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

[DeathAndTaxes]

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!

Once work is submitted you will ALWAYS get paid for it (if still within the PPLNS window at the time a block is found, if one is ever found).  You could burn your computer and if you have valid shares in the sharechain (any share chain if a fork exists) you will be paid on them.

Not being able to submit MORE work to a fork, or being able to submit any work to any chain doesn't "undo" work already submitted.

[Red Emerald]

I've been following p2pool for a while and it really looks like we need a FAQ

We already have a wiki page, so lets put it there once we have some questions figured out.  In no particular order...

1) What is PPLNS?

2) Why am I not getting any shares with my NVIDIA after waiting a whole 5 minutes?!

3) Why am I getting so many rejects?

4) What stops the pool operator or the block finder from stealing a block?

5) Why does it say "Generated?" I want to spend my coins now!

6) Do I get paid transaction fees?

7) What are these payments I'm getting that aren't generated?

Subsidies sound like an awesome idea! How do I send some BTC to these awesome miners?

9) Do I really need the WHOLE blockchain?

10) How do merged mining payments work?


I'm sure theres some more.  I just see these asked a lot.

[forrestv]

I've been following p2pool for a while and it really looks like we need a FAQ

I started a FAQ here about a week ago: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool#Frequently_Asked_Questions Good ideas for questions, though.. let's expand it.

[Rubberduckie]

I'm using cgminer 2.2.6 on my 6970 and 6870 with AMD 11.11 drivers.

Would it be worth using the newer 12.2 AMD driver? Has anyone tried 12.2 on a 6XXX card and noticed a difference in hash rate?

[Rubberduckie]

I'm using cgminer 2.2.6 on my 6970 and 6870 with AMD 11.11 drivers.

Would it be worth using the newer 12.2 AMD driver? Has anyone tried 12.2 on a 6XXX card and noticed a difference in hash rate?

forget I said that, just read 12.2 is a big no-no https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.4100

[Portnoy]

I've been following p2pool for a while and it really looks like we need a FAQ

We already have a wiki page, so lets put it there once we have some questions figured out.  In no particular order...

1) What is PPLNS?

2) Why am I not getting any shares with my NVIDIA after waiting a whole 5 minutes?!

3) Why am I getting so many rejects?

4) What stops the pool operator or the block finder from stealing a block?

5) Why does it say "Generated?" I want to spend my coins now!

6) Do I get paid transaction fees?

7) What are these payments I'm getting that aren't generated?

Subsidies sound like an awesome idea! How do I send some BTC to these awesome miners?

9) Do I really need the WHOLE blockchain?

10) How do merged mining payments work?


I'm sure theres some more.  I just see these asked a lot.

+1

[forrestv]

Added those to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool#Frequently_Asked_Questions . Feel free to expand them!

[chunglam]

A simple comparison between our pool and a pure PPS pool.
In peroid 13/2/2012 0:0:0 UTC to 19/2/2012 23:59:59 UTC, 31 blocks found by our pool.
In that peroid, I assume the average hash rate is 260GHash/s and the difficulty is (1376302+1379647)/2=1377974.5.
In theory, a 400MH/s hash rate rig will probably find very close to 8046 shares per day.
260GH/s means 260*1024/400*8046=5355317.6 shares per day, equal to 3.8864 blocks per day and 27.2 blocks per week.

We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

[rjk]

A simple comparison between our pool and a pure PPS pool.
In peroid 13/2/2012 0:0:0 UTC to 19/2/2012 23:59:59 UTC, 31 blocks found by our pool.
In that peroid, I assume the average hash rate is 260GHash/s and the difficulty is (1376302+1379647)/2=1377974.5.
In theory, a 400MH/s hash rate rig will probably find very close to 8046 shares per day.
260GH/s means 260*1024/400*8046=5355317.6 shares per day, equal to 3.8864 blocks per day and 27.2 blocks per week.

We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

And those numbers exclude subsidies? P2Pool ROCKS.

[forrestv]

P2Pool release 0.9 - tag: 0.9 - UPDATE REQUIRED before Mar 4 for Bitcoin and Feb 26 for Litecoin

Windows py2exe binary: http://u.forre.st/u/daowkjuo/p2pool_win32_462b252.zip
Source tarball: https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/tarball/0.9
Source zip: https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/zipball/0.9

Changes:

• Compatibility-breaking protocol change
  • Let miners voluntarily raise their share difficulty so P2Pool's required difficulty can drop, which will lower variance for small miners
  • Include SHA256 midstate in shares so that PoW can be verified in isolation, which enables future stronger DoS-proofing
  • No longer allow payouts to go to any script. All payouts will go to pubkey hashes (as with normal transactions), which also reduces the size of shares slightly
• Fix for fork issue on Litecoin network only caused by recent period of fast blocks

Persistent note: I would recommend switching to Bitcoin 0.6.0 RC 1, which includes the RPC getblock call. The getblock call lets P2Pool keep track of block heights more robustly, and so might protect you from sharechain forks. Download it from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63165.0

[kano]

...
We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

i.e. pool had something like +14% luck in that period.

However it's missing some accuracy since you went from TimeA to TimeB not BlockA to BlockB
There is extra time used to get the first block before 00:00:00 (which makes the total time for those block go up) and extra time wasted after the last block until 23:59:59 (which makes the total time for those blocks go down)

[forrestv]

...
We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

i.e. pool had something like +14% luck in that period.

However it's missing some accuracy since you went from TimeA to TimeB not BlockA to BlockB
There is extra time used to get the first block before 00:00:00 (which makes the total time for those block go up) and extra time wasted after the last block until 23:59:59 (which makes the total time for those blocks go down)

Actually, I believe that measuring between two times is more accurate than two blocks. If you measure between two blocks, you're estimate is biased towards more luck. Look at the case of just one block - in 0 time, we got one block and therefore we have infinite hash power. If you look at any one second period, you'll usually get 0 H/s, sometimes some really large number, but never infinity.

[kano]

...
We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

i.e. pool had something like +14% luck in that period.

However it's missing some accuracy since you went from TimeA to TimeB not BlockA to BlockB
There is extra time used to get the first block before 00:00:00 (which makes the total time for those block go up) and extra time wasted after the last block until 23:59:59 (which makes the total time for those blocks go down)

Actually, I believe that measuring between two times is more accurate than two blocks. If you measure between two blocks, you're estimate is biased towards more luck. Look at the case of just one block - in 0 time, we got one block and therefore we have infinite hash power. If you look at any one second period, you'll usually get 0 H/s, sometimes some really large number, but never infinity.

Nope.
If you look at one block you look at the time from the previous block to the block in question.
i.e. what I said above

Edit: interesting mistake to make that one
Satoshi made it in bitcoin to calculate the difficulty change and no one has ever fixed it
(Edit2: of course it will break bitcoin to fix it like any protocol breaking change ... since the calculation would be different)

[Syke]

• Let miners voluntarily raise their share difficulty so P2Pool's required difficulty can drop, which will lower variance for small miners

Sounds great. How does this work?

[-ck]

New cgminer version 2.2.7 designed to cope better with failover circumstances involving p2pool as it effectively works off a different blockchain.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=28402.msg758324#msg758324

[LightRider]

Unable to mine on the latest p2pool with ufasoft .28. No error message given, just sits at 0 KHash/second. Anyone else having a problem like that?

[Frizz23]

We performed 114% better than PPS pool, at least in last week(even with a 1day 7hours long block).

And the next week it might be the other way round.

It's called variance 

[thirdlight]

variance 

By George, (s)he's got it!

[forrestv]

Unable to mine on the latest p2pool with ufasoft .28. No error message given, just sits at 0 KHash/second. Anyone else having a problem like that?

What was the last version of P2Pool that worked?

[finway]

seems the p2pool HASHRATE stop growing ?
what's wrong? full?