I personally recommend bfgminer over cgminer for ASIC users, but both are in the recommended clients.  I've switched my preference back and forth over the last year, but in general I prefer bfgminer for ASICs.

I don't know for sure what the split is, but I'd bet it's fairly even between bfgminer and cgminer.

It's the same in the long run if you compared for example 500 days at full vs 1000 half-days, regardless of pool payment method.  There is on caveat:  You have to do this at the same difficulty.

So for every day at diff X, you need 2 half-days at diff X.  If your two half-days happen to have a difficulty adjustment between them, you will make less.

The renaming wasn't designed assuming you're going to rename workers into the same name of a previous worker.  The pool servers have your old names cached to a specific worker ID, to avoid repetitive worker lookup queries to the database.  That old information can't be cleared until the next time the pool servers are restarted.

You do know that all the tables can be sorted by clicking on the headers, right?


UPDATE:  I'm not dismissing the problem itself, it is on the list of things I'm working to change.  ScryptGuild is seeing some changes to how workers are cached in order to fix problems like this, and the occasional problem where an update fails to post to one server and the old settings remain cached.  Unfortunately, right now there is no "fix" for a Name<->WorkerID association being stuck when you reuse a worker name.  The only way to force that cache update is restarting the pools.

Block solving is random.  It can take less than a minute (happens a few times a month at least), it can take 3-4 hours.  On *average* it takes about 40 minutes.  If the pool is having *very* bad luck, it can be upwards of 6-7 hours.  2-3 hours is not uncommon in the slightest.

ScryptGuild has updated for the correction in block halving rate.

Eh, not FUD exactly.  It's more like a "prediction" of something that based on the historical evidence is already fairly likely to happen.  Bitcoin has a pretty big history of major site XYZ screwing something up and getting "hacked" every few months due to that site's own inadequate security or poor software design.

The error above happens when Cloudflare updates an SSL cert on a proxy (or starts a new proxy).  They need to add all the domains to the cert, so for a brief period the certificate pops up that error.

The above error(s) happen once in a while with Cloudflare.  It normally goes away in under an hour.

The blockchain is public.   If you've ever made a transaction, people can see your address and send coins to it.  I've had a few emails from BTC Guild users thinking that it was an error in their payout (they received 0.00000001 instead of the amount), and it was just a secondary spam transaction that somebody sent to a lot of people.

Wimp.  My phone plays http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBweJkRBOL0  on an endless loop when Guild stops responding.  For those who can't stomach it, skip to 25-35 seconds to get an idea on why this is the single most effective way to get someone out of bed fast.

It's our worst stretch of luck since October.  To be honest, I'm surprised we had good luck consistently for so long.  Until this difficulty, we've ended every difficulty above 100% luck since October.  That *probably* isn't going to happen this time around based on how bad we've started this one off.

However, look at the larger picture.  Even with "terrible" luck (87%) for the last week, our 1-month average is still 99.84%.  There's definitely some perspective you need to look at .

Yes, the pool pays orphans, meaning there is no need to wait for any confirmations before crediting users for a block.

Just for the record...the "Efficiency %" is a meaningless number on Stratum in bfgminer/cgminer.  It serves no purpose whatsoever.

Frycoin was a smooth start on ScryptGuild.  No disconnects, and stales were as low as you could expect given the flurry of blocks that happened at launch.  A few new faces joined us for the Frycoin mining launch, but we're eager for more!

Considering the thread was kept alive and not marked as a scam when they had done *nothing* after 3 months, good luck.

If you don't think 50BTC is a scam, consider one important fact:  It took them over 3 months to do *anything* after the "hack".  ANY pool, even the ones that charge no fee and are run as a hobby, would have taken action within a week.  That action could have been a shutdown, or correcting the problem, or posting the truth about what happened and how they plan to move forward to eventually make an attempt at repaying their debts.  50BTC has done none of that, and it is now 4 months since the "hack".

Hard to say.  It would have to become unprofitable to keep going unless there was another reason for closure (such as legal reasons).  That's barring something unseen, like a legitimate offer to purchase the pool (no offer has ever been made that came remotely close), in which case I wouldn't have control over how long it stays around.

The block transaction fees are split among the entire pool, not just the block solver.  Otherwise claiming your pool pays out transaction fees is somewhat shady, since smaller users will be unlikely to ever see their reward get a boost due to transaction fees being paid out, while paying them out to the whole pool means everybody sees the increase in earnings with every block solve.

One could argue that in the long run, both methods pay out the same, since eventually when a small miner hits a block solve they get a HUGE reward boost, which averaged over the course of their mining ends up being a good % increase.  However, in this scenario, "the long run" is measured in millennia for small miners, far longer than you can reasonably expect BTC Guild (or even BTC) to stick around.

ScryptGuild Closing Down

ScryptGuild is going to be shutting down on September 25, 2014.  The mining servers will halt in 2 weeks, which is August 10th.  Users will have until September 25th to withdraw their balances before the coin daemons and wallets are taken offline.

I would like to thank everybody that has joined ScryptGuild to date.  The pool was a fun new project to work on, solving the problems of maintaining state within multiple coins over a single server to keep shares valid even during switches, and allow fast user switching on demand.  I am very sorry that the pool ended up entering a period of non-development for so long.  The rewrite was something I looked forward to, but the external factors which kept delaying the rewrite ended up pushing a different project into the front of the line.  I do not want the pool to become another ArsBitcoin/Deepbit, where it just continues on with no direction and no updates, dying of atrophy, and as such have decided that shutting down is the proper action to take.

At this time, I'm trying to get another non-pool related project off the ground, which is something I've been putting off for a few years (before BTC Guild even started).  These days, it looks like it's time to work on that project.  It is not only one that I have been wanting to do, but also one which I believe has a much brighter future than a scrypt-coin mining pool.

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ScryptGuild is a project forked from the BTC Guild custom stratum implementation, with a design for proper multipool functionality.  Unlike other multipools, ScryptGuild is always mining on every coin at the same time.  When the pool switches between coins, your old work is still able to solve the previous coin that was being mined, rather than being called stale immediately.  The pool seamlessly moves between coins with no delays, no network hiccups, and no downtime.  As far as your miner can tell, it simply received a new block on the network.

ScryptGuild is designed from the ground up for stability and uptime.  The stratum server process is a custom C++ implementation.  It does not use VPS providers.  Even for beta, it is running on dedicated hardware, and for release it will be in the same 100% uptime datacenter as BTC Guild running on a half-rack of colocated hardware.


ScryptGuild currently runs at 2% fee PPLNS.  It also provides miners with the ability to have the pool automatically convert their coins to BTC at a 1% fee (plus any exchange fees required).  Additionally, miners can set "Reserves" on their coins, meaning the pool will keep a certain number of coins in their balance so they can personally speculate the altcoin market while still receiving steady income from their other converted coins.



If you're tired of the same old MPOS pools, running slow python-based stratum processes, unreliable VPS performance, and inefficient coin switching, give ScryptGuild a try today.


6/1/14 Update:  Pool has been removed from Beta status and updated to 2% PPLNS fee in preparation for the overhaul happening this month.



https://www.scryptguild.com

ScryptGuild alpha, based on BTC Guild's custom stratum backend is currently mining KDC during its testing phases at 0% PPLNS.  We're looking for more hash rate for KDC and also other scrypt-based cryptocurrencies.  Join #scryptguild on freenode IRC to get access to the pool and collect some KDC with a pool run by one of the most experienced mining pool operators in the business.

ScryptGuild alpha will be mining Frycoin at launch.  The pool is based on BTC Guild's backend stratum servers, designed for heavy loads.  0% PPLNS.

#scryptguild on Freenode IRC can get you registered and setup (in the meantime, we're also mining Klondikecoin).