Blocks are found by NH rentals all the time on -ck's solo pool.

LOL

I just got to the client site... Will be on my laptop shortly.  You guys need any help from me getting your pool back up and running or does Laviathon have everything sorted?

Feel free to crack this block while you're here

We're getting close to the 110% mark... let's get the block solved and give the finder the full 1BTC bonus!

Done

https://www.facebook.com/Bravo-Mining-574993132655281/

If any of you are on twitter, you can now follow the pool @bravo_mining.  Besides here, I'll post updates there as well.  Perhaps I'll even do some Twitter-only promos in the future .

I'm updating the OP to include the Twitter account as well.

Yes, Bitcoin would continue if you nuked their hash out of existence.  However, the second part of OP's question asked what would happen when they came back online (assuming of course they weren't really nuked, but just were no longer connected to the rest of the Bitcoin network).  They would mine their chain, rest of the world would mine its chain.  When the connection between the two was restored, it would be the 51% attack as -ck answered.

No problem.  We'll leave the light on for ya

I like to think of the MRR interface as the advanced version of rental sites.  With NH/WH, you just say, "I want X hash power and I'm willing to pay Y for it".  They figure out all the details behind the scenes.  Of course, there's really no true cap on their rentals.  Sure, you can tell them you want 500TH... but you're just as likely to see that go to 800TH as you are to see it at 500.  With MRR, you pick exactly the gear you want to rent.  Sometimes the rig owners tell you what gear it is... for example, "10 S7s".  Sometimes they just say, "Really big rig!".  However, it is completely up to you to pick out the gear you want and you pay what the owner asks for a predetermined length of time.

MRR definitely offers you more control over your rental, too.  You can have backup pools configured.  You can swap pools at will during a rental.  You can get in touch with the rig owner if you want.

So, if you like the finer details and don't mind paying the usually higher prices, MRR is for you.  If you just don't care about the details and just want to get some hash, NH/WH works just fine.

Full disclosure: every rental I have done for this pool has been NH/WH.

7 A6... 5 up and running now, 2 more coming from the group buy.  The S3s are sitting on a shelf in my basement.

Yeah... I typically go with NH/WH simply because their prices are usually better.  I like MRR because you can specify multiple pools to fall back on should your primary go down, and you also get a more precise control over the actual time you're hashing.  When you rent a rig for 12 hours, you get it for 12 hours.

Good luck!  May the block gods be with us and bless us with at least one, but hopefully more blocks

As bctmke posted, you look at the Group Buy forum to see if anything is running.  If you want to get in on the Avalon buy, post there, or PM Phil to see if he's already sent out the payment.

Setting up the controller is exceedingly easy - especially if you get one of the Avalons in the group buy.  Everything is already setup for you.  You just plug it in and go.

If you buy an Avalon on your own, and it doesn't come with a controller, you'll need to pick up a Pi and an SD Card.  Then you just flash the card with the image (BlockC image is setup for DHCP) and you're good to go.

So I ordered a couple Avalons from Phil's latest group buy.  That will bring my total to 7 .  More hash for the pool.

Speaking of that... now is a good time to get your rental on and hit the block!  Hit it before 110% of expected shares and you'll get a nice shiny bitcoin from me as a bonus.  Better hurry, though... once we cross that 110% mark, the bonus goes down to 0.9BTC.

I wonder why -ck didn't merge this with my empty block thread.  At any rate, you ask very pertinent questions Preclus.  We recently had a very large backlog of unconfirmed transactions floating around.  People flooded to the forum asking why their transactions were not getting confirmed.  There was plenty of bad press produced claiming the bitcoin network was doomed.  Claims were made that block size absolutely needed to be increased immediately.

If you read my empty block thread you'll also notice how many single transaction (only the coinbase) blocks are added to the chain.  During that time we were experiencing a backlog of transactions, had AntPool produced only half as many empty blocks as they did, there would not have been a backlog.

So, does this have an effect on transactions per second?  Absolutely - at least from a throughput point of view.  Let's assume that in order to maintain parity, I need to consume a throughput of 1500 transactions per block.  Obviously if one or more actors are cheating and not putting any transactions in their blocks, then the overall throughput rate goes down and transactions become backlogged.

I've been urging people to stop mining on pools that produce empty blocks and move.  Yes, I run my own pool and would love to see more miners on it.  However, it is more important to have miners stop pointing their hash to the bad-for-bitcoin pools, and there are plenty of choices out there, including, but certainly not limited to my own.

Payment sent as per the instructions in the PM.

All,

I have resolved the issue surrounding the failed payout cron.  Apparently 0.12 has a bit stricter rules than previous versions of core did when sending coins .  Previously, you could do this:
and everything would work just fine.  With 0.12, you instead get an error:

To fix this, I had to ensure the amounts being sent were never more than 8 decimal places in precision.

I gave Laviathon the fixed code, and he successfully ran the payout cron job.

There are indeed far better ways of calculating it... but I've not implemented anything of the sort.  Perhaps if I get the time, I'll provide a more accurate calculation of estimated next difficulty

To answer your first question, the estimated next difficulty doesn't use any metrics from the web at all.  It's a simple calculation using nothing more than the current block difficulty and network hash rate as obtained from the bitcoin core...

There is no realtime CDF or luck calculation.  Only current shares and percentage of expected shares is shown.

The port is there and working, for sure.  NH would have reported the pool as dead if it weren't able to connect.  You can always test out a pool prior to creating an order.  Login to NH and go to "Account -> Create Order".  In the "Pool Details" section header, on the far right you'll see a link that says "Pool verificator".  Click on that and you'll get taken to a screen where you input all the pool details.  Testing my own pool:

Hey traxor,

What info was NH providing you?  Was it stating the pool was fine, but you were just getting 0 recorded speed?