Bitcoin Forum

What's the best pool right now?

BTC Guild does pay per share, which is very profitable, but they charge a 5% fee. Slush's Pool only charges 2%, but lacks some features. I want to hear what you guys think on the topic.  :)

The three pools I use are: (in no particular order)

http://ozco.in
http://bitminter.com
http://maxbtc.com

I would recommend you use these pools because of their fair payout systems (DGM or PPLNS) that cannot be hopped and because they do not have a mandatory fee.

So they're better than PPS or Score based?  :D

Edit: ozco.in seems to have a 5% fee on PPS.

It all depends on what you want out of the pool.

If you want lots of fancy stats/features and dont mind variance then the pools listed by gigavps is good but if you dont mind the lack of fancy pool features and only interested in zero variance then my 101% PPS Bonuspool ie. no fee, we pay you an extra 1%, offer might be more for you.

p2pool if you make sure everybody can connect and your node is stable you can easily archive >100% efficiency at all times.

/thread

You do know efficiency isnt the same as percentage payout ? p2pool offers pplns and that comes with variance like any other non-pps pool, no way around this unless changing to 0% PPS pool.

strange I always assumed efficiency is equivalent to payout. What else would it be?

Efficiency reflects how efficient you handle workload/getworks. So if you have >100% efficiency it means you are submitting more than 1 solved work unit per getwork and in the case of pools offering rollntime this is generally the case since alot of work is generated locally which would keep efficiency over 100% since much less work per submitted work is fetched from the pool.

and the reason for this not affecting payout would be?

Really, did you read what I typed ?

The only benefit to higher efficiency is less strange on a pool since you dont hammer it for work as often. You are still submitting the same amount of work in relation to your hashrate, not 1 more or 1 less thus you dont get paid more simply because you have higher efficiency.

Im surprised you dont know this yet with nearly 2000 posts.

If you still dont understand then I wont be able to explain it to you, its really not that complicated.  ;)

ps. I have just under 1000% efficiency with the latest cgminer on my biggest gpu cluster, do you seriously think I am getting 10x more from my hashing ?

Alright I understand it now, still you might be wrong.... I'd look it up myself, thanks ;)

*facepalm*

No I might not be wrong, I am right.

I would not recommend using PPS at ozco.in. Their DGM payment system will payout 100% over time.

Also, those fancy graphs are good at helping you understand what kind of return you are making and how the pool is doing with variance and other factors.

What do you guys think of MT.Red?

He didn't mean the efficiency in cgminer; he meant the efficiency in p2pool.

The efficiency in p2pool shows your amount of dead/orphan shares in comparison to the rest of the pool. If your efficiency is above 100%, you have less than average deads/orphans and vice versa.

Still the efficiency >100% doesnt reflect earnings of >100% PPS which he for some reason kept hammering on about.

I still think he was looking at cgminer efficiency since I clearly noted cgminer in my response and he didnt shrug at that to suggest hes looking at a different number within p2pool.

True, it only tells you if you're making more or less than the other people on the pool.

ozcoin with DGM for the win

if you're getting 5% more of your shares counted on p2pool you're getting 5% more than someone else with the same hashrate.  What do you think your payout would be in p2pool if your efficiency were below 50% compared to someone with 105%?

*double facepalm*

Sure one guy could earn more than another, it doesnt mean everyone can earn more than 100% of available block BTC, that is whats up for discussion here.

If your efficiency for p2pool displayed 200% efficiency then there must be another user with same hashrate getting 0% efficiency and mining into your wallet.

If everyone could easily get >100% efficiency as electricmucus suggested, where do you think that extra magical BTC comes from within p2pool network ? Surely not from space and time itself.

If your efficiency was below 50%, there's most likely something severely wrong with your internet connection. I'd say get off the dial-up/satellite. I'm on pretty bad DSL and my efficiency is currently sitting at 105.3%.

I haven't. You see my suggestion wasn't that far off after all....
But I am not willing do debate with you, I find your excessive use of the facepalm expression offensive.

I find your lack of knowledge offensive and then to tell me that I might be wrong when you dont know what it actually is.

Just to recap your own words:


Re-read what you typed and then try to say again that you didnt state easily >100% efficiency, your own line of defense is claiming archive wasnt a mispelling of achive which is surely is otherwise that whole sentence wouldnt make sense.

Im glad you finally learned about these basics after 1966 posts but next time please remember what you typed before calling me a liar.

Why? Are you a face?

Achieve, actually.

I haven't accused anybody ITT of lying or otherwise.

My point was that if I have constant efficiency of over 100% on p2pool I have more income than if I were to mine on a 100% fair pool. I still think that is the case and I never have claimed that the overall payout for all p2pool miners goes over 100%. (bitcoins out of thin air). If my original statement still is wrong I apologize, but quite frankly I still can't see what's wrong with it besides nit-picking on things like spelling errors.

Anyway: I don't care really about the subject, I all you wanted was to stumble me on my loudmouth claim which you suspected wasn't properly researched, congratulations you have been successful. If you don't mind I still gonna believe that I am earning more by having more efficiency in p2pool than the average. In case you wanna convince everybody else go ahead, do it faggot.
But you gonna have to debunk the claims on the bitcoinwiki first, good luck with that.

 I'm out,

OzCoin down right now but great pool, but now adding fees :(

So you don't donate to pools you use? How do you expect pools to have good uptime if you're not paying someone to run it?

i would say the same except include eclipsemc in there

i'm pretty sure I make less using p2pool.  yes, my 'efficiency' might be higher compared to other people, but i'm still getting like 3-4% rejects, vs 0.1% on some other pool..

well, i0coin, ixcoin, and namecoin made up for it at the start, but now they're about 1/5th (ixcoin and i0coin, namecoin is about 1/2) what they were worth 2 weeks ago.  is there some exchange for i0coin and ixcoin other than vircurex?

OP ever coming back to tell us why he wants PPS? Low hashrate?

Mt. red had a lot of downtime. THey had the highest PPS rate, 2nd highest is ABC

So I wanted to do red but the downtime. then I decided not to do PPS at all

OzCoin good, but just attacked and recovering, halted payouts. and they're introducing a fee soon

Bitminter, if you donate just 1% you don't have to wait for the 120 confirmations (20 hours) to get your bitcoin rewards for each block like you would with OzCoin

DeepBit/BTC Guild, big guys but still got hit with attack and DB has large fee as well as BTC Guild is not the best paying PPS and must have 0.1 to withdraw (deepbit=0.01BTC minimum)

ABC Pool you need 0.2 or else you'll get charged .01 fee to withdraw!

Mt. red i believe NO fees to withdraw

You're right 105% efficiency on p2pool = 105% expected return for your hashpower.  Of course for the whole pool returns can only be 100% of expected return over a long enough time, Clipse doesn't know what he's talking about because cgminer getwork efficiency is as related to p2pool efficiency as my car engine efficiency is.

Stales only hurt you if you have relatively higher stales than the rest of the p2pool network, and seeing as you're reporting 3-4% stales compared to the p2pool avg of 6-9% you should be getting greater than expected returns for your hashpower.

So you confirm that not everyone can get >100% efficient on p2pool then you tell me I am wrong ? Maybe you should just race into a wall with that logic.

Re-read what electricmucus claimed and what I quoted from his own text before you even bother to comment on what I typed.

Again, not everyone can earn more than 100% from p2pool and only because some people are running <100% and others >100% doesnt mean p2pool will reward everyone at >100% which was the basis of this discussion but I am sure you didnt bother reading into that. jesus people learn2math.

I honestly fail to see how some of the people on this forum even got into bitcoins with the lack of rudimentary mathematical skills.

Btw racerguy, this discussion is not about the p2pool luck factor as reported on p2pool.info , thats completely unrelated to this discussion.

Actually efficiency on p2pool = percentage payout, wrong again.

You are again avoiding the original point, efficiency/luck/whatever on p2pool.info is not guaranteed nor are anyone able to claim that you can earn more than 100% indefinitely. Guess what you can continue to think you are on the right track while missing the whole point of this discussion, p2pool CANNOT guarantee >100% efficiency/luck/whatever you want to call it no matter how hard you try to convince anyone here.

I would bet my left nut that the only reason some people would be getting >100% at times aside from the general luck factor is due to pplns and some miners who stop mining and losing their rewards which are claimed by other continous miners due to pplns.

You can keep on believing you are right it still doesnt make you right.

Stop talking about p2pool efficiency if you have no idea what it means, it's got nothing to do with getwork efficiency and it's got nothing to do with the overall pool luck displayed on p2pool.info and it's got nothing to do with pplns/miners dropping out.

You can try P2Pool  at my public node. If its ok for You, then you can made You ouwn Node or stay at mine

http://p2pool-cologne.dyndns.org:9332      NO Fee
BTC Adress as Username, Password something


a lot of fun

Does it hurt to be so stupid? Honest question, because I don't know how I could live with myself if I were in such a state.

Gotcha, p2pool efficiency got nothing to do with nothing and is its own mystical value that relates to nothing else. Thanks for clearing that up, Im about to launch my own p2pool session so I could earn some magical credits.

p2pool efficiency = (100-your orphan rate)/(100-p2pool orphan rate).  I don't know where you get getwork/p2pool.info/miners dropping out having anything to do with it.

Also electromucus was correct in his first post, if you forward your p2pool port and allow incoming connections it is easy to achieve >100%efficiency on p2pool which translates to >100% payouts(or I've been lucky the entire last 2 months on p2pool with share).

Do you read the shit you type? If everyone can easily get >100% efficiency which translate to >100% payouts then there must be some magical >blockreward and there isnt, there is a maximum blockreward + transactions.

The only way you could earn more than 100% PPS on p2pool is the following 3 factors:

1.) p2pool is running lucky and hitting blocks faster than expected poolwide.
2.) PPLNS - alot of miners drop out in long rounds or whatever the reason which rewards the remaining miners with more value for each of their shares due to those dropping out losing value on their shares.
3.) you are full of shit.

None of this relate to a guarantee in magically producing extra btc out of a set btc block value.

If you still dont realise just how stupid your post is, please just shutdown your computer since you have failed all possible logic.

1) nothing to do with what electromucas claimed.
2) nothing to do with what electromucas claimed, also you don't seem to understand how pplns works.
3) If you're going to be a dick about being right, be right or you'll end up with egg all over your face.

[/quote]
p2pool if you make sure everybody can connect and your node is stable you can easily archive >100% efficiency at all times.

/thread

[/quote]
See that if in there?  That means >100% efficiency is conditional on you opening your p2pool port and allowing incoming connections, he never claimed the entire pool was enjoying >100% efficiency.  You just mistakenly assumed he was talking about getwork efficiency then overall pool luck then your own ignorance of pplns led you off on another random tangent.  Like I said if you're going to be a dick about correcting someone be correct.

p2pool if you make sure everybody can connect and your node is stable you can easily archive >100% efficiency at all times.

/thread

[/quote]
See that if in there?  That means >100% efficiency is conditional on you opening your p2pool port and allowing incoming connections, he never claimed the entire pool was enjoying >100% efficiency.  You just mistakenly assumed he was talking about getwork efficiency then overall pool luck then your own ignorance of pplns led you off on another random tangent.  Like I said if you're going to be a dick about correcting someone be correct.

[/quote]

WOW you surely cant be this rediculously stupid. So now everyone open their port and everyone gets >100% Efficiency, that is what you are stating here and in effect everyone would earn >100%.

Please just shutup cause you are just typing with shitstained fingers now, no way I can take you seriously after yet another illogical reply.

PPLNS works exactly as I stated, Im not being a dick just pointing out how fucking stupid you are.

It is users like you who come here bringing down the collective intelligence of this forum slowly but surely straight into the toilet.

ps. I deliberately quote your own broken quote, well played sir.

If pplns worked like you claimed it could be hopped, miners dropping out dont make your shares magically worth more or pplns pools would be hopped whenever they had a hashrate drop.  pplns shares are worth the same more or less no matter what the entire hashrate of the pool is, it's just with a lower poolwide hashrate you end up with a higher % of shares per last n shares so you get a bigger slice of the less frequent block reward.

Do you understand english, and yes users dropping out long enough DOES increase your share value if you continue mining, read below if you even care. Your logic that PPLNS would be monitored to get hopped when hashrate drop is silly, now you are assuming people can predict when a block would get hit aswell, LMAO.

PPLNS work exactly as I stated, if we both start a PPLNS block at same time with same hashrate and submit same shares and I stop mining then you would effectively get a bigger slice of the pie for your shares, my shares would reduce in value over time and the difference would in effect get added to the remaining miners(you in this case).

PPLNS can be viewed as Prop with share loss to miners who stop mining, there is nothing special about it. If there is 2 users with 1GH each on a pplns pool and one of the users leave for long enough then I would FOR FREE get the difference and in this case total of 50BTC all to myself with no rewards going to the guy who quit. This is exactly why you could see more earnings aside from luck on p2pool due to PPLNS penalising users quitting within a block period, not sure how you got to hopping since none of this points to me suggesting its possible to hop it, please stop eating bath salts.

Please read up and understand how PPLNS actually works and how your earnings gets affected when you stop mining on a PPLNS pool since you dont seem to understand or simply want to play stupid with your replies.

Project X PPS sucks!

OP should be here saying:

"Moderator, Moderator?! I'd like to take my thread back"

poor effort from p2pool fanbois and clipse, way to shit on what was looking like a useful thread.

ontopic: yes Ozcoin is introducing fees, the topic is Best Pool not cheapest pool :)

Ozcoin is a premium pool with good features, introducing a fee ensures the viability of the pool going forward and will allow us to extend our features and improve the pool further.
I guess everyone has forgotten the ARSbitcoin saga - it once was an awesome fee free pool....

ARSbitcoin saga. never heard of it

starts here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18567.msg606692#msg606692
basically a tale of real life taking over the ability of a 0fee pool operator to continue properly running and maintaining a pool. The BIP16 changes were the final nail in the coffin.

How can you be replying to these idiots for this long and add so much insult to it ?
While I agree with everything you said,  Calm down ,,,

I had emucus ignored for as long as I can remember.  I suggest you do the same,

On topic :
I'll continue mining at Ozco for a while since I feel like I owe something to Graet for his great support.
While I think 3% is a lot for long term, heavy miners, he got my trust that this strategy will benefit us all at some point.

You are right, I fked up responding so long and feel ashamed as hell. I just find it so frustrating that sometimes I cant help myself to keep responding hoping that something will change, I definitely failed hard with that part, heh.

So, I just got my brand new BFL BitForce Singles.
I was mining with my graphics card up until a few days ago at DeepBit. Why? Dunno. Just got there somehow.
Anyways, I decided to do some research and find the best pool for my 2 Singles & Graphics card.
Taking into account that reward is dropping in December, I realized that I would like a pool that also shares the tx. fees (that's how Satoshi meant it to be).
Given that, I also wanted the pool with least variance (we all hate variance when it's against us).
Next, I went to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools and found my winner:

BitMinter

- Tx Fees are shared
- No mandatory fee (I donate 2%)
- Hash power is nice - 1 TH/sec

Of course, ever since I started mining there, the luck was against me, but that comes with me, not with the pool...

If you want the least variance (PPS) and transaction fees paid out, Mt. Red would make more sense. Although I would keep BitMinter as a backup; Mt. Red is down fairly often.

Depending on how often MTRED is down Bitminter could have lower variance, especially now that DrH has set N=2.

Yeah, my only problem with BitMinter is how far away the server is (Germany I think?). I do notice a few more rejects on BitMinter than MaxBTC (the pool that I have the lowest ping to, about 35).

OK, but my point is that PPS is not the lowest variance method if the site is down a lot.

To answer the OP's question....I mine mostly on Ozco.in and Eclipse using DGM. I've tried others but like them best.

Primary is Ozcoin and that is because it is run by a helpful, respectful guy. Graet is a great person to work with, and when I was a noob I saw his name all over bitcointalk explaining stuff and generally just helping the community out.

Doesn't MtRed have 100% downtime?

If you want PPS and transaction fees paid out then you are out of luck. That pool doesn't exist.

In the future when transaction fees go up even more we will see PPS pools paying above what they today call "zero fee", because it isn't actually zero fee (transaction fees are not paid out).

Sorry, MtRed do payout txn fees on PPS, part of the reason they pay on blockfind I am told :)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15929.msg1128174#msg1128174

Ah, I stand corrected. My apologies.

Interesting, they delay PPS payouts so they can include transaction fees in the payout. Looks like a good way to include tx fees on PPS pools.

Maybe other PPS pools will take that route too, rather than calculate in some average tx fee value. Time will show.

Details on pools fees and payments can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0

:P

Yeah, yeah, rub it in :D

Btw, what does "pay stales" mean? Do that many pools pay for stale proofs of work ("shares")?

I thought only one pool did that, which closed down. The name eludes me right now.

Yes, it means they pay stale shares. I'm not sure how they tell those from invalid shares, but according to their websites and forum threads, there are five pools that do, four of which are PPS.

BTW, that post is a work in progress - if anything is wrong, let me know. I spent a day off sick from work reading pool threads, and I might have lost my mind at some point. ;)

I guess they keep track of old work for a while so they pay for work that is "too old" but not "too too old". ;) Doesn't make sense to pay for work that was stale 30 minutes ago.


I was sure Deepbit doesn't pay stale shares. They pay out orphaned ("invalid") blocks though.

Maybe I'm wrong and I should also start reading all the pool threads. But it does sound like a fast way to lose one's mind.

Best pool as of Semptember 2012? I'd say Bonuspool https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60717.0
Miners get 130% PPS. Only trick is that coins are paid at the end of Semptember.

I'll pm [Tycho] and check that I didn't make a mistake. I seem to also remember this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AOfbnGkuGc) in the thread, so I could be wrong.

... if coins are paid at all.
Dont you think that whole scheme smells to high heaven? Its a pool run by one of Pirate's fiercest defenders. I would exercise some caution if I were you.

I know you hate Clipse and his pool. Now you are going to advertise your pool hopping scheme, right? Like you did few weeks ago in Clipse's thread?

The approach I've been considering implementing is paying a PPS value based on the actual value of the block that getwork creates. This would include transaction fees for the block. It'd make the PPS value slightly variable as transactions are included in blocks being hashed. A downside might be if an outlier transaction with a large fee is in a block and the pool pays out PPS for it but doesn't win it - it might take longer to recover from that. if transactions fees are evenly distributed across blocks it might not be too bad. I assume this is how DGM pools include transaction fees?

I strongly distrust Clipse, accused and IMO shown him to be a liar. Whats currently going on doesnt exactly instil confidence, but if you do trust him, feel free to spend your shares there. You may want to buy some Pirate debt while you are at it.  As for my pool hopping scheme, its not a pool, so its not something I would bring up in this thread and I dont think you can seriously accuse me of spamming it.  

In effect you're paying out Tx fees?

That's what the effect would be. I haven't implemented it yet though so not currently paying out Tx fees.

That would mean paying PPS once a block solves rather per share -  is that how you do it atm?

No, the effect is it pays out the transaction fee value for the current block being worked at as part of the PPS payment. So each PPS increment for the user is adjusted based on the fees for that block being worked on, even though the pool hasn't received those fees and might not if it doesn't solve that actual block. Over time it should balance out though.

Currently bitparking doesn't pay out transaction fees at all.

I understand - thanks for persevering.

Only 1 DGM pool is paying txn fees currently to my knowledge
DGM is score based
incoming shares increases score,
we use a RPC call to see value of transactions in block when share submitted, this is factored into score
currently when we pay out we do: pool_B = [[50 - 3%]+ txn_fee]
this will be changing to: pool_B = [[50+ txn_fee  ] - 3%] before block reward halves, obviously when reward halves it will become pool_B = [[25+ txn_fee ] - 3%]
roomservice may be able to give a more detailed explanation when he has time
hope that's a help
Graet

P2pool! Everyone who cares for bitcoin's future, should at least check it out.

I haven't been paid since 2012-07-24 despite Clipse agreeing to pay me prior to the pirate collapse.
He is able to lock his pool thread to avoid bad publicity.