I'd just like to take a moment to remind miners of some of Ozcoin's features:
- Staff in Australia, USA and Europe, between us we are able to offer 24/7 support and troubleshooting
- Pool does not rely on an individual, in case of accident/illness/other mishap there will always be competent people with sufficient access to continue the running of the pool.
- Currently 2 servers in USA (waiting for 3rd to come back online when upstream provider issues fixed) and 2 servers in Europe
- Established pool with experienced staff and a history of treating miners fairly and honestly
- Continual deveolpment and improvement - with the upcoming changes to the mining scene there is much work to be done by all pools.
- IRC channel is like a family - including our pet "ozbot" one of the smartest BTC centric bots on the freenode
- Ozcoin does not restrict the number of txns accepted into blocks.
- Merged mining with or without longpolls, to reduce Bitcoin stales
Some of the higher priotity development jobs include:
- Paying mined transaction fees to miners - something we did as a proportional pool and essential before block reward halving
- Higher difficulty shares to support faster mining hardware
- Pay valid block -> valid block for all miners and a "orphan bonus" to VIP members
Lower priority:
- more graphs and stats
On a more personal note
The decision to introduce fees was a hard one to make, I held off for as long as possible.
I felt sick in my guts for 2 weeks over this decision before I announced.
It would have been quite easy to close the pool and go back to being a miner, my wife would be ecstatic, but then I'd be looking for a good pool to mine on... back to why Ozcoin was opened in the first place
I had always hoped that miners that appreciated the service would contribute a litte back to cover costs. Some did, most didnt, and then there is the issue of "proxy pools" mining on 0fee pools, contributing nothing and charging their miners a fee - good business model for them I guess - something current donors and I cannot continue to subsidise.
I expected our hashrate to drop off after the introduction of fees, as a result I expect the pool hashrate to be more stable.I also expect in time miners will see the value that Ozcoin offers and our hashrate increase again
Along with the demise of proportional pools and as mining becomes more "professional" and mining "companies" demand more resources I expect 0fee pools will either introduce fees or become unsustainable to the point of closure. Sad but true.
I am excited that Ozcoin now has a viable future and will be able to continue to offer quality mining and transaction verification services to the Bitcoin community.
Thanks for reading,
Best Wishes
Graeme Tee
Graet
Managing Director
Ozcoin Pooled Mining Pty Ltd
