Bitcoin pools PAYOUT rates experiment (real miners, table/graph results)

[akashamar]

Hi,

I'm running a small Bitcoin pools payouts experiment. The goal of this experiment is to compare pools by payouts from equal real hardware (5 SP-20 miners on different pools). Many miners are calculating their profit by:

• counting on ideal luck Bitcoin mining (100% luck)
• not taking into account PPS/PPLNS/etc. reward system
• not taking into account pool performance, related to rejects, stale shares and lost shares

The idea of this experiment is to get real life results, with actual payout numbers. After all, at the end PAYOUTS are the only real parameter any miner should consider.
I also supplied payout addresses with payout history, so you can also check the frequency of payouts - there are some miners that prefer to be paid regularly and not count on non-PPS luck and variance.

More details and results form first week of testing is available here:

http://www.poolpayouts.com

Feedback welcome

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[akashamar]

Results from first week of testing are online. Some observations:

1. There is obviously no such thing as 100% Bitcoin payout, even considering pools fees. According to current Bitcoin network difficultly the pay rate should be 0.01055580 BTC/Th/Day minus pool fees, but no pool was able to match this. 1.4 TH miner should earn 1.4 * 7 * 0.01055580 = 0,10344684 BTC in one week (with 0% fees).

2. Small pools (below 5 Ph/s) are having high variance on non-PPS reward scheme.

3. nicehash currently has the highest cumulative payout

But beware that payouts are issued only once per day for antpool/f2pool/nicehash and only at block find for kano and only when balance is at least 0.01 for btcguild. Therefore there is still some variance in payouts and one week is not enough to get real results, but merely first insight. We'll see how payouts will be after another week.

Lessons learned so far: do not only count on theoretical payout rate and pool fees, also consider actual pool payouts.

[jonnybravo0311]

One week's worth of testing is way too soon to attempt to make conclusions, especially the first one you state.  There will be weeks where you get far over 100% of expected payouts on every one of your pools except for Discus Fish.  For your test on nicehash, are you just mining their pool, or are you including earnings you received from people renting your gear?  The reason I'm asking is because nicehash is a 3% fee PPS by itself.  It should be virtually identical (1% less) in earnings to f2pool... unless your gear is rented for more than what PPS would pay.

If you want, you can check out my long-running thread comparing OgNasty's NastyPoP payout to standard p2pool payouts here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=891298.0.  I've had S3s running the test since November of last year, and I update it every Friday.  You're welcome to use the data there and include it in your graphs and stats.

[akashamar]

One week's worth of testing is way too soon to attempt to make conclusions, especially the first one you state.  There will be weeks where you get far over 100% of expected payouts on every one of your pools except for Discus Fish.  For your test on nicehash, are you just mining their pool, or are you including earnings you received from people renting your gear?  The reason I'm asking is because nicehash is a 3% fee PPS by itself.  It should be virtually identical (1% less) in earnings to f2pool... unless your gear is rented for more than what PPS would pay.

If you want, you can check out my long-running thread comparing OgNasty's NastyPoP payout to standard p2pool payouts here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=891298.0.  I've had S3s running the test since November of last year, and I update it every Friday.  You're welcome to use the data there and include it in your graphs and stats.

Thanks for your feedback. Like I said, one week is merely first insight. Regarding nicehash - I'm just mining at their pool - but the current cumulative payout is probably the highest on nicehash pool because of their payout schedule (there is probably some more not yet paid balance on f2pool and antpool). We'll see how numbers will roll on to next week.

[NiceHashSupport]

Good work, we have been waiting for someone independant to come up with such comparison. Keep it up!

[kano]

Well as long as you run it for a few months and not bother posting data before that for anything but PPS,
since it will be only luck based if you post weekly which no PPLNS pool can control,
then come back in a few months with your results.

Anyone who is stupid enough to mine based on a few weeks of PPLNS results, clearly doesn't know how PPLNS works.
1 week is meaningless on all PPLNS pools.
1 month is meaningless on most PPLNS pools except the few large ones (20% of bitcoin and above)
3 months would be a reasonable estimation on any PPLNS pool about 5% or more of the network (i.e. not many)

Of course on the other hand, if you post the details properly (not how you've given in your 1st post) taking luck properly into consideration then you would have posted something useful, rather than useless like many others have posted before you.

[akashamar]

kano, thanks for your feedback. Yes, my goal is to run this experiment on a long-run basis (several months). My intention is not to compare PPS/PPLNS, but primary to give insight into how payments are delivered to users when mining on various pools. And also the obvious difference between various pools performance (related to pool's location, software used, etc.). Me, as well as many other users, too, are looking to get as much as possible profit out as mining. And since mining is not as profitable as it was a year ago, a 5% can make a difference. In an ideal world it should be essentially the same on which pool one is mining. I'd like to see if my experiment can prove or deny this ... we'll see in few months.

[akashamar]

Today we've seen another diff adjustment (unfortunately it was a positive one, +2.44%). I've gathered and summarized payments so far and compared them to theoretical ideal earnings considering diff in previous period (0.0105558 diff*1.33 Th/s*12 days=0.168470568 BTC):

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_may_17th_difficulty_change.png

[kano]

Don't forget that after you stop mining at some PPLNS pools you keep getting paid (my pool currently for about a week or more)
So that's gonna throw a glitch in your calculations where you'll have infinity% -
... those pools would well be worth mining at where you'll get inifinty% payout? ...
(same related reason why my pool is low there even though luck over the past week is > 107%)

[notlist3d]

I really like your site, neat idea behind it.  I have seen others that focus on amount of blocks solved.  But to go on the side of how much the miner would make is a interesting perspective.

I hope you keep the site going.  This might cause me to try a different pool.

[aarons6]

I really like your site, neat idea behind it.  I have seen others that focus on amount of blocks solved.  But to go on the side of how much the miner would make is a interesting perspective.

I hope you keep the site going.  This might cause me to try a different pool.

the only way this site would do you any good is if you had a time machine and you could go back in time and pick the most luckiest pool.

these graphs dont tell you anything useful as far as what one would be the best pool tomorrow.

[akashamar]

I really like your site, neat idea behind it.  I have seen others that focus on amount of blocks solved.  But to go on the side of how much the miner would make is a interesting perspective.

I hope you keep the site going.  This might cause me to try a different pool.

the only way this site would do you any good is if you had a time machine and you could go back in time and pick the most luckiest pool.

these graphs dont tell you anything useful as far as what one would be the best pool tomorrow.

Once again I'd like to point out that the idea of this experiment is NOT to get the best pool or to say which pool has the best payout. The main idea is to show what kind of payments miner can expect and how often these payments arrive in miners pocket. And also to get an insight about how close to ideal theoretical payouts we can get. Regarding switching pools - one thing that is already showing up is that switching pools can lead to serious profit loss, especially if one is switching between PPLNS pools.

[kano]

...
Once again I'd like to point out that the idea of this experiment is NOT to get the best pool or to say which pool has the best payout. The main idea is to show what kind of payments miner can expect and how often these payments arrive in miners pocket. And also to get an insight about how close to ideal theoretical payouts we can get. Regarding switching pools - one thing that is already showing up is that switching pools can lead to serious profit loss, especially if one is switching between PPLNS pools.

That depends on the pool.
You need to understand how their payout works to determine if it matters if you switch and determine when you can switch.
That also affects how much you are paid after you stop mining, which the information you are posting completely ignores.

I'd hope if you think you can provide useful information that you actually fully understood the payouts of each pool you are comparing.
At the moment it would seem you don't.

In the case of my pool, switching makes no difference unless we find a block worse than 500% diff (which has only happened once so far) and of course you also can't know that in advance so in reality switching pools makes no difference at all at my pool.

[akashamar]

Results after 2 weeks of uninterrupted mining are online, here is also the graph:

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_week_002_normalized_graph.png

Antpool is obviously having a round of extreme luck, paying near or even above 100% luck mining

[akashamar]

Results after 3 weeks of uninterrupted mining are online, here is also the graph:

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_week_003_normalized_graph.png

While Antpool is still having good luck, NiceHash is now on par with Antpool, suggesting it was paying above 100% luck mining for the past period.

[jonnybravo0311]

To achieve the results with NH, your gear is obviously being rented and the average rental price is higher than expected BTC earnings.  I'm curious to know what backup pool you've set on that miner, and if you've configured it to have a minimum accepted payout rate on NH (by setting your password to something like p=0.011).

By the way... you've certainly proven that your first assertion of "no such thing as 100% payouts" from your first week observations is incorrect .

[akashamar]

To achieve the results with NH, your gear is obviously being rented and the average rental price is higher than expected BTC earnings.  I'm curious to know what backup pool you've set on that miner, and if you've configured it to have a minimum accepted payout rate on NH (by setting your password to something like p=0.011).

By the way... you've certainly proven that your first assertion of "no such thing as 100% payouts" from your first week observations is incorrect .

I'm not using any p= parameter for nicehash, I'm using "x" for password.

And as far as backup pools - I'm using backup pools for the same pool if it is available (for example, usa and eu stratum servers for the same pool).

If pool would go completely down (all it's stratum servers goes down), then an additional backup pool is set to nicehash stratum since it pays on PPS and it looks like best paying PPS so far -> but this is set on a different payout address (not the one used for experiment). This would also mean that if one pool would go completely down, miners would still be hashing away (I don't want to waste them ). However I'm also monitoring miners with miner's dashboard (https://github.com/selaux/miner-dashboard) and I'm barely seeing any switches to this last-resort pool, therefore I can say that all pools, chosen for this experiment are very very stable, near to 100% stable.

And yes, I'm happy to see that 100% payouts can be achieved, we'll see how will this go on long term, I'll do another comparison to theoretical payout after the next diff adjustment.

[akashamar]

Today we've seen another diff adjustment (this time a negative one, -2.50% ). I've gathered and summarized payments so far and compared them to theoretical ideal earnings considering diff in previous periods:

first period up to May 17 2015: (0.0105558 diff*1.33 Th/s*12 days=0.168470568 BTC)
from May 17 2015 up to May 31 2015: (0.01030404diff*1.33 Th/s*14 days=0.191861225 BTC)

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_may_31th_difficulty_change.png

It's cool to see that AntPool and NiceHash are almost at 100% of theoretical ideal payouts

[akashamar]

Results after 4 weeks (1 month) of uninterrupted mining are online, here is also the graph:

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_week_004_normalized_graph.png

So far NiceHash has the highest payouts, Antpool just slightly lower, following f2pool, kano and btc guild. Also, NiceHash, Antpool, f2pool and btc guild are providing constant daily payouts.

[akashamar]

Results after 5 weeks of uninterrupted mining are online, here is also the graph:

http://www.poolpayouts.com/after_week_005_normalized_graph.png

Antpool, NiceHash and kano have cumulative top payouts, obviously kano had some very good luck in the last week. btcguild is surprisingly low, I wonder if it can recover in payouts since it has quite big hashrate (aprox 12 ph).