So if their handicap were proportional to their reward from the last round, it wouldn't come CLOSE to covering the pain caused by the shares granted to the high end traders.

Example:

Joe Blow 20ghash earns 200000 shares in round 123 in 200 minutes
Jane Blow 2ghash earns 20000 shares in round 123 in 200 minutes
Slowie mc whybother 50 mhashes earns 50 shares in round 123 in 200 minutes
Scammer mcdouchpants 100 mhashs earns 100 shares in 200 minutes

So in the next round you calculate the estimated hashes per user in the first few minutes:

joe bloe 20ghash starts off with 5000 loyalty shares (5 minute estimated share volume)
jane blow 2ghash starts off with 500 loyalty shares
slowie mc whybother ends up with 12.5 or whatever loyalty shares.
Scammer mcdouchpants gets 25 loyalty shares

So if the next round ends in only two minutes

Joe bloe would get 5000 loyalty shares + 2000 earned shares
jane blow 2ghash would get 500 loyalty shares + 200 earned shares
Slowie mc whybother ends up with 12.5 loyalty shares and somewhere around 4 earned shares on the round
Scammer mcdouchpants would end up with 25 loyalty shares and lets say he's running 20ghash and he pulls 2000 earned shares.

So scammer mcdouchpants would be hurt badly in this situation because his payoff would be only 2/7ths what it would be if there were no loyalty shares.

For anyone STAYING in your pool, their percentage of payments would stay the same (actually they'd see a ~5% increase in earnings).

Pool hoppers would see a ~62% drop in profitability.

Also... people that bail on long blocks would be penalized a bit.

[edit] my point is that the aggregate share proportions amongst loyal users shouldn't be affected much, except because they'll have more shares than anyone that was not laboring in the previous block.  If the very FIRST share recieved was the block hash, the payout would be almost identical to the payout for the previous block.

So if you are a scammer and that block was 2 hours long... you're out of luck.  Because even in 5 minutes, you'd still be looking at 50% of the shares relative to your processing power for the block.  In the upper area it'd make hardly any difference.

Bottom line? You get guaranteed safety from pool hopping and you have to work through one block at a decreased rate.

So are low hashrate miners having problems in your current system?

Because if your current system is able to handle them, then by distributing loyalty shares each round (for that round only, then they go away) you'd be handicapping by way of the distribution of rewards for the last round.
                                                                                   
Are you having a tough time with your payouts to slow miners now?

No no... 5% is the net loss.

The loss only on fast blocks is near 25% on average.  

So we're losing 25% of our potential pay off for a 5% gain in performance.  So the miners are netting somewhere around 25% more per hash by hopping pools than we do sticking it out.

Well, perhaps, but those hoppers didn't do the sometimes 4 hours of processing on the server that we did in order to get a shot at a fresh block.

While we're slaving away at calculating that hash...they're off trying to get more than their due many other places.

Anyway, I can solve the problem with a relative degree of ease.

You create another class of shares called 'loyalty shares'.  You create a number of shares equal to the estimated share count at 5 minutes with current has power.

You distribute loyalty shares proportional to the payouts on your last block.

So...

Two things...

1) Pool hoppers would be fucked. (their margins would be reduced to tatters.  If they happend to hop in on a 2 pool that closed in 2 minutes, their share would be super miniscule due to the loyalty shares.

2) It would ease attrition on long length blocks because folks wouldn't get the loyalty shares if they bailed.

This way... instead of your most loyal folks getting shafted in short rounds, we'd end up doing the best.

Whatever it is... it is raping us.

I have found some interesting data that seems to point at pretty substantial losses due to pool hopping in early parts of rounds.

Basically I ran a bunch of numbers and I'm looking at some anomalies that would be highly unlikely to be caused by chance.

Since I was seeing what seemed to be much lower numbers than I should have seen on short rounds, I had to do some data analysis with small sample set that had some progressive variance caused by systems going down from time to time.

So, my analysis is off a somewhat normalized figure of 5 chronologically continuous blocks average.  I compared the 5 block normalized average to a percentage figure for individual payouts over or under the mean for all payouts.

It shows that in blocks that move faster, payouts deviate from running averages to the tune of 85.34% against averages.

Larger blocks have a mean average of 104.47%.

You can see the analysis here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AhhejNMzWwx8dGpYZE9FYXk3d05MQjVDNUxLcHNXZkE&output=html

If it is pool jumping, it is killing our profits by potentially more than 5%.  The only real other thing it could be is slush.

If it is pool jumping, the solution seems simple.  Distribute an initial set of shares each round based upon the percentage of total shares by user in the round preceding.  The initial set of shares should be determined by estimated shares at current hash rate in the first 5 minutes.

This will suck the piss out of pool jumpers and give the loyal folk here their hard earned full return.

Thoughts?

What is going on?

Maybe they finally found some jackass to give them a few hundred BTC and now they're getting the hell out of dodge.

So... my first day I netted a whopping .01%.  That's .002 btc on my 2 btc.

The fee to withdraw my 2 btc would be .035 btc, so basically about 15+ days for me to recoup the fee. (not the worst thing in the world when mutual funds often take 6 months + to recoup commissions.)

PLUS...

They claim that you can make "up to 5%" which stands to reason that if they net more they keep 100% and they probably keep a portion of lesser amounts.

Which is fine.  In all honesty I EXPECT it.  I just feel like full disclosure is a great thing.  I just don't buy that their only revenue comes from the 1.75% fee.

Am I wrong?

Yep looks like we have a winner.

I think we're going to see a break out to the next price zone in the next week. 

Feels like the consolidation is complete. 

Plus... if other folks are like me... their fiat just hit the exchange. 

AWESOME.

Let's hope it stays that way.

More for us.

Ahhhh it's so awesome.

Stupid triangle though.  Taking away all my fun. 

Sit and wait, it says.  FUCK YOU, I say.

Idk... send me some BTC and I'll tell you where when I feel like it.

Sweet spot @ 6 it looks like...

I'm buying at 6.20 ATM...

I don't mind losing a little skin to gain an arm and a leg.

So the first motion of the POORLY CONCEIVED INVESTMENT GROUP, FOR GREAT JUSTICE will be to cash out all assets in favor of MOAR BTC.

Yeah, market is ready to be bullish.  I'm going to get into margin stuff, but for now I'm just weighing the market and buying. 

There will be plenty of opportunities to slaughter the pigs later.

Nothing more diverse than doubling down.

I'll be game for $100 once BTC hits $10.

So... since there is a reaaaally good chance that we'll have another bubble... would people be interested in gathering together to convert some of their profits into other investments?

It seems like if you properly structured things, you could bring together up to 38 individuals into buying things like oil wells, billboards etc... that provide a longterm cash payoff.

It seems possible to me that folks are going to take their money up 10x - 20x their investment this year, it would make sense to utilize some measure of collective resources for longterm gain.

Market volatility for bitcoin isn't likely to vanish overnight.  (unless there is some sort of... calamity to strike fiat currencies... however unlikely that may be)

So yeah, if there IS another bubble and folks want to diversify in tangible assets, maybe some sort of co-op investment club would be useful since you'd combine many times the buying power with many times the # of opportunities.