Bitcoin Forum

I just don't understand why anyone would join a guild that's so big. We all know a 51% attack isn't exactly that dangerous, but that doesn't mean there aren't other types of effects from giving so much power to one group.

And thus the cycle continues.  Now even 30% warrants outrage, a value that nobody had seemed to have an issue with for all of 2011 and 2012 when it was Slush or Deepbit with 30%.  Hell, for a long time it was 2 pools controlling 30%+ each, double the danger!

i remember a lot of bitching about deepbit in 2011.    not so much slush

ignorance?  

i've always figured most of the biggest asic miners nowadays didn't even know about bitcoins until this year (outside of the companies themselves hashing)

well, wait, let me edit this again.  i'm not saying ignorance based on size (well, indirectly I suppose).

more like "the more often I get paid, the more I make"

The bitching about Deepbit was when they were ~45%.  And it wasn't even that loud until they actually *had* 51%.  BTC Guild is 29.8% (http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php).

Because BTCguild kicks ass, I only recall once that my miners went down due to them and I had a private pool link super quick that got me going again.

I can always remove my hashrate from the pool if for some strange reason eleuthria starts acting funny as well.

I've been there a while though, so you go somewhere else  ;)

Thanks for the answers. Didn't mean to be bitchy :)

Well, I don't think you should have to defend the fact that your pool is successful, shrug..

Even if it did get to 51%, I suspect the only benefit you could take advantage of w/o crashing the price would just be that you'd be able to win even more of the orphan "races" just by solving another block on top of the one that had a possibility of being orphaned..  any other types of chicanery would most likely be detected pretty fast & I personally dont see the incentive of destroying one's own source of income (or the value of their current assets)

Less variance. 

Thread over.

lol the question is why isnt btcguild bigger?   who are the dummys mining at smaller pools earning less money?

And that is nonsense too. More variance, yes, less money? Wrong. If you're arguing about stability or something else, that's a different story, but being smaller doesn't make you earn less money.

btcguild has less downtime of any pool ive ever tried,    they get the most blocks,  most up time,  therefore more to share among the miners,   math doesnt lie

my 60ghs on btcguild for the last 7 days has earned more than my 65ghs on ghash.io

#justsaying

Eleutheria rocks!

/thread

Just going to reinforce ckolivas' post, even though yours is Pro-Guild.  The uptime/stability is true, so is the fact that we find the most blocks. However, we split it more ways than other pools.  You'll get smaller payments, but much more frequently.

You could make *significantly* more on a small pool.  You can also make *significantly* less on a small pool.  The smaller the pool, the bigger the gamble (and bigger the payoff).

Its only a gamble if you're only mining at a certain pool for a short period of time.  The statement "make significantly more / less" is misleading.  Its correct for a particular short time period, but your statement might make people think their yearly income is influenced by pool size and that's simply not the case.  I'm sure you know this eluthria, but its not clear from your post.

I can't believe some people on here who have obviously invested significant (but perhaps worthless in the future) amounts of fiat currency in mining hardware and don't understand the simple basics of pooled mining.

Over a long enough time frame, the only income differentiation between pools is governed by fees, reward system, and uptime.

It only becomes a gamble if you're pool hopping or if a pool's hashrate is so low that they don't offer a significant reduction in risk beyond solo mining.

xzempt is so misguided its not even funny.  The "dummies" he speaks of are off mining at lower fee pools mitigating downtime risk with failover to other low fee pools - over the course of a month making a couple percentage points more income than with the guild.

Now if your goals are to mine BTC and sell it off for fiat as quickly as possible, then the lower variance of a big pool is more attractive.  If your goals are to accumulate BTC for saving, spending, and the occasional exchange to fiat, lower fee pools might be more attractive.

There is one slight hiccup in the "long term it evens out" mantra, which I myself *normally* use when recommending people use PPLNS over PPS.  Neutral/good luck today is worth a lot more than it will be next difficulty.  Similarly, bad luck today will hurt you a lot more than it will next difficulty.  So there is a potential gain/loss due to variance.  Again, the odds are just as likely one way or another.  It's a matter of risk assessment.

This hiccup is only present during times of continual/rapid network difficulty growth.

you mean like almost always...lol

Latter half of 2011 and majority of 2012 were pretty steady in general.  Not enough rapid growth to cause variance to have a lasting effect.

I agree with that, pool size needs to be large enough such that variant risk is acceptable within a 2 week time frame.  A 1TH pool is very risky these days, but as you get to 50TH and up, I feel you're pretty safe.  Of course that minimum-pool-hash-power-to-feel-safe number is somewhat subjective per individual miner and rises with difficulty.  6 weeks ago, I would have felt safe at 10TH and up.

As difficulty continues to rise, this becomes an issue because miners will naturally consolidate to larger pools.  The reliability of the distributed network is at risk if small pools start closing down and large pools become a target as nearly a  single point of failure.  If the small pools aren't around as fail overs there could be major disruptions in transaction processing (and miner income) if there are any serious attacks against the network.

That's why I'm of the mind to recommend supporting smaller pools before its too late.  Miners with large investments in hashing power would do well to protect the long term viability of their investments by supporting smaller pools to make sure they don't go under. 

If you have a bunch of hashpower you have two choices as I see it.  Reduce short term risk by mining at a huge pool and risk future network instability, or mitigate short term risk by utilizing multiple smaller pools and reduce long-term risk to the network and bitcoin in general.