Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery - 0.1 BTC prize - closed

[TheRealSteve]

Wrong forum section? Feel free to move!

Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery
BTC0.1 prize money

Ah, the venerable Block Erupter USB - many a miner's first foray into ASIC Bitcoin mining.

But what are they doing now?  Collecting dust?  Fetching $5 each in flash sales only to be found on ebay for $15 each - and selling, too?  Still hashing away, forgotten behind a computer tower at a job you were fired from for completely unrelated reasons a long time ago?

Well you wish you'd remember it now, because Block Erupter USB mining hasn't been this profitable...ever?  Yeah, ever.

To celebrate the Block Erupter USB's upcoming 2-year anniversary, I'm 'giving' away BTC0.1 (a small prize for a small device) in a lottery.

To partake, rather than buying a ticket, all you have to do is mine using a Block Erupter USB or equivalent class for 3 days.  No tinkering, no wracking your brain, just using a miner for what it was originally intended to do: mine.

Prize: BTC0.1
It's not much, but it's more than you're going to get mining with one now, short of being a solo Bitcoin mining lottery winner

Rules:
1 You must register as a participant in this lottery in this thread.  After registration and well in advance the Three Days of Mining begins, you will be assigned a particpant number (sequential based on thread post order) and be sent a unique code that will allow you to participate.
2. You must mine using a Block Erupter USB or equivalent class miner at the specified Bitcoin mining pool for 3 days.
2.1 An equivalent class is determined purely by hash rate.  Values between 200Mh/s and 450Mh/s are accepted.  If you've got an old Avalon - welcome!  If you overclocked your Block Erupter USB, come on in!  If you find some place you can still rent 300Mh/s and point that specifically to a pool, more power to you, join on in.  If you manage to hack the driver for a 1Th/s miner to submit shares so infrequently as to appear as being 300MH/s... oh go on, you.
2.2 This hash rate must be achieved for no less than 90% of the time.  If you go under too much, you may be disqualified.  If you go over too much, you may be disqualified.
3. You must post or PM an address to which potential winnings should be sent (at time of submission or if selected as the winner), and - lest I send BTC into a void - you must sign the following message using that address to prove receivership:

Code:

Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery 2015

Duration:
If you did suddenly remember where at your old place of employ you've left yours and all you need to do is sneak in after hours but that's going to take some scoping out of the guard shifts, not to worry, you have a little while to go fetch it and get up to speed.

• Registration for this lottery opens effective immediately and closes 2015-05-01 12:00am PST (night of 30th on 1st).  Not sure when that is?  Google is ever-so-helpful: current time pst
• Mining measurement will begin 2015-05-01 12:00am PST and ends on 2015-05-04 12:00am PST (night of 3rd on 4th).
• You may begin mining before that the beginning if you wish to test settings and/or ensure that your miner gets a stable estimate of hash rate on the pool.

Winner selection:
The winner of the lottery will be determined by the blockchain as follows:

1. Take the first block mined after 2015-05-04 12:00am PST as determined by the block timestamp.
2. Take the (big-endian, leading zeros in front) hexadecimal representation of the hash of this block.  Example: 00000000000000000e65e8998a362a1149846f73d3f48a539c88bd05b695c979
3. Take the last four two bytes (four characters) of this hash.  Example: c979
4. Take the value of those two bytes.  Example: hex2dec(c979) = 51577
5. Modulo this number with the number of participants.  Example: 51577 % 5 = 2
6. Add 1 to get the winner.  Example: 2 + 1 = 3.  In case this participant is disqualified, the winner will be the next participant, with rollover.


Transparency and fraud:
The specified pool has a semi-public stats URL where you can track the performance of the miners.  Its output is in JSON, which you can use to keep track of yours and others' stats automatically, or use an online JSON viewer for clarity.
The pool will however require a code for mining so that one miner cannot affect another miner's hash rate out of either incompetence or malice.

Bitcoin pool
There are very few pools that would work with this type of contest, and only one that fits the bill perfectly, and that is BTCDig.  Details about the reasons for this are given in the next post.
Website: https://btcdig.com/
Difficulty: VarDiff, UserDiff=2
Public leaderboard: https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/
Public stats (JSON output): https://btcdig.com/api/v1/user/miner-stats/b54d615182ade3e9510670a0c286947f26739de9/
Pool URL: stratum+tcp://pool0.btcdig.com:3333
Pool username: BEUSB@ID (to be assigned)
Pool password: password (to be assigned)
Mining software config:

   bfgminer/cgminer -o stratum+tcp://pool0.btcdig.com:3333 -u BEUSB@ID -p PASS

If you're unsure how to get a Block Erupter USB working with your mining software, hit up Google

Pool donation is set to 5%

Lottery address:

• Winnings will be paid out from the following address: 1BEUSB4ayzai5jHKrwbiUh8asxZ1KK5e9t
• Signature (message as in rule 3): ILri6fCPtDJTfq1pi7ns+KURvItXHLVZziCbnbDSpTLaNghLVOJSPo0+QD4z5B5M9ZnlDR/8wQ86gpi0mKr1bHY=

Disclaimer / the fine print:
I will not give feedback on this thread other than clarification of rules and technical support for posting. This lottery is open to any member of the BitcoinTalk Forum.  If you're not a member, now's a good time to become one.  By participating, you agree to the rules and disclaimer.  I'm not allowed to participate.  Bummer.  friedcat is totes allowed to participate, tho'.  Entries past the registration closing time will be disqualified.  If you choose to partake and mine at the designated pool, you implicitly agree to their terms, conditions and privacy statements.  Any amount mined that can be paid out by the pool will be added to the winner's prize.  I won't be responsible for entries not qualified due to technical errors.  A single winning entry will be chosen.  Only one entrant?  Winnar!  Only a single entry is allowed per person - you with the shill accounts, you know who you are, play nice.  Results and winners will be announced on 2015-05-04.  That's May 4th, not April 5th.  My decision is final and no further correspondence will be entertained unless it is entertaining.  Prizes are not exchangeable for cash or other products - I mean, by me, you can do whatever you want with it when it's yours.  I do not accept responsibility for any tax implications that may arise from the prizes or the use thereof, for you poor sods whose Bitcoin is taxed strictly. This post may receive updates in the below section at any time during the contest period.  I told you this was the fine print bit, right?

2015/04/21: Fixed end date being last year - whoops!
2015/04/30: Fixed start date and pool setting (okay in PMs)


Contests:
1. Block Erupter USB mod contest 2015 - 0.3/0.15/0.05 BTC prizes
2. Block Erupter USB Three Days of Mining lottery 2015 - 0.1 BTC prize
3. Block Erupter USB - StickMiners Horizons - 0.1 BTC prize

[TheRealSteve]

Here's the deal with the Bitcoin pool of choice.
There were only two contenders, and one of them is run by ButterFly Labs - I'm cool with that, but I know some may not be - and ended up having too high a minimum Diff.

Here are the requirements for a pool to work in the contest as set up:
1. Needs to be okay for Block Erupter USB and equivalent class miners.
In practice, this means that its minimum difficulty should be around 2.  Diff=1 would be best.  Diff=4 is acceptable.  Diff=8+ already causes large variance in apparent hash rate readouts.

2. There needs to be a way to have a public overview of all the participants.
This means that you need to be able to set up workers and have a public overview page of all the workers in one way or another; i.e. a stats page, charts based on embedded values, or an API - either fully public or via an API key.

3. It should not be trivial to sabotage a miner's hash rate.
This means that any pool that relies solely on addresses or worker names would not work, as those are likely to be visible in the overview page.  A pool that still requires worker passwords thus works better.

4. It should be very simple to set up.
Which means that if people need to create accounts, fill in a bunch of forms, join teams, etc. - well that's just unnecessary effort.

The following pools have been ruled out already + reason given.  Note that there may be multiple reasons, pools were checked first for feasibility, then features.

pool	reason	pool	reason
solomining.com	down	btcguild.com	Would require individual login for each 'worker' (team member), no public overview per-worker hash rate page or API result
cryptopros.com	SSL certificate error	50btc.com	Would require individual login for each 'worker' (team member)
BitAffNet	no new registrations	Discus Fish	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
bitalo	inactive	solo.nicehash.com	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
Tux's Coinpool	altcoin-focused	bitsolo.net	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
BTCChina	requires firstborn	cucumerpool.us	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
ozco.in	vardiff starts at 512 (regardless of worker setting)	coinstack.io	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
crypto-miners.club	min diff=384	altnuts	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
give-me-coins	vardiff starts out at high diff, remains there (128)	yaamp	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
eligius	vardiff starts out at high diff, remains there (127)	ispace	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
ckpool	min diff=42	InfernoPool	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
GHash.IO	min diff=16	xpool	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
multipool	min diff=16	nastypool	worker hash rate can be sabotaged
BitMinter	vardiff starts at 16, drops down to 4, bounces around throwing off apparent hash rates	mmpool	no workers or equivalent
slush's pool	vardiff starts out at high diff (256), min diff=8	btcmp	no public overview per-worker hash rate page or API result
eclipsemc	min diff=9	TripleMining	no public overview per-worker hash rate page or API result
polmine.pl	min diff=8	solo.ckpool.org	no public overview per-worker hash rate page or API result
altnuts	worker hash rate can be sabotaged

[philipma1957]

okay I think I can do this.  I have an ice fury it can set freq o from 1 to 60

50 gets me 1.8gh

that is too high but if I set it to 10 my hash rate will drop very close to .200 gh - .450 gh which is  good


So would this qualify?  assuming I get hash rate to .3gh or so?

If not I think I will join anyway and you can donate the prize to some one else.

[TheRealSteve]

So would this qualify?  assuming I get hash rate to .3gh or so?

For any form of "this", as long as you get between 200Mhash/s and 450Mhash/s 90% of the time*, you're good to go  See rule 2.1

* Might need a bit of clarification - for the duration of the three days the hash rates will be polled automatically.  Each poll gives the pool-side apparent hash rate of the miner.  Over time this yields a certain number of samples.  The number of samples that falls between 200Mhash/s and 450Mhash/s (inclusive both ends) should be no less than 90% of the total number of samples.  See also: https://i.imgur.com/UL5WKcm.png

P.S. Thanks for the move, mod - Will post here for the third and last(?) contest as well

[btct22]

Cool count me in, I can plug a BE in and run ye olde miner batch file with some new creds no worries.

[TheRealSteve]

Cool count me in, I can plug a BE in and run ye olde miner batch file with some new creds no worries.

Excellent! Your ID is 1 (BEUSB@1) and your password has been sent your way

[BitBlitz]

Heh. Count me in!
Gives me an excuse to run one of my "hacked" BEUSBs (soon to appear in your other thread) that has been collecting dust for ~18 months.

[TheRealSteve]

Heh. Count me in!
Gives me an excuse to run one of my "hacked" BEUSBs (soon to appear in your other thread) that has been collecting dust for ~18 months.

Looking forward to that submission!

In the mean time: Your ID is 2 (BEUSB@2) and your password has been sent your way

[TheRealSteve]

Graphs

	BEUSB@1	BEUSB@2	BEUSB@3	BEUSB@4	BEUSB@5	BEUSB@6

April 22nd: Thought I'd play with some graphing bits. @2's hashing away nicely, as does my reference miner on @ID.  @1 hasn't connected so far - of course it's far from starting time, so that's okay
graph update
April 26th: BEUSB@1 joined in - initially with an overclocked (~430Mh/s) Block Erupter USB, now with a stock one to bring it back into valid range
April 30th: Just updating the graphs
May 1st: First 12 hours of measurement update

[BitBlitz]

Thought I'd play with some graphing bits.

Cool.  
I wondered if the first miner in the stats was yours (wake it up.  It looks a little sluggish).  Am I correct in assuming that these miners are collectively displayed as "Team BEUSB" at https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/ ?

[TheRealSteve]

I wondered if the first miner in the stats was yours (wake it up.  It looks a little sluggish).

I know, BEUSB@ID is a tad slow, but there's a reason for that - It's still within range, so it's all good

Am I correct in assuming that these miners are collectively displayed as "Team BEUSB" at https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/ ?

That is correct - and we're not in last place

[TheRealSteve]

BEUSB@1 has joined in and we're almost breaking 1Gh/s
https://btcdig.com/user/toplist/

[Dunkelheit667]

May I ask to join in or is it to late? Just found three old BE's.

[TheRealSteve]

May I ask to join in or is it to late? Just found three old BE's.

There's a few hours left
registration closes at midnight; current time pst
Your username (BEUSB@3) / pass (see PM) are on their way.  Keep in mind that you should only use a single one, or your apparent hash rate will be too high

[Dunkelheit667]

Your username (BEUSB@3) / pass (see PM) are on their way.  Keep in mind that you should only use a single one, or your apparent hash rate will be too high

Thanks a bunch! Just plugged one of these little pieces of history in and hashing away. It feels like 2013.

I wish all participants good luck!

Will be busy the next days with observing hashrates.

[helipotte]

Sound like fun, I'm in!  I have about 50 of these packed away.  Been turning them into UARTs to use with other hardware.

[TheRealSteve]

Thanks a bunch! Just plugged one of these little pieces of history in and hashing away. It feels like 2013.

But with greater ROI (though FUN > ROI, of course)

Sound like fun, I'm in!  I have about 50 of these packed away.  Been turning them into UARTs to use with other hardware.

They do make decent generic USBser devices; CP2102 is a decent chip   If you do want to join in with one of them, just say the word

[helipotte]

Count me in! I even have one that is overclocked.

[TheRealSteve]

Count me in! I even have one that is overclocked.

Wouldn't use an overclocked one - you'll quickly fall outside the acceptable range   Username (BEUSB@4) and password (see PM) on their way.

[sidehack]

Count me in on this. I just forgot to say something sooner.