p2pool hosted VPS control your own pool.

[aynstein]

I will be launching a hosted p2pool VPS service with the option to have your p2pool node merge mining for multiple alt coins while mining BTC.

I am trying to generate some interest in this service and would love any feedback about what would get you to start mining with p2pool. My plan is to keep it as inexpensive as possible. Free if donations to the project can sustain it. I am still looking for ideas on community oversight to ensure the service is setup and operated in a way that will benefit bitcoin and all of us with it.

I believe the more people mine with p2pool the better it will be for everyone, even if some of them do so off of hosted vps.

If your interested in having a hosted pool, speak up.

If your wondering if this is a good alternative to the p2pool node you already have setup and running, it's not. This is something intended for those not mining with p2pool because of the relatively difficult setup process.

If your wondering if p2pool mining can be made simple enough that anyone can reliably mine on it, the answer is absolutely.

Happy Mining!

[thcst8]

Would people pay for personal stratum pools?  I have a friend who can do this.  All you need is a headless Ubuntu 13 64bit vps.

[aynstein]

You could look at this as a personal stratum pool, but really it's about bringing the benefits of p2pool to as many people as possible.

I have also been considering setting up some sort of mine assist to help smaller operations see at least one or two shares per day. It may even be possible to set up smaller miners with borrowed workers to overcome the long wait between payouts for smaller miners, Perhaps slightly less efficient but if the extra mining power was on a worker with a btc address and the pool had 0 fee then I believe the return would be about the same for the loaned power, with the benefit of getting the pool a share or so and paid out once or twice a day. To be clear, this is not a working feature but rather an hypothetical solution to the problem of smaller miners and the time between pay outs, which is a common objection.



i am trying to figure out how we can set it up to cover the cost of hardware.I believe its not so much about the hardware as making it simple to get started and reliable once its going. I am going to begin with CentOs containers under openVZ, I believe 512 should be enough memory for smaller pools and even larger ones probably not much more then 1.5 GB. Like p2pool itself, I would simple ask the users to donate a small amount to help cover the cost of hardware, or perhaps just set a merged mining of name coin to the projects wallet. For mining directly that would be a 0 loss of btc return strictly speaking.

I am currently running nodes on Ubuntu 12.04, Debian 7, CentOS 6.4 (all 64bit).


So far I am having the best experience with CentOS and p2pool but bitcoind seems to like debian\ubuntu flavors. Maybe not. I believe others have had similar experiences but I need to look into it more before I make any conclusions. I am always open to any new or old information I have not seen....