bit pit - (LP, ESMPPS, 8-decimal payout, SSL, API, 0% fee, Almost 0% Stales!)

[TheSeven]

While early testers had their expected payout decrease over the weekend (due to more miners joining the pool), the flipside is that the round will now be over sooner.

...which still doesn't make it more fair.

Yes, betatesters should be aware of this and they will get other rewards which might mitigate the problem, but I'd like to discuss the root cause:

Let's define some symbols:
m: Miner's shares per second (assumed to be constant)
pc: Current total pool shares per second at the time the first block is found
pa: Average total pool shares per second until the first block is found
s: Number of shares before the first block is found (assumed to equal the difficulty)
b: Pool's reward for the block (50 BTC)
r: Miner's reward for the first block

Assuming score-based accounting at a high decay rate, r can be approximated as b * m / pc. (Proportional would be b * m / pa.)
The time to find the block will be s / pa. So the miner's reward per second of mining will be b * m / s * pa / pc.

b * m / s is the fair part of that. It means that the miner gets rewarded for that share of a block that he would have managed to reach by soloing the same amount of time (on average).

Multiplying this by pa / pc is the unfair part. Share-based accounting is usually fair because pa / pc is close to 1 once a pool has taken off. However it is more like 0.3 for bitp.it's first round, and that's what seems to make beta testers angry.

Using proportional accounting for the first round (where pool hopping isn't an issue anyway) would change that formula to b * m / s * pa / pa = b * m / s, which is perfectly fair.

While I don't expect bitp.it to switch to this during the current round, this might be valuable advice for other people wanting to kick off a pool:
Use proportional accounting until hash rate growth per block drops below 20% (which shouldn't take long), after that switch to score-based accounting with a sane decay factor.

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[1bitc0inplz]

I signed up and added all 200-300 of my Megahashes, lol.

My other pool's site seems to go down every other day, trying this one on for size! Thanks.

Thank you.

[1bitc0inplz]

We have to be getting close to this block   

[Tx2000]

I hope so ☺

[1bitc0inplz]

I hope so ☺

We do too 


Keep the mega hashes coming people, the more we get the faster we'll find this thing. The 7 BTC reward is still up for anyone's taking!

[lowentropy]

Hi guys, I wanted to throw out a question to our current miners and anyone who's considering mining with us.

We chose to go with a scoring system because we believe it protects miners from the effects of pool-hopping. TheSeven is correct in his assessment of the very first round; in our first round we grew at much more than a 20% rate and therefore early beta testers take a small hit (most of which is absorbed my myself and 1bitc0inplz). To help counterbalance this, we'll be detailing our ideas for account add-ons shortly, and beta testers will get them all for free!. However, in the long run, 20% growth is abnormal and we still believe that proportional rewards are not fair to honest miners.

But ultimately, we want to listen to what you guys think, and which system you would prefer: proportional, or scoring? Let's open up the floor.

[TheSeven]

Hi guys, I wanted to throw out a question to our current miners and anyone who's considering mining with us.

We chose to go with a scoring system because we believe it protects miners from the effects of pool-hopping. TheSeven is correct in his assessment of the very first round; in our first round we grew at much more than a 20% rate and therefore early beta testers take a small hit (most of which is absorbed my myself and 1bitc0inplz). To help counterbalance this, we'll be detailing our ideas for account add-ons shortly, and beta testers will get them all for free!. However, in the long run, 20% growth is abnormal and we still believe that proportional rewards are not fair to honest miners.

But ultimately, we want to listen to what you guys think, and which system you would prefer: proportional, or scoring? Let's open up the floor.

I'd propose score with 0.05*difficulty shares half-life in the long run

[lowentropy]

I'd propose score with 0.05*difficulty shares half-life in the long run

An adaptive decay rate is a very interesting concept, thanks!

[1bitc0inplz]

We're a zero-fee pool and we're going to stay that way, so to cover costs we plan to offer a-la-carte add-ons. Any add-on we create will be free for those beta testers forever.

Curious.

Any hints to some potential add-ons?

We have a few ideas of things we'd like to add, but we'd rather hear from you guys. What add-ons do you look for in a pool?

[Tx2000]

We just hit our first block?  Who's the lucky guy =o

[Tx2000]

We're a zero-fee pool and we're going to stay that way, so to cover costs we plan to offer a-la-carte add-ons. Any add-on we create will be free for those beta testers forever.

Curious.

Any hints to some potential add-ons?

We have a few ideas of things we'd like to add, but we'd rather hear from you guys. What add-ons do you look for in a pool?

Haven't really thought of it.  Maybe some sort of RSS feed for pool miners to get updates periodically on stats such.

[luffy]

at last!
lets get to the second one fast
we don't have top scorer statistics so we cannot see who found it!

[Tx2000]

Yea, hopefully this next round is shorter.  Last one was a war.

[1bitc0inplz]

We just hit our first block?  Who's the lucky guy =o

You beat me to it 

I am ecstatic, we solved one. For those interested, here is the block we solved: http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000006950d7082d8ac99606293d625fa5e502bd6fe648d0dd5646d45

We solved it after 1,294,502 shares. That guy was a though one!

I don't want to break the winner's anonymity, I'm not sure how everyone fills about me just blurting out screen names. If I were in the winner's shoes I'd be celebrating!

But, we do know who solved the block and is a valued member of the pool. We will be emailing him shortly to congratulate him and to make arrangements for him to receive his award.

I appreciate everyone who's help us! Now, on to round 2! 

[1bitc0inplz]

at last!
lets get to the second one fast
we don't have top scorer statistics so we cannot see who found it!

Wow, that reminders me.... I need to write screens for round history.

It's seemed silly to write a screen we didn't need yet, now it seems rather urgent. lol.

As far as leader boards, that is now high on my list. However, for everyone's anonymity I was thinking about not showing usernames unless each user individually opted in to allowing their username to be shown. For a user who hadn't opted in to that, they'd simply be listed by their numeric user id on the leader board. How does that sound to everybody?

[1bitc0inplz]

Yea, hopefully this next round is shorter.  Last one was a war.

The next round will hopefully be a lot shorter. The thing to remember is that we stayed below 4 GH/s (on average) until just this Saturday, so round 1's length looked "worse" than the hash rate would indicate reasonable.

[Tx2000]

at last!
lets get to the second one fast
we don't have top scorer statistics so we cannot see who found it!

Wow, that reminders me.... I need to write screens for round history.

It's seemed silly to write a screen we didn't need yet, now it seems rather urgent. lol.

As far as leader boards, that is now high on my list. However, for everyone's anonymity I was thinking about not showing usernames unless each user individually opted in to allowing their username to be shown. For a user who hadn't opted in to that, they'd simply be listed by their numeric user id on the leader board. How does that sound to everybody?

Sounds gravy to me.  I think it's very important, considering all the recent events with BTC, to put a priority on privacy and security above all else.  And allow the opt-in for those who don't mind showing a little leg.

I'll show my leg for BTC 

[BtcNmcMiner]

We just hit our first block?  Who's the lucky guy =o

I don't want to break the winner's anonymity, I'm not sure how everyone fills about me just blurting out screen names. If I were in the winner's shoes I'd be celebrating!

But, we do know who solved the block and is a valued member of the pool. We will be emailing him shortly to congratulate him and to make arrangements for him to receive his award.

I appreciate everyone who's help us! Now, on to round 2! 

Well, It must not have been me, I pretty much am only able to contribute Mhash's, no programming or development skills, and only 270-280 Mhash/s at that. I'm nearly a nobody in the Bitcoin world 

But if IWantCoins found the block, that's me and you can tell me.


Also, I personally didn't have a scoring problem with this round, mostly because I knew it was a new pool and even though I started mining there (I think Saturday Night) I still saw my estimated reward jumping from 1.5 to .5 BTC up and down several times. I figured it was just from new miners coming on and the percentage that I was contributing at any one time changing drastically. I still think I made as much, or probably more then I would have earned mining at any other pool. Plus, additionally I had a shot at 5 bonus bitcoins the chance at finding the first block was enough to convince me to mine here rather than staying at deepbit or slush.

[1bitc0inplz]

Well, It must not have been me, I pretty much am only able to contribute Mhash's, no programming or development skills, and only 270-280 Mhash/s at that. I'm nearly a nobody in the Bitcoin world 

But if IWantCoins found the block, that's me and you can tell me.

Nothing wrong with that hash rate, that almost what I'm running at 

Also, if you solved the block you'd know on your console. Next to each of your workers it shows "Blocks found". Unfortunately, you were not the lucky winner.

[BtcNmcMiner]

Now I see the blocks found number, I spent probably 5 minutes looking for the stats page (the link must have been removed, IIRC before it went to a page that displayed "nothing here" or something like that.