Advanced warning to users:

Friday at 9 AM PST payouts will be disabled to defragment/consolidate the pool hot wallet.  During this time automatic payouts and manual payouts will not be processed.  If the network is making blocks at the normal rate, it should last about 2 hours.

This is being done because over time the bitcoind wallet gets very cluttered with extra addresses (change) and tens of thousands of transaction inputs (the results of change).  Over time, this means bitcoind will occasionally time out to a payout request and not respond with a transaction id, requiring manual correction in order to provide proof that the transaction was sent or to resend the transaction if it failed.


In other news:  New UI is still on target for launch in the next 4-6 hours.

Stratum is not inherently slower than longpolling.  In a proper implementation the notification times between long polling and between Stratum are identical (or faster on Stratum since the remote server does less work and requires less burst bandwidth to forward them).

New UI is mostly functional for users who would like to use it right away at https://www.btcguild.com/new_ui/  - You can now log in if your cookies don't automatically log you in already.

Launch has been postponed until I return from my meetings tomorrow [starts at 10 AM, should be home before noon].  Like I said in my post yesterday, I'm not comfortable launching it tonight before I go to bed in case something is broken with the new interface, and there's still some introduction pages that need to be added so new miners aren't lost after they make the account.

Should be interesting to see the figures after this block hits...those numbers are about to take a huge hit (they only update when a block is found).

Last 100 per-share payouts on PPLNS is already available under PPLNS History (classic interface), and underneath the table of completed PPLNS Shifts on the new layout.

While it's somewhat of a concern, I have a strong feeling that once Avalon/BFL chips are in more hands, the current percentage of network lead will fade quickly.  If you subtract ASICMINER from the pool, BTC Guild is roughly even with the 2nd largest pool (50BTC).  50BTC and BTCGuild (sans ASICMINER) are only ~30% larger than the #3 and #4 pools.  Assuming that ASIC distribution is roughly equal to current pool hashrate distribution, the 4-12 TH/s ASICMINER adds to BTC Guild will just be a drop in the bucket.  And they may or may not stick around once they have all their chips up and running.

We're still a long way from where we were back in 2011/early 2012 when Deepbit was on occasion in control over >= 51% of the network, and 40%+ average.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're only [4-6 weeks] awaaayyyyyyy~~~

PPS is actually a smart choice for this stage in the ASIC timeline.  Variance is present even as a very big percentage of the network.  In the long run, luck will level out.  However, it is not not BTC-earned that levels out, it's your deviation from blocks found per difficulty vs blocks expected per difficulty that levels out.

If bad luck hits you early in a period where difficulty is constantly rising, you will lose out on significantly more income than if it hits you at a time where network difficulty is relatively stable.

No worries, 24 hour statistics and Namecoin information will both be in the new setup before it goes live.


UPDATE 1: Namecoin is now displayed, and PPLNS now hides if you turned it off.  If you have NMC and PPLNS both turned on, all 3 will show up in row, but the font size will shrink in order to fit the information without requiring an extra row of tables.

UPDATE 2: Account settings page starting to be implemented.  Hide/Show for NMC and PPLNS is working so far.


UPDATE 3:  Looks like my noon estimate might have been in BFL-time!  I promise it won't take 6+ months to finally deploy!

Thank you those who have been emailing me or chatting with me in IRC and voicing your feedback and suggestions.  Small delay on deployment, instead of tomorrow at 8 AM it will likely be around noon.  I need time to rewrite the How-To sections, take new screenshots as needed, etc.

If you haven't taken a look yet, please do (link is available on the BTC Guild website).  I'm always open to suggestions.  It doesn't mean I'll implement everything, but the best way to make improvements is to get feedback from others.

I'd say Stratum/GBT and Vardiff/User Selectable works, though VarDiff is certainly "more ready" than user-selectable only since it doesn't require the user to know anything about proper settings other than a host/port.

Dwolla is basically a BTC<->USD exchange that won't admit they're a BTC passthrough.  I remember back when they had their big brag press release about how much they were growing without mentioning Bitcoin, yet the growth timeline had a direct correlation to when different BTC exchanges started using Dwolla as a method for funds transfers, and the price increases during the 2011 bubble.

I'm guessing 4 TH/s was an estimate based on how fast their hash rate was climbing.  Looks like it will be healthily above 4 TH/s based on current growth back up.

The demo of the new template no longer automatically displays my personal account settings if your cookies aren't forwarded.  Starting to plug in the account settings and worker management pages.  I think you are really going to like the new worker management page.  If you have a lot of workers, it is immensely better (thanks to the paginated tables with real-time search), while also being useful to people with just a few since it puts all the settings (including min-diff) onto the same page.

I'm likely going to hold off on deploying until tomorrow morning.  I think it will be ready tonight, but I'd hate to go to sleep after launching it and wake up to find everybody complaining that <X> no longer works.

Sorry I didn't post this last night:  I was told that the speed will not be stable today, so don't spend too much time spamming F5 on the rankings page.  They are aware and expecting to see fluctuations in speed throughout the day as they work.

Nope, ASICMINER just had some downtime (upgrading).  They're already turned back on, but the Hall of Fame uses a 1-hour window to determine speed for users (even playing field and doesn't swing drastically).  It will take another ~40 minutes for their full speed to show back up under the Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately I can't really give any details on the specifics at their physical location, I only get limited information.  I'm just trying to help people understand the already public data when there is a misunderstanding or question about how the stats work.

I'm not sure if it's diligence or self-preservation .

ASICMINER just turned back on at BTC Guild [shares counter started increasing again, and speed did not fully drop to 0].  Remember that the speed shown on hall of fame is a 1-hour average, so don't be alarmed if it looks like a slow growth back up.

There's no way to measure overall network hash rate reliably, especially in such short term.  But no other pool is showing the hash power show up.