What would you like to see in a Bitcoin mining pool?

[Nexious]

Hi all!

I launched Nexious a couple of months ago with the main aim at helping decentralize the network and to try and create another place miners can mine instead of putting all the hash in a few selected pools. Nexious has over 500 registered accounts and the hashrate has been fluctuating between 10TH/s - 200 THs/.

I have run a few incentive programs to help entice miners into trying out Nexious (0% fee for life accounts for first ~100 members, the rest of members are 0% fee until first block is found) but yet am unable to get enough miners to find blocks on a regular basis, or even the first block for that matter.

I wish to invite everyone to have a look at https://nexious.com even if you are not going to mine there and give me some feedback or suggestions!

I am open to all feedback, good or bad. I would also love to hear ideas (am open to nearly anything!) on what you as the miner would want, or like to see. What could make you switch from your current pool? What do you like about your current pool that Nexious doesn't have? What could I implement to make you try Nexious?

It would be much appreciated!

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[TheRealSteve]

I'm not a major miner, but right off the bat I'd say I prefer pools that do not require an account login, using solely the payout address as the identifier. Using message signing (could be a one-off with cookies) that can still provide access to statistics without having to make those public, should that be a concern.

I think you're using, or building upon, a pre-built pool server kit (MPOS?), so I'm not sure how familiar you are with its workings, but going through the registration progress: after I registered I'm supposed to log in - but it still shows the 'register' form.  Given that there's no account verification requirement, other than for a redoubling of confirmation that the user knows their username/password, I'd think that need to log in right after registration is a superfluous.
The 'Home' link should probably go to the Dashboard page, with Home instead being News/Announcements.
I'm pretty sure the timezone detection is broken - Pacific/Wallis is at least not correct

As for features.. there's plenty..
- being able to form groups with group overview and APIs (without requiring a shared account, I think the now-defunct 50btc had this working pretty slick, triplemining did as well.)
- not needing to set up workers (not sure if actually required, but the steps all outline the username.workername settings so I'd imagine you should..the steps make no mention of this)
- * having per-worker miner settings easily available to be copied and pasted, including the username/password pre-filled in, to make it easier for people to get started (btcdig)
- adding the option of (semi-)randomly paying out a little more to some than to others (triplemining)
- add merge mining for e.g. namecoin (even if deemed 'worthless' it'll give people something)
- adding the option of a solo pool (various pools, catering from those with big hash rates just not wanting to share so much to those with low hash rates playing the lottery)
- accept cgminer's --suggest-diff (ckpool) to aid vardiff with an initial value (when not using the fixed high diff ports)

I'll point a GekkoScience Compac at my test account to look at the bits currently not displaying much of anything, but I think there's very little extra to be desired from the statistics overview.

Debbie Downer mode: Thing is that until you gain some sort of critical mass, a lot of people tend to stay away from small pools due to the low block interval and thus payout interval - and you'd have to consider whether any changes requiring effort will actually bring about getting such a critical mass to be worth said effort.  The features I mentioned, for example, were implemented at pools already and it didn't save them, btcdig is still pretty small as well, and even somewhat larger pools, like BTCGuild, have thrown in the towel over time.

On the up side: you're engaging people and at least considering your options.. given how few public pools remain, some of which under neglect, that's already a plus.

[Nexious]

I'm not a major miner, but right off the bat I'd say I prefer pools that do not require an account login, using solely the payout address as the identifier. Using message signing (could be a one-off with cookies) that can still provide access to statistics without having to make those public, should that be a concern.

I think you're using, or building upon, a pre-built pool server kit (MPOS?), so I'm not sure how familiar you are with its workings, but going through the registration progress: after I registered I'm supposed to log in - but it still shows the 'register' form.  Given that there's no account verification requirement, other than for a redoubling of confirmation that the user knows their username/password, I'd think that need to log in right after registration is a superfluous.
The 'Home' link should probably go to the Dashboard page, with Home instead being News/Announcements.
I'm pretty sure the timezone detection is broken - Pacific/Wallis is at least not correct

As for features.. there's plenty..
- being able to form groups with group overview and APIs (without requiring a shared account, I think the now-defunct 50btc had this working pretty slick, triplemining did as well.)
- not needing to set up workers (not sure if actually required, but the steps all outline the username.workername settings so I'd imagine you should..the steps make no mention of this)
- * having per-worker miner settings easily available to be copied and pasted, including the username/password pre-filled in, to make it easier for people to get started (btcdig)
- adding the option of (semi-)randomly paying out a little more to some than to others (triplemining)
- add merge mining for e.g. namecoin (even if deemed 'worthless' it'll give people something)
- adding the option of a solo pool (various pools, catering from those with big hash rates just not wanting to share so much to those with low hash rates playing the lottery)
- accept cgminer's --suggest-diff (ckpool) to aid vardiff with an initial value (when not using the fixed high diff ports)

I'll point a GekkoScience Compac at my test account to look at the bits currently not displaying much of anything, but I think there's very little extra to be desired from the statistics overview.

Debbie Downer mode: Thing is that until you gain some sort of critical mass, a lot of people tend to stay away from small pools due to the low block interval and thus payout interval - and you'd have to consider whether any changes requiring effort will actually bring about getting such a critical mass to be worth said effort.  The features I mentioned, for example, were implemented at pools already and it didn't save them, btcdig is still pretty small as well, and even somewhat larger pools, like BTCGuild, have thrown in the towel over time.

On the up side: you're engaging people and at least considering your options.. given how few public pools remain, some of which under neglect, that's already a plus.

Thank you for your input and feedback TheRealSteve, I really appreciate it as it shows an insight into how some miners may think
I am working on fixing, touching up some of the website features mentioned (redirection to login after registering, auto timezone detection and fixing some confirmation issues)

I have thought about some of the features you have listed, and while I am all open to suggestions at this stage I would rather add features that miners would use or at least encourage new miners to join. As you stated some of those pools added the features yet gained minimal miners/total hash rate.

Im not saying I wouldn't add those features, I would rather focus on things that the majority would use/would like first. Once again I thank you for your input

[TheRealSteve]

Yeah, unfortunately the priorities of most miners are:
#1 - frequent payouts.  Which either means a large pool to reduce variance, or PPS which means needing up-front capital to cover periods with low luck.
#2 - uptime.  Nobody likes having to deal with pools that go down periodically.
#3 - profit.  The lower the fee, the better.

Over time I've mostly seen pools disappear.  The pools that gained users were either due to being big pools already (see point 1) or forced departure from other pools shutting down.  One exception to this may have been Slush's decision to support BIP101 (though in the same period they had a 0% fee in place as well) which brought in some miners, but that came with the drawback that the pool ended up getting DDoS'd.

It's hard to compete on the first three items, especially as a newcomer

[p3yot33at3r]

I launched Nexious a couple of months ago with the main aim at helping decentralize the network.....

Creating a(nother) centralized pool doesn't help decentralize the network - it creates another centralized pool.

Apart from that, to start a pool requires the owner to have a major amount of initial hash rate to begin with to make it competitive. Trust is also needed. There's been a glut of new pools appearing lately run by noob accounts with no post history or proof of trustworthiness resulting in miners getting scammed, unpaid, lied to & generally ripped off. Transparency is important as miners are now very suspicious of new pools, & rightly so.

Running a pool isn't easy, it's also a thankless task & the amount of work involved is underestimated by most people. Good luck.

[Nexious]

Yeah, unfortunately the priorities of most miners are:
#1 - frequent payouts.  Which either means a large pool to reduce variance, or PPS which means needing up-front capital to cover periods with low luck.
#2 - uptime.  Nobody likes having to deal with pools that go down periodically.
#3 - profit.  The lower the fee, the better.

Over time I've mostly seen pools disappear.  The pools that gained users were either due to being big pools already (see point 1) or forced departure from other pools shutting down.  One exception to this may have been Slush's decision to support BIP101 (though in the same period they had a 0% fee in place as well) which brought in some miners, but that came with the drawback that the pool ended up getting DDoS'd.

It's hard to compete on the first three items, especially as a newcomer

Thanks again TheRealSteve, payouts are made every 5 minutes (no block is found yet so no payments have been made). I strive for 100% up time (unless a planned outage/upgrade and have had no complaints as of yet) I understand all miners are after profit hence the 0% promotion etc.

I understand it is hard to gain trust any other way than over time and am prepared to pay for the server costs etc out of my own pocket for the life of Nexious, the fee was only ever there to cover server costs not to make any money as such.

Creating a(nother) centralized pool doesn't help decentralize the network - it creates another centralized pool.

Apart from that, to start a pool requires the owner to have a major amount of initial hash rate to begin with to make it competitive. Trust is also needed. There's been a glut of new pools appearing lately run by noob accounts with no post history or proof of trustworthiness resulting in miners getting scammed, unpaid, lied to & generally ripped off. Transparency is important as miners are now very suspicious of new pools, & rightly so.

Running a pool isn't easy, it's also a thankless task & the amount of work involved is underestimated by most people. Good luck.

I understand that, yet the lack of support for p2pool and the likes is not what the miners seem to want for some reason. So my plan was to help at least bring the hash rate down of some of these larger pools that are nearing high percentages of the network hash rate.

I do rent substantial amounts of hash time to time to help boost the pool hash rate up, unfortunately high electricity costs here don't let me run my own miners and is better to just buy BTC instead.

I realize running a pool isn't easy, the last 2 or so months have been a fun but hard time and I am prepared for many more months in the future

[p3yot33at3r]

Creating a(nother) centralized pool doesn't help decentralize the network - it creates another centralized pool.

Apart from that, to start a pool requires the owner to have a major amount of initial hash rate to begin with to make it competitive. Trust is also needed. There's been a glut of new pools appearing lately run by noob accounts with no post history or proof of trustworthiness resulting in miners getting scammed, unpaid, lied to & generally ripped off. Transparency is important as miners are now very suspicious of new pools, & rightly so.

Running a pool isn't easy, it's also a thankless task & the amount of work involved is underestimated by most people. Good luck.

I understand that, yet the lack of support for p2pool and the likes.....

What

Not sure where you're getting your info from. P2pool has one of the most active threads on this forum (13447 post to date) as well as reddit & other forums. Issues/fixes are rapidly dealt with by the dev via github & it has forks that also cater for a multitude of altcoins. It is also one of the longest running pools.

Please don't post false information about other pools in an effort to promote your own.

[Mikestang]

I understand that, yet the lack of support for p2pool and the likes.....

What

I think you misunderstood, I'm pretty sure he meant the lack of support for p2pool from miners, i.e. the hash rate pointed at the pool.  I read it as a complaint that not enough people point hash to p2pool.

[kano]

What I'd like to see in a mining pool is one thread per pool.

So since this isn't the official nexious thread but another nexious thread to advertise the nexious thread ...

The solution is simple, use my pool

https://kano.is/