The 0.00xxxxx NMC balances will be funding my mansion...made of cardboard....and roughly the size of a car.  These amounts are worth less than half of a penny.

I've deleted the massive derailment posts that filled the last page and a half.

My recommendation of Eligius is for three reasons:
1) They have been around as long as BTC Guild.  They opened in the same week.
2) No controversy about that pool/Luke-jr has ever been related to miners' being cheated, stolen from, or ripped off.
3) The pool operator (wizkid057) has always been transparent and quick to respond to questions, concerns, and comments for the pool.


If users do not want to use Eligius, I gave two other pool recommendations (BitMinter and Kano's CK Pool).  I recommend those pools for essentially the same reason I recommended Eligius, Kano's CK Pool being slightly different, since it's not as old as a pool, but the operator still fits the criteria and the operator has had significant presence in the community for much longer than the pool has been around.


EDIT: I did not delete the initial post that mentioned concerns over the Eligius recommendation, or the first few replies.  However, I did delete almost an entire page of posts that became bickering.  If you want to rehash old fights about Eligius/Luke-Jr, do it in a different thread.

This actually is incorrect.  There are (almost) always transactions in the mempool with enough priority to be included.  However, some pools (generally the ones based on eloipool) opt to push out an empty template block to miners when a new block is found on the network to have the least possible delay between a new network block and miners beginning to work on it.  They then send a proper block template with transactions shortly after.  Some mining software does not immediately switch to the newest work, or sometimes the miner actually solves a block on the empty template before those pools manage to send one with transactions.

It's an ugly hack, and the performance gain is virtually nothing on other mining software (BTC Guild and ckpool have no issue producing a proper block template and sending it to miners immediately).

You use a site that isn't run by lazy people.  Blockchain.info has never been accurate, and has had no valid excuses as to why it refuses to become more accurate when it is trivial to do so.

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC
http://www.whomined.com/
http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

We need people support the small-ER pools.  Not the small-EST pools.  That's the real problem.  Your options these days are a few chinese pools with extremely high shares of the network, or other pools with ~3% (or less).

The small pools continue to shrink because when a small pool hits bad luck it lasts for days, and there are a lot of people who leave them after that and never come back, picking to go with a giant pool instead because when they have bad luck it only lasts for a few hours due to their size.

Just a reminder:  If you're going to make a manual withdrawal to finish off your account, wait until your shares have fully matured (no shares left in open shifts).  Otherwise your account might generate slightly more BTC, and it may not be enough to actually request another withdrawal (I will not reduce it further than 0.0001 BTC).

Had a small hiccup in the manual withdraw request.  I had been debating between 0.0005 and 0.0001 as the new minimum withdrawal amount during closing.  I had set the code to enforce 0.0005, but changed my mind and went all the way to 0.0001 while writing the post about closing, and updated it so that the button became enabled for any balance of 0.0001 or greater.  However, it wouldn't actually let you request amounts under 0.0005 because I forgot to lower that number.

So now it's working properly and allowing withdrawals of any amount equal to or greater than 0.0001 (and will pay out all the satoshis at the same time on a manual request).

I recommended BitMinter, Eligius, and Kano CKPool at the bottom of my closing message.  All 3 are long standing, trustworhy operators who are always accessible in IRC or in their respective pool threads.  Well, Kano CK Pool isn't long standing as a pool, but as a presence in the community it still holds true.

BitLicense doesn't require miners to register.  Pools are in a very ugly gray area, because they can be considered a custodian of the users' funds.  That is one of the many criteria that can be used for what is considered a virtual currency business activity and requires BitLicense registration.  There is no exemption for pools.

EDIT:  Exact line:  "(2) storing, holding, or maintaining custody or control of Virtual Currency on behalf of others; "



This is the other (and major) reason.  The pool was/is profitable, but not profitable enough to cover a loss of user funds if a compromise ever happened in the future.  It has never happened in the history of the pool.  We've lost coins (and covered the losses) before from software bugs (double payments sent, the bitcoin 0.8 upgrade causing one server to credit people PPS as if network difficulty was 1).  But never a compromise.

I mean the pool's luck for the last 3 months has been 88~89% of expected block solves.  Eligius' 3 month luck is almost identical to that last I checked in their thread.  Slush doesn't give a 3 month luck but his 1-month luck is pretty close to that.  I do not know if that is statistically bad enough (Guild + Eligius pools in aggregate) to point towards something other than variance.  Both pools combined are only about 5% of the network, so 12% under expectation over 90 days might be something that could happen 1 in a hundred samples.  I'm sending organofcorti a message about it since that's his area of expertise.

Don't forget the couple hundred other pages in the thread before this one (the pool closed it's original thread when it switched from proportional to PPS back in 2011)!


I'll probably end up using BTC Guild's domain/page for some future Bitcoin project.  My current projects are completely unrelated to Bitcoin (other than my retro game store which will accept Bitcoin).  But I'm looking forward to some kind of app (or game) development in the future and will probably try to make Bitcoin integrated in some way.

== Posting this again so it is at the top of a new page and people don't overlook it ==


BTC Guild is Closing Down
BTC Guild will be shutting down its mining servers on June 30th, 2015 at 23:59 UTC. Users will still be able to log in and retrieve their history (CSV exports on the settings page) and request withdrawals until September 30, 2015..



Why is BTC Guild Shutting Down?
This is the second time BTC Guild has announced closure, but this time the decision will not be reversed. The reasons have not changed much since the original announcement.

As mining has become more centralized, BTC Guild has continuously shrunk in proportion to the network, now being less than 3% of the network hash rate. The costs of running the pool have not changed, and the amount of funds at risk in the event of a compromise is significantly higher than what the pool could ever recover from. When the pool was 20-30% of the network, the amount of funds at risk was slightly higher, but the ability for the pool to recover from that loss was present. At 3% of the network, the pool would not be able to recover from such a loss..

Additionally, the NYDFS BitLicense regulations have now become finalized, and the final regulations have enough gray area that BTC Guild is at risk. The fact that BTC Guild is not in New York does not matter, since it would be doing business with New York residents while they are physically in New York. This fact makes it possible for New York to attempt to claim jurisdiction to enforce regulations. Whether or not BTC Guild could win in defense of such an attempt is irrelevant, since the cost of defending the pool would be greater than any income the pool is expected to generate going forward.

Finally, I have been growing concerned for some time now about attempts to defraud pools. The pool's luck has been on a decline for over a year. The luck on a few other pools has also shown a negative trend. While it is not impossible that it's a coincidence, this is something I have been constantly made aware of and am helpless against. There is no way to know whether it's just bad luck, a small bug in older miners (BTC Guild probably has the highest percentage of first/second generation ASICs) resulting in a few % of block-solving shares to disappear, or a large pool trying to hurt the competition (many of the largest pools have large private mining operations now). It would only take a fraction (1 PH/s or less could do it) to cause significant harm to a competing pool, and that activity could be masked by proxies and multiple accounts to be impossible to catch.



PPLNS Blocks and Final Withdrawals
Users will be able to keep mining up until the servers turn off at end of day June 30th. Since PPLNS is a backwards paying system, the very last shares submitted are unlikely to receive any blocks unless a block is found at the last second.

The PPLNS shift length will be steadily reduced starting June 16th. This means that more shifts will likely end with 0 blocks, but shifts that find blocks will receive a larger amount than they would have previously. It is not recommended that users wait until the last minute to change pools.

The minimum withdrawal for a manual withdrawal will be reduced to 0.0001, and will not require a transaction fee to be paid in order to request the withdrawal.



Not For Sale
In the previous closure announcement, one reason it was cancelled was due to offers to purchase/take over the pool. This never happened because of personal attachment to the project and concern over user privacy and security.

The risk of users being cheated or stolen from as a result of transferring pool ownership is not something I am willing to accept. This is part of the reason the pool is closing in the first place: Risk of users losing funds because the pool would not be able to cover losses in the event of compromise.

I will not be entertaining offers on purchasing the pool this time around. There is no (reasonable) price the pool would be sold for.



Recommended Pools
The following pools are personally recommended for users to consider moving to:
BitMinter - long standing pool with good reputation
Eligius - long standing pool with good reputation
Kano CK Pool - cgminer developers No longer recommended because the operator acts like a child.
P2Pool (decentralized pool)



Thank you to all the users and the Bitcoin community for making BTC Guild a success for the last four years. It has been hard to finally make this call a second time with the determination to not reverse the decision. You will still be able to find me around the Bitcoin Talk forums (outside of the Pools subsection for once), and on IRC in #btcguild (and probably #bitcoin once the pool winds down).

BTC Guild is Closing Down
BTC Guild will be shutting down its mining servers on June 30th, 2015 at 23:59 UTC. Users will still be able to log in and retrieve their history (CSV exports on the settings page) and request withdrawals until September 30, 2015..



Why is BTC Guild Shutting Down?
This is the second time BTC Guild has announced closure, but this time the decision will not be reversed. The reasons have not changed much since the original announcement.

As mining has become more centralized, BTC Guild has continuously shrunk in proportion to the network, now being less than 3% of the network hash rate. The costs of running the pool have not changed, and the amount of funds at risk in the event of a compromise is significantly higher than what the pool could ever recover from. When the pool was 20-30% of the network, the amount of funds at risk was slightly higher, but the ability for the pool to recover from that loss was present. At 3% of the network, the pool would not be able to recover from such a loss..

Additionally, the NYDFS BitLicense regulations have now become finalized, and the final regulations have enough gray area that BTC Guild is at risk. The fact that BTC Guild is not in New York does not matter, since it would be doing business with New York residents while they are physically in New York. This fact makes it possible for New York to attempt to claim jurisdiction to enforce regulations. Whether or not BTC Guild could win in defense of such an attempt is irrelevant, since the cost of defending the pool would be greater than any income the pool is expected to generate going forward.

Finally, I have been growing concerned for some time now about attempts to defraud pools. The pool's luck has been on a decline for over a year. The luck on a few other pools has also shown a negative trend. While it is not impossible that it's a coincidence, this is something I have been constantly made aware of and am helpless against. There is no way to know whether it's just bad luck, a small bug in older miners (BTC Guild probably has the highest percentage of first/second generation ASICs) resulting in a few % of block-solving shares to disappear, or a large pool trying to hurt the competition (many of the largest pools have large private mining operations now). It would only take a fraction (1 PH/s or less could do it) to cause significant harm to a competing pool, and that activity could be masked by proxies and multiple accounts to be impossible to catch.



PPLNS Blocks and Final Withdrawals
Users will be able to keep mining up until the servers turn off at end of day June 30th. Since PPLNS is a backwards paying system, the very last shares submitted are unlikely to receive any blocks unless a block is found at the last second.

The PPLNS shift length will be steadily reduced starting June 16th. This means that more shifts will likely end with 0 blocks, but shifts that find blocks will receive a larger amount than they would have previously. It is not recommended that users wait until the last minute to change pools.

The minimum withdrawal for a manual withdrawal will be reduced to 0.0001, and will not require a transaction fee to be paid in order to request the withdrawal.



Not For Sale
In the previous closure announcement, one reason it was cancelled was due to offers to purchase/take over the pool. This never happened because of personal attachment to the project and concern over user privacy and security.

The risk of users being cheated or stolen from as a result of transferring pool ownership is not something I am willing to accept. This is part of the reason the pool is closing in the first place: Risk of users losing funds because the pool would not be able to cover losses in the event of compromise.

I will not be entertaining offers on purchasing the pool this time around. There is no (reasonable) price the pool would be sold for.



Recommended Pools
The following pools are personally recommended for users to consider moving to:
BitMinter - long standing pool with good reputation
Eligius - long standing pool with good reputation
Kano CK Pool - cgminer developers No longer recommended because the operator acts like a child.
P2Pool (decentralized pool)



Thank you to all the users and the Bitcoin community for making BTC Guild a success for the last four years. It has been hard to finally make this call a second time with the determination to not reverse the decision. You will still be able to find me around the Bitcoin Talk forums (outside of the Pools subsection for once), and on IRC in #btcguild (and probably #bitcoin once the pool winds down).

Yes.  The last month is at 77.592%.  You don't need to "observe" anything, it's posted right on the PPLNS Stats page.

I wouldn't mine with anybody who thinks mining in a pool means you're competing with others in the pool.  You're NEVER doing the same work as the other miners on the same pool.

You are *always* competing with THE ENTIRE NETWORK, no matter if you're solo mining, pool mining, or solo pool mining.

Home miners continuing to leave while giant farms (especially in China) continue to come online.  Now that it's getting hot in the northern hemisphere (which is where most home miners are located), it's becoming even more of a loss to keep miners running due to the extra cooling needed if you have them in your home.  They also perform worse at higher ambient temperatures, so home miners are literally just losing some of their hashrate in the warmer weather.


EDIT:  Also the fact that there's not a single pool outside of China that even has 5% of the network anymore makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy that the pools continue to shrink because people can't stand variance.

Decrease in hashrate over the last year is a factor in why the luck swings as much as it does (smaller share of the network = bigger spikes and longer low periods).  But the bad dayss are outweighing the good days significantly.  And unlike the last time where it was finally statistically evident as to why (broken miner client software that wasn't submitting shares higher than 4.2 billion [unsigned integer max]), there simply isn't anything of the sort this time around.  There is not a single user showing a shares vs blocks solved ratio that indicates anything broken.  But that's because it's virtually impossible for a single miner to ever submit enough shares for that to be visible:  You would need to submit about 250-300b shares without a block solve.  We don't have anybody even remotely close to that many shares without a block solve, but we also barely have any miners who have even submitted that many shares to begin with.

He means take them to court, it's the only way you'll probably ever get anything.  Deepbit has been dead for a very long time.

BTC Guild is not even 5% of the network any more.  The only pools larger than 5% these days are Chinese (and private farms).  It is possible and has happened a few times where a single bad block for BTC Guild now takes over 24 hours to complete.  Back when we were 35-40% of the network, that same block would have only taken 3-4 hours. 

This absolutely nukes the luck figures for the 1D/3D/1W/2W, and even has a big impact on the 1-month luck, due to how small we are now.  Our 1D-1M figures were over 100% until that bad block hit, and 3M was climbing back up as well.  But at this size, you will almost never see 98-102%.  Luck "averages out" in an infinite time frame, but when you're small, it rarely IS at the average, it will be one extreme or another, and when you average the extremes you'll probably get close to neutral.

Still sucks when it happens.  That single block took the 1D/3D/1W/2W/1M figures all back under 100%, and made the 3M figure take a pretty big hit as well.  For a while there I thought we might finally be seeing the 3M average back over 100% [it had been creeping up steadily for the last 3 weeks].