Disappearing solo miners

[Chucksta]

That site was worth taking down

No, it wasn't, and neither is any website "worth taking down." The internet is a means by which all information is allowed to freely flow from one willing entity to the next, no matter how offensive people may deem that information to be.

LOL, there are, and there's nothing you can do about it

[carriun]

While we're on the subject, perhaps someone can help me understand one aspect of solo mining I haven't had the chance to personally explore. If your 95% probability solo mining time is >2 weeks, for example, will the difficulty changes ultimately have an adverse effect on your income? Statistics was never my strong suit.

 Income% in coins is  your hash rate as a percentage of the global hash rate. I% = mH/gH.   If you are kicking out 2GH/s and the global hash rate is 4TH/s you are .05% of the total network hash rate.  You should earn .05% of the total coins generated over a given time period. (2,628,000/year * .05% = 1,314coins/year)

Difficulty is just a different way to measure the global hash rate.  As gH/s goes up so does the difficulty and I% goes down.

A pools percentage is poolHash / globalHash (pH/gH).  Your poolIncome% = mH / pH.

If your 2GH/s is part of a 1TH/s pool you are 0.2% of the pool
The pool is 25% of the global hash rate (4TH/s).
The pool would earn 25% of all generated coins and you would get .2% of that  (.05%) less any pool overhead charges.

over time solo mining will win out unless you have a 0% cost pool.  with solo mining you could just have a very long dry spell.

If you are running multiple solo miners you are better off pooling them so they don't generate duplicate work.

[Raulo]

If you are running multiple solo miners you are better off pooling them so they don't generate duplicate work.

It's a myth. Every getwork is unique. There is no duplication ever. You can run 10 miners with 10 separate bitcoind or 10 with a single bitcoind and the probability of finding a block is the same.

[fpgaminer]

You should earn .05% of the total coins generated over a given time period. (2,628,000/year * .05% = 1,314coins/year)

While I appreciate your response, it seems like you may have misunderstood my question.

If you're mining solo, you don't get .05% of the total coins generated over a given period of time. Bitcoin is a discrete system, and you are only rewarded if you generate a block, at which point you get 50 BTC (or less, in the future). On top of that, the probabilities change every 2016 blocks because of difficulty changes.

So imagine this example scenario: The difficulty just changed to 434883, which means that each time one of your miners performs a Bitcoin hash (sha256[sha256[data]]), you have a 5.4e-14% chance of it meeting the Target and rewarding you with a tasty 50 BTC prize.

Now, for 2016 blocks after that, you end up being very unlucky, and generate no blocks at all. 2016 blocks having passed, the difficulty rises to 500000. Now your probability changes to 4.7e-14%. Just because you spent all that work in the past 2016 blocks doesn't make it more likely that you'll generate a block. It's all independent. So what does that mean? It means all your work was wasted, and now it's more difficulty to generate a block. You could have left your machine off for two weeks, and gotten the same results.

Contrast that with having been in a pool for 2016 blocks. You would have gotten paid for your work during that difficulty period.

Now, again, I was terrible at statistics in college, so someone more versed in it will have to correct my (probably obvious) mistakes. It's the discontinuities that difficulty changes introduce that throws me off, really.

[carriun]

You should earn .05% of the total coins generated over a given time period. (2,628,000/year * .05% = 1,314coins/year)

While I appreciate your response, it seems like you may have misunderstood my question.

If you're mining solo, you don't get .05% of the total coins generated over a given period of time. Bitcoin is a discrete system, and you are only rewarded if you generate a block, at which point you get 50 BTC (or less, in the future). On top of that, the probabilities change every 2016 blocks because of difficulty changes.

Yes you do.  Over time it will average out to your percentage of hash rate towards the global hash rate.   You'll get nothing for a long time then get lucky and get 50.  over a couple years time it will average out.   The probability doesn't change.  Difficulty is another way of saying global hash rate.  As the global hash rate goes up the difficulty goes up to try to get 1 solution every 10 minutes.   Global hash rate goes up your percentage goes down.

So imagine this example scenario: The difficulty just changed to 434883, which means that each time one of your miners performs a Bitcoin hash (sha256[sha256[data]]), you have a 5.4e-14% chance of it meeting the Target and rewarding you with a tasty 50 BTC prize.

Now, for 2016 blocks after that, you end up being very unlucky, and generate no blocks at all. 2016 blocks having passed, the difficulty rises to 500000. Now your probability changes to 4.7e-14%. Just because you spent all that work in the past 2016 blocks doesn't make it more likely that you'll generate a block. It's all independent. So what does that mean? It means all your work was wasted, and now it's more difficulty to generate a block. You could have left your machine off for two weeks, and gotten the same results.

Yeah you could have left your machine off for two weeks, or you could have been very luck and solved all 2016 blocks.  It is all chance.  Your machine is just rolling the dice a couple billion times a second and hoping your numbers come up.   The rolls in the past have no bearing on the future rolls.

Contrast that with having been in a pool for 2016 blocks. You would have gotten paid foryour work during that difficulty period.

Now, again, I was terrible at statistics in college, so someone more versed in it will have to correct my (probably obvious) mistakes. It's the discontinuities that difficulty changes introduce that throws me off, really.

OVER TIME a solo miner will generate the same amount of coins as a pool miner that has a 0% charge.    Pooling gives you a steady but small amount of coins and solo gives you nothing for a long time and then bam! 50.

Your chances of solving go down equally when the difficulty goes up whether you are pooling or solo.

[Raulo]

Solo miners are getting scarcer.

Total 172 blocks

6.06 17:00:00 UTC - 7.06 16:59:59 UTC

deepbit: 58
slush: 38
btcmine: 19
btcguild: 17
eligius: 7
bitcoinpool: 3
swepool: 2
bitcoins.lc: 1

total pools: 145 (equivalent to 4096 TH/s)

Other miners and smaller pools: 27 = 761 TH/s (16%). Again, probably all time low percent-wise. The solo miners hashspeed increases but slower than for the pools and thus the percentage drops.