The miner for ypool can never match the efficiency of a solo miner, and it certainly can't compete with mikaelh's most recent builds. This is because in pooled mining (at least ypool's implementation of it) the miners are paid to produce blocks of a lower-than-network difficulty, as in Bitcoin. This is not a problem in Bitcoin since you can't look for low difficulty shares without looking for high difficulty shares at the same time.
However, in Primecoin it is very possible to tune ones search for shorter chains. For example if, after the sieve, you find a collection of 7 numbers that are in the form of a chain (e.g. H-1, 2H-1, 4H-1, 8H-1...) but the number on either side of the chain was proven to be composite then you should not waste time with an expensive primality test on any of the numbers--it will never be a valid share when the network difficulty is 8 or higher. However, if miners are paid to produce shares of difficulty 7 then they should check this chain.
There are a few resolutions to this dilemma. One possibility is that everyone checks all chains that aren't long enough to be network shares but could still be pool shares. This is fair for everyone--nobody has an advantage over anyone else--but it means that fewer blocks are generated overall (everyone is wasting time that doesn't benefit the network). Another possibility is that some people ignore the shorter chains, while others check all chains. This gives an unfair advantage to the people checking the shorter chains--they will produce fewer valid blocks for the pool this way while producing more shares and taking a larger cut of the profits. The final option is if everyone only checks the longer chains while ignoring the shorter ones. This is the solution that gives the highest average payout and is the one that ypool is trying for, but it has the problem that if anyone wants to increase their payout they just have to change a couple lines of code and suddenly they can start taking a higher payout. This is a classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons.
I have explained this attack in detail to (who I think were) the operators of ypool and they have continued to operate. The only case where mining with them is a wise decision is if you are so averse to variance that you are willing to take an enormous cut to your profits (e.g. 50% or more) in exchange for a more regular payout.
Fascinating. So do you think primecoin is going to end up fundamentally incompatible with pooled mining simply because of the nature of the computational work being done for the coin, or are the problems that you have outlined likely only specific to ypool's implementation and solvable by a different and creative approach to parceling out work to pool participants? If primecoin ultimately became a coin that was considered optimal to GPU mine, but significantly suboptimal to pool mine, that would make it quite the unusual coin, and would leave small miners with no escape from high variance. I'd say from that explanation the only way one could effectively pool mine without this exploit would be to literally setup their own private pools to operate however many rigs they are mining primecoin with. Thank you for the insight Koooooj, interesting.
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Small progress report time!
Most of the first day was spent setting up the dev environment... libblkmaker doesn't compile under Visual Studio, I had to move to use MinGW for everything. Everything's fine though. This was predictable, and didn't delay development.
I am excited for the finished product
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price lowered to 4btc total or 2btc per card
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I just watched Primecoin spike to .0148 on cryptsy.
EDIT: Looks like it actually hit .015999 before receding.
Someone investing 1 BTC or so into XPM and rising price by 100% is not indicator of correct price but of low volume and idiocy. It was at least 20 BTC
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A Ripple gateway might help, giving it access to pretty much any service that is interested in people being able to pay with whatever they want while the vendor gets paid in whatever they want...
With the proliferation of currencies out there, what vendor would bother anymore to use a shopping cart that doesn't automagically allow pretty much any darn thing out there to buy what they sell?
-MarkM-
I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to Ripple, but for it's intended purpose I do see your point. It would make using XPM for just about anything a reality.
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It hit .019 on mcxNOw
Wow, someone had a real case of trigger finger there. I was there when it happened. Dunno if anyone actually bought at 0.019 but I sold 200 XPM at 0.015 so I'm happy pfft.. You won't be happy when it reaches 0.1 BTC. If it is able to reach that level, it's going to take plenty of time and require a whole slew of useful XPM services. I'm sure it's within the realm of possibility though
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I am so happy at the acknowledgement of primecoin in the market. Primecoin is hugging its elder brother ppcoin now at #5 in market cap ranking, only 11th day of its release +1 you did an excellent job. ppcoin deservers plenty of love too though!
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It hit .019 on mcxNOw
Wow, someone had a real case of trigger finger there. I was there when it happened. Dunno if anyone actually bought at 0.019 but I sold 200 XPM at 0.015 so I'm happy I like your wording, makes it sound like it was a historical event
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It hit .019 on mcxNOw
Wow, someone had a real case of trigger finger there.
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I just watched Primecoin spike to .0148 on cryptsy. It seems to have dropped back slightly, but is still above .01 Get 'em while they're hot folks EDIT: Looks like it actually hit .015999 before receding.
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Hello All! FuzzyBear is running a group buy on the ppcoin/primecointalk forums for Asicminer USB Block Erupters. You can find the thread here http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=298If you are interested, please head over and let us know. The details of the group buy are outlined in the OP. If you have any questions contact FuzzyBear or myself Happy hashings.
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I will toss some coins to the bounty but not for CUDA
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UPDATE: If anyone is having issues tracking their package try changing the "RA" to "RE" in the confirmation code. Seems USPS says to use "RA" but the labels are listed as "RE". LINK: https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action edit: Some labels have "RE" and some have "RA". I'll try to be more consistent on this in the future. If I change to "RE" it won't find the label. I'm not worried, it was supposed to be here Monday but I'll give it another day or two till I panic Yes shipping from Hawaii takes a little longer than the normal estimates USPS provides. This is from my past experience shipping to and from Hawaii. Yes I saw that in your other post. No worries, just wasn't sure if changing the label letters to the RE would provide any more info. Seems the RA one is working for me, the USPS is just slacking. Damn government employees!
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UPDATE: If anyone is having issues tracking their package try changing the "RA" to "RE" in the confirmation code. Seems USPS says to use "RA" but the labels are listed as "RE". LINK: https://tools.usps.com/go/TrackConfirmAction!input.action edit: Some labels have "RE" and some have "RA". I'll try to be more consistent on this in the future. If I change to "RE" it won't find the label. I'm not worried, it was supposed to be here Monday but I'll give it another day or two till I panic
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El Oh El
Walter, they are calling the cops, man.... put the piece away!
Smokey, you're entering a world of pain.
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USPS screwed me, delivery date was supposed to be today. Guess I will have to wait till tomorrow to receive my precious
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I am curious whether the OpenCL or CUDA miner will be out first.
I'm hoping for OpenCL. I'm sure most people are since we are all sitting on AMD GPUs
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