Website updated. Here's what's new:

• My account -> account details: Account info rearranged. Looks better now, I think.
• My account -> banners & avatars: Finally got dynamic banners/avatars!
• Statistics -> luck: See our luck (CDF) from block to block.
• Statistics -> rewards: See how our PPLNS payout compares to the expected average reward.
• Statistics -> API: Started on a simple web service API. But I think some changes are necessary to make it more generic and "future-proof". Consider it a beta that will probably change.
• Statistics -> Live stats, full size: Now shows the 10 latest blocks and shifts. They update whenever an update of round data indicates a change. There is a checkbox to turn on audio notifications of new blocks (off by default whenever you open that page).

If something looks funny, try clearing your browser cache and reloading the page. Some files changed that are typically cached.

Now I can have a look at the client (miner) again. Sorry for the delay, but I had to finish this web update first. Even though I'll be working on the miner next, feel free to make new suggestions for the website as well. They will go on my neverending TODO list.

Update: If you already had live stats open, please reload the page. I made some changes to the data format and the old page can no longer read its data feed correctly.

Yeah, I will put in something like that. Plus probably something to indicate how actual pay compares to expected average pay.


Have to say, I wasn't happy with the way it looked myself. I'll have what you describe in the next update. Thanks for the suggestion!

About litecoin, I'm not sure yet. It could take away focus from bitcoin and "water down" the whole deal. Some already think namecoins are just confusing and an annoyance. I did however, while working on merged mining, make it fairly easy to add more merged chains. Litecoin isn't merged, but it should still be easier because of the recent changes. Well, while I am busy working on other things I guess we will soon see whether litecoin is just another failcoin copy of bitcoin, or if it actually has something to offer that bitcoin doesn't.


Thanks for the kind words, guys. And like you say SgtMoth, thank you to all the miners. You keep BitMinter alive, and seeing everyone mining here and supporting the pool is a big motivation to keep working on this. Thanks for taking a chance on a small pool while most just pick the biggest one. We have gone from tiny to small, and if you're right, DAT, we could soon be on our way to medium size.


Damn! Where do I get one of those, and what's the price?

Great ideas about showing our luck and expected income versus actual income. I'll see what I can do.

New today: port 80 mining. I tested it for all of 30 seconds and it seems to work. If you are only able to connect to port 80, then try mint.bitminter.com:80 instead of the usual mint.bitminter.com:8332. Port 8332 is still preferred though, so keep using it if you can. This is not supported in the BitMinter client yet, I'll need to add an option for it. It should work with other miners, though.


Yeah. They come and leave a bit, but as we're hopper-proof it's not something to worry about. They get fair pay and give the pool a nice boost.


Nice Looks like the pool on average has gone from just over 5% NMC stales to just under 3%. Some of it probably from people upgrading miners, and some from the recent NMC difficulty increase causing blocks to be created slower. If everyone switches to merged mining friendly miners we should get it down to the same level as BTC stales.

Quick website update:

• Full page live stats
• Worker list showing stales, now on its own page (look under the "my account" menu)
• Get fresh round stats data from server every 2 minutes instead of every 5 minutes
• Extrapolate round stats every 1/4 second instead of every second

Good idea. Now you can choose between pop-up or full page.


Oops. Fixed. Thanks for catching it! Never could learn this complex percentage stuff.


Added to worker list so everyone can check theirs.

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.

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.

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.

Updates to the website:

• Livestats fastest miners is now a top 50 list
• Live round stats has lots of new data. As requested it now shows your own numbers too (requires being logged in)
• Account details shows expected pay per BTC/NMC block based on your current scores in the 10 latest complete shifts
• Transaction history links for NMC now go to the NMC block explorer
• Transaction history now listed with newest entries first. You were right, it makes more sense.
• Block info page links go to correct block explorer. Added link to block page in addition to coin generation page.
• Removed cash out address from signup form. Some users found it a hassle. I may in the future also remove the optional worker from the signup form and instead create a default worker for new users. Just choose a username and go.
• Updated some text here and there (e.g. short info about merged mining on front page)

Let me know if anything isn't working. If livestats look strange, first try clearing the cache in your browser and reloading the page.

The new round stats is a bit of a tight fit. I like the idea of a small popup with stats. Unfortunately the round stats have too many numbers to fit in a small window. The solution, at least for now, is scrollbars. Same for the top 50 list.

Sounds cool! You wanna give it a try?

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.

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.

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?

Yes, please all cgminer users grab the new version. And BitMinter users use the regular and not the beta version until the next beta is out. Then we can get NMC stales well under 1% I think. It's currently just over 5%.

Last night we had another NMC stale that would have created namecoins had it not been stale. I hate seeing that - maybe I should stop logging those.

I know NMC isn't worth much, but we should always strive for max performance.

Hold on to that feeling. 

But seriously, no, there's no donation possible yet.

What I'm planning right now:

• More numbers on website - especially regarding namecoins
• Updates for the client/miner: fix performance degradation in the beta, fix stale handling in the beta to better work with merged mining, add some automation options
• After that: donations and some other stuff. Not 100% sure what I will do first yet.

I should have new web updates done this weekend and hopefully get some work done on the miner.

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.

bitcoind doesn't broadcast out new work. Workers poll for new work when they run out or run low on work.

Long poll is a technique for letting a server push data to a client with HTTP which doesn't really support server push. This way the server can give new work to the miners when a block change happens which invalidates all the old work the miners have. Then miners immediately start on the new work instead of doing useless work on old data, finding proofs or work that are useless and sending them to the server only to have them get registered as rejected proofs of work, aka. "stales".

Unfortunately bitcoind doesn't support long poll or any other kind of push or notification to clients that anything has happened. But pools do.

Edit:
more about long polling in general: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29
more about bitcoin getwork with long poll: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getwork

Yes, I think so too. I could add separate shifts for NMC, but it might add more hassle and confusion than it is worth.

Really bad luck on block #81, but I'm glad we finally finished it. Even with the block creation that failed due to a stale, it would have been one block at 350k and one at 900k proofs. I looked around at other pools to see if they had any namecoin blocks that big. But, strangely, several pools don't seem to show any info on the namecoin blocks.

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 just realized there's an inconsistency in how stales are being registered now.

• You only get your proof of work counted in the shifts if it is valid (non-stale) on the bitcoin side. Otherwise it is counted as rejected in the shift (not shown on website yet).
• Your miner is told that the proof is accepted if it is valid on bitcoin OR namecoin.
• Work done on blocks register accepted/rejected individually - no problem here. Not shown on website yet though.

I think it makes sense to change it so the miner is told the proof was accepted if it was included in the shift as accepted, otherwise the miner is told it is rejected?

Question is, should it be accepted if it is valid on either bitcoin or namecoin, or only when valid on the bitcoin side? I'm leaning towards shift+miner acceptance only when proofs are valid for bitcoin. The reason for this is 1. I think bitcoin is more important and 2. I don't want the pool to "pretend" everything is fine while you are actually producing massive stales (most proofs would still be valid for bitcoin OR namecoin).

Yes, the beta client is trying to be smart about stales, but instead creating extra stales on the namecoin side. I had not yet thought about merged mining when I made those changes.