PPC Proposal: A community-funded PPC mining pool

[Vuxil]

There's a lack of good mining pools for PPC right now, and that sucks. I would be willing to start a round-based (less risky) pool and keep it as a reasonable (i.e. self-sustaining) fee. We would do this right and get a good host that has DDOS protection, because what PPC needs now is a stable pool, not just another mediocre one. This means Amazon EC2 is preferable. Pool interface and functions will be kept basic to reduce costs as much as possible so that maximum number of people can mine. We just want somewhere stable to mine right now. Back-end will be pushpool because that's what is supported by PPC right now.

EC2 promises stability. But alas, it is expensive. I'm still in grad school, and can't fund it. However, I'm technically capable and can build us a pool that all of us can use. So, I am accepting donations in BTC and PPC to fund this project.

Because the pool will be community funded, I will publish weekly financial statements about donations, which would include a list of public addresses that sent me coin, as well as how much they sent. If anyone has an issue, they could just bring it up and we would look into the records to see what happened. After the pool reaches a point of self-sustainability, donations can be cutoff and pool fee's will be adjusted to maintain self-sustainibility.

If you decide you want to help, here are two addresses you can send donations too. I will begun publishing weekly statements one week after the first donation. If we don't hit enough donations for at least 4 months of estimated server costs, I will return all donated coins back to donors (server costs to be determined soon, this idea just spawned from #ppcoin on irc.freenode.net; join us).

BTC: 1BwZJhcVBPt6XvPVFBNXwDiuzAzcgqzwcH
PPC: PXjCWFZfYctgEgnB9yqrVnkmZJ43jFA6At
If you are interested in making a donation in USD, please PM me and we can work out the details.

Thanks,
Vuxil

[Vitalicus]

Good idea, but who are you ? Can we trust you ? Here I can trust only in Sunny King.

[CrownCloud]

I can provide a VPS / Server for a discounted price for this project

[VforVictory]

Good idea, but who are you ? Can we trust you ? Here I can trust only in Sunny King.

You can trust him, remember? <Waves hands in front of you> Yes, see, the memory is coming back to you. 

[Vuxil]

Well it was an option for those who would want to try, but it doesn't seem like a popular idea, so no matter. Less work for me

[Neverest]

I like the idea, but you need to supply more figures:
- What will be the fixed and variable costs
- What benefits have funders over regular miners
- How much hashpower do you need to cover running cost/ how much fees do you need

etc.

Also as a VPS was already offered: what hardware is actually needed to set up a pool? I have space on my VPS as well.

Thanks

[Vuxil]

I like the idea, but you need to supply more figures:
- What will be the fixed and variable costs
- What benefits have funders over regular miners
- How much hashpower do you need to cover running cost/ how much fees do you need

etc.

Also as a VPS was already offered: what hardware is actually needed to set up a pool? I have space on my VPS as well.

Thanks

VPS wouldn't work unless it's behind something like cloudflare for DDOS protection. They won't really scale well either. I was thinking EC2 just because you know you can get the stability you need out of it. The nice part is also your server fees will be variable to how many people are connected and using your pool. Not worried about getting enough hash power for fees, I think it will happen naturally as there is a lack of pools.

As for costs, I need to work out estimates for EC2. I haven't done this yet, not sure if I will since there isn't that much interest. Likely this idea will just die in this thread unless there is a sudden surge of interest.

And lastly, for benefits of funders over regular miners, I haven't thought of that at all. Any suggestions? Besides paying back donations over time in PPC, I really don't know.

[Neverest]

VPS wouldn't work unless it's behind something like cloudflare for DDOS protection. They won't really scale well either. I was thinking EC2 just because you know you can get the stability you need out of it. The nice part is also your server fees will be variable to how many people are connected and using your pool. Not worried about getting enough hash power for fees, I think it will happen naturally as there is a lack of pools.

As for costs, I need to work out estimates for EC2. I haven't done this yet, not sure if I will since there isn't that much interest. Likely this idea will just die in this thread unless there is a sudden surge of interest.

And lastly, for benefits of funders over regular miners, I haven't thought of that at all. Any suggestions? Besides paying back donations over time in PPC, I really don't know.

I think there is interest, seeing that still many people use the scam pool and many sites stress that PPC mining is more profitable at the moment.
Also I would like to start offering a mining pool to some other markets as all is very US/EU/RU focused, so would be good to have a scaleable pool.

Benefits for funders:
- Co-own the pool and therefore receive part of the generated fees.
- Only invest: pay-out 200% of paid amounts of support once generated fees are enough to cover running costs (which should be right after the start, else the fees are not high enough.
- Discount on fees for life.
- No fees for life on first xxx coins/month; in which case you need fixed amounts of donations/loans, so every loaner puts in the same and gets the same benefits.
First I put no fees for life, period, but then realized that some server farm/ASIC type of set-up could generate more costs than the rest of teh pool users could cover with fees..

[sal002]

I was thiking a good pool would be to make the necessary changes to p2pool to have it work with PPC.  That way, software is available...

[Vuxil]

I was thiking a good pool would be to make the necessary changes to p2pool to have it work with PPC.  That way, software is available...

SK said he will support p2pool in 0.4, so it's coming, it's just down the road right now

[Sunny King]

SK said he will support p2pool in 0.4, so it's coming, it's just down the road right now

p2pool support has been under evaluation and is currently on hold. There is no plan of supporting it in v0.4. I have already recommended people to hold development of p2pool.

[matauc12]

Well I would have been down to fund, perhaps significant amount but I can't just send money without knowing how much you need, and it wouldn't be 100% donation, it would be to help start with my money returned with donations from pool, not looking for returns beyond that.

[CrownCloud]

I like the idea, but you need to supply more figures:
- What will be the fixed and variable costs
- What benefits have funders over regular miners
- How much hashpower do you need to cover running cost/ how much fees do you need

etc.

Also as a VPS was already offered: what hardware is actually needed to set up a pool? I have space on my VPS as well.

Thanks

VPS wouldn't work unless it's behind something like cloudflare for DDOS protection. They won't really scale well either. I was thinking EC2 just because you know you can get the stability you need out of it. The nice part is also your server fees will be variable to how many people are connected and using your pool. Not worried about getting enough hash power for fees, I think it will happen naturally as there is a lack of pools.

As for costs, I need to work out estimates for EC2. I haven't done this yet, not sure if I will since there isn't that much interest. Likely this idea will just die in this thread unless there is a sudden surge of interest.

And lastly, for benefits of funders over regular miners, I haven't thought of that at all. Any suggestions? Besides paying back donations over time in PPC, I really don't know.

Could get a dedicated for cheaper than EC2, should be more than enough to power a single coin pool.

[hiddenvalleyranch]

Sounds like a good idea, but honestly I would rather just have p2pool.

[Vuxil]

SK said he will support p2pool in 0.4, so it's coming, it's just down the road right now

p2pool support has been under evaluation and is currently on hold. There is no plan of supporting it in v0.4. I have already recommended people to hold development of p2pool.

Thanks for clarifying SK.

Everyone else, I know p2pool is preferrable, but we need a pool now. So that leaves us with pushpool. Also I'm not sure if a dedicated server hosted by anywhere reputable would really be any cheaper than an EC2 instance; I need to look into this. I've found some other stable and affordable cloud providers, but I don't think they would be as resilient during a ddos

I'll update again later today after I do some shopping comparisons. One way to do this would just to

[Vuxil]

Just FYI I have rented out a very cheap VPS to do some testing on. Currently I have pushpool setup and I am able to connect to it and mine ppc. There are some connection issues, but I have yet to determine whether it's due to the crap VPS or if I misconfigured something. I will update this thread as I have new information, so please follow this and stay tuned.

After I feel comfortable with the pushpool setup I have going, I will look for a more appropriate host. EC2 is still preferrable, but there are some other cloud providers that I am looking at now.

Really, I have to do the entire frontend now. I know there are some premade packages like miningfarm for front end work, but those projects have not been updated in a very long time so I have to see if they still work.

If I do need donations, I think the way I'll do it is collect them manually and then payout 2x the donation a mount when the server is stable and has some insurance coin. Hold off on donating for now though, it's not necessary at the moment

Good idea, but who are you ? Can we trust you ? Here I can trust only in Sunny King.

Pretty new to this forum, but I've expressed interest to SK in helping move ppcoin along. I'm not a bad guy, you'll just have to trust me =x

[hiddenvalleyranch]

I'm onboard, at least until p2pool is working.

[roy7]

I was hoping http://ppcpool.bitparking.com/ would choose a provide risk-free payment system and come back online. Doesn't seem to be happening. So if you get going I'll certainly rotate you in with coinotron, they go offline a bit too much and they are the only pool I've got...

[Keninishna]

I managed to setup a stratum ppc pool on an amazon instance however I need a web front end to use. Is there any free or cheap stratum web front ends? I can have a new pool setup in a short time.

[Vuxil]

I managed to setup a stratum ppc pool on an amazon instance however I need a web front end to use. Is there any free or cheap stratum web front ends? I can have a new pool setup in a short time.

I don't believe PPC supports stratum yet. And, I'm also looking for a frontend, but I might just roll my own. Not sure yet