why isn't p2pool more popular than it is?

[mdude77]

I can't help but wonder why p2pool isn't more popular than it is?  From what I'm seeing in the various pool threads, most, if not all pools, keep having problems.   Either namecoin crashes, hardware issues, or DDOS attacks.  Why not use p2pool?

Anyone who can manage setting up a mining farm, large or small, shouldn't have any difficulty setting up a p2pool node.  Then you can do your own namecoin merged mining if you wish (most pools seem to be dropping namecoin support), but most importantly, you're then part of a decentralized pool.  If someone gets DDOSed, that node goes down, but the rest keeps working, unlike a conventional pool.

Yes, there are public p2pool nodes.  I don't suggest using them unless you have a really small operation, as they are no better off than normal public pools.

P2pool ftw!  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0

M

[os2sam]

I doubt that you really want an answer to that question.

But one possibility is maybe because you get paid allot of small amounts instead of meeting a threshold and getting paid a larger amount in one lump sum.

When you then spend your coins you could end up paying a large transaction fee, correct?  Or maybe I'm all wrong about that?
Sam

[mdude77]

I doubt that you really want an answer to that question.

But one possibility is maybe because you get paid allot of small amounts instead of meeting a threshold and getting paid a larger amount in one lump sum.

When you then spend your coins you could end up paying a large transaction fee, correct?  Or maybe I'm all wrong about that?
Sam

Actually I do want an answer.  

Yes, incoming mining payments are in increments.  The only difference between this and a conventional pool is the conventional pool sits on it until it's matured, and usually will hold it until your requested threshold is reached.  With p2pool, you receive it as it happens, and it matures in your wallet.  No transaction fees for receiving it, and you can spend it when you want, with whatever transaction fees you'd pay normally.

You also get a reward for finding a block.  There was an optional 0.5% author fee to keep development going - v10 he bumped it up to 1.0%.  It is optional - you can override it.

It also has stratum support.

I'm really not seeing the allure of conventional pools over this.

Oh, BFL singles don't work on it.  Those people have to stick with conventional pools.

M

EDIT: Forgot to mention PPS.  No PPS on p2pool.  I can see why PPS users would like a conventional pool.  All others though...

[-ck]

The honest answer is a combination of effort required to get it up and running and stay in sync with p2pool changes, profit margins being lower due to the altered block nature and higher effective rates of lost work, and the intermittent issues that seem to repeatedly plague p2pool during development. Most people use pools to avoid the rolling release/change cycle at the pool end since that adds yet another potential point of failure on top of getting your client right. Setting up 3 or 4 regular pools with failover is mostly a fire and forget thing for miners by comparison.

[mdude77]

The honest answer is a combination of effort required to get it up and running and stay in sync with p2pool changes, profit margins being lower due to the altered block nature and higher effective rates of lost work, and the intermittent issues that seem to repeatedly plague p2pool during development. Most people use pools to avoid the rolling release/change cycle at the pool end since that adds yet another potential point of failure on top of getting your client right. Setting up 3 or 4 regular pools with failover is mostly a fire and forget thing for miners by comparison.

It's not like conventional pools aren't having problems.  I'm seeing them left and right.

But well said.


M

[Krak]

The massive amount of bandwidth usage certainly doesn't help things. I tried p2pool again yesterday and racked up 1GB in just over 12 hours (even with only ~3 incoming connections). I can't really spare 1.5-2GB a day on a 150GB monthly limit.

[K1773R]

The massive amount of bandwidth usage certainly doesn't help things. I tried p2pool again yesterday and racked up 1GB in just over 12 hours (even with only ~3 incoming connections). I can't really spare 1.5-2GB a day on a 150GB monthly limit.

you probably didnt update p2pool...

[Krak]

you probably didnt update p2pool...

I literally just updated it yesterday to try it out with Stratum. So yes, I did.

[Luke-Jr]

I can't help but wonder why p2pool isn't more popular than it is?  From what I'm seeing in the various pool threads, most, if not all pools, keep having problems.   Either namecoin crashes, hardware issues, or DDOS attacks.  Why not use p2pool?

Eligius has been pretty stable for a while, and offers most of p2pool's features without its limitations (high variance, high bandwidth/CPU, more maintenance, more vulnerable to DDoS, etc).

Anyone who can manage setting up a mining farm, large or small, shouldn't have any difficulty setting up a p2pool node.  Then you can do your own namecoin merged mining if you wish (most pools seem to be dropping namecoin support), but most importantly, you're then part of a decentralized pool.  If someone gets DDOSed, that node goes down, but the rest keeps working, unlike a conventional pool.

It takes less bandwidth to DDoS every p2pool node, than to DDoS some of the non-p2p pools. A number of these non-p2p pools also support decentralized mining.

Yes, there are public p2pool nodes.  I don't suggest using them unless you have a really small operation, as they are no better off than normal public pools.

They're worse, in fact, since they are centralized. While GBT's bandwidth usage is reasonable for ordinary Bitcoin mining, it's massive for p2pool's 10 second blockchain, so not a viable option there (yet).

[mdude77]

The massive amount of bandwidth usage certainly doesn't help things. I tried p2pool again yesterday and racked up 1GB in just over 12 hours (even with only ~3 incoming connections). I can't really spare 1.5-2GB a day on a 150GB monthly limit.

I'm coming to the realization that incoming connections don't have to be there.  I have mine limited down to 3 to prevent stales and is working just fine.  If bandwidth is an issue, don't turn on port forwarding.

M

[Krak]

I'm coming to the realization that incoming connections don't have to be there.  I have mine limited down to 3 to prevent stales and is working just fine.  If bandwidth is an issue, don't turn on port forwarding.

M

My bandwidth usage was about the same before and after the incoming connections popped up. I also noticed a pretty big delay in normal internet browsing while it was running (my upstream bandwidth got maxed out pretty regularly).

[os2sam]

I doubt that you really want an answer to that question.

Actually I do want an answer.  

Cool!

But one possibility is maybe because you get paid allot of small amounts instead of meeting a threshold and getting paid a larger amount in one lump sum.

When you then spend your coins you could end up paying a large transaction fee, correct?
Sam

Yes, incoming mining payments are in increments.  
--snip--
No transaction fees for receiving it, and you can spend it when you want, with whatever transaction fees you'd pay normally.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't answer my statement/question.  I'll attempt to restate.

Spending your coins mined "in increments" on p2pool will have a higher transaction fee associated with it than coins received, say, 1 Bitcoin at a time.

Is that statement correct?  Or not?

Thanks,
Sam

[mdude77]

That's all well and good, but it doesn't answer my statement/question.  I'll attempt to restate.

Spending your coins mined "in increments" on p2pool will have a higher transaction fee associated with it than coins received, say, 1 Bitcoin at a time.

Is that statement correct?  Or not?

Thanks,
Sam

I'm not sure what you're asking.  If you're saying "if I spend 0.25 BTC at a time, instead of waiting until I have 1 BTC to spend, and I pay 'proper' transaction fees for each 0.25 BTC", then yes, you'll spend more in transaction fees.  AFAIK, there aren't fees associated with mining.

M

[os2sam]

That's all well and good, but it doesn't answer my statement/question.  I'll attempt to restate.

Spending your coins mined "in increments" on p2pool will have a higher transaction fee associated with it than coins received, say, 1 Bitcoin at a time.

Is that statement correct?  Or not?

Thanks,
Sam

I'm not sure what you're asking.  If you're saying "if I spend 0.25 BTC at a time, instead of waiting until I have 1 BTC to spend, and I pay 'proper' transaction fees for each 0.25 BTC", then yes, you'll spend more in transaction fees.  AFAIK, there aren't fees associated with mining.

M

OK, I'll try to restate again

I mine 500Mhs/s on p2pool and get a bunch of small payments per block and get 13 BTC and pre order a Jalapeno.

I mine another 13 BTC, say on Deepbit, with a 1 BTC threshold to a different wallet and pre order another Jalapeno.  Will the 13 BTC from p2pool require higher transaction fee to spend because they comprise a bunch of small input transactions?
Thanks,
Sam

[Krak]

OK, I'll try to restate again

I mine 500Mhs/s on p2pool and get a bunch of small payments per block and get 13 BTC and pre order a Jalapeno.

I mine another 13 BTC, say on Deepbit, with a 1 BTC threshold to a different wallet and pre order another Jalapeno.  Will the 13 BTC from p2pool require higher transaction fee to spend because they comprise a bunch of small input transactions?
Thanks,
Sam

Yes. More inputs make a transaction bigger which will make it more likely to require a transaction fee to get it confirmed.

[mdude77]

OK, I'll try to restate again

I mine 500Mhs/s on p2pool and get a bunch of small payments per block and get 13 BTC and pre order a Jalapeno.

I mine another 13 BTC, say on Deepbit, with a 1 BTC threshold to a different wallet and pre order another Jalapeno.  Will the 13 BTC from p2pool require higher transaction fee to spend because they comprise a bunch of small input transactions?
Thanks,
Sam

Yes. More inputs make a transaction bigger which will make it more likely to require a transaction fee to get it confirmed.

Seriously? 

M

[gyverlb]

OK, I'll try to restate again

I mine 500Mhs/s on p2pool and get a bunch of small payments per block and get 13 BTC and pre order a Jalapeno.

I mine another 13 BTC, say on Deepbit, with a 1 BTC threshold to a different wallet and pre order another Jalapeno.  Will the 13 BTC from p2pool require higher transaction fee to spend because they comprise a bunch of small input transactions?
Thanks,
Sam

With 500MHs/s your average reward should be around 0.04BTC per block found. You can pack several inputs in a transaction with a 0.0005 BTC fee so your loss from fees is less than 1% when you use p2pool mined coins.

So if the alternative is a pool with more than 1% fees you're automatically better off with p2pool.

Currently the fees earned by block mining are around 1-2%, so if the alternatives don't pay you network fees, that's more you lose vs p2pool.
And lastly, my 2 months performance on p2pool is 107,5% vs expected 100%PPS so p2pool seems to have a higher than average reward than most pools. I didn't even count some small downtimes in that period so it's a low estimate. This matches what http://p2pool.info/ reports: constant higher luck.

One explanation may be that p2pool is by its nature better connected to the bitcoin network than most pools: all P2Pool nodes quickly broadcast a p2pool found block on the bitcoin network which may lower orphan rate.

[-ck]

Don't forget that by default, there is a fee attached to mining with p2pool unless you disable it. I'm not advocating or passing judgement on that fact, just pointing out that people seem to forget or not even know the fee is there.

[os2sam]

OK, I'll try to restate again

I mine 500Mhs/s on p2pool and get a bunch of small payments per block and get 13 BTC and pre order a Jalapeno.

I mine another 13 BTC, say on Deepbit, with a 1 BTC threshold to a different wallet and pre order another Jalapeno.  Will the 13 BTC from p2pool require higher transaction fee to spend because they comprise a bunch of small input transactions?
Thanks,
Sam

With 500MHs/s your average reward should be around 0.04BTC per block found. You can pack several inputs in a transaction with a 0.0005 BTC fee so your loss from fees is less than 1% when you use p2pool mined coins.

So if the alternative is a pool with more than 1% fees you're automatically better off with p2pool.

Currently the fees earned by block mining are around 1-2%, so if the alternatives don't pay you network fees, that's more you lose vs p2pool.
And lastly, my 2 months performance on p2pool is 107,5% vs expected 100%PPS so p2pool seems to have a higher than average reward than most pools. I didn't even count some small downtimes in that period so it's a low estimate. This matches what http://p2pool.info/ reports: constant higher luck.

One explanation may be that p2pool is by its nature better connected to the bitcoin network than most pools: all P2Pool nodes quickly broadcast a p2pool found block on the bitcoin network which may lower orphan rate.

That's a very helpful explanation.

So at 4 Bit Cents per block my 13 BTC example would have 325 inputs.  Would that really be only a 0.0005 BTC fee?

Does anyone have a real world example?
Thanks,
Sam

[zvs]

The massive amount of bandwidth usage certainly doesn't help things. I tried p2pool again yesterday and racked up 1GB in just over 12 hours (even with only ~3 incoming connections). I can't really spare 1.5-2GB a day on a 150GB monthly limit.

I'm coming to the realization that incoming connections don't have to be there.  I have mine limited down to 3 to prevent stales and is working just fine.  If bandwidth is an issue, don't turn on port forwarding.

M

If the outgoing connections it picks are good, sure.

I'm considering having my local node just have 1 outgoing connection, to my nogleg server.

(figured I'd edit this to say that I'm going to shut the local p2pool down right now and maybe rework it later.  got an incoming connection now requesting shares that's saturating my upstream, giving me like 30% DOA and 500ms ping times)