Proportional mining?

[ryann]

When I use the new cgminer it tells me the difficulty of each share. How does this effect my payout when im using the proportional payout with my pool? I know the basics such as the more I contribute the more i get paid but im trying to figure out how th difference in  numbers such as ie. Diff 3/1 or Diff 30/1  mean to my payout.

[crazyates]

Right now? It's just useless information that's kinda cool to see. Most pools are based off Diff 1 shares, so any share you see is adding toward your prop payout.

[ryann]

Right now? It's just useless information that's kinda cool to see. Most pools are based off Diff 1 shares, so any share you see is adding toward your prop payout.

What do you mean its useless information if the higher the number the more I get paid? I got a 6500/1 share and was wondering how much that would add compared to getting a 2/1 share

[Graet]

Right now? It's just useless information that's kinda cool to see. Most pools are based off Diff 1 shares, so any share you see is adding toward your prop payout.

What do you mean its useless information if the higher the number the more I get paid? I got a 6500/1 share and was wondering how much that would add compared to getting a 2/1 share

on a proportional pool: nothing
they pay per share not per difficulty of share

also proportional is a flawed payout system that is exploited by strategic miners - check out a pool with a fair payout system

basically cgminer is showing info you never saw before

[crazyates]

Right now? It's just useless information that's kinda cool to see. Most pools are based off Diff 1 shares, so any share you see is adding toward your prop payout.

What do you mean its useless information if the higher the number the more I get paid? I got a 6500/1 share and was wondering how much that would add compared to getting a 2/1 share

When you submit a share to a pool, there are only 2 catagories: Under the current difficulty, and over the current difficulty. You could submit a share that has a difficulty of 3,000,000 and it counts the same as a share that only has a difficulty of 1. The only time a pool cares about the submitted difficulty is when it's over the network difficulty, and it counts as a block solve.

Out of the two numbers that CGMiner displays, the first is the difficulty of the share you just submitted, and the second is the the minimum difficulty a pool will accept, IIRC. The proportional stats refers to (your number of shares submitted / total number of shares it took to solve a block).

[ryann]

So the higher the number the better it is then? Im so confused lol. All I know is im making far more today with proportional than I am with PPS. More than triple.

[Graet]

yes, a high enough number solves a block
but as far as payment from most pools currently they work on 1 share not the difficulty of the share

[ryann]

yes, a high enough number solves a block
but as far as payment from most pools currently they work on 1 share not the difficulty of the share

So why am I making alot more coins with proportional? Is it because of luck that curently they are solving blocks quicker? OR is it that I am personally lucky by helping solve large chunks of the block ?

[Graet]

yes, a high enough number solves a block
but as far as payment from most pools currently they work on 1 share not the difficulty of the share

So why am I making alot more coins with proportional? Is it because of luck that curently they are solving blocks quicker? OR is it that I am personally lucky by helping solve large chunks of the block ?

usually pool luck
also the fees of the pools (if any)

[crazyates]

yes, a high enough number solves a block
but as far as payment from most pools currently they work on 1 share not the difficulty of the share

So why am I making alot more coins with proportional? Is it because of luck that curently they are solving blocks quicker? OR is it that I am personally lucky by helping solve large chunks of the block ?

It's more likely that your pool is going through a lucky phase. PPS is by nature extremely consistent, ignoring a pools luck or variance.

Lets say you can submit 10,000 shares per day. That's almost 7 share a minute. Using Ozcoin as an example, out of their last 12 blocks found, one was just over 200,000 shares and took ~20 minutes, and another one was over 11million shares, and took over 20 hours. For the short one, if you were 140 shares (20 minutes * 7 shares/min) out of 200,000, then you would have received 0.07% of the reward. For the long one, you would be at 8400 (20 hours * 60 min/hr * 7 shares/min) shares out of 11 million, which would still put you at 0.07% of the reward. The difference is you just got your reward in 20 minutes, not 20 hours.

These round durations affect your earnings over any given time period, for better or worse, where they would not have if you were PPS.

[crazyates]

yes, a high enough number solves a block
but as far as payment from most pools currently they work on 1 share not the difficulty of the share

So why am I making alot more coins with proportional? Is it because of luck that curently they are solving blocks quicker? OR is it that I am personally lucky by helping solve large chunks of the block ?

usually pool luck
also the fees of the pools (if any)

Were you on Deepbit? They charge a 10% fee for PPS.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0

[meebs]

So the higher the number the better it is then? Im so confused lol. All I know is im making far more today with proportional than I am with PPS. More than triple.

its called luck. there will be days you make FAR less than PPS.. theoretically over a long period of time it'll be roughly equal, but if that pool is used often by hoppers, you will make less.

[eleuthria]

Comprehensive answer:

When you're mining, every share you find matches a certain difficulty.  Every single hash technically does (so a GPU is finding 200-400 million shares per second technically).  The odds of a share matching at least difficulty 1 is roughly 1 in 4.2 billion.

Difficulty 1 was the starting point for pools.  By providing any share of at least difficulty 1, you were proving to the pool that you were working on solving the block.  With a network difficulty of 3.3 million, it means on average the pool will find a block every 3.3 million difficulty 1 shares.

Many pools are now starting to implement variable difficulty/higher difficulty requirements.  In the case of a pool offering a set difficulty (say difficulty = 16), there is no need for any special adjustments.  They can record each share as a single submission.  In a PPS-variant, these should be worth 16 times what a Difficulty-1 pool paid, assuming the same fee and payout method.  In a proportional variant, no adjustment needs to be made, since the entire pool is based on difficulty 16.

However, most pools are implementing variable difficulty, since this method allows the pool to scale to the needs of the miner.  Since higher difficulty will always mean there is a slight increase in variance, variable difficulty allows the pool to set a standard submission rate, which can keep individual miner variance to very low levels (average of +/- 1% with BTC Guild during a 24 hour period for example).

With variable difficulty, the way I have done it, and the way I suspect most pools have/will do it, is I simply record your submission multiple times, based on the difficulty.  The PPS rates I display assume Difficulty=1.  If your miners are adjusted to Difficulty of 4, each submission counts as 4 shares.  In a proportional pool, the same method could be used (although I don't believe any proportional var-diff pools exist yet).  For a score-based pool (slush), I believe it is also simply a matter of making your submission scores be multiplied by current variable difficulty.

[JMcGrath]

Nice response, I'd just like to add to or simplify though...

Before ASICs were announced, 1 share = 1 block at difficulty of 1. This is still the most common of all the pools out there but after ASIC Miners are available the difficulty and rate of these miners will be so high that a pool operator will most likely change this ratio. BFLs monster can do 1.5TH which is so fast the bitcoin network can't even keep up with the amount of shares submitted so the difficulty ratio per share will need to be increased.

As a GPU or even FPGA miner, this means that it will take that much longer to submit a single share (example ratio 10:1 would take 10x longer) however you will still be payed for 10 shares at the pps rate. If however you are currently mining at a pool that is already using a higher difficulty ratio, let's just say 2:1 as an example you are submitting 2 shares at the pps rate for every share you submit.

Using that example, if you had submitted 100 shares and only paid 100xPPS rate you're getting screwed. I wouldn't worry too much, none of the major pools are doing this yet but if you're part of some small unheard of pool it would be something to watch at least...

Just take the number of shares submitted x the difficulty rate x PPS and you should have your exact payout