There is nothing wrong.  Confirmed balance is how much coin you have available for withdrawal (assuming that balance meets or exceeds the pool's minimum withdrawal amount).  Unconfirmed balance is coins that are not yet available because the block from which you were rewarded them has not yet matured.  When the pool finds a block, your unconfirmed balance will go up by however much your portion of block reward is.  Once the block matures, your unconfirmed balance will go away and your confirmed balance will go up by that amount.

Let's have a block party weekend .  Everyone who finds a block this weekend will get a 1BTC bonus from me.  Runs from now until 23:59:59 EDT on 5/1/2016.

For you guys that are using Rozo's referral... did you create a new NH account?  If not, is there a way to use his referral with your current account?  Obviously I rent from time to time and if I can help out, I will


Weird... I've seen that happen quite a bit with the Bitmain hardware, but haven't ever experienced with my Avalons.  Phil, you've got some experience with the Avalons as well... any ideas?

Sure... the variance is a reflection of shares to find the block, total PPLNS shares, your round shares and your round PPLNS shares.  You can calculate it yourself from the information provided on the round statistics page as follows:

If I use your specific numbers:

Hope that helps

NH is simple.  You choose either the WH proxy (located in San Jose, CA) or the NH proxy (located in Amsterdam).  Then you choose the algorithm (SHA256).  Now, you just plug in how much you want to spend in total, how much you want to pay for the hash, and how much hash you want.  Put in the pool details and create the order.

The primary difference between NH and MRR is in the way you get your hashing power.  On NH, there is no guaranteed hashing time.  Your order can be outbid and go to zero speed.  Your order might never get to the hash you want.  Or, it might be way over the speed you want.  The point is, with NH you pay for a number of hashes.  How long it takes to get to that number is not relevant to them.

With MRR, you pay for time.  You rent a rig for a set amount of time.  If that rig happens to hash higher than expected, lucky you.  If not... well, hopefully either the rig owner increases your rental time, or MRR refunds you for the difference.

Each has their own advantages.  MRR for when you know "I want exactly X hashing for exactly Y time".  NH for "I want to get N total hashes and don't care how long it takes to get them".

One advantage I will give to NH - your order is very mutable.  What I mean by that is you can cancel it at any time.  You can refill it at any time.  You can change the price you're paying, or the hash limit.  On MRR, once you've picked your rig and rented - that's it unless something catastrophic happens and either the order is auto-canceled because it didn't give you advertised hash in the first 20 minutes, or you complain loudly enough to MRR support and they cancel it.

That I don't know... I have 8xA6 pointed here and they reconnect and stay connected without issue.  For example, the last time they failed over to my backup pool was on Monday when I shut down the stratum servers because my datacenter had the switch issue.  When I fired them back up, all of my A6 came right back.

When was the last time your A6 showed the pool as dead and didn't fail back over properly?  Are you on the latest firmware?

You notice correctly.  I took it away because it needs to be fixed.  Until I get that done, it remains gone.  The problem was that it determined your estimated earnings by only considering shares since the previous block was found.  That works out great for a PROP pool, but not at all for PPLNS.  Too many people would PM me or email me or hit me on IRC asking why their payment was "X" when the estimated earnings said it would be "Y".  It will be fixed eventually, I just haven't had the time to dedicate to it (stupid real-world job ).

There was a bonus of 1BTC if you found the block before the diff change.  That didn't happen, unfortunately.  I would have loved to have seen it.  At any rate, there will be another bonus... I just haven't figured out what it'll be yet .  Probably going to do some iteration of the contest we ran last round.  As soon as I finalize the details, I'll post it.

Block 409094 has matured and your balances are available for withdrawal.  If you have auto-payouts set, your payments have already been sent and confirmed.

Onto block 9!  Remember, if you find that block before the diff change, I'll send you a 1BTC bonus

I haven't started the "pick the range" contest back up yet... mostly because I have neither finalized how I want to run it this time, nor on the prize for winning.  Right now, the currently running promo is that if somebody finds a block before the diff change, they get 1BTC.

When I do start the "pick the range" contest again, the chances are extremely slim the prize will be as high as it was this time.  It may get there over time if people don't win for a few rounds... but starting off it's not going to be a possible 3BTC win.

As you can see from the statistics page, the math works out once the block has been found.  That's because the payout code is accurate .  Yes, I spent my time ensuring miners were paid appropriately.  Funny, that .

The problem with the estimated earnings is that the calculations and code are all completely wrong.  They completely assume a round is never more than since the previous block was found.  Works great for PROP.  Not so much for PPLNS.  I reported this on the MPOS github repo.

Anyway, since the code exists to properly calculate the payouts, it really shouldn't be too hard to port that over to the UI.  I'm currently working on it, although I don't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to it since my real job continues to interfere... lol.  In a nutshell, there are a few places I need to make changes (getting the proper number of your payable shares for the round), and ensure that's written to cache, because the live SQL queries are painfully slow to execute.  I might have to disable the live view (i.e. no more magically updating dashboard) in lieu of this change for performance reasons.

OK... once again I find myself explaining PPLNS payouts.  I've tried using examples of glasses of water.  I've tried using math.  I really want you guys to feel comfortable and understand how this thing works, so how can I best help you understand it?

Let me try to break it down in sections to see if that helps, and maybe you can ask about particular sections for further clarity.

What the hell is "N"?
N represents a rolling window of payable shares.  It can be any value a pool operator sets.  It can be a set value, or it can be dynamically adjusted.  The bigger the N value, the bigger the payable window is.

What is ramping up?
This is a phrase commonly used to indicate a miner has just started mining on the pool.  Because they have just started mining, they do not have a full set of shares in that "N" window.  This is important: your payouts during this time will be lower than you think they should be.

How long does it take to ramp up?
This completely depends on the size of "N" and the hash rate of the pool.  The larger the "N", the longer it takes.  How long that is is variant depending on the pool's hash rate.  For example, if a pool sets an N value of 500,000,000,000 shares, and the pool averages 1PH, it will take just about 25 days.  If the pool averages 40PH?  About 15 hours.

What does this mean to me?
As stated above, it means that during your ramp up time, your payments will be lower than you think they should be.  They will gradually increase, assuming a constant hash rate, as you get closer and closer to being fully ramped up.  Let's look at an example.  If a pool chooses a window of 5 times the current network difficulty as "N", then statistically, your first payment will be about 1/5 of what you expect.  Your second payment will be about 2/5.  Your third payment will be 3/5.  Your fourth will be 4/5.  Your fifth payment will be what those mining calculators say you should be making.

WTF, why did I get paid so little?
This is completely normal and expected behavior when ramping up.

Mining with a full clip
Ok... you've been mining for a while and N shares have passed.  Congrats!  All things being equal, your payouts should reflect what an estimated earnings calculator shows.

What does luck have to do with it?
Remember that "N" thing I've mentioned a few times?  Well, because "N" is a rolling window of payable shares, any share you have in that "N" window can be paid multiple times!  If the pool has good luck, which my pool most certainly has, then your shares get paid multiple times!  Typically, with a 5N pool, you expect each share to be paid five times.  If the pool finds more blocks in that window than it expects to, you reap the benefit and make more coin.

I love mining, but I have to stop
Well, firstly, sorry to see you go.  But, there's good news for you.  Remember that whole discussion of ramping up?  Guess what... there's ramping down, too!  Even though you're shutting down your miners, you're still going to receive payments!

Wait... what?  I'm getting paid even though I'm not mining any more?
Yes!  Remember, "N" is a rolling window of payable shares.  Even if you're not submitting any more shares, those shares are still viable and payable until they are no longer in the window of "N".

How does that work?
Just like ramping up, you ramp down.  All things being equal, on a 5N pool, once you stop mining, your next payout will be about 4/5 of expectations.  The one after that will be about 3/5.  The next one 2/5 and the final one 1/5.

---

I really hope this has helped you understand PPLNS.  Please feel free to ask any questions about any portion of it, and I'll do my best to help you.

All,

Because the "Estimated Earnings" shown on the dashboard page is causing all kinds of confusion, I have removed it until such time as I can fix the underlying formulas for calculating it.

Why did I do this?

Because the estimated earnings as currently working calculates your earnings based upon the current round only.  In other words, if this were a PROP pool, that estimated earnings would be correct.  However, since this is a PPLNS pool, your estimated earnings and payout are based upon your total payable shares over "N".

I will update the thread when I complete development work and bring the estimated payouts function back.

You know what?  Absolutely.  If anyone finds a block on the pool before the diff change (about 198 blocks from now), I'll send you 1BTC.

Congrats to borachinua on finding block 409094 containing 893 transactions with a value of 25.17913002BTC!  What a nice way to wake up



A nice 515G share by the rental.

Now, onto the contest....

The block was found at 111.52% of expected shares.  According to the table, that range belongs to borachinua.  Yup... you guessed it... borachinua receives the 3BTC!!!  2 for having the correct range and 1 for being the block finder during the range.

I have sent the bonus winnings to the BTC address you have registered with the pool.  TxID: d0659de93222fa64d34dac2a4127d50363435aef282b1562cad3aba76479fd09

Once again, congrats!!!

We're at 108... you probably want a higher pick than 104

Everyone, please note: the updated list and latest picks will be updated in the second post of this thread to avoid constantly bumping.  You can find the latest picks there.

For now it's a 1% range.  This will likely change during the next iteration of this contest (rules on which I am still working).  The issue is in finding the balance.  Too small a range, and it blasts right by with a larger rental.  Too large a range and it could stick there for a while if the miner doesn't rent big during that slot.

User Name	Low Percentage	High Percentage
justchillz	49.90%	50.89%
Songminer	61.28%	62.27%
zachmonroe	85.30%	86.29%
rozo	88.00%	88.99%
bit5norba	90.00%	90.99%
dennishh	91.00%	91.99%
mikestang	93.00%	93.99%
philipma1957	94.00%	94.99%
bctmke	96.30%	97.29%
GoJonnyGo	98.00%	98.99%
controlhosting	99.00%	99.99%
traxor	100.00%	100.99%
wardie	101.00%	101.99%
dsppage	102.00%	102.99%
abmonstein	103.00%	103.99%
eghigo	104.00%	104.99%
vh	105.00%	105.99%
LASERminer	106.00%	106.99%
YuenglingDude	107.00%	107.99%
carlsberg112	108.00%	108.99%
apederzoli	110.00%	110.99%
borachinua	111.00%	111.99%
OneInchWonder	118.00%	118.99%

Just means more fees for us when we hit it

If we hit right now...

2273 tx and .32 in fees

Crap... wasn't ours