Bitcoin.com Pool, PPS

[icon73]

Bitcoin.com Pool Now Pays a 120% Block Reward
When we first launched pool.bitcoin.com network fees were averaging about 10% on top of the block reward, so we decided to pay 110% in an effort to attract more miners to our pool to help resolve the scaling debate.

Today the network congestion is even worse, so we have increased our block reward to 120% effective immediately.

This applies to all private miners on our pool, and all cloud mining customers.
Everyone will now receive 120% of the block reward!
We already paid significantly more than other pools, and now we pay even more, so tell your friends!

[VRobb]

Nope.

[icon73]

Nope.

Any reason in particular?  I haven't got much of a setup, I only run about 200 TH/s. But 10% seems worthwhile to me.

[slow_br0]

so now he's pretending to be the welfare while he is just redirecting the fees kind of accordingly for the current fee market situation. or is that +10% put on top of blockreward+fees?

[icon73]

so now he's pretending to be the welfare while he is just redirecting the fees kind of accordingly for the current fee market situation. or is that +10% put on top of blockreward+fees?

I get the impression that the pool keeps the mining fee, and that he is paying 110% PPS with no pool fees.  Is there a pool that pays PPS and includes the block fees in the PPS?

[kryptk]

I believe btc.com (https://pool.btc.com/) is including tx fees in what they are calling FPPS(Full PPS) Mode.  Although, they don't give a very extensive explanation.

Over the last week I compared them to two other pools to see the actual return results.  btc.com made a decent return over the others. 

[MemoryDealers]

Most pools have kept all of the fees until just recently,  and many miners suspect pools of stealing hash rate from them.

Bitcoin.com will never steal any hash rate,  and it is our goal to pay more than every other mining pool in the world.
(This likely already is the case)

If the network fees continue to rise,  we will be upping our pay out to 115% of  the block reward.
Like the current 10%, the extra 15% would be coming from the TX fees.

I'd love to see some reports back of exactly how our payout compares to other pools miner for miner.


Please give us a try, you won't be disappointed.
https://pool.bitcoin.com/

[kano]

Most pools have kept all of the fees until just recently,  and many miners suspect pools of stealing hash rate from them.

Bitcoin.com will never steal any hash rate,  and it is our goal to pay more than every other mining pool in the world.
(This likely already is the case)

If the network fees continue to rise,  we will be upping our pay out to 115% of  the block reward.
Like the current 10%, the extra 15% would be coming from the TX fees.

I'd love to see some reports back of exactly how our payout compares to other pools miner for miner.

...

Oh, so you haven't actually done an analysis of why that means your pool is VERY likely to fail and everyone will lose all unpaid work when that happens?

Meni Rosenfeld's "Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems"
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf

2.2 Pay-per-share (PPS)
(specifically the last paragraph)

and

Appendix C
Safety nets for PPS pools

Have a read - you should at least understand what you are doing if you want to run a PPS pool.
Ignorance is bliss? (until everyone loses money)

That shows the statistical analysis of why you will go broke and thus proves that what you are doing is simply an attempt to get miners to switch and you will drop the 110% very soon or go broke (or you are cheating your miners by under paying them)

[icon73]

Oh, so you haven't actually done an analysis of why that means your pool is VERY likely to fail and everyone will lose all unpaid work when that happens?

Meni Rosenfeld's "Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems"
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf

Have a read - you should at least understand what you are doing if you want to run a PPS pool.
Ignorance is bliss? (until everyone loses money)

That shows the statistical analysis of why you will go broke and thus proves that what you are doing is simply an attempt to get miners to switch and you will drop the 110% very soon or go broke (or you are cheating your miners by under paying them)

Hi Kano,

I love your pool.  Used it for some time, until I moved to bitcoin.com.  While I realize and understand the risk of ruin bitcoin.com is facing with this pool, for the moment they are paying me for the PPS every night at 10:00pm PST.  It would seem to me that the entire risk to me as a user of the pool if bitcoin.com wants to buy my hash is one day of earnings.  Once they miss a payment, I would simply move my hash back to a "responsibly run" pool like yours.  I can assure you, since I have put my hash on the bitcoin.com pool, I am being properly paid, and I am paid what I expect to be paid based on the PPS model.  So as far as I can tell, I am not being cheated, and his pool seems to accept more shares than most of the pools I have mined on.  

That being said, help me as a noob in the bitcoin field to understand why it's a bad idea for me to take bitcoin.com's money?  Right now with a hash rate that is just reaching 200 th/s it seems like I am risking maximum of say $170.  That is at the 110% rate, and as long as bitcoin.com manages to run the pool for longer than 10 days, the 10% would cover a days loss, and the 10% would then become profit on the 11th day.

While I realize my math isn't nearly as fancy as what you had in the pdf it seems like it is reasonable to me.  Any other thoughts?

[kano]

Oh, so you haven't actually done an analysis of why that means your pool is VERY likely to fail and everyone will lose all unpaid work when that happens?

Meni Rosenfeld's "Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems"
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf

Have a read - you should at least understand what you are doing if you want to run a PPS pool.
Ignorance is bliss? (until everyone loses money)

That shows the statistical analysis of why you will go broke and thus proves that what you are doing is simply an attempt to get miners to switch and you will drop the 110% very soon or go broke (or you are cheating your miners by under paying them)

Hi Kano,

I love your pool.  Used it for some time, until I moved to bitcoin.com.  While I realize and understand the risk of ruin bitcoin.com is facing with this pool, for the moment they are paying me for the PPS every night at 10:00pm PST.  It would seem to me that the entire risk to me as a user of the pool if bitcoin.com wants to buy my hash is one day of earnings.  Once they miss a payment, I would simply move my hash back to a "responsibly run" pool like yours.  I can assure you, since I have put my hash on the bitcoin.com pool, I am being properly paid, and I am paid what I expect to be paid based on the PPS model.  So as far as I can tell, I am not being cheated, and his pool seems to accept more shares than most of the pools I have mined on.  

That being said, help me as a noob in the bitcoin field to understand why it's a bad idea for me to take bitcoin.com's money?  Right now with a hash rate that is just reaching 200 th/s it seems like I am risking maximum of say $170.  That is at the 110% rate, and as long as bitcoin.com manages to run the pool for longer than 10 days, the 10% would cover a days loss, and the 10% would then become profit on the 11th day.

While I realize my math isn't nearly as fancy as what you had in the pdf it seems like it is reasonable to me.  Any other thoughts?

It's actually quite simple.
In terms of your risk, yes until they stop paying you, you are getting 110% PPS.

If they delay or stop paying you, you indeed do have to be pro-active to stop mining.
They of course will operate on the assumption that few if any miners they have attracted will switch if payments are late.
But the real issue is that do they even understand the risk?
As a pool gets bigger, the risk gets greater.

But you've said that extra 10% covers the risk over what? 100% PPS?

Who else pays 110% PPS?
Low fee PPLNS pools should be paying similar to that, on average at the moment, with no risk of the pool going broke.

Well, according to the stats on my pool, we should average that also, but since it's PPLNS, it's block luck that decides the actual reward.
e.g. the pool averages were: last month 138% PPS ... December 73% PPS ... January 101% PPS

If they were transparent and said the reasons why they are paying 110% and how long it will be 110% then you could manage your risk.
But if they don't even understand Meni's statistical analysis of PPS pools and the risks, then you should be running far and wide away from them the second that a payment is delayed, and you've also then lost what you'd expect on other pools.

The last pool that did the same thing was BAN ... back in 2014 ... never heard of them?
Well they failed due to financial loss caused by paying ... 110% PPS ...
The exact same situation existed where people were saying how they get paid, so it doesn't matter.
Then the payments slowed down, and the 110% dropped to 105% then it all went to crap and it dragged on for ages while anyone who was left still mining there lost BTC.

While the situation now is different due to a lower risk of that happening due to higher % transaction fees, it's still not a small risk.

It's not hard to be transparent and say how they are funding this grave financial risk, but that's called bad marketing and of course they wont do that ... or even worse they don't even realise what they are doing ...

[icon73]

The last pool that did the same thing was BAN ... back in 2014 ... never heard of them?
Well they failed due to financial loss caused by paying ... 110% PPS ...
The exact same situation existed where people were saying how they get paid, so it doesn't matter.
Then the payments slowed down, and the 110% dropped to 105% then it all went to crap and it dragged on for ages while anyone who was left still mining there lost BTC.

While the situation now is different due to a lower risk of that happening due to higher % transaction fees, it's still not a small risk.

It's not hard to be transparent and say how they are funding this grave financial risk, but that's called bad marketing and of course they wont do that ... or even worse they don't even realise what they are doing ...

Hi Kano,

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.  It was very helpful. I had never heard of the BAN pool, but I have been mining only 5 months.  My wife and I now have 18 S9 miners.  We host them at Oregon mines.

I assumed that bitcoin.com set up the pool to promote Bitcoin Unlimited.  I assumed they were willing to pay a larger than typical PPS value because they wanted to attract hash so they could signal BU in found blocks, to promote Roger's agenda of Bitcoin Unlimited.  I don't want this to turn into a SegWit v BU discussion, but I was simply attempting to state what I thought was the answer to your question about transparency.  I thought that intention was entirely clear.  BU is stamped all over the pool, and many of the ads, and the press release.  As far as funding the cost associated with running the pool?  I figured that was Roger's pocket.  I got the impression he was putting his money where his mouth was, and that he was going to pay me, out of his pocket for my hash, so he could drive his agenda.  While he may have no clue how much it will cost him to pay for my hash, it's my understanding from everything I see online that he is probably one of the few people (along with Bitmain) that can afford it.

Now if I was going to guess when he would stop paying 110% PPS, my guess would be when the BU v SegWit question was decided, and a clear winner emerged.  Again, not trying to have that discussion, just stating what I think is the case.

So, I guess at this point we can see what Roger wants to tell us, or not about his intentions for the pool, how he is funding it, and how long he believes he will be able to continue to sustain that payout.

Kano, again, thank you for the thoughtful reply.  It was nice of you to take the time. 

[philipma1957]

So I go to the site and get endless bull shit.

no mining instructions at all.


well just spent 30 more minutes   how the fuck do I mine here?


whomever set this up has me baffled.

I would have mined but come on  no way will I mine here now.

no address to point the miners to.

no pool stats what the f is this site?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

^^ plus no description of payouts for PPS vs PPLNS nor any other relevant FAQ's. Left me baffled as well  

[leowonderful]

Please tell me this is a joke. More than 100% PPS with no fees and a pool with no stats nor pool address to mine to? Pool will either die of not paying out or they'll die of no hashrate from this. At least release a proper website and pool, I'm sure everybody would much rather prefer a fully usable site release than this.

[philipma1957]

Please tell me this is a joke. More than 100% PPS with no fees and a pool with no stats nor pool address to mine to? Pool will either die of not paying out or they'll die of no hashrate from this. At least release a proper website and pool, I'm sure everybody would much rather prefer a fully usable site release than this.

I would have sent hash here at 110%

but after spending a long time on the site frankly don't like the way it is run.

It has so much info for new people and not the right info for a seasoned miner.

I clicked a ½ dozen invites and got worthless loops and redirects to info that I simply do not care about.

I did some simple math  and 110%  ppn is getting closer to being possible as a working plan.

old  calculations say you need about 95%  to be safe as a ppn

with blocks now doing 13.5

here is my math

12.5 x 1.1 = 13.75

13.75 / .95 =  14.47    

so if you get 14.47 per block and pay out 13.75 per block    you would most likely make a real profit as a pool operator.

We just need more fees I think blocks are still a bit short for this 110% to last.

but from fucking with the site it looks like there is 82 ph mining there.

that should be 3.5 blocks per day.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Maybe them not giving us a pool address to point miners at is their very effective way of blocking pool-hoppers

but from fucking with the site it looks like there is 82 ph mining there.

Or so the site shows. Of course with no other stat than that graph to show, oh I don't know, say, blocks found, luck%, etc. potential users have no way of verifying it.

[philipma1957]

Maybe them not giving us a pool address to point miners at is their very effective way of blocking pool-hoppers

but from fucking with the site it looks like there is 82 ph mining there.

Or so the site shows. Of course with no other stat than that graph to show, oh I don't know, say, blocks found, luck%, etc. potential users have no way of verifying it.

I spent enough time  trying to get mining should not be that hard.  Let some one else use them.

[Swimmer63]

I started mining here yesterday.  This was a private pool that just opened to the public.  It had 80 PH as a private pool.  It appeared to grow by 2 PH yesterday after the announcement that it is open to all.

The only way to get on the pool is to send in a request for an invite.  Then I was given a website link to register.
My guess is that opening to the public was somewhat of a last minute decision.  While their website is nice, they don't have an official thread here or a telegram chat or anything where pool users can get answers to questions.

I had one issue yesterday, that Roger Ver actually got back to me on directly.  Then I pointed out a sorting option that was not working well and received a response and a fix in about 2 minutes.  So it' clearly not a "new" pool.

Got paid 110%, if not more, for yesterday's hashing.

But now today the front end site has been down all day due to a DDoS attack I assume.  My miners are still running and I'm still getting alerts for miners being down.  But no access to stats all day.  And given the number of people that dislike Roger and what he stands for, I imagine he will have to figure out a way to deal with robust disruptions if he wants the pool to grow.  Because there are plenty of petty bitcoin people with a torch for Core, just as there are probably equal numbers for BU

Personally, it's not that I am big BU supporter, but I do believe Core has been hijacked by Blockstream and lost it's independence.  While I despise the FUD that surrounds this issue and find both sides guilty of grade school tactics, we need a solution that is workable - NOW.  Bitcoins growth is stunted everyday there are tens of thousands of transactions left unprocessed.  I'm for BU, or a compromise with SegWit, or just about anything that lets Bitcoin, the primary chain, grow unfettered.

[Swimmer63]

Pools back up.

[philipma1957]

I started mining here yesterday.  This was a private pool that just opened to the public.  It had 80 PH as a private pool.  It appeared to grow by 2 PH yesterday after the announcement that it is open to all.

The only way to get on the pool is to send in a request for an invite.  Then I was given a website link to register.
My guess is that opening to the public was somewhat of a last minute decision.  While their website is nice, they don't have an official thread here or a telegram chat or anything where pool users can get answers to questions.

I had one issue yesterday, that Roger Ver actually got back to me on directly.  Then I pointed out a sorting option that was not working well and received a response and a fix in about 2 minutes.  So it' clearly not a "new" pool.

Got paid 110%, if not more, for yesterday's hashing.

But now today the front end site has been down all day due to a DDoS attack I assume.  My miners are still running and I'm still getting alerts for miners being down.  But no access to stats all day.  And given the number of people that dislike Roger and what he stands for, I imagine he will have to figure out a way to deal with robust disruptions if he wants the pool to grow.  Because there are plenty of petty bitcoin people with a torch for Core, just as there are probably equal numbers for BU

Personally, it's not that I am big BU supporter, but I do believe Core has been hijacked by Blockstream and lost it's independence.  While I despise the FUD that surrounds this issue and find both sides guilty of grade school tactics, we need a solution that is workable - NOW.  Bitcoins growth is stunted everyday there are tens of thousands of transactions left unprocessed.  I'm for BU, or a compromise with SegWit, or just about anything that lets Bitcoin, the primary chain, grow unfettered.

yeah  same old same old.

but it has helped alt coins a lot.

many people follow my signature  and use alt coins to get around btc being stuck unless you pay a big fee.