[1500 TH] p2pool: Decentralized, DoS-resistant, Hop-Proof pool

[mitak64]

Latency is very relative, it depends mostly on your infrastructure .
With my setup, it changes very dynamically.
Currently it's ~ 0.6s, usually it hovers around 0.35s.
Personally, I did not see any improvement in latency, after upgrading the Bitcoin client.

[1714326386]

1714326386

[1714326386]

1714326386

[zvs]

hmm, can p2pool be modified to detect block height?

for example, these doge blocks: 145089, 145086, 145085...  are over 4000 height behind the current block.

It seems like a better way of identifying the blocks?  This way you can penalize shares from blocks that are 2 height below current?

ed: i read the warning about altcoins, so i'm just using doge as an example.  the same could apply to bitcoins

[spiccioli]

... My memory usage graph is blank for some reason.

Hi,

it is blank because it lacks code to track memory on freebsd.

Given that I can't live without ZFS and building on opensolaris was long and cumbersome (at least for me) I've got a freebsd box running and made a little hack to util/memory.py to track it on solaris/opensolaris and freebsd.

Here it is

Code:

import os
import platform
import resource

_scale = {'kB': 1024, 'mB': 1024*1024,
    'KB': 1024, 'MB': 1024*1024}

def resident():
    if platform.system() == 'Windows':
        from wmi import WMI
        w = WMI('.')
        result = w.query("SELECT WorkingSet FROM Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process WHERE IDProcess=%d" % os.getpid())
        return int(result[0].WorkingSet)
    elif platform.system() == 'SunOS':
        with open('/proc/%d/as' % os.getpid()) as f:
            f.seek( 0, 2 )
            v = f.tell()
        return float(v)
    elif platform.system() == 'FreeBSD':
        return resource.getrusage(resource.RUSAGE_SELF).ru_maxrss * 1024
    else:
        with open('/proc/%d/status' % os.getpid()) as f:
            v = f.read()
        i = v.index('VmRSS:')
        v = v[i:].split(None, 3)
        #assert len(v) == 3, v
        return float(v[1]) * _scale[v[2]]

I'm not a python coder, so bear with my poor code quality

spiccioli

[Fior Sirtheoir]

Hello all.  Is there a list, somewhere, of the p2p servers set up, for Bitcoin and alt coins?  I have been mining eligius but want to move to P2P for decentralization and increase in profits.  I have read that P2P profits long term are greater, does this still hold true?

[smooth]

I have read that P2P profits long term are greater, does this still hold true?

Nobody can answer that, since it depends so much on luck and other factors. With the luck taking a very long time to average out, so the other factors a are really hard to measure. Over the past few months p2pool has had fairly bad luck. Very recently luck has been a little better. The future, nobody knows.

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time. Maybe that is important to you.

Server lists:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66182.0
http://p2pool-nodes.info/

EDIT: http://p2pools.org/ (thank you CartmanSPC)

[smooth]

I'd like to get the p2pool entry in organofcorti's pool list corrected to indicate that p2pool does support merged mining. 

Here's what is now:

PPLNS mining pool

Pool : p2Pool
Fee :0%
Pay Tx Reward: Yes
Variable Difficulty: p2Pool
Local Work : Stratum
Pay Orphans: No
Min Withdrawal : Unknown
Merged Mining: No

Here's what I propose to submit (changes in bold). If someone can be more specific about the min payout, or has other suggestions, that might be helpful.

Pool : p2pool
Fee :0%
Pay Tx Reward: Yes
Variable Difficulty: p2pool
Local Work : Stratum
Pay Orphans: No
Min Withdrawal : Unknown
Merged Mining: Yes

[CartmanSPC]

Hello all.  Is there a list, somewhere, of the p2p servers set up, for Bitcoin and alt coins?

http://p2pools.org/ is a nice list...

[Fior Sirtheoir]

I have read that P2P profits long term are greater, does this still hold true?

Nobody can answer that, since it depends so much on luck and other factors. With the luck...

Good thing I am a lucky S.O.B

And thanks for the list.

[organofcorti]

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time.

Can you derive this for me? I've just spent a bit of the afternoon on it and I can't see it.

[phillipsjk]

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for infinite time.

Can you derive this for me? I've just spent a bit of the afternoon on it and I can't see it.

fixed.

[smooth]

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time.

Can you derive this for me? I've just spent a bit of the afternoon on it and I can't see it.

First, let's ignore orphans, they affect both more or less equally, though how exactly they affect eligius is complex. It doesn't help refute the argument though.

The expected value of every share on p2pool (PPLNS) is exactly B/D (for some suitable scaling of B and D). This can be derived, and is likely is derived in one of Meni's posts.

The expected value of a share on eligius is (the product of an equivalent B/D and) the sum of an infinite series adding the probabilities that it is paid on this round plus the probability that it is paid on each future round. This series never goes to zero, so the terms beyond any finite time horizon always have a positive sum.

Not formal, but good enough?

[smooth]

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for infinite time.

Can you derive this for me? I've just spent a bit of the afternoon on it and I can't see it.

fixed.

No that's backwards. My original post was correct, as explained in my previous post.

This does not (at all) guarantee that you make more in p2pool. Expected value doesn't mean that.

[IYFTech]

Hmmmm....having all sorts of latency issues since upgrading to Bitcoin v9 & getting regular cpu spikes up to 60% - anyone else having problems? Done the right thing, uninstalled old, installed new from ppa, etc.........tried reinstalling........strange

[mdude77]

I have read that P2P profits long term are greater, does this still hold true?

Nobody can answer that, since it depends so much on luck and other factors. With the luck taking a very long time to average out, so the other factors a are really hard to measure. Over the past few months p2pool has had fairly bad luck. Very recently luck has been a little better. The future, nobody knows.

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time. Maybe that is important to you.

I'm not sure that last statement about being higher payout than Eligius is accurate.  You can put 0% donation into both, both pay transaction fees, and Eligius pays merged mining on NMC.  Yes you can merge mine in p2pool, but you are solo merged mining, which is almost the same as solo mining BTC. 

And when you throw in increasing variance with p2pool, I definitely think Eligius comes out ahead (which is why I'm there, not on p2pool).

M

[organofcorti]

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time.

Can you derive this for me? I've just spent a bit of the afternoon on it and I can't see it.

First, let's ignore orphans, they affect both more or less equally, though how exactly they affect eligius is complex. It doesn't help refute the argument though.

The expected value of every share on p2pool (PPLNS) is exactly B/D (for some suitable scaling of B and D). This can be derived, and is likely is derived in one of Meni's posts.

The expected value of a share on eligius is (the product of an equivalent B/D and) the sum of an infinite series adding the probabilities that it is paid on this round plus the probability that it is paid on each future round. This series never goes to zero, so the terms beyond any finite time horizon always have a positive sum.

Not formal, but good enough?

I'm not sure about the way you're thinking about expected value of a share on Eligius.

You need to show that for any t < Infty E(p2pool share) > E(eligius share) and I don't think that's the case (or at least I couldn't see a way to derive it).

[smooth]

Let's posit that both pools have the same expected value for a share given infinite time.

Let's further posit that shares are proportional to time. This is not exactly true, but it is close. If you do not like this equivalence, then you may modify my original statement to be that the payout for p2pool is greater over a finite number of shares.

The payout for a share is made over at most N shares for p2pool. Once N is reached your expected payout is equal to the expected value of the share. The payout for that same share on Eligius is made over a potentially infinite number of shares (blocks). Thus for any future share > N, e(p2pool) has an expected payout value of 0 and Eligius has some expected payout value > 0. Sp when we reach N (and for any finite number of shares >=N), the expected value paid out by p2pool is greater than the expected value paid out by Eligius, because Eligius still has some remaining expected payments > 0 while p2pool does not.

For shares < N it isn't as clear. I'm ignoring that case. If your window is less than N your expected payout for Eligius may in fact be higher, I'm not sure.

I'm really not sure if this is not clear to you or if you would just like to see it stated more formally.

[smooth]

I'm not sure that last statement about being higher payout than Eligius is accurate.  You can put 0% donation into both, both pay transaction fees, and Eligius pays merged mining on NMC.  Yes you can merge mine in p2pool, but you are solo merged mining, which is almost the same as solo mining BTC.  

I did not claim it has a higher payout. I claimed it has a higher expected value (a mathematical term similar to average) over a finite period of time (more precisely a finite number of shares). In fact they have the same expected value over an infinite time horizon, as far as I can tell.

And when you throw in increasing variance with p2pool, I definitely think Eligius comes out ahead (which is why I'm there, not on p2pool).

I agree eligius most certainly has lower variance and may be preferable for that reason. This is a different question than expected value in finite time.

There are other pools that also have higher expected value than eligius in finite time but also have lower variance (certainly much lower than p2pool and possibly lower than eligius though this is certainly not clear). It isn't my intent here to promote any particular pool so I won't name names. I'm just pointing out some differences in payout methods that may or may not matter to a particular miner.

BTW, solo mining has the exact same expected value as mining on a zero fee hop-proof pool. But obviously very different variance.

[IYFTech]

Hmmmm....having all sorts of latency issues since upgrading to Bitcoin v9 & getting regular cpu spikes up to 60% - anyone else having problems? Done the right thing, uninstalled old, installed new from ppa, etc.........tried reinstalling........strange

Rinse, repeat:



Running Xubuntu 13.10 64bit - anyone else have latency issues with Bitcoind v9?

Anyone??

[Tegija]

I have read that P2P profits long term are greater, does this still hold true?

Nobody can answer that, since it depends so much on luck and other factors. With the luck taking a very long time to average out, so the other factors a are really hard to measure. Over the past few months p2pool has had fairly bad luck. Very recently luck has been a little better. The future, nobody knows.

However, I will say that the expected value of the p2pool payout method (if set to zero fees) is higher than the expected value of the eligius payout method for finite time. Maybe that is important to you.

I'm not sure that last statement about being higher payout than Eligius is accurate.  You can put 0% donation into both, both pay transaction fees, and Eligius pays merged mining on NMC.  Yes you can merge mine in p2pool, but you are solo merged mining, which is almost the same as solo mining BTC. 

And when you throw in increasing variance with p2pool, I definitely think Eligius comes out ahead (which is why I'm there, not on p2pool).

M

it will be always big discussion which pool has better payouts. if we are only "thinking" about it this discussion is senseless...
i have reference miners in different pools since 2 months and can say pretty clear that mining in eligius is for sure not more effective than mining  in p2pool. even with lots of bad luck in p2pool last few months i have better payouts in p2pool.

it looks like p2pool has a big variance, but in reality every pool has some variances. p2pool maybe does not find a block some days long and we speak already about "big loss and variance", but nobody recognizes when other pools with huge hash rate has daily payout drop of 30-40% and that sometimes several days.

payout stability of ghash.io, btcguild, eligius etc. is a myth. everyone has low payout phases and mostly this "lows" make payout in in the end (long terms) worse than it is in p2pool.

Those are my real experiences and not just what i am thinking.

[murraypaul]

payout stability of ghash.io, btcguild, eligius etc. is a myth.

The greater the proportion of the network hashrate a pool commands, the lower its variance will be.
That isn't a myth.