I don't think there's a "line", there are various courses of action each with its own degree of "unethicalness". But I think that if you start mining for a pool with the intention of obtaining payouts in proportion to the contribution, and then for whatever reason you decide the pool is not for you, you're free to go. The problem starts when the reason you joined the pool in the first place is to obtain a payout greater than your contribution. Clearly if you use hopping software to hop dozens of times a day then this is your intention.

As for the namecoin hopping, a major difference is the lack of a reference "fair" reward. For pooled mining as a phenomenon in the larger Bitcoin mining world, it is clear that the fair payout per share is pB, and that any amount above it is freeloading (remembering that every share submitted to a pool ultimately translates to increased security of the Bitcoin network). But Namecoin and Bitcoin between them are not part of a larger context which defines what the fair payout is. Furthermore, a decrease in a blockchain's difficulty generally means that its security is lesser now, and hence adding capacity to it is more beneficial. So it is acceptable for market forces to drive capacity to where it's most valuable.

...While creating value. Buying Bitcoins leaves the other party with dollars which he finds more valuable than Bitcoins, and buying mining rigs increases Bitcoin's security.

It relies on taking advantage of people who don't know any better. But as I said it's not black and white, and hopping is acceptable if it is accompanied by genuine attempts to educate the public.

That was sly I spent like 2 hours searching for this deal today. Make them search too

Yes... 5830's are 129.99 @ newegg and are going to get around 300mh.  My 6870 tops out around 286 and costs 40-50 more

ncix us also has 5850's in stock for $145 i believe until tomorrow.

So after a day of bad luck (actually meaning not as lucky as we used to LOL), we're back!

Average shares per block: 1482591 (-14.1%)
Average in last 24 hours: 1131453 (-49.4%)

This is like mining at the difficulty a few levels back.

You have to be able to find someplace with a 5830 in stock...

If in USA 6870 
Otherwise, prices may vary outside the US!

Some premium motherboards like MSI BB Marshal can absorb massive electric loads without affecting the stability of addons on the mobo.
The downside is that those boards cost a lot ($400 or more) due to having high quality components, capacitors, chokes etc.

Yes, a low quality board can limit the overclocking capability of a card if a lot of power is being drawn through too many slots (75W for each card), at some point the power draw will choke and some cards might be getting sub-par power.

One way to circumvent this is using modded extender cables w/ Molex which feed the card the 75W from the PSU rather than the motherboard.


Try OC'ing them individually. If the problem persists then those are the hard limits of the cards you have, i.e they can't be pushed higher.

I have some 5850's that wont go even a bit above 880mhz, and some will go easily past 1ghz.

It's not. The memory DIMMs on the motherboard example was just to illustrate how having additional loads (electrically speaking) can reduce the electrical stability of the subsystem, forcing operations to a slower speed or risk errors. So having additional cards inserted can cause similar problems, in addition to the obvious heat being produced, resulting in lower max O/C ceiling.

There's additional heat produced, the additional electrical load on the motherboard as well as EMI can affect stability. It's like boards with high capacity memory DIMMs, it's not unusual to find the manual warning that if you use more then X dimms with Y capacity, you can only run the memory at a lower speed.

sorry not getting the circularity.

I've been explaining pool hopping on multiple threads, bragging of my efficiencies, telling miners at pool threads that they're losing out because I'm pool hopping. I've tried really hard (in some cases successfully) to get full time miners to get their pools to change.

I've helped pools change and for brand new prop pools pointed out the importance of not being on prop because it will cost full time miners. I've posted this on their public threads where all their miners can read it.

If someone reads a post like that from me and doesn't care, then he is giving tacit but knowing approval for pool hopping.

The pools do set the rules between the pool and each individual miner. But that has nothing to do with whether there is or isn't an implied agreement between miners in the same pool. (See my example rebutting the vineyard workers example.)

Yep. Change the story a little bit:

A vineyard owner needs some vines cleared out. He asks some guys if they'd like the job. They ask how much it pays. The owner says, "I'm willing to pay $30 to get it done." The two guys agree to do the job. A few hours later, the owner decides he wants the job done faster, so he adds a third guy to the team, and then insists that the two guys who originally agreed to do the work accept $10 each, even though they did more than 1/3 of the $30 job.

Now that the person getting paid the same but working less has his bonus coming right out of the other guys paychecks, it seems a bit different, doesn't it?

The point of that story was that none of the workers benefited at the expense of the others and therefore they had no right to complain. A pool hopper does benefit at the expense of other miners.

(Emphasis added)

Therein is the difference. While people who only buy the discounted items may put pricing pressure on the merchant to raise prices on goods other people buy, it is the merchant that sets the prices. It is not just the merchant's scheme that pressures them to raise prices, but the merchants themselves who actually raise prices in response.

If pool hoppers only harmed other miners indirectly by forcing pool operators to change their payouts, it would be a completely different situation. But pool hoppers harm the other miners directly with no action on the part of the pool operators required.

The whole point was that even in this example people would say that doing it was the right thing to do.


btw @ CanaryInTheMine:

Adding additional hashing power to a pool (constantly) reduces the time to find a block while leaving the (average) payout per share constant. Pool hopping however shifts average payouts from continous users to hoppers. Please don't get that mixed up. Also, I encourage you to get your math straight. There are still huge misconceptions about the principles governing pool hopping.

Also, at your latest post: there is so much wrong about this, I don't even know where to start. As an introduction you might want to check out http://www.justiceharvard.org/.

@ bcpokey:

Coin hopping is essentially the same as pool hopping.

Anti-pool hoppers, I ask again, clearly delineate why pool hopping and only pool hopping is immoral/unethical/whatever.

Just say it's stealing isn't good enough. It's a mathematical algorithm implemented to maximize returns on shares submitted. Why is that different than say, finding a more efficient hashing method that boosts your hash/second? The same physical hardware is now returning more bitcoin at the expense of others.

Or taken a look at another way, many people arguing against pool hopping engaged in coin hopping. When difficulty dropped and it was more profitable to mine namecoins you hopped over to those, raped the crap out of the difficulty and then hopped away when 2016 blocks were up, leaving a huge difficulty in your wake to be sorted out, effectively damaging namecoin and all those who support it. Why are you not immoral scumbags for doing that, when pool hoppers are? Because you did it manually instead of with a program? Over a longer time frame?

Specify what factors EXCLUSIVE to pool hopping are what make it unethical, and no more stupid analogies.