Over many people, not over a single miner!

In my opinion, there should be as little "luck" needed in pooled mining as possible.

There is already some variance that comes from pools not having 100% of the mining power of the network, but every further introduction of "luck" (or call it variance) introduces also "bad luck" for others.

Score based mining is imo only useful for pools that have ~5%+ of the network hashrate. This means that on average every ~3 hours a block will be solved, so people jumping in don't get screwed over too much due to being late on a profitable round.

If you have a small pool however where you can expect finished blocks only every few days or so, it might happen that an honest on-off miner might loose out significantly.

Maybe it might be useful to do some calculations which pool is recommendable based on your mining habits ("2 hours/day means you'll need to join a score based pool with at least x% of the network hash rate to minimize initial variance")?

Googling for "jansson PPA"
https://launchpad.net/~petri/+archive/ppa

 

This is not taking into account difficulty changes. If you're unlucky and miss payouts currently, there might (with increasing difficulty) be no way to make up for that loss via luck.

If a mining pool grows slower than the network, the payout will be less and less. Also there is the risk of people leaving the pool (see slush...) before you have made up for bad luck.


On the other hand, you might be lucky too, join late in an early round and then continue in a growing pool that keeps up with the global hashrate.

In the end ppl. mine in pools to reduce variance as far as possible - introducing variance is often not so cool. Otherwise no sane person would be mining with PPS on deepbit (or any other pool that charges fees).

Searching for "Ubuntu PPA" gives the following link: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas

...neither is the flag of the EU for the Euro!

Small score based pools get completely unattractive to be joined by anyone, if they haven't very recently found a block.


Score based pools are only working very well for 24/7 miners, if you don't mine all the time, you will loose income when using a score based pool to the 24/7 miners.
If you want to open a new pool, you better make it proportional and after some "critical mass" has been reached, switch to score based to ensure a steady and more fair income if you wish.

I personally wouldn't join a score based small pool where blocks are only found every 3-4 days, as the risk of "buying in" with (depending on my hashrate vs. pool hashrate) quite some BTC in the beginning is too high for me.

So in the end I get screwed when joining a score based pool by the pool (as I would get probably less than someone mining longer than me with the exact same hash rate(!)) and I get potentially screwed by pool hoppers on short rounds if I stick to a share based pool...

As I currently get even a bit more payout than on average on short rounds here, I guess at least the attacks are not very widespread...

Btw. does this script calculate in "bitcoin time" (=2016 Blocks = 2 weeks) or in "human time" (14 days = 2 weeks)?

With the constant increase of difficulty, the "Bitcoin time" should already be well into summer 2011...

As far as I understand that babbling, you want someone to mine on your account in a mining pool and then trust/hope that you will distribute the BTC accordingly.

Question:
Why shouldn't I just mine on my own account then?!

Well, in the other extreme case (= "solo mining") you only get BTC if you have this single "share" that solves the block.
Every method in between takes money from the winner and distributes it to someone who didn't submit a winning share (however the distribution is calculated).

Since share based pools are vulnerable to "early leaving", I wonder if it's also possible to "join late" pool-hop on score based pools (join the pool after ~60% of the expected average time has been mined and hop away to another late pool once the block has been solved for example). Since it is as unpredictable that a round will be short or long, it shouldn't make a difference, right? I didn't do all the calculations yet though and have to take a look at Holy-Fire's algorithm again...

Score based ppols claim that they are more or less immune to pool hopping, you would look for share based pols probably.

A possible implementation would be a pool of pools, which moves around different pools depending on their solved blocks (conveniently announced in realtime by the pool via long polling).

One of the most difficult variables to get is the current hash rate of the pool, you would have to operate with older data + estimates. As new pools are currently popping up and miners join and leave, this number might not be too accurate (check out http://eligius.st/~artefact2/ for example, how much the hash rate fluctuates) thus screwing your calculations on how long to stay in each round.

In the end pool hopping is NOT cheating! You do all the work you have to do etc.
To NOT pool hop however harms your income by up to 28%.

As I don't have a server at my hands and I guess a dedicated pool-hopping pool might be popular for miners, but not pool operators (as they would get slammed with a lot of GH/s at the start of a round and then suddenly the miners move on to the next pool) I probably won't implement something like this in the public and would advise other to do the same.

Tja, wer die 0.00004096 BTC pro 512 bytes (!) nicht übrig hat... Der Betrag ist SOWAS von minimalst, um einen BTC kann man da tausende Transaktionen durchführen!

Sinnfrei ist es ja eher, kostenlose Transaktionen zu minen (immerhin muss da auch einiges berechnet, übertragen + gespeichert werden!) - derzeit ist es einfach nur so, dass es zu wenige bezahlte Transaktionen gibt und man eben für die Chance auf die 50 BTC/Block in den sauren Apfel beißt statt auf bezahlte Transaktionen zu warten.

So wie derzeit die Schwierigkeit in die Höhe schießt, wird's wohl hoffentlich nicht lange dauern, bis andere nachziehen und Gebühren vorraussetzen. Wer dann einen "Mutter Theresa Pool" für Gratistransaktionen aufmachen will, kann das ja gerne tun. Genauso wie jeder einzelne hier einfach die GraKa anwerfen kann um Gratistransaktionen in Blöcke zu verpacken. Wird nur eben "ein bisschen" dauern...

Bei Eligius hat man als Miner den Vorteil, dass quasi 100% der 50 BTC ausgeschüttet werden, im Vergleich zu den Transaktionsgebühren, die oft weniger als 1% zusätzlich ausmachen ist das sehr wohl ein großer Vorteil.


Das einzige Problem ist, dass der Mainline-Client überzogen hohe Transaktionsgebühren vorraussetzt und auch durchsetzt. Könnte man seine Gebühren händisch einstellen, würde ich ohne Probleme jedes Mal einen ganzen oder halben Millicent spenden, was um ein Vielfaches höher als das von Eligius verlangte Mindestmaß ist.

Um 0,1 BTC kann ich mir jedoch schon fast ein Bier kaufen, zum Vergleich! Logisch, dass die Leute da keine Gebühren abdrücken wollen!

It might be more psychologically relevant:

"Oh, a lot of ppl. are dropping out, I should drop out too!" 

As far as I understood, 1 "solved" share is a nonce that creates a hash that starts with Zeroes.
Sometimes there are more leading Zeroes than required by chance, and every once in a while there is a share that has enough leadeing zeroes to be also able to qualify for the current difficulty.

Why should a share that was submitted early in a round be worth less than a share that was submitted later on? Both shares have the exactly same chance of being the winning share.

As far as I understand the pool hopping paper, Raulo did not take the increased hashrate by pool hopers into account - so you would earn BTC faster while hopping, but also less because the pool has a higher hash rate in the beginning of rounds. This might even the "cheating" out.

Edit: It would also mean that I, as a constant miner would see slightly less income from short rounds. This is not the case.

Tja, jede Transaktion kostet zumindest ein bisschen Speicherplatz... Ich habe kein Problem damit, wenn man als Miner sagt, man will auch für seinen Aufwand entlohnt werden.

Außerdem steht eh klar angegeben, dass man Transaktionsgebühren zahlen sollte - wenn nicht kann es eben länger dauern.

What about a "no account" option, where you can just (like with Eligius) use a payout adress as username and mine away?

You could then payout automatically after 1 BTC or so has been reached or of that address hasn't shown up for more than 1 week or a few days.

Ok, the sale day is now over on steam so this offer is invalid.

Closing this thread, before someone picks it up in 2 years and complains that 2 BTC are worth far too much!

Does this also increase your dept towards the company (aka. "the other 4000 shares") or do you still plan to pay 0.75 BTC for these over time?

I will vote "nay" on my share(s), since currently a lot of offers are below your price (some even below the initial 75 Bitcents). Until these are sold, no money will come in to the company. I guess after the first rigs were assembled and you publish a nice (indoor) picture of that a few more ppl. might be interested in investing.

Only fees, as luck is averaged out.

Stale shares might also be a factor for pooled mining.

It is on sale today for 19,99 EUR but now costs 26,79 EUR!

These Steam prices are more volatile than BTC!

Anyways - my offer still stands until the end of the week. Since some ppl might have gift codes still left it might be better than nothing to get a few BTC out of this. And who knows - maybe 2 BTC are worth 50 EUR until then?