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[ciuciu]

I do not understand your explanations.
My control window shows that I submitted 269435 out of 2824488 shares for block 56, and the total payout is 0.00735799.

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[Meni Rosenfeld]

I do not understand your explanations.
My control window shows that I submitted 269435 out of 2824488 shares for block 56, and the total payout is 0.00735799.

This is a score-based method, specifically the geometric method. The reward depends not only on how many shares were submitted, but on when they were submitted. (You can read some background info here.)

On the face of it, it looks like you were unlucky and a block was found only some time after you submitted the bulk of your shares. But it's a bit weird, if you stopped mining I'd expect 0 shares in the last 5 hours, and if you kept mining I'd expect much more than 59... Can you confirm that these numbers make sense?

[ciuciu]

Yes, I can understand a penalty if you do not mine continuously but it should be around 10%, not that you lose everything. What is happening if my rig breaks down or I'm without electricity?
How do I know that is not the pool operator who took my bitcoins, without sharing with the other pool members?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Yes, I can understand a penalty if you do not mine continuously but it should be around 10%, not that you lose everything. What is happening if my rig breaks down or I'm without electricity?
How do I know that is not the pool operator who took my bitcoins, without sharing with the other pool members?

It's not a penalty. You don't get penalized for mining intermittently. Your expected payout is exactly proportional to the number of shares you submitted. But the actual payout varies due to the random nature of block finding. Like I said, you were unlucky, you could just as well have received much more than the average.

There's probably some work to be done wrt providing the statistics necessary to verify everything is done honestly. It will probably be easier if the pool switches to a lower variance method.

[cengique]

There's probably some work to be done wrt providing the statistics necessary to verify everything is done honestly. It will probably be easier if the pool switches to a lower variance method.

I don't think it's that complicated to make sure everybody is getting what they deserve. And no need to police this. Instead, if you have been contributing to the pool in the past hours before the block was found, your reward can be estimated by 50 * your hashing power / total hashing power. I think Inaba even implemented the correct estimate on the EMC website to avoid surprises.

Of course this method does not give you an exact number for your reward, so it does not make sure *all* rewards are paid up to the bit-cent.

I'm not sure I like the PPLNS method so much, as far as I can see from mineco.in. They estimate your reward by counting your contributions to the last 750,000 shares. With making the window so long, I'm not sure if this pool has much incentive for people to keep mining continuously. Although, currently its total hashing power is about 80 GH/s, which exceeds EMC's. I wonder if they can keep this consistently. And I did hear they had some long blocks recently.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I'm not sure I like the PPLNS method so much, as far as I can see from mineco.in. They estimate your reward by counting your contributions to the last 750,000 shares. With making the window so long, I'm not sure if this pool has much incentive for people to keep mining continuously. Although, currently its total hashing power is about 80 GH/s, which exceeds EMC's. I wonder if they can keep this consistently. And I did hear they had some long blocks recently.

There's no such thing as "incentive for people to keep mining continuously". Either the reward system is hopping-proof or it's not. If it is then anyone can mine whenever they want and get on average the exact fair reward for their contribution. If implemented correctly, PPLNS is hopping-proof. All currently existing PPLNS pools that I know of use a naive implementation that is only approximately hopping-proof, but still good enough.

[cengique]

I'm not sure I like the PPLNS method so much, as far as I can see from mineco.in. They estimate your reward by counting your contributions to the last 750,000 shares. With making the window so long, I'm not sure if this pool has much incentive for people to keep mining continuously. Although, currently its total hashing power is about 80 GH/s, which exceeds EMC's. I wonder if they can keep this consistently. And I did hear they had some long blocks recently.

There's no such thing as "incentive for people to keep mining continuously". Either the reward system is hopping-proof or it's not. If it is then anyone can mine whenever they want and get on average the exact fair reward for their contribution. If implemented correctly, PPLNS is hopping-proof. All currently existing PPLNS pools that I know of use a naive implementation that is only approximately hopping-proof, but still good enough.

My point was that variance also comes from the changes in the pool's total hash rate. Especially in the long blocks, people hop-off to leave and mine on other pools. If they can guarantee payment by contributing in the last N shares without any decay, they can do this without loss. If significant amount of people leave a pool then that hurts the chances that the pool will find a block. So it increases the variance for the consistent miner on that pool. The geometric method, in addition to being hopping-proof, also encourages the miners to stay put in the pool. This may not have been the original intention of the method, but I think it still a valid outcome.

[ciuciu]

Again, according with the control panel block 56 took 2824488 shares. I submitted 269435 shares. My reward should have been approximately 4.76, not 0.00735799 as indicated now.

[WebMonkey]

even though meni says there is no incentive, there clearly was an incentive for you to mine continuously.

the block was solved in 2 days, not 2 hours.  so the shares that you keep telling us about are worthless in the scoring method.
they don't count for squat.

your shares needed to be consistent right up to the round finishing for you to get what you think you should have gotten.

you didn't have any shares at the end so you didn't get paid.

you have to mine continuously to get paid.

incentive.

now, so that i'm not accused of picking on meni;
if we solved a block every 2 hours and people jumped in and out, yes, they'd average out.
but hey, we don't.  so casual miners or hoppers are going to be penalized for not mining continuously.

i wonder if i used the the word continuously enough?

=]

'monkey

[ciuciu]

Hey Monkey,
Then you should tell this to people who sign up, not robbing them of their shares. I understand is convenient for you to take advantage of this, but it should not work this way.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

*sigh*

Especially in the long blocks, people hop-off to leave and mine on other pools.

They don't gain anything from doing that. The fact that the round was long does not affect the payouts of futures shares they submit.

If they can guarantee payment by contributing in the last N shares without any decay, they can do this without loss.

They don't know when the round will end, so they don't know which shares are the last N. There's decay, but it's a step function rather than exponential.

The geometric method, in addition to being hopping-proof, also encourages the miners to stay put in the pool.

No, it does not. For the past shares they will get the same reward whether they stay or quit. For future shares they will get the same reward whether they mined previously or not.

I think there's a misconception that decay only happens when you leave the pool. But past shares decay the same way whether you're in or out. The reward for future shares is independent.

you have to mine continuously to get paid.

No. You can mine for a minute and get paid, if a block is found a short while after it. With PPS is 100% to get 0.1 BTC, with score-based it's 1% to get 10 BTC. Mining continuously does help to decrease the variance.

Again, according with the control panel block 56 took 2824488 shares. I submitted 269435 shares. My reward should have been approximately 4.76, not 0.00735799 as indicated now.

This is the third time you've said that, and the third time I reply that no, this is how proportional pools work. It is not how score-based methods work. And score-based is better.

Then you should tell this to people who sign up,

I guess a bit more information on the site about the system used is in order. But the OP of this thread clearly describes that this method is used.

not robbing them of their shares. I understand is convenient for you to take advantage of this, but it should not work this way.

No robbing of shares is done, any more than shares are robbed when you mine solo and don't find a block. Nobody can take advantage of this, the operator definitely doesn't gain anything out of the use of this method. It exists to make sure miners aren't robbed by pool-hoppers. That said, in the future a lower-variance method may be implemented, and then such cases of bad luck will be rarer.

[WebMonkey]

Hey Monkey,
Then you should tell this to people who sign up, not robbing them of their shares. I understand is convenient for you to take advantage of this, but it should not work this way.

not my pool, just a small fish swimming around.
[i do believe the reward system is clearly defined though]

'monkey

[Inaba]

Having a little issue with this last block . Apparently someone poked it with a stick a little too hard and it's being fussy.  It's solved, though... working on getting the DB to spit out the right information.

[1984]

All the hoppers are doing wonders for the prop difference, I wonder if most are just using an auto-hopper and aren't aware they're hopping into a scored pool...

[Inaba]

Yeah, this last round really demonstrates how much pool hoppers steal from you on a proportional pool.  Almost 10% of my earnings would have gone to pool hoppers.

I am working on implementing the double geometric method, as opposed to the current method, to reduce the variance experienced.  Hopefully it will make things a little more pleasant for some people. 

Since it's a complete rewrite from scratch, there are some changes that I wanted to make that will make block processing almost instantaneous, so it's a good thing all around.

[n4l3hp]

@ciuciu

I submitted 25580 shares on that block but only got 0.0045BTC. There was a power failure for several hours before the block was found and already past 1 hr into the next block when the power came back. Lets just call it we're unlucky.   If someone who have 50% of the pool's total hash and stopped hrs before the block was found, all shares have decayed to nothing if its outside the allotted valid time frame. This is so to discourage pool hopping. Looking at your screenshot, I get the impression that you don't stay during the longer blocks.

[kripz]

Hey Monkey,
Then you should tell this to people who sign up, not robbing them of their shares. I understand is convenient for you to take advantage of this, but it should not work this way.

I think that this is important. I cant find any info for this when singing up or on the website anywhere except in the middle of 41 pages of a forum.

[ciuciu]

From n4l3hp explanation, now I understand.
I still do not think this is fair. There is nothing written on the website when you sign up.

Anyway, enjoy MY bitcoins they are the last you get from me. You just lost soon to be 15Gh, to some stupid score method.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Hey Monkey,
Then you should tell this to people who sign up, not robbing them of their shares. I understand is convenient for you to take advantage of this, but it should not work this way.

I think that this is important. I cant find any info for this when singing up or on the website anywhere except in the middle of 41 pages of a forum.

Not in the middle, it says it right there in the original post of the thread:

We are a geometrically scored pool.  We use Meni Rosenfeld's scoring algorithm which awards each user fairly based on their contribution to the block.  This prevents pool hoppers from taking a substantial portion of your profit.  For more information, see this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4787.0

Anyway, the proportional method is broken, why would you assume it is used in the absence of other information?

Anyway, enjoy MY bitcoins they are the last you get from me.

Who are you saying this to? Inaba doesn't have the bitcoins, they were distributed to those who mined in the time before the block was found.

You just lost soon to be 15Gh, to some stupid score method.

On the other hand, he got 67 GH/s from people who have a clue about probability, don't judge pools over bad luck in a single block, and don't want 20% of their rewards to be stolen by hoppers.

[Inaba]

Ciuciu - what method would you prefer?