There isn't much alternative.  Most of this speed is not coming from new users, but users that already have accounts since most people who ordered ASICs were already involved in mining.  The only solution is encouraging users to move off voluntarily.  The options are to either kick people off or make it so they are encouraged to look at other options.  This isn't like raising fees just to increase how much the pool makes, it's to make it less desirable, thus reducing market share.

blockchain.info's graph is based on blocks, not actual hashing speed.  If the pool has good luck, it will be larger on the chart.  If it has bad luck, it will be smaller.  That has absolutely no indication of pool hopping (at least using that chart).

Video games and hard drives mostly (in terms of direct BTC->Goods).

I think this actually hurts more than it helps.  We used to see new pools opening up every other week in 2011 for a while, because somebody made a frontend (SimpleCoin and MFCE(might be wrong on spelling)) for pushpool.  What you ended up with was a lot of pool ops who were "hacked", disappeared, or didn't have a clue how to configure and manage servers.  I think it ended up driving people even harder towards the largest pools because they were obviously more prepared and capable.

I have outlined a plan for mitigating the potential of BTC Guild obtaining 51% of the network, by attacking the problem with increasing severity at 40% and 45% of the network.  The current plan can be found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=168108.0


Current users will mostly be affected by the proposal to increase fees on the pool, if BTC Guild's share of the network continues to increase.  This was not in the original proposal, but talking with several people, it seems to be the most effective way to shave off some of the pool's hash rate without FORCING miners to leave.  The key points for current users are:

1) At 40% of the network (using blockorigin.pfoe.be as the indicator):  PPS fee will be increased to 7% for all new miners.  Old miners will see the new fee at the next difficulty as well.  The fee will be dropped back to 5% when the pool drops back down under 40%.

2) At 45% of the network:  Getwork pools will be shut down within 24 hours.  This means users on BTC Guild will need to upgrade to a Stratum based miners or use a Stratum proxy on their machines to continue mining if they are not already doing so.  mergedmining.btcguild.com WILL remain online as a getwork pool at first, but may also get taken down.

3) If 40% of the network happens again after removing getwork (will need time for the 2016 block average to adjust):  PPLNS fees will be increased to 4%.  Again, this fee will be dropped back down once the pool has dropped back down to a sub-40% level.

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I am doubtful #2 and #3 will be required.  I think the problem is getting enough attention at this point, but a plan is needed so miners are not caught off guard by sudden changes.

I hope the loyal and long time Guild miners understand why these steps are necessary for the Bitcoin network as a whole.  I hate the idea of pushing people away forcefully, but steps must be taken to make other pools seem more appealing if BTC Guild grows too large.

I would like to thank all the current miners for what the pool has become today.  I never expected a project that started as a LAMP server running on mining rig in my dining room to grow into something like this.

I have updated the plan a little bit to proposals that include increased fees to push some miners out to other pools, rather than relying on registrations being cut off.  Cutting off registrations will not prevent old miners from turning on ASICs they receive, and with over 80,000 accounts on BTC Guild, it's far more likely for the new hash rate to come from old users than new ones at this time.

I made altcoin Guild spinoffs in the past, but that was very...temporary.  I have no intention of adding LTC anymore, even though I did have a successful test run of updating my stratum software to be LTC compatible.  Botnets are already starting to move over to LTC because it is CPU-friendly.  LTC pools get more DDoS attacks than BTC pools, and dealing with BTC botnets already takes up too much of my day to day life.

As for NMC:  They are rising because NMC (and LTC) are complete Pump & Dump coins.  It is extremely easy for somebody to pump & dump those coins because they are worth so little.  Minimal risk, decent reward.  The price drops down to under 0.002, then somebody spends just a hundred BTC and they're back to 0.01+ for a few days, and enough idiots follow suit and put in buys to make it profitable for the person who pumped the price.  The NMC project is dead.  It is a virtually unusable system with more overhead than it requires.

It would be turning them off.  I have no intentions of even attempting to run a proxy pool.

The biggest problem with raising fees is miners do not keep constant check on the website/forum thread.  If you have automatic payouts and self monitoring, there is very little reason to even look at the pool website.  Even less reason if you use the pool API.  Raising fees, in my opinion, requires significant warning time.  Users will feel cheated if they log in after a week and see the last few days they were being charged more than they signed up for.  Lowering fees is easy, nobody complains about extra money, but the other way around just leads to a lot of headaches.  The switch to PPS with BTC Guild had a lot of warning, and users still emailed me complaining -weeks- after the switch.

I've considered raising fees, but Guild already charges reasonable fees (3% and paid for orphans+tx fees or 5% straight PPS).  It's a good spot, and it's made me enough to be worth the 16+ hour work days when a crisis happens.

Raising fees is just penalizing users who stick around.  I might make more, I might make less, but it's at the cost of the users that don't leave.  It also leaves a bad taste in people's mouth when a pool raises fees.  Pools have always had a strong leader, and it's changed hands a few times in the last two years (Slush -> Deepbit -> BTC Guild -> Deepbit -> 50BTC -> BTC Guild).  I'm trying to come up with a solution that doesn't damage the pool long term if the lead changes again.  I don't want to be in the position of 51%, but I also don't want to cut off the legs of my business in the long run.

I've been a bit too defensive (which turns into aggressive) in IRC the last 24 hours about this, and I apologize to those that were on the receiving end when they raised the concerns.  This is something that has been on my mind a lot for the last month.  Everybody expected the network speed to explode once ASICs delivered.  But I don't think anybody expected a single pool to get such a disproportionate amount of the first batch.  The pool has increased to 6x more GH/s than what was there at the start of February.



EDIT/UPDATE:  After a lot of input (mostly in IRC), the above statement no longer applies to the new plan.  Quite simply, raising fees is the only effective way to make users consider choosing another pool and willingly leave.  I'm giving a large amount of warning now with this post, and it's also referenced on the pool website news page.  I hope it's not required, but it really is the only method that we've come up with to make users leave without arbitrarily kicking them off the servers.

Higher 'N' values aren't required, but I find that if your pool is fast enough to do it without making maturation time too long, it's a good idea.  You need to find a good balance.  Higher N values = longer time for a share to be fully paid, but more likely to get steady payments.  I think any N-value where a share is fully paid within 24 hours should be considered effective enough that miners don't feel like they're being held hostage.

This mitigation plan is no longer in effect.  The first step was already done in May of 2013.  If the pool becomes a valid 51% threat again, a new plan will be put forward.

This is being posted in a new thread so that it stands out to people who do not frequent the primary pool thread, since this is about more than just the pool.

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A lot of noise in the IRC, reddit, and forum yesterday related to "BTC Guild dangerously close to 51%" due to a large amount of luck yesterday - https://slotsonlinecanada.ca/.  The pool found ~30% more blocks than expected at its given hash rate.  According to the last 2016 blocks, BTC Guild is still shy of 40% (36.61% as of this post).  Obviously I can't wait until the pool is 49.9% to start taking measures, even though a 51% attack is only a true threat if the person controlling it uses it.

This is the outline for measures that will be taken.  I will not be using 24-hour pie charts from blockchain.info to base these decisions due to how much luck influences the charts (either good luck by BTC Guild or bad luck on the rest of the network).  Figures will be pulled from http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/top.php which accurately grabs each block for BTC Guild, and also uses a 2016 block window to determine percentages.


If Pool Speed is Over 40% of Network
BTC Guild will begin limiting the creation of new accounts.  Additionally, the fee on PPS will be increased from 5% to 7.5% on all new miners, and will be moved to 7.5% on old miners after the difficulty changes.  PPLNS will remain at the 3% + tx fees rate initially.


If Pool Speed is Over 45% of Network
BTC Guild will remove all getwork based pool servers within 24 hours.  This is expected to reduce the pool by about 3.5 TH/s, or roughly 15% as of this post.


If Pool Speed is Over 45% of Network After Getwork is Removed
PPLNS fee will be raised to 4%, and new registrations will be completely closed off until speed drops back under 40%.



Suggestions are welcome if you can think of a better way to make miners willingly leave the pool.  The only thing I will not consider is kicking miners off entirely (outside of getwork).

Hopefully that was a mistake and PPLSN is not some new payment system.  Please don't get creative!  We have well defined and studied payment methods that users can clearly see the benefits/drawbacks of.  HHTT would be able to make great use of PPLNS due to its speed.

At 3-4+ TH/s, you could very effectively run N as a value much higher than difficulty (5x or more).  My pool actually runs N at ~20x difficulty.  It's a bit extreme, but it also makes the payouts much more steady per shift.  While that has no effect on 24H earnings, miners are generally much happier when shifts don't swing wildly.

1) Correct (this is shown in the footer on every BTC Guild page)
2) Correct, I have not implemented merged mining into Stratum, and will not be doing so.
3) Namecoin as a project is dead.  Right now it's just a pump & dump platform.  Most of the time NMC is near worthless, but because it's so cheap it's easy for somebody to force small bubbles for relatively no risk.  As such, I have put it into End-of-Life mode where support is limited, just like what has been done with getwork.

The only way to reliably execute the double-spend shenanigans is to have >= 51% of the speed (thus being able to ALWAYS eventually produce 51% of the blocks).  Right now you're seeing what happens when a large pool has extremely good luck, while other pools are apparently having bad luck.  In a 24-hour window (which is WAY too small for anything remotely reliable), that causes very fun charts that make people's heads explode apparently.

Blockchain.info uses a 24 hour window.  That is completely useless information because luck can play a HUGE factor in reported pool "% of network".  BTC Guild is still LESS THAN 40% of the network:  http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php


BTC Guild has LOST speed (not much) recently.  But today's luck has been insane (look at our PPLNS stats and compare the Per Share rates on recent closed shifts to the PPS Rate).

This isn't the first time a single pool has made 6 blocks in a row, nor will it ever be the last.  Ozcoin did it before with less than 25%.  BTC Guild is only at 35% of the last 2016 blocks.  That's a LONG way off of 51%.  ~10 TH/s would have to leave other pools and join BTC Guild (extremely unlikely), or ~15 TH/s of new speed would have to join the network and all point at BTC Guild (even less likely).

Thanks os2sam for helping out while I sleep .  Been pulling really long days lately, almost afraid to close my eyes.

Manual payouts are now available again - All pending payouts have already received confirmations so the backlog is cleared as well.

Transaction has 80 confirms already.  If you're not seeing it in your wallet, make sure it's sync'd up with the blockchain.  In the future, remember that transactions can take 1 hour or even more to get a confirmation, even when fees are attached like they were to this payout.