Swedish ASIC miner company kncminer.com

[kendog77]

I'm an Engineer, and am continually amazed at how often Murphy's Law comes into play.

I'll be impressed if Knc shows a video of the chips hashing on a public pool at the advertised speed before the end of the month.

[xyzzy099]

Here's the thing. the percentage rate is NOT the only thing you want to look at here.. There are plenty of reputable smaller pools, some which charge as low as 1/2% to mine with them. These sound great at face value but the fact is, they simply do not find as many blocks as say btcguild. If you don't find block, then you don't get BTC, and you therefore water down the value of each hash you put into the pool.

Now, if you are using a pool which uses PPLNS, this is a problem, since the pool will only pay you based off of blocks found. so no blocks found = no money, or in the case of smaller pools less blocks found = less money.

If the pool is using PPS, this is MUCH for the pool, and possible yourself as well depending on how much reserves the pool has, what percentage rate they take from found blocks, and their luck. This is because in a PPS pool, if you mine X amount of shares, you get paid for X amount of shares regardless of whether or not a block is found or not. This is very dangerous IMO because you are trusting that the pool doesn't go bankrupt based off of the following :

Pool has a sufficient reserve of BTC to weather the block where they do not mine coin.
Pool has a high enough percentage rake from the found blocks to sustain the reserve. and
Pool doesn't have absolutely terrible luck...

It is for these reasons why you do not see many pools still doing PPS, because it is just too risky, and there are too many players in the game now to assume a optimistic result. If you are considering PPS, you might want to read up on what happened to bitclockers.com

Case in point,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144073.0

Now with that said, BCTGuild, admittedly does own a large share of the network, but that is for a good reason. They have had the best luck at finding blocks and they are using PPLNS for calculating payments, so the pool should never go bankrupt. and this equates simply to a much higher / stable return for on each hash you contribute to the pool.

As for solo mining, if you do intend to keep your Jupiter after the difficulty goes to ridiculous and it is no longer very profitable to run them, then this may be the way to go if you don't mind burning the electricity. But at-least for now while we are in the thick of the gold rush, you are better off sticking with the pool model, and choose one that fits your level of risk.

You DO NOT make more money in the long run by mining on a pool that gets more blocks.  You get paid PROPORTIONALLY to your hashrate vs. the rest of the pool's hashrate.  In a big pool like BTCGuild, you will get smaller payouts more often.  In a smaller pool, like Eligius or Bitminter, your will get less payouts, but they will be bigger.  The only advantage to mining in a big pool is less variance in the short term.

You are assuming all pools have the same reliability, which is not true.

In my experience, I have found BtcGuild to be very reliable and some of the smaller pools to be less reliable.

That is a valid point.  FWIW, P2Pool, being distributed, is highly unlikely to ever 'go down'.  I have never seen the pool go down at Eligius (where I am mining now), but I have only been using it for a couple of weeks.  I am definitely making more BTC/day (with more variance) than I was on BTCGuild.

[rizzman]

Here's the thing. the percentage rate is NOT the only thing you want to look at here.. There are plenty of reputable smaller pools, some which charge as low as 1/2% to mine with them. These sound great at face value but the fact is, they simply do not find as many blocks as say btcguild. If you don't find block, then you don't get BTC, and you therefore water down the value of each hash you put into the pool.

Now, if you are using a pool which uses PPLNS, this is a problem, since the pool will only pay you based off of blocks found. so no blocks found = no money, or in the case of smaller pools less blocks found = less money.

If the pool is using PPS, this is MUCH for the pool, and possible yourself as well depending on how much reserves the pool has, what percentage rate they take from found blocks, and their luck. This is because in a PPS pool, if you mine X amount of shares, you get paid for X amount of shares regardless of whether or not a block is found or not. This is very dangerous IMO because you are trusting that the pool doesn't go bankrupt based off of the following :

Pool has a sufficient reserve of BTC to weather the block where they do not mine coin.
Pool has a high enough percentage rake from the found blocks to sustain the reserve. and
Pool doesn't have absolutely terrible luck...

It is for these reasons why you do not see many pools still doing PPS, because it is just too risky, and there are too many players in the game now to assume a optimistic result. If you are considering PPS, you might want to read up on what happened to bitclockers.com

Case in point,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144073.0

Now with that said, BCTGuild, admittedly does own a large share of the network, but that is for a good reason. They have had the best luck at finding blocks and they are using PPLNS for calculating payments, so the pool should never go bankrupt. and this equates simply to a much higher / stable return for on each hash you contribute to the pool.

As for solo mining, if you do intend to keep your Jupiter after the difficulty goes to ridiculous and it is no longer very profitable to run them, then this may be the way to go if you don't mind burning the electricity. But at-least for now while we are in the thick of the gold rush, you are better off sticking with the pool model, and choose one that fits your level of risk.

You DO NOT make more money in the long run by mining on a pool that gets more blocks.  You get paid PROPORTIONALLY to your hashrate vs. the rest of the pool's hashrate.  In a big pool like BTCGuild, you will get smaller payouts more often.  In a smaller pool, like Eligius or Bitminter, your will get less payouts, but they will be bigger.  The only advantage to mining in a big pool is less variance in the short term.

Sure, its proportional - proportional to your hash-rate AND the amount of BTC found by the pool and with the amount of processing power coming online, that's going to be an even bigger factor that's going to significantly water down the blocks mined by the little pools, and considering we are in a gold rush right now where everyone's going for the low hanging fruit, I'd rather make a little less steadily while the difficulty is lower, than risk making less chasing the bigger payout before difficulty becomes impossible. and yes you are correct, the variance is an important factor, but its not the only one. The fact is more luck in the pool = higher reward per share and right now BTCGuild is in the money.Simple as that until their luck changes.

[Phoenix1969]

Actually, I make a great deal more mining on Slush than I do on BTC guild with my 83 Gh/s ....

I have same experience, tried MANY, and slush was best

[jmw74]

Here's the thing. the percentage rate is NOT the only thing you want to look at here.. There are plenty of reputable smaller pools, some which charge as low as 1/2% to mine with them. These sound great at face value but the fact is, they simply do not find as many blocks as say btcguild. If you don't find block, then you don't get BTC, and you therefore water down the value of each hash you put into the pool.

Now, if you are using a pool which uses PPLNS, this is a problem, since the pool will only pay you based off of blocks found. so no blocks found = no money, or in the case of smaller pools less blocks found = less money.

If the pool is using PPS, this is MUCH for the pool, and possible yourself as well depending on how much reserves the pool has, what percentage rate they take from found blocks, and their luck. This is because in a PPS pool, if you mine X amount of shares, you get paid for X amount of shares regardless of whether or not a block is found or not. This is very dangerous IMO because you are trusting that the pool doesn't go bankrupt based off of the following :

Pool has a sufficient reserve of BTC to weather the block where they do not mine coin.
Pool has a high enough percentage rake from the found blocks to sustain the reserve. and
Pool doesn't have absolutely terrible luck...

It is for these reasons why you do not see many pools still doing PPS, because it is just too risky, and there are too many players in the game now to assume a optimistic result. If you are considering PPS, you might want to read up on what happened to bitclockers.com

Case in point,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144073.0

Now with that said, BCTGuild, admittedly does own a large share of the network, but that is for a good reason. They have had the best luck at finding blocks and they are using PPLNS for calculating payments, so the pool should never go bankrupt. and this equates simply to a much higher / stable return for on each hash you contribute to the pool.

As for solo mining, if you do intend to keep your Jupiter after the difficulty goes to ridiculous and it is no longer very profitable to run them, then this may be the way to go if you don't mind burning the electricity. But at-least for now while we are in the thick of the gold rush, you are better off sticking with the pool model, and choose one that fits your level of risk.

You DO NOT make more money in the long run by mining on a pool that gets more blocks.  You get paid PROPORTIONALLY to your hashrate vs. the rest of the pool's hashrate.  In a big pool like BTCGuild, you will get smaller payouts more often.  In a smaller pool, like Eligius or Bitminter, your will get less payouts, but they will be bigger.  The only advantage to mining in a big pool is less variance in the short term.

Sure, its proportional - proportional to your hash-rate AND the amount of BTC found by the pool and with the amount of processing power coming online, that's going to be an even bigger factor that's going to significantly water down the blocks mined by the little pools, and considering we are in a gold rush right now where everyone's going for the low hanging fruit, I'd rather make a little less steadily while the difficulty is lower, than risk making less chasing the bigger payout before difficulty becomes impossible. and yes you are correct, the variance is an important factor, but its not the only one. The fact is more luck in the pool = higher reward per share and right now BTCGuild is in the money.Simple as that until their luck changes.

Yeah, from what I'm reading here, I think I have a grasp of how it works.

I think PPS is crazy, I read about another pool (not sure which one) whose reserve was either stolen or lost.  This was a while ago, a year maybe.  I don't want a pool to open up the possibility of a scam or accidental loss, just so I get a predictable payout.  As long as the average is as high as possible and the variance isn't ridiculous.

I don't think solo mining with a Jupiter would be a good idea (for what I consider acceptable risk).  I'm not sure what the odds are of never finding a block, but I bet it's significant.  Depending what day I get it, I'm sure the odds could be 10% or more that I lose my entire investment going solo.  Of course, the odds are about the same that I mine 6 blocks (or whatever double the predicted rate is).

Is there a formula or calculator somewhere for variance?  eg, if the network hashrate is X and I have hashrate Y and my pool has hashrate Z (Y=Z for solo), I'd want a graph of odds of each amount of payout.  And if it could take into account increasing difficulty that would be great.

[CoinHoarder]

I'm an Engineer, and am continually amazed at how often Murphy's Law comes into play.

I'll be impressed if Knc shows a video of the chips hashing on a public pool at the advertised speed before the end of the month.

I agree. 

[nightengale]

About 4 or 5 months ago, BitMinter was having a horrible string of bad luck to the point they were wondering if there was something technically wrong with the pool. Did that ever get sorted out?

+1 for slush, before I was pushed out by ASICs, I had good results there. Looking forward to getting back into the BTC mining game.

[Paladin69]

Once you guys get your miners in hand what pools will you consider using and why?

btcguild via PPLNS for the 3% fee.  Easy to withdrawal and monitor on my iphone. 

How can it be monitored on Android?

[Trongersoll]

Actually, I make a great deal more mining on Slush than I do on BTC guild with my 83 Gh/s ....

If nothing else, you will pay 1% less in fees on Slush than you do on BTCguild.

[timmmers]

That was a wafer. Good to see and al that...but not a chip nonetheless.
Looking positive for a happy few pages here in the near future , it's already become useful again with a purpose
A picture is worth 500 pages of words

[Trongersoll]

I'm an Engineer, and am continually amazed at how often Murphy's Law comes into play.

I'll be impressed if Knc shows a video of the chips hashing on a public pool at the advertised speed before the end of the month.

I agree. 

Murphy works overtime.

[fex]

About 4 or 5 months ago, BitMinter was having a horrible string of bad luck to the point they were wondering if there was something technically wrong with the pool. Did that ever get sorted out?

Yes, there was an independent audit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201258.0

I think Bitminter is one if the best paying pools right now, because of low fees, Namecoin mining and payment of transaction fees.

Edit: bitparking might pay even more (0% fee, alt coins) but is somewhat small.

[Beta-coiner1]

That was a wafer. Good to see and al that...but not a chip nonetheless.
Looking positive for a happy few pages here in the near future , it's already become useful again with a purpose
A picture is worth 500 pages of words

Or 500 GH coming with Jupiter.:-)

[timmmers]

That was a wafer. Good to see and al that...but not a chip nonetheless.
Looking positive for a happy few pages here in the near future , it's already become useful again with a purpose
A picture is worth 500 pages of words

Or 500 GH coming with Jupiter.:-)

Looks that way. The day I see someone report that on a machine they just received I'll be really happy, it's not often that people can afford faith in a company in this game from what I've seen. I've always thought they were a cut above as far as professionalism was concerned and having an October delivery date was less stressful...but the guys who get the 1st rigs deserve rewards for sticking their necks out more than the rest of us.

Seems to me to be the first truly reliably ASIC rig manufacturer. Gonna be busy aren't they?

[Rampion]

For Fast food reference:

LOL, awesome chart

[Biomech]

About 4 or 5 months ago, BitMinter was having a horrible string of bad luck to the point they were wondering if there was something technically wrong with the pool. Did that ever get sorted out?

Yes, there was an independent audit: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201258.0

I think Bitminter is one if the best paying pools right now, because of low fees, Namecoin mining and payment of transaction fees.

Edit: bitparking might pay even more (0% fee, alt coins) but is somewhat small.

What little mining I've done has been with bitparking. I have no experience of the others, because I was using a low end GPU and didn't think I had a snowball's chance in hell at the bigger ones.

That being said, I found them easy to use, and I did make a bit of coin. This was just before I moved from PA. I'm probably going with them once I get the hardware sorted.

[vesperwillow]

Give Slush a chance when you get back into it. I've used both. I like the merged mining of BP, but Slush has always provided me more payout and it's been very reliable.

[Anduck]

So... i asked whether someone had seen a working asic chip of KNC?
Why I ask it?
If you dont have chips and you need to deliver actual product in less than 2 weeks (tm)...
You guys who say they can deliver in time.. You obviously have no clue what is needed after the chip is ready and in hand. Read about bitfury asics production. ...and their reseller btw shipped in time, too.

[-Redacted-]

Ignored.  Asshat who thinks he's a know-it-all.  Joins such illustrious members on that ignore list as Kuroth, Vigil, Eve, bbxx, and atomichaos....

[Anduck]

Ignored.  Asshat who thinks he's a know-it-all.  Joins such illustrious members on that ignore list as Kuroth, Vigil, Eve, bbxx, and atomichaos....

i only ask you to read about development of these things. Lol @ your reply.... Please.