+1

No one is being paid fewer bitcoins.  No hashing power is being taken away from Bitcoin at all.  Approximately, merged mining allows Namecoin to use the same hashes which are generated for Bitcoin.  No longer does one have to choose between mining bitcoins and mining namecoins.  Instead, Namecoin blocks simply happen as you are trying to find a Bitcoin block.  If a miner does not want them then they could stay with a normal Bitcoin pool or use a merged mining pool and just delete the gained namecoins, their Bitcoin income will not be affected and nor will their power consumption.

The simple fact is that a merged mining pool is currently about 45% more profitable than an ordinary Bitcoin pool.  Only a few pools have implemented it at this time due to the scrappy state of the code and the lack of protocol documentation and all of these pools appear to be passing on (or intending to pass on) the mined namecoins to their users.

By "This" I am referring to an offer like "we pay 0.00002663771002209 BTC per every submitted share".  You instead seem to be referring to something like "we pass all the proceeds of our mining activities onto the miners".  For the second case, secretly keeping namecoins would be unjust whereas simply not mining them in the first place is sound.  The way I see it, most pools operate by specifying an explicit reward system so the former case applies.


+1

This is a job for the free market.  Instead of declaring certain reward systems immoral pool operators should be free to offer whichever reward systems they like.

I don't mean to appear a troll so I will stop posting here now.  I feel there has simply been a breakdown of communication.  I believe that saying you will do one thing and then proceeding to do something entirely different is dishonourable.  I'm arguing about buying shares for bitcoins and I don't think that the buyer is required to detail what they intend to do with those shares.  What is important is that they are honest about the actual trade and provide the promised bitcoins in exchange for the shares.

I'm glad to see your hashing power back online mike and that all the pools look healthy.

With the merged mining software and the multi coin framework, how much capacity do you think your servers have in terms of GH/s or workers?  I've seen some of the merged mining pools have somewhat restrictive capacity limits and was wondering if this was a competitive advantage of simplecoin (at least until slush brings merged mining to his pool).

Let us consider your excerpt from deepbit.


In the case of the Pay per share, the offer is for a certain amount of BTC per every submitted share.  It matters not what the pool operator does with those shares so long as the appropriate amount of BTC is paid.  If the pool operator is able to sell the shares on honestly and fairly for 1000 dollars a pop then more power to them!  If the pool operator is using the shares to do something ethically questionable then that is another matter altogether but I personally don't put "mining namecoins" in this category.

In the case of the proportional system I'm right with you.  They say that you receive your part of every solved block less 3% fee.  To apply this only to the solved bitcoin blocks but to use the hashing power to solve namecoin blocks in secret on the side is dishonest and misleading (namecoin blocks are blocks too after all).  If they went on to clarify that a block was specifically a Bitcoin block then they are above board again.

Reviewing your answers to my questions it seems your objection is not with the mining of Namecoins in secret but purely with the fact that the pool operator is profiting.  You are happier for namecoins to be mined and destroyed in secret than to be mined and pocketed in secret.  Denying a pool operator this would not be unlike requiring a FGPA miner to sell his bitcoins much more cheaply simply because he can.  If a pool operator started a PPS pool offering just 0.00001 BTC per every submitted share (no other details given at all) I would not accuse them of theft (I will not be so devious as to claim that 99% of people would agree but just suggest that more than 1% would).  Their ethics come into question only when they fail to deliver the promised BTC.  This is such a basic tenant of the free market that I expect we are using different definitions for some term and I cannot for the life of me think what it could be.

Lol.  My landlord wanted to do this with my room a little while back but I resisted.

It's a shame to be without your hashing power, it makes a significant difference.  I'm sure you'll be dismayed at the drop to 0 on your monthly hashrate graph.  Fortunately for the PPLNS pool a new user, trasp, is keeping the pool above 10 GH/s.

Gah! beat me to it.

Does this mean you only have 303 posts on this forum which are not about this?

What if a pool operator decides to use the merged mining software for reasons of compatability and efficiency but sends all of the generated NMC (the public keys to spending them) to /dev/null?  Would it be ethical then?

What if the pool operator runs the merged mining software but patches it so as not to broadcast winning namecoin hashes to the network?  Is this still stealing hashing power from miners?

What if a pool operator uses the latest bitcoind (no merged mining at all) and just pays out the Bitcoins to the users.  Are such pool operaters guilty of theft?  Do you accuse deepbit and BTC Guild of suddenly charging a 30% fee because they didn't immediately and rashly start using merged mining?


What about a pool operator which does merged mining with bitcoin and foocoin (worth nothing) but only pays out the bitcoin and doesn't even mention the foocoin?  Are they required to inform users of how they are using the shares then?

What if an pool operator finds a way of using the winning hashes in a clever way to add a small amount of processing power to Folding@Home or similar?  Are they required to state exactly what they are doing?  Would they be required to pay the miners extra for this?

What if they print off all of the winning hashes and hang them on a wall as a piece of art for their own personal enjoyment?  Are they required to let the miners know of this?

Merged mining takes nothing from the Bitcoin miners at all.  There is no stealing because nothing is being taken?  There is no fraud because no-one is being mislead.  Bitcoin miners receive just as they would have before merged mining became available.  All that is different is that the pool operator is secretly being more efficient.

All that a miner and a pool operator have is an agreement.  There may not be anything in writing but this is where ethics comes in.  The pool operator specifies the reward system and fees, and then the miner supplies shares to the pool operator.  If evidence can be found that the operator is not living up to the agreement then this is cheating, plain and simple.  If the pool operator advertises the pool as "giving you a fair share for your work" or "making your hashes work as hard as possible" then they are arguably guilty of fraud or theft if they use the proportional reward system or don't use merged mining respectively but few make such claims and expect miners to be intelligent enough to assess the proposed deal on its own merits.  I find it laughable that you would suggest that I'm in a 1% minority of people on this.

Some interesting news here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42667.msg566146#msg566146

Not only is this evidence in favour of the fact that merged mining is working (so a little less risk for miners considering moving to a merged mining pool) but there is a quickly growing lump of namecoins which will at some point be released possibly sending the namecoin market value down sharply and reducing the income bonus for using merged mining.  For those of you getting namecoins now it might be worth trading them for bitcoins before slush releases the stash.

Also, of course, it means that slush's pool is likely the most profitable of the big pools right now by far even if you don't hop it.  This is definitely worth a look for those miners that need to be paid hourly (the highly variance averse).

It looks as if slush has been playing with merged mining and has managed to find a BTC block with the existing tools.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42667.msg566146#msg566146
Bitcoin block: http://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000000012542736b4489474836ca3cc2d7e42ecd37d003d4b160bc7470
Namecoin block: http://explorer.dot-bit.org/b/19274

Hopefully this will give miners more confidence that merged mining works.

Don't put words in my mouth!

I would guess that most people mining at a standard Bitcoin mining pool are expecting a "fair share" of Bitcoins for their hashing power.  By using the hashes to generate Namecoins I would argue that a pool operator is doing nothing to change this.  I fail to see how any cheating or scamming is going on.  No rules are being broken and no fraud is taking place.  If a miner doesn't care about namecoins then this is a non issue.  If a miner does care then they might consider using a pool which pays out the namecoins too; it's a free market.

If a miner actually has a moral problem with Namecoins (but not with Bitcoins) then there could be something to this but I honestly feel that most of the comments here are driven by personal greed and envy.


There are several reasons.  Low variance, reputation, reliability, lower risk.  Honestly though, with BTC income close to electricity cost for most and with merged mining offering a greater than 40% income bonus I would expect most people to try merged mining.

This is most likely due to the operator of a large pool using all the hashing power for merged mining but only paying out the Bitcoins.  Any miners with a standard Bitcoin pool are expecting a certain payout in Bitcoin for their hashing power.  Starting merged mining at the pool does absolutely nothing to change this (aside from possible a little server downtime) and so is a good opportunity for profit.  If miners actually want the namecoins then there is a selection of pools which payout namecoins too.

Does anyone have any evidence to support the idea of there being a way of actually cheating with merged mining?

Thanks for the fix.

That seems very possible.  The rates at simplecoin have come down quite a bit from an initial spark of interest too.  I'd imagine there are some risk takers in the Bitcoin mining crowd though and with the potential reward as high as it is I expect there is also a significant problem with awareness.


I'm expecting the NMC value to fall in the mid-term as merged mining establishes itself and we have a temporary glut of supply as the Namecoin difficulty adjusts.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.

As many of you are aware, Namecoin merged mining is now available giving miners the ability to mine both Bitcoin and Namecoin simultaneously (that is, with 100% of your shares counting for both Bitcoin and Namecoin).

Right now, the extra income that a miner would make by switching from a bitcoin pool to a merged mining pool is about 20% (that is if you sell your namecoins at https://exchange.bitparking.com/main as you collect them).  You can get an up-to-date figure at allchains.info and can use http://dot-bit.org/tools/nextDifficulty.php for reliable future difficulty predictions.

To calculate this income bonus I use the formula:

As I understand, merged mining has been rushed out to patch Namecoin's high difficulty problem.  Most of the big pools are being prudent and waiting for a basic level of protocol documentation before implementing merged mining (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47136.0).  Some smaller pools (including of course many Namecoin pools) started with the existing merged mining tools right away in an attempt to attract more miners.

Yes, thanks for the quick fixes.  "Current NMC Round Shares" is still wrong by the way.

This transition seems to have been nothing short of a complete success.  Well done!  Hopefully simplecoin.us will reach critical mass before the big pools bring merged mining online.

Excellent work.

I have just invented a simple game for miners.  I believe it clarifies the problem with the proportional reward system (at least for people who are more comfortable with words than with formulae).  If you think that I've missed the point or made a subtle error then please correct me.  Also, feel free to use/extend this as you see fit.

This is a 4-player game.  There is a central pot into which each player must deposit a bitcoin to play.  A fair coin is flipped repeatedly.  If a tails comes up at any point then the game ends immediately and the 4 players split what is left in the pot evenly.
If the coin comes up heads on the first flip then player 1 takes a bitcoin from the pot.
After the second head, player 2 takes a bitcoin.
After the third head, player 3 takes a bitcoin.
After the fourth head, player 4 takes a bitcoin.

This game comes with the question: If you were invited to play this game, which player would you like to be?

Of course, the idea is that:

• Honest 24/7 proportional miners will be happy as player 3 or 4.
• People who have an ethical problem with pool hopping will be disgusted with the game and refuse to have any part in it.
• Pool hoppers will ask to be player 1.

Yay, a block for PPLNS.  Cheers cheisler850!

I don't have any unconfirmed NMC yet though.  Is there a delay?

We have had a lot of bad luck at the PPLNS pool but not enough for me to be suspicious.  Of our last 3 blocks, one was in August!  Given that the proportional pool is paying out I see no reason for there to be a problem with the PPLNS pool.  So long as the pool holds at 10 GH/s we should be seeing 2 Namecoin Blocks a day on average and so I fully expect to see at least one Namecoin block today.

Any idea why the proportional pool is more popular than the PPLNS pool?  The proportional pool had a higher hash rate even late in the last round when shares were actually worth less than at the PPLNS pool.

Welcome all merged mining fans! even if you only plan to stay until your favourite pool brings merged mining online.

Thanks very much for this!  It seems "simplecoin.us:8337" worked before the switch but now "pool.simplecoin.us:8337" is required.

Right, let's see how this pool is coping with merged mining!