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

[forrestv]

Edit: I should add - that when there's an orphan battle, who do you think will win?
A solo P2Pool bitcoind with 8 connections or BTC Guild's bitcoind with ? connections?
If they post them very closely together the winner is usually the one with the most connections and the fastest internet.

Edit2: and if you look at the 2 block hashes, the BTC Guild one is not the one with the harder difficulty either.
000000000000079f7e918f3fba8f758383e1061c5d4eb8b3742612dedc23c00e P2P
0000000000000c163ce8827e37bb459161e6978dc1ff0c052c53dd7f5858608a BTCG

Unfortunately, P2Pool did have an orphan block. However, P2Pool is not at a disadvantage to other pools. P2Pool not only passes block solutions to the local bitcoind, but also passes them to other P2Pool nodes so that they can spread faster. In theory P2Pool should be better for this reason. I've been working on this a bit, because right now stale shares aren't passed around, and that might have contributed to this being an orphan.

Also, keep in mind that whoever made this share had it ultimately declared as an orphan because of P2Pool's bitcoin stale rules (probably along with other shares that they mined), so they are being punished for having a too-high latency.

Last, the fact that their block's hash is lower does not make any difference at all.

[kano]

...
Last, the fact that their block's hash is lower does not make any difference at all.

Yes I know, that's exactly what I said means.
... I just thought I'd point it out in case anyone said othewise

[kano]

Edit: I should add - that when there's an orphan battle, who do you think will win?
A solo P2Pool bitcoind with 8 connections or BTC Guild's bitcoind with ? connections?
If they post them very closely together the winner is usually the one with the most connections and the fastest internet.

Edit2: and if you look at the 2 block hashes, the BTC Guild one is not the one with the harder difficulty either.
000000000000079f7e918f3fba8f758383e1061c5d4eb8b3742612dedc23c00e P2P
0000000000000c163ce8827e37bb459161e6978dc1ff0c052c53dd7f5858608a BTCG

Unfortunately, P2Pool did have an orphan block. However, P2Pool is not at a disadvantage to other pools. P2Pool not only passes block solutions to the local bitcoind, but also passes them to other P2Pool nodes so that they can spread faster. In theory P2Pool should be better for this reason. I've been working on this a bit, because right now stale shares aren't passed around, and that might have contributed to this being an orphan.
...

Actually that would only make a difference if bitcoind accepted network blocks from p2pool ...

Bitcoind accepts non-self-generated blocks from the network only.

How does that work with p2pool?
Does p2pool pretend to be another bitcoind and tell the bitcoind about the block whenever it receives a block difficulty share?
Edit: which would mean the p2pool would have to be one of the 8 (or more) constant connections to the local bitcoind.
Edit2: and p2pool would have to deal with all the normal network traffic that bitcoind handles ...]

Edit3: OK, looks like I'm wrong
Maybe you can do it with getmemorypool ... is that how you do it?
Can you feed an new network block into the bitcoind with getmemorypool?
(I've never gone near that command due to the merged-mining implications it created)

If that's the method, then that would put it back to comparing the network speed of bitcoind's block-chain versus p2pool's share-chain+rpc to bitcoind.
Got any info to decide one way of the other?

[stevegee58]

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

[kjj]

Edit: I should add - that when there's an orphan battle, who do you think will win?
A solo P2Pool bitcoind with 8 connections or BTC Guild's bitcoind with ? connections?
If they post them very closely together the winner is usually the one with the most connections and the fastest internet.

Edit2: and if you look at the 2 block hashes, the BTC Guild one is not the one with the harder difficulty either.
000000000000079f7e918f3fba8f758383e1061c5d4eb8b3742612dedc23c00e P2P
0000000000000c163ce8827e37bb459161e6978dc1ff0c052c53dd7f5858608a BTCG

Unfortunately, P2Pool did have an orphan block. However, P2Pool is not at a disadvantage to other pools. P2Pool not only passes block solutions to the local bitcoind, but also passes them to other P2Pool nodes so that they can spread faster. In theory P2Pool should be better for this reason. I've been working on this a bit, because right now stale shares aren't passed around, and that might have contributed to this being an orphan.
...

Actually that would only make a difference if bitcoind accepted network blocks from p2pool ...

Bitcoind accepts non-self-generated blocks from the network only.

How does that work with p2pool?
Does p2pool pretend to be another bitcoind and tell the bitcoind about the block whenever it receives a block difficulty share?
Edit: which would mean the p2pool would have to be one of the 8 (or more) constant connections to the local bitcoind.
Edit2: and p2pool would have to deal with all the normal network traffic that bitcoind handles ...]

Edit3: OK, looks like I'm wrong
Maybe you can do it with getmemorypool ... is that how you do it?
Can you feed an new network block into the bitcoind with getmemorypool?
(I've never gone near that command due to the merged-mining implications it created)

If that's the method, then that would put it back to comparing the network speed of bitcoind's block-chain versus p2pool's share-chain+rpc to bitcoind.
Got any info to decide one way of the other?

Yes, p2pool does make a regular p2p connection to your local bitcoind and pretend to be just another node.  It also makes a RPC connection.  And it uses them for different things.

If your local miners find a block, your local p2pool will return that block to the local bitcoind using RPC calls.  It will also spread that block to all of it's p2pool peers, which will then relay it to their local bitcoind using the ordinary bitcoin p2p protocol.

In other words, a block found by p2pool will spread through two different networks.

[kjj]

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

Have you found any shares in the last 24 hours?

[randomguy7]

What are your stale rates for locals and shares? I currently have 0.9% for local but a freaking 27% for p2pool shares. What does the dead-value mean btw?

[stevegee58]

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

Have you found any shares in the last 24 hours?

Yes.  I was paid out on the most recent 4 according to p2pool's block chain.

[stevegee58]

For those interested, I imported the blockchain data into Excel from http://blockchain.info/address/1Kz5QaUPDtKrj5SqW5tFkn7WZh8LmQaQi4 (the block chain from p2pool) and found the average time between payouts starting 1/1/2012:

0.46 days between payouts on average for 2012

[thirdlight]

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

You've recently restarted p2pool, and it's got a new address from your bitcoind.

Please feel free to cut and paste this when someone asks the same question in 14.36 hours:

Your previous address will still receive any payouts if a block is found within 24 hours, your new address will also receive it's share of any payouts. Your expected payout will be spread across both addresses. If a block is found now, the old will get the bigger share. If a block is found in 20 hours, the new will have a much larger share. If you want to keep the same address (so you can keep an eye on things), specify it with the "-a" option.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Edit: I should add - that when there's an orphan battle, who do you think will win?
A solo P2Pool bitcoind with 8 connections or BTC Guild's bitcoind with ? connections?
If they post them very closely together the winner is usually the one with the most connections and the fastest internet.

Which is why every p2pool node should use port forwarding.  My bitcoind has 208 connections granted maybe BTC Guild would have still won the orphan battle but at least it would be a fighting chance.

On edit: hey is you use the add node command for bitcoind is that node guaranteed to be used?  Even if the person is limited to 8?

The reason I ask is I (and others) could setup a high connection relay server with low latency and 200+ connections.  For people who can't get port forwarding figured out they could add that node and be 1 hop away from 200+ nodes. 

[stevegee58]

Why does p2pool currently show "current payout: 0.0000 BTC"?  Seems a little low...

You've recently restarted p2pool, and it's got a new address from your bitcoind.

Please feel free to cut and paste this when someone asks the same question in 14.36 hours:

Your previous address will still receive any payouts if a block is found within 24 hours, your new address will also receive it's share of any payouts. Your expected payout will be spread across both addresses. If a block is found now, the old will get the bigger share. If a block is found in 20 hours, the new will have a much larger share. If you want to keep the same address (so you can keep an eye on things), specify it with the "-a" option.

I'll keep the copy/paste in mind for the future, but I definitely have the same payout address as before.

[thirdlight]

I definitely have the same payout address as before.

Can you see your address on this page?

[stevegee58]

No, but I went to http://127.0.0.1:9332/payout_addr and it says the address I've been seeing for the last week.

OK, rather than mess with changing payout addresses I just switched to using -a with the payout address I was using with deepbit.
This should keep things simpler anyway.

[thirdlight]

Good, setting an address removes one of the variables, & makes life easier all round.

Right now it's taking an average of 384 minutes to find a share with 100MH/s (ie 38.4 mins with 1GH/s, and 3.84 mins with 10GH/s, and 3840 mins with 10MH/s). So work out how long it'll take you to find 5 shares. Check back after that amount of time. You should see your address in the page I mentioned before.

It takes a bit of getting used to - with a pps pool, you can see your balance increase with every page refresh, with p2pool things tend to work in hours & days, rather than seconds! The result (earnings) is the same, you just have more time for other things. I know how addictive a pool stats page can be!

[stevegee58]

OK 1 last noob question and I'll wait 5 hours before posting again.
If I don't show up on http://yat.uukgoblin.net/p2pool-stats/current_payouts.html, yet my cgminer is clearly working hard on solving something, what am I really accomplishing?  I'm being told to solve hashes but I'm not in line for any payment at all is how it seems.

Or is it that copy/paste snippet you wanted me to remember?  It's still using an address that bitcoind assigned (and I can't find) and I'll get paid something eventually on that address for my current efforts?

[Frizz23]

Frizz23 and anyone else having problems with apparent forks, upgrade to this and follow the above advice.

What happens to all those shared that have been submitted to a forked pool?

I haven't gotten any credit for those - so I assume they are lost.

[forrestv]

Frizz23 and anyone else having problems with apparent forks, upgrade to this and follow the above advice.

What happens to all those shared that have been submitted to a forked pool?

I haven't gotten any credit for those - so I assume they are lost.

Yes, they're gone now; However, they had some value when you created them. The forked pool could have found a block and paid you a handsome amount, but you just didn't have great luck. (Kind of like solo mining for a while and then giving up.)

[DeathAndTaxes]

OK 1 last noob question and I'll wait 5 hours before posting again.
If I don't show up on http://yat.uukgoblin.net/p2pool-stats/current_payouts.html, yet my cgminer is clearly working hard on solving something, what am I really accomplishing?  I'm being told to solve hashes but I'm not in line for any payment at all is how it seems.

Or is it that copy/paste snippet you wanted me to remember?  It's still using an address that bitcoind assigned (and I can't find) and I'll get paid something eventually on that address for my current efforts?

cgminer shows the 1 difficulty shares.  That is only for troubleshooting at the card level.

p2pool pays based on high difficulty (i.e. >1) shares (called "share difficulty").  Showing 1 difficulty shares in cgminer was just added for troubleshooting purposes and to allow stats which compare to other pools. 

Look in p2pool window each time a block is found it will says something like "share difficulty 560".  The 560 means that p2pool shares are 560 times as hard to find thus on AVERAGE you should find 1 every 560 shares cgminer shows (note p2pool difficult changes so the 560 is just an example).  Now due to variance you aren't going to find 1 p2pool share every 560 shares in cgminer.  However in the long run it will equal out.

So to check your progress calculate how long it will take you to find 5 to 10 shares (you want a decent # due to variance).  If p2pool shows share time of 2 hours then wait 10 to 20 hours.  Check p2pool you should see roughly the number of shares you projected (longer periods of time will be more accurate once again due to variance).  

Once p2pool is showing shares in the command prompt window you can check the payout page.  Your address should be listed.  You can now check cgminer.  Cgminer shows 1 difficulty shares so you should see roughly (# of p2pool shares ) * (p2pool difficulty).  Once again it may vary somewhat due to variance.  If you wait twice as long (say 20x p2pool share time) you will notice the three stats get "closer" to expected value.  If you wait 100x share time they will be vary close. 

After 30 days they will be all aproaching expected value.
Make sense?

Probably not.    It gets easier the more you use it, ask questions, and check how everything works together is suddenly "clicks".

[Frizz23]

Frizz23 and anyone else having problems with apparent forks, upgrade to this and follow the above advice.

What happens to all those shared that have been submitted to a forked pool?

I haven't gotten any credit for those - so I assume they are lost.

Yes, they're gone now; However, they had some value when you created them. The forked pool could have found a block and paid you a handsome amount, but you just didn't have great luck. (Kind of like solo mining for a while and then giving up.)

This forked pool can still find a block. But after I have restarted p2pool I am no longer connected to this forked pool. Hence I don't get a reward for my work.

This seriously sucks about p2pool!