Pool Hopping

[rupy]

Hi, so because deepbit is slow in realizing and fixing their server problems my mining is starting to look like pool hopping, my miner frenetically swap between deepbit and slush and I started to realize why pool hopping is really great!

Read about it here: http://bitcoin.atspace.com/poolcheating.pdf

So a few questions:

1) Are pools banning hoppers?

2) If not, wouldn't the best pool hopping strategy be to mine at a fresh pool after each block for a while, then solo mine until a fresh pool becomes available = a pool solves a block.

Hope I'm not breaking some unknown rule like "the first rule of bitcoin is you don't talk about pool hopping" or something...

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[organofcorti]

Hi, so because deepbit is slow in realizing and fixing their server problems my mining is starting to look like pool hopping, my miner frenetically swap between deepbit and slush and I started to realize why pool hopping is really great!

Read about it here: http://bitcoin.atspace.com/poolcheating.pdf

So a few questions:

1) Are pools banning hoppers?

Some pools are. Others just penalise them.

2) If not, wouldn't the best pool hopping strategy be to mine at a fresh pool after each block for a while, then solo mine until a fresh pool becomes available = a pool solves a block.

It doesn't have to be solo mining - just any mining method is provably fair (PPS, DGM, PPLNS).

Hope I'm not breaking some unknown rule like "the first rule of bitcoin is you don't talk about pool hopping" or something...

No, it's just been talk to death, that's all. Sorry you're late to the party!

Check the following links for more details on pool hopping and the maths behind reward methods generally:

https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_summary.pdf
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf
http://howtohop.blogspot.com
http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[Shadow383]

1) Are pools banning hoppers?

[organofcorti]

1) Are pools banning hoppers?

What hashrate were you using per worker?

[Shadow383]

1) Are pools banning hoppers?

What hashrate were you using per worker?

Too much, evidently 
~20-25Gh/s

That was a while back though...

[rupy]

No, it's just been talk to death, that's all. Sorry you're late to the party!

Sorry about that... kind guessed it...

[Inaba]

Yeah, Tycho is stealing funds from miners he decides are hoppers.  He keeps the funds for himself and won't respond to emails with regards to it.  I'm fine with him banning hoppers, but keeping the funds is dishonest and skeezy as hell.

[Shadow383]

Yeah, Tycho is stealing funds from miners he decides are hoppers.  He keeps the funds for himself and won't respond to emails with regards to it.  I'm fine with him banning hoppers, but keeping the funds is dishonest and skeezy as hell.

I've had a couple of accounts get banned and I've always been paid out in full 

[Inaba]

There's apparently at least two kinds of blocking... one you get paid, the other you don't. 

[organofcorti]

Yeah, Tycho is stealing funds from miners he decides are hoppers.  He keeps the funds for himself and won't respond to emails with regards to it.  I'm fine with him banning hoppers, but keeping the funds is dishonest and skeezy as hell.

That's really unlike what I know of Tycho. Last time anyone tried something like this it was Jine from Bitlc when he held the funds for Multiclone. He relented after a week though.

I haven't read anywhere in Deepbit's TOS that if he suspects you of pool hopping he'll ban you and take your coin. I hope he comes and comments soon, and explains it was all a misunderstanding. Or that he's only targeting Inaba because he's a rival pool op

I'm not that keen on the pool hopper IP banning. It's only prolonging the inevitable change to an all PPS DeepBit or DGM or PPLNS. You can't wield the banhammer like that forever, it's way too heavy.

[Inaba]

BitLC is holding ~50BTC of mine hostage as well... he won't return emails or PMs.    He conveniently "deleted" the data when he closed my account for running a "proxy."  He apparently doesn't believe that I control 500 GH/s directly.

[organofcorti]

BitLC is holding ~50BTC of mine hostage as well... he won't return emails or PMs.    He conveniently "deleted" the data when he closed my account for running a "proxy."  He apparently doesn't believe that I control 500 GH/s directly.

You should start a thread, Inaba. This sort of information needs to be available to all miners so they can judge the honesty and reliability of a pool op.

[os2sam]

I remember the days when one could go to the pools forum and actually get useful information and status of your pool(s).  Those were the good ol day's.

Maybe this forum should be renamed to something like "misc crap".

I'm not complaining about this particular thread, just griping in general.
Sam

[os2sam]

wouldn't the best pool hopping strategy be to mine at a fresh pool after each block for a while, then solo mine until a fresh pool becomes available = a pool solves a block.

CG Miner can identify which pool detects a new block first and often times that is the pool that found the block too.  I had asked for a mining strategy that would automatically go to the pool that detected the last block.  ckolivas declined to add that as a strategy because it was too close to pool hopping.

But that is similar to what you are wanting too.  I think it's a good idea because you can be confident that you are always mining on a properly functioning pool which is all that I was after.
Sam

[Graet]

I remember the days when one could go to the pools forum and actually get useful information and status of your pool(s).  Those were the good ol day's.

Maybe this forum should be renamed to something like "misc crap".

I'm not complaining about this particular thread, just griping in general.
Sam

I hear ya
really we need a "pools forum" with a "pools related" subforum for all the "extras"
cant see it happening though, some board are ridiculously overmoderated (Bitcoin Discussion)
Pools seems to be pretty neglected by mods....

Th last significant thing done by a mod on the Pools forum is removing the top 10 with no explanation despite being asked in 1 thread on pools and 2 in the Meta forums

running a pool I feel I am forced to use these forums - if there was a decent alternative I would be there in an instant

I could easily go into a rant about how Miners and Pools are treated as second class citizens by this forum (and its staff) and the Bitcoin devs, I guess oneday they will realise something important:

With no verification of transactions there is no Bitcoin.
this is why mining exists, it is part of Bitcoinl.

I wonder if we will ever see a "miners strike" - imagine the tears and fud and the opportunities for 51% etc etc!!!

anyway just helping a thread go offtopic - if ya cant beat em join em?
best
Graet

[Inaba]

BitLC is holding ~50BTC of mine hostage as well... he won't return emails or PMs.    He conveniently "deleted" the data when he closed my account for running a "proxy."  He apparently doesn't believe that I control 500 GH/s directly.

You should start a thread, Inaba. This sort of information needs to be available to all miners so they can judge the honesty and reliability of a pool op.

I'd be happy to, but I just figured people would complain about me making a fuss over something like that. 

[Shadow383]

BitLC is holding ~50BTC of mine hostage as well... he won't return emails or PMs.    He conveniently "deleted" the data when he closed my account for running a "proxy."  He apparently doesn't believe that I control 500 GH/s directly.

You should start a thread, Inaba. This sort of information needs to be available to all miners so they can judge the honesty and reliability of a pool op.

I'd be happy to, but I just figured people would complain about me making a fuss over something like that. 

Pools stealing from their miners is kind of a big deal. I've been fairly lucky - that's only happened to me on bitcash.cz... they actually reset my round share count to zero but didn't reset my total share count, so I was showing 0.001BTC paid for >29000 shares 

[organofcorti]

BitLC is holding ~50BTC of mine hostage as well... he won't return emails or PMs.    He conveniently "deleted" the data when he closed my account for running a "proxy."  He apparently doesn't believe that I control 500 GH/s directly.

You should start a thread, Inaba. This sort of information needs to be available to all miners so they can judge the honesty and reliability of a pool op.

I'd be happy to, but I just figured people would complain about me making a fuss over something like that. 

I'll buy the debt from you if you like

I'm not saying this should necessarily result in a scammer tag for the involved pool ops, but they've made a unilateral decision (not in their terms of service) to take coins from miners so they have to be able to either explain their decision to the satisfaction of all parties or make restitution. Otherwise fulltime miners will start to wonder what they have to do to piss off a pool op and have their funds frozen.

[Inaba]

How much on the coin are you wanting to buy it for?  There's ~50 (Last I looked it was 48 and some change, but I had mined quite a bit since I looked and then account was deleted without advanced warning) at BitLC and then at least another ~15 on a couple accounts at Deepbit... actually there's probably quite a bit more at Deepbit, but I never bothered to go back and try to collect the smaller accounts as it wasn't worth the hassle.  I did try to get Tycho to send me the two 7+ BTC accounts, but no response.