Why are people afraid of pool fees?

[live627]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

[1714756882]

1714756882

[1714756882]

1714756882

[senseless]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

Almost all pools keep the transaction fees. Depending on the number of blocks a pool gets; that might be sufficient to pay the colocation for the server.

[Sant001]

With difficulty going up so fast, it's only natural that miners want to keep every penny.

What's more, pools usually pay on a daily basis, so if a pool is not around tomorrow miners will just switch to another pool.

Are you running a pool or planning to?

[Lethos]

The most popular pool (based on it's hash rate) actually has one of the highest fees in the business. Their results are pretty reliable, but it doesn't always correlate to reliability in server uptime. Most people do after all suggest you always have a second backup pool.

wknight done a good job of keeping track of this recently.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=106417.0

Also organofcorti does a lot more indepth study on all the big pools.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77000.100
http://organofcorti.blogspot.co.uk/

However to explain why some newbies probably don't like fee pools is quiet simple, they probably don't have the hashing power the more long term members of the community do, so many of the newbies just coming in now also are still understably using GPU's. If you are still using GPU's with an ever increasing difficulty, you won't be making that much of a net profit, so it's a good idea to save Btc where you can.
Since they probably aren't mining much in the first place, every mBtc matters.

[organofcorti]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

Almost all pools keep the transaction fees. Depending on the number of blocks a pool gets; that might be sufficient to pay the colocation for the server.

So you've paid for the colo. Who runs it? Who maintains the pool 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is on hand to respond to queries and complaints in a timely manner? Should a pool op do all this for free?

ALL pool have to be run at a profit or you end up with an unreliable pool. MTRED for example is a fee free PPS pool - not only does the pool op not take a fee but he runs the risk of not being able to payout a run of bad luck.

Whether the pool runs for a fee or accepts miner donations for added services and benefits, there has to be a revenue stream or the pool op has no real way keep uptime high or develop new technologies that help miners even more.

Block tx fees are atm insufficient to use as pool revenue and as the block reward halves many pools will pass block tx fees to miners since they will start to make a larger percentage of earnings.

tl;dr
If you don't want to pay a fee (or a donation) to reduce your mining variance at a pool, you have three options:
1. Stay with fee free pools that don't reward/encourage donations and deal with poor uptime and unreliability
2. Use p2Pool
3. Solo mine and deal with variance.

[os2sam]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

One word:

GREED

[JoelKatz]

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Why should a miner care whether his pool is reliable in the long run?

[os2sam]

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Why should a miner care whether his pool is reliable in the long run?

If they're solo mining they shouldn't.

[organofcorti]

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Why should a miner care whether his pool is reliable in the long run?

Each time a miner has to go to back up increases stales, if the website's down you can't access your coin, and if the pool fails losing coin is a certainty.

[JoelKatz]

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Why should a miner care whether his pool is reliable in the long run?

Each time a miner has to go to back up increases stales, if the website's down you can't access your coin, and if the pool fails losing coin is a certainty.

All of these are short run concerns.

[Gabi]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

Yes you are missing things like p2pool

No fee and it's much much better and safer than any other pool. Fees to keep the service up and running? You keep p2pool up and running 

[organofcorti]

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Why should a miner care whether his pool is reliable in the long run?

Each time a miner has to go to back up increases stales, if the website's down you can't access your coin, and if the pool fails losing coin is a certainty.

All of these are short run concerns.

For any given miner at a particular pool, losing coin is not a short run concern. Unless the timecale you relate to is quite different to others?

[keystroke]

I don't get it?? In the newbie forum most especially, pools without fees are preferred over those that take back a small fee.

Here's how I see it: Pools with fees are more reliable in the long run because they have some extra funding to keep their services up and running. Ones which do not incur such fees don't seem to have this safety net.

Am I missing  something?

Yes you are missing things like p2pool

No fee and it's much much better and safer than any other pool. Fees to keep the service up and running? You keep p2pool up and running 

I've been wondering why p2pool isn't more popular. Have people just not made the switch yet?

[lenny_]

p2pool have problems with stales/orphans. At this moment:

Code:

Pool rate: 330GH/s (10% stale)

10% in average of it's power is wasted. So it's like 10% fee pool.

[Liquid]

sorry for being noob but what is the best pool to go with in terms of reward ?

[os2sam]

sorry for being noob but what is the best pool to go with in terms of reward ?

There's not really one "best pool".  Solving blocks is a random event after all.  One pool may be having terrible luck while another is having great luck.  So if you have allot of hash power you may want to split it between several pools.  Kind of like diversifying your investment portfolio.
Sam

[meebs]

Why do people not like fees? Maybe because they dont feel the services provided are worth a 3-10% tax on earnings.

When you actually calculate it out.. it is a SUBSTANTIAL income for the pool operator.

Say we have a 5% pool that does 2500ghash/s.

5% * 2500 = 125 g/hash worth of fees.

on my rig I am getting 1.7 ghash for about .6 BTC/day

125 / 1.7 * .6 btc = 44.17 BTC/day * 365 = 16122 btc/year.

at current exchange rates.. thats $170k USD/year, not chump change.

Of course, if a pool operator can explain how much it costs, how much time it requires etc than that might help miners understand why they are charged so much.

Of course the pools could be operated as a business and its just the owner making a nice living off of the services he provides...

[organofcorti]

Why do people not like fees? Maybe because they dont feel the services provided are worth a 3-10% tax on earnings.

When you actually calculate it out.. it is a SUBSTANTIAL income for the pool operator.

Say we have a 5% pool that does 2500ghash/s.

5% * 2500 = 125 g/hash worth of fees.

on my rig I am getting 1.7 ghash for about .6 BTC/day

125 / 1.7 * .6 btc = 44.17 BTC/day * 365 = 16122 btc/year.

at current exchange rates.. thats $170k USD/year, not chump change.

Of course, if a pool operator can explain how much it costs, how much time it requires etc than that might help miners understand why they are charged so much.

Of course the pools could be operated as a business and its just the owner making a nice living off of the services he provides...

Your calculations imply a degree of constancy which simply isn't there.

1.  If you want to estimate yearly earnings, you have to assume that a pool will maintain a particular % of the network hashrate.
2.  The USD/BTC exchange rate is not stable. Six months it was USD $2 per btc.
3.  Extrapolating the yearly earnings of a pool from your own mining results is not a valid method. You should convert the hashrate to shares per day, convert that to expected blocks/day.

Aside from that, you miss the point - of course the pool owner needs to have a "nice earning" from the services he provides - how else is he or she expected to take maintaining the service seriously? Maintaining a pool is a 7 day 24 hour job, and many of the larger pools employ people from different timezones to be on hand for miner queries and pool emergencies.

[DavinciJ15]

Why do people not like fees? Maybe because they dont feel the services provided are worth a 3-10% tax on earnings.

When you actually calculate it out.. it is a SUBSTANTIAL income for the pool operator.

Say we have a 5% pool that does 2500ghash/s.

5% * 2500 = 125 g/hash worth of fees.

on my rig I am getting 1.7 ghash for about .6 BTC/day

125 / 1.7 * .6 btc = 44.17 BTC/day * 365 = 16122 btc/year.

at current exchange rates.. thats $170k USD/year, not chump change.

Of course, if a pool operator can explain how much it costs, how much time it requires etc than that might help miners understand why they are charged so much.

Of course the pools could be operated as a business and its just the owner making a nice living off of the services he provides...

My costs are $250 a month for the pool I can squeeze it down to $100 but I will max out at 300 - 400 GH capacity then there are issues keeping the pool up and running hackers constantly attacking, system problems are like keeping your mining equipment running for a 5 to 10 GH of GPUs.

Then you want to update your site and make improvements, none of that can be posible without a profit.

Davinci

[Liquid]

sorry for being noob but what is the best pool to go with in terms of reward ?

There's not really one "best pool".  Solving blocks is a random event after all.  One pool may be having terrible luck while another is having great luck.  So if you have allot of hash power you may want to split it between several pools.  Kind of like diversifying your investment portfolio.
Sam

Thank you for your explanation,  is that like pool hopping ?