What error do you see when trying to load?  Is it an actual error page, or is it a generic browser error?

No problems here. Probably a problem at your closest CloudFlare server. Nothing I can do about that other than wait.  CloudFlare is only used for website access. The mining servers are completely separate.

That's part of what I need to work out.  I'm obviously not going to rely on a third party profitability estimator.  I'll probably do something simple (price average over last 12 hours vs difficulty vs average coins per block).  Once it is implemented, there will be a stats section which describes how the current "most profitable" coin was chosen by the pool.  Users will always be able to override the auto-switch aspect.

Ideally, on your settings you'll be able to either pick which coin you want to mine, use an 'auto-switch' setting, and then probably have something like "exclude the following coins from auto-switching", where it will pick the most profitable coin of the ones you have not excluded.

Neither feature can be implemented.  While share submission counts are stored per worker, that is only for stats (and PPS) purposes.  All PPLNS earnings data is stored on the user account level.  It could be estimated, but estimated stats generally cause more confusion/headache than they're worth.

At least to start, ScryptGuild will not do *any* form of transferring between currencies.  So you'd have to either run your own wallets, or set the payouts to an exchange like BTC-e or Cryptsy.  There will eventually be an instant conversion option on ScryptGuild, probably only to LTC though (since it's ScryptGuild), which uses market rates + small fee, depending on how reliable the exchange APIs are for scrypt coins.



No teasers yet, but the website will probably be functional *before* Friday for setting up accounts and workers.  I've purchased a nice template to start off with, I just need to take a little time to customize it and start replacing demo data with proper placeholders.

I was just so relieved last night when I finally figured out where that stupid bug was.  I was getting so desperate to get ScryptGuild moving that I was almost considering using that crappy MPOS package most the pools use these days for using with slush's python stratum pool.

Alpha will be fairly basic.  It will be PPLNS, 0% fee during alpha (pool keeps the meager txfees).  At launch it will be manual coin selection by picking a port (probably LTC + Doge +...maybe Moon?).  While that's up and running, I'll be working on another update to the backend to allow multiple chains on the same port, with website (and API) based controls to swap a user between chains.  That will be 'Beta' stage.  Final stage will include the ability to opt in to automatic chain switching based on estimated profitability.

I think users will enjoy the layout for the new ScryptGuild.  It will NOT look like BTC Guild, since I've determined the BTC Guild interface would not be very efficient when working with potentially dozens of different coin chains.  But it also won't be something you've seen on any other pool to date .

ScryptGuild alpha is tentatively scheduled to start on Friday.  After encountering a number of setbacks from code I wrote while sick (always seems like a good idea at the time), I've fixed the problems that prevented the launch last week.  Some family is visiting this week, so I'm holding off on launch until the weekend.  As such, the alpha will probably look much nicer than originally planned.

I hope you're comparing the BTC:USD conversion to BitStamp and not Gox.  Nobody seriously uses Gox for USD exchange rates.

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator  is the calculator I've always recommended for hard numbers at current difficulty, which is the only hard number you can be given.  I don't have a calculator on the pool because I believe it is misleading for non-PPS users, since pool luck will skew results one way or another, just confusing most users.

The expected earnings per day of any miner on any pool is based on their speed vs the current network difficulty.  This number is then skewed mostly by pool luck, and then somewhat by pool payout method depending on the method and the configuration.  For BTC Guild's PPLNS, the payment method itself has virtually no variance impact due to an 'N' value in PPLNS that is obscenely high (> 10x difficulty).  The only variance you're likely to see is entirely based on the pool's luck.

The speed of the pool only acts as a limiter, establishing a likely floor and likely ceiling of how far luck/variance can swing over a given period.  You'll have highs and lows, but a pool the size of BTC Guild experiences "extremely poor luck" as a day at 63% expectation.  In smaller pools, that would be "normal" bad luck, with extremely bad luck being something closer to 10-20% expectation.  If it's really small, possibly even 0% if they fail to find a block all day.  With that benefit comes the downside, which is BTC Guild is unable to hit the extremely good luck values that small pools have.  BTC Guild's very good days would be 130-140%, our highest 24-hours I can remember was a hair under 150%.  A smaller pool can see numbers as high as 300-500% in a 24-hour period, it just takes a handful of blocks.

1.3% is slightly above normal for BTC Guild.  I always use 1% as the rule of thumb for orphans.  So compared to other pools which do not pay orphans, it is effectively a 2% fee for BTC Guild.  Less if the other pool fails to pay transaction fees or namecoins.

The EU validation server uses diff2 for some users (it doesn't always update when you change worker settings).  You get forwarded to the real servers after a single valid share submission.

No problems connecting to it from here in the US.

Yes.  I've hit a few snags on it, but it is absolutely in development.  I've had to push the date back to February due to some setbacks in the adoption of the old backend to scrypt and it's different ways of handling difficulty compared to SHA256.  I also have some family coming to visit + bringing a load of furniture & computers from my old house this weekend, so the odds of it launching this weekend are basically 0.

The idea is a profit-switching scrypt pool.  The alpha will simply be single chains with different ports based on what coin.  Beta will be multiple chains in one URL with the ability to switch via the Web UI.  The "release" version will include the ability to have the site automatically move you between chains based on profitability.

The expected value of your share is the same.  Always.  It doesn't matter what the shift settings are.  It doesn't matter what the pool speed is.  The expected value of a share never changes.  Pool luck is the ONLY thing that affects the realized value on your shares.  This is true on *EVERY* payment system except PPS, where the realized value is static regardless of pool luck.

Count the blocks BTC Guild solved yesterday.  Count the blocks it solved today.  It's a hell of a lot more, which is exactly why yesterday's payments sucked and todays have not.

Stay in school kids, otherwise you'll look like this moron.

No date was ever given for DVC/IXC, only that they would come *after* the new backend and after Scrypt Guild.  Unfortunately, the new backend took much longer than expected (illness + bugs), and was eventually scrapped entirely.  As a result, Scrypt Guild is also pushed back further.

IXC and DVC are *completely* worthless.  If BTC Guild adds them, they'll just become twice as hard to mine from difficulty, and go even further down in value since you'll have a whole lot of new people selling them to the highest bid on the books.  Right now they add less than 0.2%.  If their difficulty was increased by BTC Guild's hash rate, it would be less than 0.1%, not counting the drop in value guaranteed to follow the rise in difficulty.


This isn't saying they won't be added, just that they have always been near the bottom of the list of things to add/consider adding.

My apologies to wizkid.  I wouldn't have responded at all if this user's posts weren't pointed out in my thread.  This kind of derailment is why I had my thread converted to self-moderated, but I also won't let somebody hide in another thread spouting provably false information.

One fun thing to note is the argument people will always make:  You'd have been better off buying BTC than buying a miner.  This is mostly true, if the person doing the investing is rational, patient, and holds true to their investment decision.

I have first hand evidence of friends who I recommended not purchase miners at a certain point for that same reason.  They did so anyways.  And they made more off the miners than they would have buying BTC.  Not because of any failure in my math, but a failure in assumptions.  The "buy BTC instead" argument doesn't work if somebody would have cashed out their coins after a reasonable rise.  Such as cashing out the coins they purchased after a 30% gain.  My friends absolutely would have done that, and been happy with a $300 profit after a month.  Instead, they had to sell their coins slowly as they mined them.  They ended up more than doubling their investment because even though they sold coins continuously, they ended up selling at significantly more than a 30% gain over the price when they had purchased their miners.

So a wise, patient, and true believer, investing in BTC would be better off putting their money directly into coins, and following a strict selloff plan.  But those types of investors are rare (though many believe they are that type).  Human emotion is an extremely large factor in trading, especially on highly volatile markets like Bitcoin.

Nice to see someone fairly new that actually has read up on these things and understands them.  What you've posted is extremely close to the explanation I gave on the forum and BTC Guild news post.  One tiny correction: the per share rate "does matter", in that BTC Guild's PPLNS system also provides you a number showing how much any given share was paid in that shift.  It does so because some people like to compare what they're earning on PPLNS directly against PPS.  Obviously the per share rate varies dramatically from shift to shift by luck, but it's just something people have requested to be visible.

The rest of your post is spot on though.  The length of shifts mean *nothing* in the long run.  They simply control the minimum and maximum expected values of a given shift.  Longer shifts = reduced maximum and increased minimum, squeezing the expected variance into a narrower band on the chart.  Longer shifts means the amount paid to each share when a block is solved goes down, but the length of the shift means you will likely see more blocks found before the shift is closed, which ends up being a wash.  Overall, the only thing that matters is pool luck during the time you're mining, the shifts are just an accounting method used to allocate + audit your fair share of the pool's blocks.

Please refrain from breeding.  It will not end well for humanity.  It was explicitly stated previously.  You are too stupid to understand PPLNS, but you're also too ignorant to know you don't know how it works.

On the graph, it's the luck per shift.  So each shift gets paid X amount for its time.  At 100%, it paid exactly what you'd expect.  That will obviously never happen (or at least almost never happen) since shifts aren't based on blocks found but shares submitted, so it's always going to be at least a little +/- from 100% for a given shift.

This percent is equivalent to how much you made above or below expectation.  So if you plug your hash rate into a mining calculator, it will spit out your expected earnings for a day/week/month.  Subtract the pool fee (3%) from that for your expected earnings on BTC Guild at your hash rate.  If a shift were at 100%, it'd be exactly the same as that calculation (maybe +/- a few satoshis from rounding).  Otherwise, the % shown is basically the % of that expectation.  If it's 134%, you made 34% more than what your speed is expected to make.  If it's 63%, you made 63% of what you would expect to make.