Hi all -- I have a handful of the A2 Terminator Mini Units (30Mh/s) and the single fans are extremely loud.

Anyone have a replacement suggestion?  There's got to be something out there at 1/2 the volume.

Thanks...

[HAVE FIXED]

It looks like most pools HAVE NOT fixed this issue.

Be sure to ask the pool you are using if they have prevented people from submitting duplicate shares (and getting credit for it).

So far the only Scrypt pools I know that HAVE FIXED the issue are:

1.  Hash-to-Coins.com
2.  IPOMiner.com

I'd be glad to add more FIXED pools to the list!  This need to be fixed -- fast!

[FIXED]

I have a feeling most Scrypt mining pools are still affected by the duplicate shares exploit.

Perhaps this topic will get the other ones moving to fix the exploit where a miner can submit duplicate shares -- receiving 2x, 3x, 4x or more credit for their mining share on a pool.

The following Scrypt pools have FIXED the issue:

1.  Hash-to-Coins.com
2.  IPOMiner.com
3.  Smarterhash.com
4.  ??

Anyone have any info on what is going on with SONG?

There's two different block chains -- supposed updates but not released through official channels.

Wow - so what is the special coin that everyone is mining? 

I'm seeing 1 Gh/s on Nicehash / Westhash go for almost 1 BTC (per 24 hrs) -- while normally it is 1/5 the price.

Hi - so I don't even know if this is possible, but I looking to purchase an established Scrypt coin - that has a good reputation -- is listed on at least 2 exchanges and the majority of the coins can be transferred to me (so that I know someone isn't going to just dump the coins at some point).

I'm not looking for scams coins -- but a coin where the developer has lost interest, but it is still trading and needs a new dev team to promote and repurpose it.

Please PM me only with serious inquiries.  In addition - full transparency will be required.  I'm not going to deal with code names and weird stuff like that.

Thanks!

Ok - I've been a fan of Smarterhash from the beginning, despite my differences with the developer.

But now I received an email from Smarterhash talking about V2 -- and in the process my email address along with 34 other subscribers (I assume) was exposed.

Have you heard of BCC?

This is not cool at all and very amateur.

So - I'm tossing some ideas around with a few people and wanted to get some feedback from you.

What features would you want in the perfect Scrypt mining pool?

1.  What type of multi-pool features do you want?  Multi-pools based on your hashing power?

2.  Do you want to keep your mined coins in their native currency?  Or have them automatically converted to BTC?

3.  What type of share payout system?  Or would you prefer a solo-mine option (would you pay extra)?

4.  What type of data / charts / research do you want available?  Would you pay extra?

5.  What is a fair fee for such pool?  A percentage?  Or a flat fee based approach?

6.  Do you need an EU or US based server?

7.  Do you want email notifications?  If so - what would set off an alert?

8.  Regarding coins - do you want established coins?  Or also new coins that could be risky?

9.  Anything else?

Thanks for your ideas!

So I've noticed that some Scrypt pools that mine the same coin at about the same hash rate do not find a similar # of blocks (this is over a decent period of time - so its not the whole variance bad luck thing). 

I've even seen some pools at a low hash rate (in the 200-300Mh/s range) do much better than a pool at a higher hash rate (2x to 3x as much).  This would be for coins that have an average hash rate of 500Mh/s to 1Gh/s.

There must be other variables when it comes to alt coin mining pool optimization?  Are there any special tweaks? 

Or special nodes that one pool may have access to and the others do not? 

Could it just be latency? 

Or the # of miners at one time?

Just curious - as not all pools are doing the same - even though the hashes stated would predict otherwise.

Hi - I am looking for someone that can setup a basic Scrypt mining pool that handles about 10 coins.  I know there are a couple of open source setups out there, so I'm hoping that this wouldn't require a lot of custom work.

Please PM if you are interested, capable and legit (I like to know who I am dealing with :-)  This project would need to be completed in less than a week.

Preference would be someone in the US (just due to time-zone sake).

Thanks!

Wow - so I guess I feel a little depressed. 

1.  No new Scrypt mining hardware.

2.  Everything went to the Ponzi-Mining -- which is starting to collapse for many. 

3.  Most alt coins are becoming less profitable to mine.

I don't really see any of these alt coins becoming mainstream.  Does anyone?  So much for LTC being BTC's silver?  LOL

I mean each one says it does this or that or supports something new and exciting - but no one is really using them for anything but trading to BTC in the end.

Any new ideas / technologies to come?  Or is this going to be the end year of home mining (no matter how you do it -- CPU / GPU / ASIC).

I have been interested in the hard drive BURST mining.  It is something different at least, but I guess that could easily be taken over by huge cloud drives as well. 

I was curious -- with the absence of anything new coming out for Scrypt mining (at least to the public) -- what does everyone think current equipment is worth right now?  Or what is someone willing to pay?  Probably best not to back it up with the whole ROI thing (as that can be manipulated a million different ways).

So here's my go -- this is what I'd be willing to pay right now (with in country shipping rates):

1.  A2 Terminator 88Mhs -- $900

2.  A2 Terminator 110Mhs -- $1000

3.  X6 Zeusminer Lightning (40Mhs) -- $150 (no PSU / no Controller)

4.  X6 Zeusminer Thunder (20Mhs) -- $100 (no PSU / no Controller)

5.  X6 Zeusminer Hurricane (10Mhs) -- $50 (no PSU / no Controller)


Anyone feel similar or different?  Anything I'm missing?  I don't know how to value the new KNC miners - as they seem to have different issues. 

So perhaps this has been discussed before -- maybe not.

I know in the past there has always been a Bitcoin pool that was being DDOS'd.  So yeah it was an inconvenience to that particular pool's members, but it never really made an impact on the general mining of the coin, people would automatically switch to one of a dozen or more pools.

Well - use this same attack on a major pool that has 2/3 the hashing of say 42 coin.  Knock them down for a day and the difficulty drops considerably and the attacked can then mine the coin quickly on their own.  I mean there aren't that many pools that mine 42 coin in any significant hash - but a couple.

I believe this is now happening with Alt-Coins.  I haven't looked at the statistics to confirm, but someone is definitely trying to manipulate the difficulty of some coins for their personal gain using DDOS attacks.

Several pools have been taken down (for more than a few hours) in the past week, so something is up.

If you think about it -- why would this not work?

If I want to mine a lot of 42 coin -- well just take down one or two pools (that mine the majority of it) for a day or two or just hours.  The difficulty will reset in a matter of minutes.  Less people mining a coin means a lower difficulty and a chance to mine more of the coin.

I don't know how much a DDOS attack can cost -- but I would think it isn't too expensive.

In addition - good DDOS protection for these alt coin pools might be pricey (in the whole scheme of things) or perhaps not even enabled.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of these pools are being hosted at someone's house. 

Am I missing something here?  I hope so!  Curious what others think...

[spike up]

I was checking out my mining on Hash-to-Coins (12/5/14 - @ 4pm Pacific US time) and they usually have a combined hash of 4500 Mh/s on average (spread out over 25 or so coins).

Well all of a sudden I saw it spike up to almost 14000 Mh/s -- with 9000 Mh/s on the 42coin pool.  Of course this made the difficulty jump up from 13 to like 50 really really quick and then the big 'ole hasher left.  It killed the coin for many hours.

So - where did this 8 Gh/s to 9 Gh/s come from?  I believe it was all from one entity.

9 Gh/s would require something like ninety A2 Terminator miners (@ 100 Mh/s)?

What do you think happened?

• Some new mining farm flexing their muscle?  Put this much power behind BTM and it would take forever for it to come back down.  Your coins would be in limbo for some time.  I mean this is already happening now with BTM - such a vicious cycle.
  
  
• Some hardware company testing out units?  Antminer L1s?  The never seen Zeusminer III boards?  The potential Lunar Astro units?
  
  
• Or maybe some large LTC pool decided to see what would happen if they diverted their power to a lower difficulty coin?
  
  
• Or is this something more sinister?  Altcoin warfare? 
  
  

I dunno - just that it was a bit odd and made me a little nervous.  Are lower difficulty alt coins in danger?

Any opinions?

[From my observations, it seems that the promised:]

First -- I'm curious if there are any new Scrypt ASIC machines coming?  Or is everything going into the "so-called" cloud - which feels a little scam-like to me, but I'm not going to judge.  It just takes out the fun for me.

I've also heard of new X11 to X15 mining and Neoscrypt mining machines coming in a year.  But I will never pre-order or pay full price for a rig.


From my observations, it seems that the promised:

• Antminer L1 units are sold out on two pre-orders and no more will be made.  Which leads me to believe that maybe this product will not even deliver on time or at all.
• KNC units are still an expensive hot mess and now they aren't selling anymore?
• The Zeusminer upgrade boards are vaporware.  Non-existant and people are being screwed on refunds or exchanges for "cloud" mining.

So -- is this the end of new hardware?  And eventually the demise of personal Scrypt mining?



My personal setup:

I'm still running my units, on a good pool.  This pool does not trade the coins to BTC -- so I like that.  Adds another variable in the setup.

• (4) A2 Terminator 90Mh/s (average power draw 850w ea)
• (2) Zeusminer Hurricane X6 10Mh/s (average power draw 250w ea)
• (1) Zeusminer Thunder X6 20Mh/s (average power draw 460w)
• (1) Zeusminer Lightning X6 40Mh/s (average power draw 960w)

I don't believe in over-clocking the units as I'm always worried about a fire and some wires get a little warm already.  To me pulling 1Kw out of a 15 amp circuit -- continuously -- it is not safe.  I'm sure an electrician will say otherwise - but I've seen outlets get brown in color.  That can't be a good sign.

Out of all these -- the A2 Terminator machines are by far the most quiet, best performing and are really well built.  I paid $1500 each for them about 2 months ago.  They of course came with built in PSU and controller.  One unit, seems to pull more power than all the others (like 980watts) - so I under clock it.  Also, I've heard that if you run these on a 220v circuit, they use less wattage, but I'm not willing to rewire.

The Zeusminer X6 10Mh/s units perform as expected.  They are abit noisy and generate the typical amount of heat.  I paid $400 for one 3 months ago and $200 for one 1.5 months ago.  I use an existing Gold 850w Corsair PSU with one PCIE connection each.

The Zeusminer X6 20Mh/s unit performs ok - but is super loud and the two PCIE connections to my Gold 850w Corsair PSU get quite hot sometimes, so I usually either cool it off for an hour each day or under-clock it.  I paid $300 for it about 2 months ago and used an existing PSU.

The Zeusminer X6 40Mh/s unit performs terribly for me - it is also super loud and just generates a lot of heat.  I'm lucky to get 35Mh/s with maybe 10% error rate.  Using a Gold 1200w Corsair PSU with four PCIE connections.  I paid $700 for it about 3 months ago and used an existing PSU.  I don't always run this unit because I don't like it - lol.  950 watts for maybe 35Mh/s.  Too much heat and too much power.


So am I making a profit or recovered my costs? 

I admit I'm not the best accountant on figures -- but rough estimate I am probably making .9 to .15 BTC daily.  This can really fluctuate, since I am not always trading in my alt coins for BTC immediately or there are long delays in getting the actual coins (big example with be BTM coin).  I'm not seeing a dramatic drop in what I make each week (especially compared to BTC mining) -- so it is still fun.

Obviously I have not gotten my ROI - which I guess would be close to $8k.  I believe right now I've made about 6 BTC and even at $500 each would only be $3k.  I'll definitely sit on the BTC in hopes it might spike really high, but who knows.  Everyone has a different prediction. 

I eventually expect to reach my ROI -- but it will take some time and hopefully the equipment won't break down prior.


Oh - and yes - electricity!  Where I am - electric is about 11 cents per kw/h.  Not the best - but definitely not the worst.  Half of my electric is not out of pocket and half of it is.  Basically some of my equipment is at home and the rest is at another location.


What about heat?  Not much of a problem now since the temperatures outside are dropping and I have windows available, but I still have to monitor it as they are tucked away so I do not hear them.  I use the WeMo Insight Wifi Switches to monitor the units power usage by smartphone.  It is great, in that I can shut them down if I feel it is getting too hot and also it tells me the actual wattage being used.  Being a worrier -- if I go on vacation, I usually turn off my units at home and monitor the others religiously.  I always keep a smoke alarm nearby and fire extinguisher.  I use multiple circuits and of course keep any combustibles away from the equipment.  I can also monitor the units via camera and login to them remotely.


Would I sell my units?   Probably not.  I'm in this for the fun and I've heard horror stories of selling your gear on Ebay.  I guess if someone locally offered me double what I paid -- maybe, but then there goes my little hobby (preventing me from getting real work done).


Anyway - I would love to hear about other people's stories…