS in my pool and it's pretty common for people to think that if they mine intermittently they will get paid less than expected average pay. If you write that in a guide it will be even more difficult to explain to newbies how it actually works. It's true some shares are not paid, but sometimes shares are paid 3x over. The variance there evens out over time, and variance does not mean less total rewards.

I think this comes from an unconscious focus on the negative. If there is a chance to sometimes earn more than expected and sometimes less, people only see the risk of sometimes earning less.

PPLNS has higher variance than PPS, not lower rewards. Same thing with score-based methods.

OK, clarifications are in order. Both Rosenfeld and DrHaribo are correct. It was too hasty of me to outright declare that score-based and PPLNS pools are not suitable for intermittent miners. I request miners to read up on the links Rosenfeld has provided.

What I did mean, however, is that the high variance is potentially a deal breaker in these cases. Although the total reward over time averages out, for the intermittent miner, the uncertainty associated with high variance can be a real annoyance. If the intermittent nature is out of the miner's control, he/she is already frustrated with the unpredictable downtime, and the variance adds to the chagrin. If they are intermittent by choice, they would (i assume) look for some certainty for rewards when the do mine. That's why I think a reward system like PPS is more suitable (psychologically) for the intermittent miner where they know exactly how much they are getting paid for the x hours they mined today.

PS: Rosenfeld, both your links point to the same file, please correct that.
PPS: note for newbies (and some other users) -- please take a close look at the comments made by Rosenfeld, DrHaribo, Eleuthria and Slush and see how nice they were in making corrective remarks. They basically found faults with what I wrote and were so very civil about pointing them out. I keep seeing comments from some users in different parts of this forum that could really do with some maturity. Being nice doesn't hurt, you know.

So given you accept that average reward is the same then for the sake of bias free article why not modify you parapgrah about rewards.

On average the reward will be the same but your paragraph only talks about instances where reward will be lower there is an exactly equally chance the reward will be higher so it makes no sense to talk about a scenario (naming Slush pool specifically) where a miner might get a lower reward.  You could name both scenarios, and scenario of getting the average reward but why not get rid of all that.

I would recommend simply indicate that average reward for any fair pool is the same (unless the pool can be hopped).  I would even add a sentence where the belief that PPLNS or score based pools "punish" miners is an urban legend.  In long run each miner will receive the same value for their shares.

Then in a separate section talk about variance. Conflating the two and talking about only the downside scenario simply reinforces this mistaken belief about pool rewards.

That's exactly what I see every day - majority of people have very strong aversion to any risk, that's the reason why majority of people are sticked on PPS pools, even when they're losing in long term because of higher fees. But they feel much more comfortable and safe, because they eliminated any possible risk.

But renormalization is just some internal maintenance, it doesn't affect anything, even variance :-). I think that relation between score renormalization and reward is yet another myth :-).

I mean - absolute numbers in score are meaningless. Everything important is YOUR SCORE / POOL SCORE. And they're both renormalized in the same way. Pool renormalization is something similar like 50 / 100 == 5 / 10 => after renormalization, there are lower numbers, but nothing is affected.

I plan to, but unfortunately don't have the time right now to revise it in a way that will do it justice, so I have edited the OP to request the reader to also read post#15 for clarifications.

do what you please but you will ruin a nice guide in the process. Some people have personal agendas and you should take that into account when adopting their "corrections". Just my personal opinion.

How dare he ruin a guide with facts.   >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(

Pls calm down and comment like the grown up person i suppose you are.
I could have sent that in pm and lose the chance to alert some individuals they are inducing biased opinions into other peoples work.

The proof is already on this forum, or other independent blogs out there, and they point out some of the "new discovered" payout algos are taking a share of the unsuspecting miners revenue and then claiming it evens out in the long run. In this business you're really better off by listening your instinct and a good example was the guide posted by kislam

Why do you think I am taking the time to formulate an appropriate response/rewrite? I definitely want to be impartial and mathematically correct, but also need to get across my own take on this very important issue without being influenced by 'personal agendas'.

cheers...

see my prev post kislam, cheers to you too  :)

That's true to some extent wrt slush/geometric (though IMO it's a bit overstated). It's not very true for PPLNS/DGM, since with the right parameters their window can be such that the variance for intermittent miners is pretty much the same as for continuous miners.

Sorry, fixed.

DeathAndTaxes is right, those are facts, not opinions. To me it sounds like you are saying 1+1=2 is just an opinion.

But you are right that I am biased, as are others. The reason I want people to understand PPLNS is because I use it in my pool. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, though.


Please include links to the proof of this. The whole reason I chose PPLNS was to get fair payouts to miners.


Where possible I would listen to facts, statistics and math. Check out the research Meni Rosenfeld has done on payout methods: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=32814.0

I agree this is a nice guide, though. It goes through the important issues and still manages to stay short, which I think is essential.

I mean security from hackers. Little things like do they have https, address locking, email notifications. Of course, nothing stops the operators themselves from taking your coins.

I kind of take exception to it as well.  As a pool op using DGM, I find that payouts are far, far more consistent than any other method for miners, be they intermittent or constant.  The DGM method really spreads out the "pain and suffering" of intermittent connections over several blocks, making it easier to take psychologically. 

EclipseMC being a no fee pool, I think it's one of the best solutions out there for non-PPS pools.  A true no-fee PPS pool is great, but  I question whether one can last, which is why I've stuck with DGM.

OK, I have modified the pool reward method section. It now reflects my opinion regarding the suitability of reward method for a particular type of miner while trying to be un-biased. Please note that this guide focuses on finding the comfort zone for the miner. Highly technical mathematical proof has little relevance here - the primary goal of this guide was to actually avoid such technical discussion (which are available aplenty elsewhere in this forum) and offer an experience-based, subjective guideline to the newcomers who can get seriously confused with all the hype and over-the-top discussions. I have mentioned a few pools by name because that made it easier to explain with an example, and I don't believe the readers are naive enough to think they are the only pools to have the example feature.

If my guide hurts your pool in any way, sorry, that wasn't my intention at all. I am not affiliated with any pool and if your pool offers better value than others then you will win more users anyway.

It's your guide. I don't have to agree with your opinions, but I'm hoping at least the facts will be straight.

That's just wrong. They don't punish anyone. Saying they can be confusing (or unintuitive, or unpredictable) will be more reasonable.

And again, this is relevant to high-variance methods, but not so much for PPLNS. You can easily have PPLNS decay rate measured in days rather than minutes.

It is unfair to condemn all hopping-proof methods just because slush's pool has very fast decay. Part of the reason for this is that slush doesn't use a score-fee, so fast decay is necessary for hopping-resistance. The geometric method is hopping-proof regardless of the decay, so decay can be more gradual if the operator can absorb some variance. Also, the size of slush's pool makes the decay temporally faster.

That's wrong. You could mine in a different score-based fair pool every day, and your total rewards will still converge to the average.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. PPS needs to take a fee to maintain stability; and, conversely, PPS has a lot of advantages so it is reasonable to pay a fee for it. I think going forward we'll have stable 1%-2% fee PPS pools.

That's wrong. Even setting aside the hopping issue, proportional pools have higher variance than a PPLNS pool with the default parameters. So if PPLNS is bad for intermittent miners, so is proportional.

Interesting.  I see that a proportional pool (assuming no pool hoppers) proves more of a problem for random intermittent miners versus 24/7 miners than a similar PPLNS pool (regardless of the value of N) (which in turn is more problematic than most other reward systems).  However, I don't have much of a feel for the value of N at which the share-based variance at PPLNS is similar to that of a proportional share.  Have you calculated such a value of N or merely shown that it is less than [difficulty]/2.

Also, I completely agree.  I'm not clear exactly on what the "intermittent issue" is but based only on the name I can safely say that if it's a problem for PPLNS then it's a bigger problem for proportional (certainly for N=[difficulty], arguably for all N).

Frankly, I refuse to mine on a pool that uses a payout system that can be directly influenced or manipulated by the pool OP with ease, in their favor.

Not all, but some pools are actually run for profit. Most OPs aren't going to take the time to develop and support a pool out of their own pocket.... continuously.

How can a payment scheme have BOTH the miner's and pool's best interests in mind ? Situations like that simply can not exist, hence all of the fancy payment methods and variations. To dismiss all and believe that most of these were formulated to better protect full time miners from pool hoppers and the like would be silly.

The only truely honest/cheatproof payment method that regards the miner moreso than the pool OP's bottom line is PURE PPS.

Unfortunately, it is a huge risk for a Pool OP, even using a fee, although by offering it, the pool OP really is showing that he/she has the miner's best interests in mind. PPS variations serve more than just 'protection' for miner's profits....they also move a certain amount of risk down the scale, away from the pool OP's pocket. When I see a pool OP post negatively about PURE PPS, all I see is an OP looking to relieve some of the risks invloved with operating a pool as well as helping to secure profits at the same time.....NOT to better serve his miners/users as one might have everyone believe.

It's all about balance. There can't be ALL WINNERS and nothing on the other side of the equation.

Back to my opening comment.....'Influence' you ask ? Wrap your minds around this:

Greedy Pool OP + PPLNS (or Time/Score Based) & FAST DECAY + ROLLING TIMEOUTS -or- SLOW GETWORK PERFORMANCE (simply helping 'run out the clock') = ...... ;) You get the picture.

I almost forgot.... Wouldn't this also make the Pool seem quite LUCKY in the process ?

I know the share/hour average of my setup and ONLY mine PPS now....and I don't need to Trust ANYBODY but myself.

Sad I thought the OP was going to update it to be objective and instead simply threw in even more confusing edge cases. 

PPLNS don't punish intermittent miners.
PPLNS miners will receive same value per share in long run regardless of how they mine.

The "guide" is now not something link worth (when noob asks for info on pools) and instead just another worthless personal "belief" based on superstition and half truths.

Sad because the OP spent a large amount of time and was articulate but it was wasted because he couldn't get away from personal biases.

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Life is not a zero-sum game, if it was there would be no way for pools to work in the first place. Pools exist to reduce a miner's variance without significantly affecting his expected payout and maturity time, and some reward systems do this better than others. Some systems make different tradeoffs between the three which are suitable for different miners.

Being the one who developed most existing hopping-proof methods, I choose to take this personally. Thankfully, your opinion of my work means very little to me.

In a 0-fee PPLNS pool, all of the block reward goes to the miners. Nothing stays with the operator. To claim that this has anything to do with the operator's bottom line is silly.

Any type of pool - even more complicated ones like DGM - can be trivially audited to make sure the operator indeed conforms to the method and doesn't cheat. If you're concerned they don't publish enough stats to enable auditing, lobby for them to publish share tables including hash values and block headers. Make sure the tables are consistent with the payouts given. Log the shares you find and make sure they appear in the table. Verify that the shares in the table are valid.

It's in AoBPMRS. Prop variance is roughly (pB)^2*ln(D), PPLNS variance is (pB)^2/X. So you need X > (1/ln(D)), or roughly N = 7.1% of the difficulty. The number is different if metric other than vanilla variance is used, but for any reasonable one X=1 (which IMO is a better parameter than 1/2) makes PPLNS better than prop.

This might have already been said, but under Pool Reward Method you forgot DGM and SMPPS, which happen to be my favorite methods.

Also, are you planning on editing and maintaining this? There are quite a few instances where you talk about specific features of a certain pool. However, these things often change and you would have to come back in and modify a sentence here and there.

At the beginning of the guide I provided links which discuss all the reward methods and asked readers to read up on them before going through the guide. Also, I did mention SMPPS and also that there are other reward methods as well.

Thanks for this, a neat little bit of trivia.  I honestly didn't expect the tipping point to be as small as N = 0.071*[difficulty].

Try not to let the trolls bother you.  I hope you find posting on this forum entertaining.

Given how slowly and painfully the mining community is processing "reward systems" I fear auditing is very much a future concern (and one I'm somewhat interested in).  Do you have a thread where you talk about possible far future scenarios for mining?  Both the topics of possible reward systems and number/sizes of pools would make for interesting discussion.

If you have taken the time to go back and check whether I have updated the guide to be objective, you should have at least read it carefully enough to notice that I have taken out PPLNS from the sentence about reward methods punishing intermittent miners. Please get your facts right before calling something worthless.

And yes, there are personal biases - I have mentioned before that this guide is based on my personal experience with different pools, with an aim to make it easy to find a comfort zone for the newcomer.

And please let off with the "Same Value in the Long Term" argument. While perfectly valid in statistical terms, it has little relevance to the intermittent miner since it's far more important to know how much reward he/she can expect to earn for a given period of mining.

Then say that. Don't say they punish people. A little bit of wording can go a long way.

Also note my other points above.

No coherent thread, but here's a short version of my vision: There will be several low-fee PPS pools, acting as a proxy to a p2pool as a backend. There will be many getwork servers, and people will freely mix-and-match their pool and getwork server(s). Oblivious shares will be used to prevent block withholding. Larger miners will skip the PPS pool and participate directly in the p2pool.

That still defeats the point by restricting the miner to a small number of pools, which would have to be similar in nature, at least for the fee system. Good luck with that.


zero-fee PPS pools do exist. Whether they are sustainable over the long run is another matter altogether and quite beyond the scope pf this discussion. Whether fees are reasonable or not can only be decided by the open market system. Users will not accept fees if they do not perceive getting adequate value for that fee (as long as there is a lower fee alternative available).


I have already mentioned that proportional pools have higher variance than others, in the second line of the very paragraph you are talking about.

Scores decay exponentially if the miner is disconnected. How is that not punishing the disconnection?

They don't have to be similar in nature. As long as the miner makes sure to only mine in pools were he doesn't lose to pool-hopping, his reward will converge to the average.

This doesn't make the quoted sentence any less wrong. The intermittent issue either exists in both PPLNS and proportional or in neither (and if it's neither, remove PPLNS from "...score-based and PPLNS pools require special consideration on your part").

The score for previous shares decays exponentially whether the miner disconnects or not. Remaining connected doesn't stop the decay, it just replenishes the score with the score of the new shares.


I'm not completely sure if we're still discussing in good faith. If I'm not welcome I'll leave, no hurt feelings.

To clarify, when you say "expect" are you referring to the concept of "expected value" from the theory of probability or something more along the lines of "a high chance of receiving at least a certain amount".

If you are concerned about the latter it would be worth pointing out that mining for a few hours at a small PPLNS pool (say N = [difficulty]) has a definite, positive, non-negligible probability of paying out 0 BTC (similar to how a lottery ticket can end up being worthless).  This is one aspect of PPLNS that many miners (even 24/7 miners) find psychologically difficult to handle and, consequently, I feel it is a fair criticism of the reward system.


Interesting.  I might also expect a large array of small PPLNS (or similar) pools.  If there were one such pool a miner may well want to send 2% of their hashing power to increase their variance and expected income so such a setup seems stable.  That's juts a knee-jerk reaction though, I think I'll give this some thought.

Scores decay exponentially if the miner is disconnected. How is that not punishing the disconnection?
[/quote]
The score for previous shares decays exponentially whether the miner disconnects or not. Remaining connected doesn't stop the decay, it just replenishes the score with the score of the new shares.
[/quote]

Yes, this seems to be a common misunderstanding and so I think is very much worth including in your work kislam.  Scores are not designed to decay to attack intermittent miners and thereby reduce pool hopping, they are there to ensure that the expected value of a submitted share is independent of the current round age.

I believe everyone should move to PPS.

If you stay with PPLNS or Prop you are losing out :

-prone to tons of variance and bad luck and long rounds
-prone to pool hoppers that will bend and screw you over

Agreed.  This is not a place for discussing the viability of various pool systems but for helping miners select a pool which works for them.  No-fee PPS pools do exist and, even without merged mining, such a pool is a decent choice for a miner.

From my recommendation of using PPS pools in this scenario it should be clear that I meant the latter.


I did not want to bring that up in order to avoid adding further technicality in this particular thread that attempts from the beginning to be non-technical. The PPLNS method also does away with the concept of rounds (or rather, it disregards round boundaries), which is another psychological hurdle for the average joe. Once a round is finished, if you have submitted shares, you expect (no relation to probability theory) to receive some reward. Fancy mathematics will have a hard time convincing the miner to wait for the long run when his rewards will average out.

I did go back and read it and while you tried to fix it with further edge cases it only makes it more complex and STILL wrong.


This is 100% false.  Nobody is punished in a score based pool.  Even pool hoppers aren't punished it is simply difficult (but not impossible) for them to achieve a >100% PPS return on their shares.

PPLNS pools don't require any special consideration any more than proportional pools do.  Essentially unless the pool is corrupted, or hopped the revenue is the same.  The only thing that varies is variance.

It wasn't clear to me but I did suspect we might be working from different definitions of "expect".  Thanks for clearing that up.  You might consider putting a note about that in your text for mathematicians and gamblers.


I'd argue that warning people that there's a real chance they could get no reward for a few hours mining at a PPLNS pool is far from technical.

Yes, round boundaries are done away with too and this is a little more technical and possibly could be omitted.  I agree that it is another hurdle as many miners think of a share as being part of a block rather than simply a proof-of-work packet.  It can be confusing that a share found in one round can still be generating income many rounds later.

PPLNS pools could help by showing a lifetime revenue & lifetime shares and lifetime expected value.  When people can see "hey I am getting within 1% +/- of PPS then it doesn't really matter if the payments are a little lumpy.

Pools do _not_ exist to reduce a miner's variance, they exist to reduce the operator's variance. Over a long enough period, solo mining will earn the same as pooled mining for a fixed hash rate. The primary reason an operator sets up a pool is to reduce the time taken to find blocks by increasing total hash rate. A pool does not get set up with the target to benefit the miners. The operator has something to gain, if not fees then at least the higher frequency of finding blocks that pooled mining allows as opposed to solo mining.

And please stop advertising your work so much. Your work is quite admirable, for sure (big fan, actually), and providing a link to it when applicable is perfectly fine. But it doesn't warrant posting twice in someone else's thread.

Are you dense ..

"Over a long enough period, solo mining will earn the same as pooled mining for a fixed hash rate."

Variance is deviation from expected value.  This has greater effect on shorter periods of time.

Why bother? Easier to just mine PPS instead.

In fact, I am getting tired of all this hair splitting. This guide is NOT about one single reward method. Enough has been said about this one issue and miners can form their own opinions regarding which method is suitable for them.

Moving on.

Why?  Because of risk of loss or lower return.  There is no free lunch.

PPS takes all the variance from the miner and puts it completely on the pool.  That presents two risks:

0% fee (and low fee) PPS pools run the risk of financial failure (gamblers fallacy).
high fee pools reduce the miner's bottom line.  

EV is actually reduced for PPS pools compared to other types of pools either through fees or though risk of loss.

Move on all you want but you guide turned into little more than an unresearched biased filled blog about pools and features you happen to like.  Which is sad.  It could have been a useful resource for the forum and new miners.  

I removed the second link. I'll leave now.

Are you human ...

Please come out from behind your technical terminology and mathematical models for a second and try to look at it from an average miner's point of view. Only time will tell which reward method wins out in terms of popularity. It may be that all pools only support PPLNS in the future, but there is also a non-zero, positive, non-negligible probability that everyone drops it because miners simply started avoiding pools with PPLNS. In the end, being the best or fairest reward method matters little if the end users are not willing to accept/adopt it. The majority is always right. We'll just have to wait and see...

That's kind of the feeling I got from the OP as well. It's not comprehensive and does not describe the reward systems in any meaningful way (either technically or emotionally) beyond the one type OP likes.  It can still be saved though.  

Yes, I will move on. Reward system was just one of many parts of the guide and PPLNS is just one reward system of many. It seems like the only people complaining so much about errors are those who have vested interest in PPLNS. I don't have a problem with that, but I do believe my time is better spent elsewhere. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Condemn the guide all you want, but I know it will help newcomers make a little more sense of the quite daunting task of choosing the right pool for them.

Your quote had nothing to do with popularity.

Here let me show you....

"Pools do _not_ exist to reduce a miner's variance, they exist to reduce the operator's variance."

Most operators are miners too.  Pools do exist to reduce variance of miners.  Period.  If they didn't then nobody would use a pool (which might be a better thing for network security).


Well no.  At one time the majority supported slavery in the US.  Didn't mean they were right.  Still if your article was on why PPLNS is unpopular you might have a point but that wasn't your claimed reason for an article. 

No you just simply ignored that your explanation of score based and proportional based pools are equally wrong.  You also failed to include the risks of PPS so hopefully no miners gets burned if a PPS pool goes down.


No it will just reinforce false mining urban legends which will require hundreds of post to correct. 

There's no timeouts in PPLNS. And there's no way to set N that gives the pool op any more money. With zero-fee PPLNS the reward system is only about deciding what percentage of the money to give to each miner - you pay out 100% in any case. It only affects the pool op this way: if you create a fair system, you get more miners.


You forgot to add: prone to good luck, short rounds and big payouts. But seriously, no reward system is prone to good or bad luck. On average you will have average luck and get average pay.


What? There's no way to improve expected income by pool hopping a properly implemented PPLNS pool. Not without being able to predict the future.

There is a lot of superstition in this thread.

Love that PPLNS ;)








Anything else to add ?

Its called I was wrong.  It is a common myth, I am not the only one who has accepted and repeated it without evidence. 

I was corrected and learned from it.  Thanks for the links I will be sure to edit them to not continue to spread incorrect information.

Some scary facts have surfaced in this thread. Let me summarize:

• PPLNS & score-based systems make it easier for a greedy pool op to steal from miners by adjusting a timeout or decay rate
• PPLNS can be abused by pool hoppers to steal from other miners
• PPLNS is prone to bad luck
• There is proof somewhere that new reward systems steal from unsuspecting miners
• Meni Rosenfeld's mathematical formulas are biased opinions
• PPLNS is more problematic than most reward systems
• When a group of people make new bitcoins they can't all be winners

If Meni Rosenfeld's research is all wrong and those points above are true, I seriously need to consider other reward systems. At least we are finally getting this properly documented for all newcomers to see.

Can you guys help me out by explaining the logic behind the points above?

You are an idiot.

Ya just had to run to your Girl friend's defence, after he was caught with his foot in his mouth above.

You forgot - PPLNS is for chickenshit Pool OPs that can't afford to run a proper PPS setup and skirt the issue by offering NO FEES......LMAO.

PPLNS is a fine system.  Over the long run a user gets the same rewards under PPLNS as they would under proportional, while having a system that can't be hopped.  Intermittent miners will receive a higher than normal variance, but it can swing either way (massively positive if they stop just as the pool hits a string of luck, massively less if they stop and the pool never finds a block before they expire).

I'm sure it is a fine system, but frankly I am sick and fucking tired of being told that I am somehow crazy for paying 5% for the opportunity to mine at the pool of my choosing currently, because I prefer PPS....and somehow PPLNS is the 'Payment System Of The Gods'....and is FREE...blah...blahty fuckin' blah....

Nobody said that but here you go ...

http://www.misterbees.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/strawman.jpg

That's why I need help understanding these things.


Looks like I forgot to add one thing to the list:

• Being wrong, admitting it and improving oneself is the most terrible thing a person can do

Noone is saying you're crazy. PPS has the lowest possible variance: none. If you want to pay extra for that, that's your choice. Many users prefer PPS even if they have to pay a little extra, and I may implement it in my own pool when I just get the time for it.

There's also nothing wrong with supporting your favorite pool - it costs time and money to run a pool. Even though I run a zero-fee pool myself, I agree with you that there are more important things when choosing a pool than whether it has a tiny fee or none.

OMFG....EVERYONE posts that I am stupid for paying 5% when I suggest a STABLE PPS POOL, then follow it up with a FREE PPLNS 'plug'.

ME:
I pay 5% Fees to mine PPS.

THEM:
You are crazy, use a FREE PPLNS Pool.

ME:
I like having my money available in real time.

THEM:
I would rather save the 5% Fee and wait as long as it takes.

ME:
...and risk not having the FREE pool around, or enough miners to cover your payout ?

THEM:
well, I consider that acceptable loss, and will be less than spending 5% now.


If people didn't have such a hardon for PPLNS and tout it as being the greatest thing going (mostly pool OPs as it were), then perhaps I wouldn't have such a big chip on my shoulder AGAINST IT.

I like paying for a service, because it ensures that the service will stay financially viable and give enough incentive for the OP to maintain the pool, hopefully with a few sheckles in his/her pocket for doing so.

You always seem to get what you pay for....nothing free is ever good in my books.
The only thing in life that is free and any good is pussy......and if you have ever been married, then you will agree that even that is hardly free.....lol

Not once in the last couple weeks have I named my pool and I most likely WILL NOT name it (to keep me from looking like a fan boy).
I simply stated that I pay 5% and it is the best 5% spent in BTC mining.....and worth every bitcent.

I wasn't trying to plug PPLNS. My only goal in this thread was to correct mistaken beliefs about PPLNS so they don't end up in a guide for newbies. I don't want miners scared away from my pool based on things that are simply not true.


This makes perfect sense. I think the big demand in some internet communities that everything should be given away for free may not be healthy in the long run. Certainly this seems wrong for the bitcoin community. I mean, bitcoin is about money. Hello?

Anyway, that's getting off topic...

It's a good thing having a concise guide that covers important issues about mining. When I started I found it all pretty confusing at first.

No, we don't think you're stupid, we just think you're a tool.  A great tool, mind you... but still a tool.  You do good work, though, so it's ok.  You pay 5%!  The best tool around!

THAT was the most pathetic insult ever...... I FEEL LIKE YOU SCAMMED ME out of a proper insult. I am going to have to report this.

I am getting a new 5830 in the next few days. I propose to set up the card to mine round-robin at PPLNS, PPS and Prop pools over an extended period, just to see how the payments (after adjusting for fees if the pool charges any) stack up against each other. Since there has been a lot of disagreement with PPLNS and intermittent mining and long-term results, i am thinking round-robin setup in cgminer can simulate the intermittent nature of mining. Please suggest:

 * Pool(s) for each category (PPLNS/PPS/Prop)
 * Mining software most suitable for this test run (cgminer seems best to me)
 * What should be the total time frame for the test run - i mean, what time frame is long-term enough to average out the different variance levels?
 * Basis of comparing the earnings - OTTOMH i think it might be ok to compare average reward per share from each pool, but pls suggest better ideas
 * Any other suggestions...

Once set up, I will publish the API key for each pool account so that anyone can monitor the progress.

Ideas?

There is no disagreement mate. We all know that PPLNS / Prop suck and that PPS is really the only viable pool system. Only solo is better when you have the power. People using Prop / PPLNS deserve to be cheater by pool hoppers, have a ton of variance and cheated by pool operator. Sheep do your research !

I think numbers speak louder than anything else. So I think this can be a useful demo that comes up with some solid figures which can be referenced later on. I request everyone to offer constructive ideas.

you don't have to, we have ppl around that can simulate (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47411.msg614637#msg614637) any situation over a long period of time...

Indeed if PPLNS can be abused by pool hoppers I certainly need to do some research and switch to a better reward system. After all, stopping pool hoppers was the reason I went with PPLNS.

Could you please point me to some evidence or explanation of these facts so I can do my research properly? Or perhaps you can explain how it works yourself.

Hi DrHaribo,

this should be of interest for you:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39832.0

Within a difficulty "set" PPLNS can't be hopped.  When difficulty changes if the change is very large (30%+) there is a small window where the pool could be hopped in theory.  However there are two real world issues that make this useless:
a) difficulty changes only occur once every 14 days
b) the window isn't always present and last only till block is solved at most

When I pool hopped I had some PPLNS pools setup in my config.  The software never found a viable hop point.  Even on difficulty changes the PPLNS pools were either <100% efficiency or when they did present a "bonus" other pools were worth even more.

To "solve" even this small (and mostly academic flaw) a PPLNS pool could record the difficulty of each share submitted.  The split would then be weighted by difficulty.

1) look at all shares in last N
2) multiply each share by difficulty when submitted
3) take product of number of shares * difficulty
4) total is miner's weighted share count
5) do the same for whole pool
6) miner share = (miner's weighted share count) / (pool's weighted share count)

You could normalize the numbers by dividing difficulty by difficulty of first share.  This has no effect on the math it simply makes the numbers smaller and more easily understood.

For example:
In last 2 million shares
you submitted 100,000 shares at difficulty of 1,378,309 worth 1.000 shares each.
you submitted  80,000 shares at difficulty of 1,202,890 worth 0.873 shares each.
Total weighted shares submitted: 169,818.31 shares

Simulations are one thing, real life data is quite another. I am disappointed by the (lack of) response from the PPLNS proponents/supporters, though. This test could potential prove their very important point that PPLNS reward method does not negatively impact the intermittent miner over the long run, compared to other methods.

No takers?

I am not sure what you are asking.  A good PPLNS pool to use for a test?  Try BitMinter.Com

How long do you need to test for to compensate for variance (luck) between pools?
You will want to submit a lot of shares to each pool.  Honestly I would look at using at least 1 million shares per pool.  Longer is always better.  You could always report back at 2M, 5M, 10M shares.

The length of time of each "switch", the randomness, the "time away" doesn't matter.  Just make sure you record the number of shares submitted to each pool, revenue generated and you can get the revenue per share.

Interesting idea. When choosing a proportional pool it may be best to choose one that isn't being pool-hopped, otherwise all it shows is how badly pool-hopping affects other miners. Your ideas for this test look fine, the only difficult thing is the time frame. Maybe report at intervals like DAT suggested.


Yes, comparing payout per accepted proof of work (share) is the way to do it, I think. Disregard stales. Other reward models will lag behind PPS, so make sure the current block at the proportional pool has completed, and all your accepted proofs of work are no longer eligible for pay at the PPLNS pool. After that, either wait for blocks to confirm, or count in the unconfirmed balance.


That's what I read before I implemented PPLNS in my pool. Meni Rosenfeld does some excellent work. Just like he suggests, I use a score for each proof of work equal to 1 divided by the difficulty at the time it is submitted. This is what I meant with "properly implemented" PPLNS earlier in this thread, just forgot to write that this time. ;)


Yes, that is what I do. Each accepted proof of work gets a score=1/difficulty. I should have said weighted PPLNS is hopper-proof.

Yeah, but make sure each reward system is tested under the same difficulty, otherwise the shares are not directly comparable.

Round-robin with cgminer sounds like a good solution.

Can you add in DGM to your test?  I would like to know how my pool compares in a real world scenario.

LOL. Never heard of double geometry stuff till now. How does it work ?

Double Geometric Method was born here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=39497.0

And here is some FAQ content:
https://yourbtc.net/faq-page

Inaba uses different parameter on eclipse than me on yourbtc. Maybe both could be considered in a test. Definitely interested too.

The simulations are really only suitable for illustrating a particular reward system, it is mathematics that establishes whether or not a reward system impacts intermittent miners.

A real data test will be difficult to perform for a number of reasons.  I fear all that could be gleaned from such a test is which pool "currently" performs the best and say nothing conclusive about future performance or about reward systems.

I really don't know why anyone would bother with anything but a PPS pool ...

Want to be cheated by operator, long rounds, pool hoppers, variance then please go ahead and worship deepbit / slush and other such botnetmasters of pools.

Firstly, you have only stated 3 reasons there not 4.
long rounds=variance
And in that case, as long as the pools luck - %fee is less than the PPS pools %fee you will be ahead.

So you are left with trusting the pool operator and hoping that hoppers are not taking more than a small % of the pools total (again less than the % difference charge between the pools) ...

Actually it is more like 1: Variance.

Pool hopping is a non issue as PPLNS, SMPPS, and double geo can't be hopped.

Trusting Pool operator never goes away.  A PPS pool operator can cheat by either running away with the money or "stale share shaving" (reporting some % of valid shares as stale to reduce payout).  If you don't trust your pool operator well you are fucked either way.

So that leaves variance.  Given the 5%-10% fee on most PPS pools I will gladly eat some variance to get 5% or more extra by not paying fees.  The hourly variance may be significant but I don't care how much I make per hour.  I care how much a make per month (when my powerbill comes).  Variance is a non-issue on a month long timeframe. 

If someone thinks less daily variance is worth it then they should pay the extra fee but thinking they "got" anything other than reduced payout for reduced variance is just denial.

Much more concise and elegantly put than I could have... but that's exactly my thoughts, Death ;)

If variance is not important then why bother to mine in a pool at all ???

If I had 50GH/s I wouldn't.
Likewise if my electrical bill came once a year I wouldn't.

However I don't have 50GH/s and my electrical bill comes once a month.  As I state I could care less about hourly or daily or even weekly variance.  However I would like to get revenue each month to pay the electric bill.

There is no significant variance over a 30+ day period when using a pool.  A pool also has the advantage of merged mining, and ability to consolidate hashing power towards a single wallet.  If pools didn't exist I likely would use an internal pool for my rigs anyways.  Given the number of free, donation, or low cost pools I simply don't see the benefit of doing all that work myself.

I think one can also solo MM but I don't know the exact steps to get that working 100%.

There is a significant amount of variance based on the pool hashrate though. What pool hashrate is giving you insignificant variance after only 30 days? Actually it probably makes more sense for me to ask what number of round it takes for you to notice variance being insignificant, I'd be interested to know if it tallies with my own observations.

As far as SMPPS hopping goes, I've had average maturity time decreased by half a round on average. Not helpful on a big pool, but very handy on a small one.

I added a new statistics page at my pool showing real life data: http://bitminter.com/stats/rewards (http://bitminter.com/stats/rewards)

You can see how actual payouts compare to the expected average income per share (basically 0% fee PPS). I can probably improve this with some stats for "all time average" and "average last X time", but I think it is already useful. There are also charts of the pool's luck here: http://bitminter.com/stats/luck (http://bitminter.com/stats/luck)

Quick way to get some data without taking months to run a test. :)

very nice

Please add a cumulative graph comparing total earning over time for both methods, or at least a weighted average trend line for the PPLNS reward. Otherwise it is not readily apparent how the rewards from two methods compare over time...

That's exactly what I was missing, thanks! Added: https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards (https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards)

I removed the first shifts (proofs of work are grouped in shifts, each of size difficulty/10). I started recording these before I switched to PPLNS, so the first ones naturally had no rewards.

This is just 46x difficulty worth of proofs of work. We are a small pool, and it wasn't always PPLNS, so we don't have that much data to go on yet.

You can see some bad luck in the beginning put us below average. Then a nice streak of good luck put us at about twice the expected earnings. From there up until now it's been pretty average. Right now we are having a really bad block, which is the reason for no earnings towards the end. Luckily we had some short blocks just before that.

Obviously the big lucky streak at the beginning takes a while to even out. Ending at 29 rather than 23 BTC is a big difference.
Since switching to PPLNS we made 58 blocks rather than the expected 46. Too small sample size maybe? Any other pool ops have some data?

Can you explain that last graph?  How can you have cumulative earnings higher than the expected average without corresponding dips below the average?  Seems like that would imply the pool is losing money (and a great deal of it if that graph is accurate).

What parameters did you use to generate the graph?  What is the timeframe of the second graph... if it's 1 million years, you're going to be stuck in the dip for your expected lifetime, losing money the whole time.  If it's 2 days, then it would be silly to not mine there, since your actual revenue would then be guaranteed to be more forever? Without the time scale, it's kind of a meaningless graph.

Good looking graphs, though!

The pool was simply lucky.  It payout what it earns.

It actual earnings were more than its expected earnings (based on mathematical odds and hashing power of pool over time).

For example a solo miner w/ 1 GH would have an EXPECTED EARNINGS of 25.64 BTC per month however as solo miner it is impossible to earn that.  In one month he will either earn 0 BTC, 50 BTC, 100BTC ... etc.  Thus his actual recovery will always be more or less than expected recovery.

What does the 29 and 23 BTC represent?  Obviously the pool has earned a lot more than 29 or 23 BTC?  Since nominal terms are meaningless (although some users might like to see them) it may be more useful to graph the difference between expected and actual recovery over time as a %.  i.e. the ending point of 29 vs 23 would be +26%.

Nice graph. The title is a bit misleading, though -- instead of saying "PPLNS vs. Expected Average" it should probably say "Pool earnings vs. expected average". The higher earning came from pool luck, not from the reward method.

The second graph is what someone with 1% of the pool's hash power would have earned since the time we switched to PPLNS. Maybe +26% makes more sense, instead of picking some arbitrary hash power.


I felt it was wrong to call the second graph "actual earnings" because noone hashed at 1% of the hash power the entire time. It's a bit hypothetical. Maybe it's ok to call it actual earnings if I put percentages on it like DAT suggested.

Also, the graph is PPLNS vs PPS (for this specific pool for the time we've been using PPLNS). The higher earnings came from pool luck, yes. But it was paid out to miners because of PPLNS. In this case we were lucky and payout was higher than PPS. But it could of course have been the opposite. It shows the variance from PPLNS. And as we see, 46x difficulty is not enough shares to even this out.

In this case, with PPLNS, the +26% earnings from good luck went to the miners. If it was PPS it would have gone to the pool op. Same thing of course if it had been -26%. With PPLNS the miners get the variance, with PPS the pool op does.


That's just the pool having better than average luck for a while near the beginning.


The timeframe for both graphs is 46x difficulty number of shares. Which is a while at a 70 Ghps pool, but I guess only about a day on deepbit? You can see that every area with zero pay in the first graph leads to a flat line in the second graph where earnings don't increase. Everything matches up between the graphs on the X-axis.

It would have made very much sense to mine here at the lucky period near the beginning, yes. But of course noone can predict that, and that's what makes PPLNS safe from pool hopping.

Yeah that isn't intuitively obvious.  I would simply show the full pool earnings (i.e. ~2900 BTC) or show it as a %.

Both might be best.  The % (just a single line showing variance from the expected) is the most useful from a statistical standpoint because nominal values aren't important however I have learned often people believe "real numbers" more than %.  Illogical but true.

Since no-one has had exactly 1% of hashing power (which changes continually) I would just show overall pools earnings.

"actual earnings vs expected earnings"

and then possibly a second graph showing the % deviation from actual.

BTW could you provide this data in txt (or csv or xls) form.  I would be interested is generating some graphs from it.  +26% is would seem (without doing an standard deviation calculations) to be REAL lucky.  I am interested in quantifying our luck.  Would also allow me to make some predictions on our likely variance based on hashing power.  I guess I could screen scrape it from the blocks or shifts pages. I am wondering how you handled changing difficulty intra-block to draw the PPS/expected line.

I think I'll do both, when I have a little time. Maybe add datestamps on the shifts too.


Maybe I can add this sort of thing to the JSON API later. But you can grab it pretty easily from the html source. If you "view source" in your browser you will find 2 huge javascript arrays. The first is actual share values, the second is the expected average values. For each line there is first an index number and then the numbers you see when you mouse over the lines in the graph. The second graph just uses the same data after adding up the values with some javascript. Hmm, come to think of it, the expected average values are easily calculated with javascript too - I should do that instead.


I didn't handle it, I just listed it as an error source at the top of the page. It uses the difficulty at the end of the shift, pretending it was the same throughout the shift. It looks like the difficulty only changed in 4 places, so it should not matter much. But for those 4 shifts I think I could calculate the average difficulty and use that. I'll look into that later.

Anyway, to me it's a little surprising that we are that far from the expected average. Do we have any probability experts here? What is "the long run" for bitcoin mining? 46x difficulty number of shares definitely looks like the short run.

So I have to admit, to PPS fans, that variance can be a bigger factor than one might expect. Just remember, though, luck isn't always bad luck, and taking a 50/50 risk doesn't always mean you lose.

Thanks.

Makes sense.  The simplest way would be to take average of starting and ending difficulty. It should cut the error down some from just using the ending. 



It does for me too.  More than I would have "guesstimated" which is why I always like to look at hard numbers.  When I get home I will run some standard deviations but I would say we are well outside 2 standard deviations.

Wow, you resurrected a 2 year old thread. ;)

Your hashrate doesn't matter for choosing a pool or reward method.

I would recommend Bitminter. It rocks.

You should avoid posting links with ref.

Not in this board.

hy guy´s i just bought a spondoolius 1,5 TH´s miner.... i read several tuts and topic´s and i really don´t know which pool is the best for me.

I have a flat with great power connection means i have constant power connection.
About internet i have only a 3g router which means sometimes it´s not the best.

 now i have the best question ever: Which pool is the best for me? or better said which type is the best

looking forward to your answers.

3G means whatever you do, don't mine a pool with the GBT protocol and don't use a Stratum pool that sends you the transactions (not sure if any Stratum pools are silly enough to do this - but some may)

The GBT transactions dramatically increase the amount of data sent from the pool to you, whereas a good Stratum pool only sends you a small work item every 30s (some of the not-so-good stratum pools wait longer than 30s, but that is not as good for bitcoin either)

Some pools also send empty blocks to their miners - avoid them - it's due to bad quality pool software and poor programming language choices.

Though, of course, I will add that my pool does all those things right :D
Stratum, with 30s work updates, no address blacklisting in an attempt to degrade the fungibility of bitcoin, no hidden transaction filtering, no hidden connections with companies to mine their transactions, we simply use the standard bitcoind rules with a larger block size limit and always send work with only and all transactions in it that the bitcoind template provides.
https://www.kano.is/

Unless there are problems or design flaws with antminer.com? then the pool profitability will average over time directly to the pool fee.
In my case the pool fee is 0.9% so the payout is 99.1% PPS + 99.1% txn which averages out to be about 99.5% PPS
I've no idea what antminer.com fees are.

I have never mined on antminer.com and don't plan on it but if you can believe what they post on their thread this is what I found:

Features
0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

How did this ancient thread from 2011 full of useless information come back to life?

Bitcoin GPU mining is dead. Post this in the Alt coins thread, you might be able to still mine some alt coins with a GPU.

OK thanks for all this information, i am still not smarter, because its already too much information.

I am mining in this moment with 8x Antminer S9 in Antpool and i have a average hashrate from 118.98 TH/s - in 3 weeks there are coming 15x more miners same type.

I want simple get the most money out of this as fast as possible. I put the miners in my house where everything fits like temperature etc. So they are running really 24/7

There are soooo many comments that they want to get people away from anntpool, i need to ask because of this.

Where can i get more money for my mining work capacity?

Thanks a lot of all answers and i really appreciate your help...

Hands down Kano is best. End of story.

Hey, was this meant for my request? I registered already in Kano, i heard it several times but i dont find there the payout option and how it works...

Let's see... Login, top-right corner > Help > Payouts....
Plus they *do* have a thread here that can be searched ya know ;)