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

[jedimstr]

Again.  I've had a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory. I have had good weeks.  The problem is that even at an estimated 19 hours between shares, I'm at 0 payout for over a week while I'm supposed to participate in this "good week".  This isn't a PPLNS issue.  Because already in parallel miners I have payout on BTC Guild with a lot less horsepower than what I've had on p2pool. The share for 24 hours limit is NOT being impelemented on other PPLNS pools. Even though theory says I should be earning more over the course of time on p2pool, 4 month totals do not bare this out.  

[organofcorti]

Again.  I've have a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory.

You notice that you're not being paid enough, but you're not relating it to a probability of earning that amount in that time period. Unless you do that, how can you know whether PPLNS or p2Pool are broken? Your earnings may be quite possible, or even probable.

[jedimstr]

Again.  I've have a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory.

You notice that you're not being paid enough, but you're not relating it to a probability of earning that amount in that time period. Unless you do that, how can you know whether PPLNS or p2Pool are broken? Your earnings may be quite possible, or even probable.

Probability has no bearing anymore when the reward system reduces my probability to 0 due to an arbitrary limit.  Again, one that does not exist in other PPLNS systems.  This is a fatal flaw.

Again. Paid enough is one thing.  Paid nothing is a whole other ball game.

Work effort expended with the majority of my miners and shares were found but p2pool gave me practically nothing in weeks.
BTC guild with a fraction of my GHs workers over the same time period gave me something. Supposedly p2pool had better luck in that time period and I ran this in parallel.

What would you do with that result after running a node for months and months?

[kjj]

And I'm telling you that you are wrong about this.

During the time that you have a share active, you will be getting more per block than you "should", which will balance out the times when you don't have a share active (when you will be getting less than you "should").

In the long run, (fraction of time with share active)*(reward per block) will equal out to (reward per block)*((my hash rate)/(pool hash rate)

Since you missed it before...

[organofcorti]

Again.  I've have a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory.

You notice that you're not being paid enough, but you're not relating it to a probability of earning that amount in that time period. Unless you do that, how can you know whether PPLNS or p2Pool are broken? Your earnings may be quite possible, or even probable.

Probability has no bearing anymore when the reward system reduces my probability to 0 due to an arbitrary limit.  Again, one that does not exist in other PPLNS systems.  This is a fatal flaw.

Probability has everything to do with it. Bitcoin mining is the most probabilistic data source I've ever worked with. How did you calculate a probability of zero?

Again. Paid enough is one thing.  Paid nothing is a whole other ball game.

Work effort expended with the majority of my miners and shares were found but p2pool gave me practically nothing in weeks.
BTC guild with a fraction of my GHs workers over the same time period gave me something. Supposedly p2pool had better luck in that time period and I ran this in parallel.

You're experiencing variance, which is much higher at p2Pool than at other pools. When you have such a low hashrate, you can expect to have many days earning zero btc. If you post your average hashrate and the average share difficulty p2Pool required of you, I can post your expected number of shares submitted per day, and a 95% confidence interval for same.

What would you do with that result after running a node for months and months?

I'm quite risk averse, so I'd move to a pool that has much lower variance. As I said before, this doesn't have to be a centralised pool. Try one of the p2Pool proxies.

[maqifrnswa]

Again.  I've have a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory.

You notice that you're not being paid enough, but you're not relating it to a probability of earning that amount in that time period. Unless you do that, how can you know whether PPLNS or p2Pool are broken? Your earnings may be quite possible, or even probable.

Probability has no bearing anymore when the reward system reduces my probability to 0 due to an arbitrary limit.  Again, one that does not exist in other PPLNS systems.  This is a fatal flaw.

Again. Paid enough is one thing.  Paid nothing is a whole other ball game.

Work effort expended with the majority of my miners and shares were found but p2pool gave me practically nothing in weeks.
BTC guild with a fraction of my GHs workers over the same time period gave me something. Supposedly p2pool had better luck in that time period and I ran this in parallel.

What would you do with that result after running a node for months and months?

I don't think you understand how this works (even though you say you do). You have a legitimate complaint but there are two things going on and I think you're confused:

1) Your probability isn't 0 because of an arbitrary limit. your probability isn't zero at all... And that limit exists in every PPLNS system (that is the "N" of PPLNs, it's the time limit). p2pooll's N isn't that bad, it's 3x the average time to block or 3 days, which ever is shorter. But I think your problem has nothing to do with the "N", but with the difficulty of "S"

2) You have a problem with the local share difficulty, which is a function of the overall p2pool hashrate. There are only 2880 p2pool shares a day, so if you don't have 1/2880 of the hashpower, you are not expected to find one a day. That's why your payout is 0 - you're just not finding shares because it's significantly harder than any other pool.

You can argue to make N larger, but I think it would be better for you to ask to make difficulty lower (ask larger miners to voluntarily increase their share difficulty so they find fewer, but higher valued, shares)

EDIT: The problem is with the ratio of N/SHARE_DIFFICULTY
BTCGuild: 250million per shift*10 shifts/1=2.5e9
P2pool: average_shares_to_block*3/Difficulty=   6814 /463000= 0.146

[jedimstr]

Again.  I've have a p2pool node that has been running for months not weeks.  I'm relating actual experience and evidence based on fact not theory.

You notice that you're not being paid enough, but you're not relating it to a probability of earning that amount in that time period. Unless you do that, how can you know whether PPLNS or p2Pool are broken? Your earnings may be quite possible, or even probable.

Probability has no bearing anymore when the reward system reduces my probability to 0 due to an arbitrary limit.  Again, one that does not exist in other PPLNS systems.  This is a fatal flaw.

Again. Paid enough is one thing.  Paid nothing is a whole other ball game.

Work effort expended with the majority of my miners and shares were found but p2pool gave me practically nothing in weeks.
BTC guild with a fraction of my GHs workers over the same time period gave me something. Supposedly p2pool had better luck in that time period and I ran this in parallel.

What would you do with that result after running a node for months and months?

I don't think you understand how this works (even though you say you do). You have a legitimate complaint but there are two things going on and I think you're confused:

1) Your probability isn't 0 because of an arbitrary limit. your probability isn't zero at all... And that limit exists in every PPLNS system (that is the "N" of PPLNs, it's the time limit). p2pooll's N isn't that bad, it's 3x the average time to block or 3 days, which ever is shorter. But I think your problem has nothing to do with the "N", but with the difficulty of "S"

2) You have a problem with the local share difficulty, which is a function of the overall p2pool hashrate. There are only 2880 p2pool shares a day, so if you don't have 1/2880 of the hashpower, you are not expected to find one a day. That's why your payout is 0 - you're just not finding shares because it's significantly harder than any other pool.

You can argue to make N larger, but I think it would be better for you to ask to make difficulty lower (ask larger miners to voluntarily increase their share difficulty so they find fewer, but higher valued, shares)

EDIT: The problem is with the ratio of N/SHARE_DIFFICULTY
BTCGuild: 250million per shift*10 shifts/1=2.5e9
P2pool: average_shares_to_block*3/Difficulty=   6814 /463000= 0.146

Your analysis is sound.  Same result.  I shouldn't support p2pool anymore because my varying 20GHS to 120GHS on this group of miners have resulted in 0 payout and will continue to result in 0 payout most of the time.

Having miners on Elizium or some other node doesn't change the fact that my 120GHs makes me a small fry that won't get any reward anymore on p2pool.  Meanwhile my much smaller amount on BTC Guild has at least earned me enough to help pay off a few of my daughter's daycare payments in recent weeks (that's 16Ghs).  Again.  With facts as laid out, what would you do?

So thanks everyone and I really tried.  P2pool is a great concept.  I wish it all the luck in the world.  Unfortunately that luck seems to only payout the guys with datacenters full of miners.

[xyzzy099]

I have to say I agree with Jedimstr.  All the mathematical analysis is accurate, but if you are a small miner, it is not helpful.

In a world where difficulty increases every two weeks at best, going a whole week with no payout at all is just not acceptable - and that is the situation low-hashrate miners are in now with p2pool.

[IYFTech]

I also agree, and have been of this opinion for some time now, but was pretty much ignored. P2pool has been getting less small miner friendly for months now, and it won't get any better I'm afraid unless a change is made. I simply switch my node off when luck is bad & mine at other pools, switching my node on again when luck is good - but even that seems to be a waste of time lately - even when luck is good it's impossible for small miners to get a share, so they sit and watch the blocks float by without payment......

A p2peer pool that only pays people with massive hashing power kind of goes against the p2peer idea in my opinion. It won't be long until my node will be switched off for good I fear 

[kjj]

Having miners on Elizium or some other node doesn't change the fact that my 120GHs makes me a small fry that won't get any reward anymore on p2pool.

You are absolutely, positively 100% dead wrong about this.  You still get exactly the same reward that you "should" be getting.  See any of my last few posts in this thread.

[jedimstr]

Having miners on Elizium or some other node doesn't change the fact that my 120GHs makes me a small fry that won't get any reward anymore on p2pool.

You are absolutely, positively 100% dead wrong about this.  You still get exactly the same reward that you "should" be getting.  See any of my last few posts in this thread.

Ok I'm wrong.  And my wallet is lying to me.  And I didn't use those coins that I DIDNT get from p2pool to pay for daycare.  Sure whatever


You can tell me I'm wrong till you're blue in the face.  Fact is over the last few weeks the pittance of power I threw at BTC guild earned me a magnitude more than the majority of firepower I threw at P2pool.  I USED and Traded this BTC already so go ahead and huff and puff all you want it doesn't change FACT and Evidence at hand for me.  

[oldbushie]

Block 273640 is interesting. 45.2 BTC, courtesy of an overpaid (20.14628295 BTC) fee. I wonder if BitMillions.com want their fees back? Surely this wasn't intended.

https://blockchain.info/tx/a2d1e19331f4ea274079c94382560bbb4f32165ed647a33adad651a604e7caa2

I'm wondering if this threw the payments out of whack, because right after that the subsequent two payouts have been half what I got before it. That's kind of a sharp drop. I'm sure it will balance out again but it's a bit baffling.

[K1773R]

Block 273640 is interesting. 45.2 BTC, courtesy of an overpaid (20.14628295 BTC) fee. I wonder if BitMillions.com want their fees back? Surely this wasn't intended.

https://blockchain.info/tx/a2d1e19331f4ea274079c94382560bbb4f32165ed647a33adad651a604e7caa2

I'm wondering if this threw the payments out of whack, because right after that the subsequent two payouts have been half what I got before it. That's kind of a sharp drop. I'm sure it will balance out again but it's a bit baffling.

oh, sweet! donations!
about time that p2pool gets such a block.

[kjj]

Having miners on Elizium or some other node doesn't change the fact that my 120GHs makes me a small fry that won't get any reward anymore on p2pool.

You are absolutely, positively 100% dead wrong about this.  You still get exactly the same reward that you "should" be getting.  See any of my last few posts in this thread.

Ok I'm wrong.  And my wallet is lying to me.  And I didn't use those coins that I DIDNT get from p2pool to pay for daycare.  Sure whatever

You can tell me I'm wrong till you're blue in the face.  Fact is over the last few weeks the pittance of power I threw at BTC guild earned me a magnitude more than the majority of firepower I threw at P2pool.  I USED and Traded this BTC already so go ahead and huff and puff all you want it doesn't change FACT and Evidence at hand for me.  

What part of "over time" and "in the long run" do you not understand?  Did you miss the part where I'm running a third of the power that you are running?

I don't really care about you, but I'm not a big fan of you spreading lies in here.  P2pool does NOT cheat people with low hashrates.

I guess if you really need that $7 each day for daycare, it may make sense for you to mine somewhere where you can get the steady payout.  But you would earn more over time on p2pool.

[xyzzy099]

Having miners on Elizium or some other node doesn't change the fact that my 120GHs makes me a small fry that won't get any reward anymore on p2pool.

You are absolutely, positively 100% dead wrong about this.  You still get exactly the same reward that you "should" be getting.  See any of my last few posts in this thread.

Ok I'm wrong.  And my wallet is lying to me.  And I didn't use those coins that I DIDNT get from p2pool to pay for daycare.  Sure whatever

You can tell me I'm wrong till you're blue in the face.  Fact is over the last few weeks the pittance of power I threw at BTC guild earned me a magnitude more than the majority of firepower I threw at P2pool.  I USED and Traded this BTC already so go ahead and huff and puff all you want it doesn't change FACT and Evidence at hand for me.  

What part of "over time" and "in the long run" do you not understand?  Did you miss the part where I'm running a third of the power that you are running?

I don't really care about you, but I'm not a big fan of you spreading lies in here.  P2pool does NOT cheat people with low hashrates.

I guess if you really need that $7 each day for daycare, it may make sense for you to mine somewhere where you can get the steady payout.  But you would earn more over time on p2pool.

I don't think anyone is contending that p2pool is cheating anyone.

The point is that difficulty increases every 10-14 days, and a share a week from now may not be worth the same as a share now.  Share variance is just too big for small miners now on p2pool.

The argument that you will make the same over time is kinda true and kinda not.  You could just as well make the argument that you will make the same solo mining as you will in a pool - but it's not really true because difficulty isn't static.  If you get paid for your shares NOW, at a rate set by current difficulty, you will make more BTC - unless you are very lucky.

[xyzzy099]

The argument that you will make the same over time is kinda true and kinda not.  You could just as well make the argument that you will make the same solo mining as you will in a pool - but it's not really true because difficulty isn't static.  If you get paid for your shares NOW, at a rate set by current difficulty, you will make more BTC - unless you are very lucky.

But if you are very lucky, you'll make a lot more BTC.

On average you'll make the same amount either way...if no one in your pool is cheating or pool hopping or otherwise taking advantage of being in a pool, anyway.

And if you are unlucky you will make a lot less.  The point of pool mining is to eliminate such variance as much as possible.  You are right that it will be pretty much the same over a long enough time, but AGAIN, we mine on pools to eliminate as much variance as possible.  Nowadays, I don't think p2pool does as good a job of that for small miners as some other centralized pools.

That being said, I am not attacking p2pool, so I hope that's not what you think.  I am a big supporter of the p2pool concept, I mine on p2pool myself, and I promote p2pool to others whenever I can.  I just hope that it can be made more friendly to small miners eventually.

[kjj]

And I'm telling you that you are wrong about this.

During the time that you have a share active, you will be getting more per block than you "should", which will balance out the times when you don't have a share active (when you will be getting less than you "should").

In the long run, (fraction of time with share active)*(reward per block) will equal out to (reward per block)*((my hash rate)/(pool hash rate)

Since you missed it before...

So if you have a whole lot of hashing power, why not dedicate a small amount of it during the time that you don't have a share active and all of it during the time that you do have a share active? Then things won't balance out, you'll get more than your fair share, and that extra has to come from somewhere (all the miners that aren't playing this game, which seems to me to be a form of pool hopping).

I suspect that all pools can be gamed in one way or another. If we discover one that definitely can't, we should just build that into Bitcoin itself.

This makes no sense.  Do you have even a rough idea of how p2pool works?

To simplify things, pretend that p2pool's hashrate is good for 1 block per day, and that the share chain only tracks the last 25 shares.  Each share is then good for 1 BTC.  Your mining rigs have a hash rate good for 0.5 BTC per day.  You will, on average, find 1 share every other day.  So, roughly half of the time, you will have an active share, and half the time you won't.  While you have a share active, you will earn 1 BTC.  While you don't have a share active, you will earn zero.  Over 30 days, you'll end up with 15 BTC either way.

[kjj]

So, roughly half of the time, you will have an active share, and half the time you won't.

As I understand it, there are other possibilities: some of the time you'll have more than one active share, and some of the time you'll solve the block. Is this correct?

Yes.  Some fraction of the time you will have 2, 3, 4,... active shares, but for a smaller miner, 0 and 1 will be vastly dominant, with 2 as a novelty, 3 as a rarity, etc.  At any rate, the sum of the series is 1/2 in the example.

[organofcorti]

I suspect all pools, other than ones where all the members trust each other, are going away eventually. I haven't seen one yet that can't be gamed.

Can you explain how any of PPLNS or DGM can be used by a miner to obtain more than their fair share? I'm pretty confident that either you're wrong, or you're mistaking variance for an increase in earnings.

[maqifrnswa]

So, roughly half of the time, you will have an active share, and half the time you won't.

As I understand it, there are other possibilities: some of the time you'll have more than one active share, and some of the time you'll solve the block. Is this correct?

Yes.  Some fraction of the time you will have 2, 3, 4,... active shares, but for a smaller miner, 0 and 1 will be vastly dominant, with 2 as a novelty, 3 as a rarity, etc.  At any rate, the sum of the series is 1/2 in the example.

OK. Now let's continue to say your mining rigs have a hash rate good for 0.5 BTC per day. Let's say you normally use 1/5 of that hashing power mining with P2Pool, and the other 4/5 solo mining. Then, whenever you gain an active share, you dedicate 100% of your hashing power to trying to solve the block.

Do you see how this will get you more than 0.5 BTC per day, if all other things are equal?

This does not work. You end up with exactly the same expected value. The days you find a p2pool share you get more than 0.5, the days you don't find a share you get only 0.4. It will exactly average out to 0.5 BTC per day over the course of several days.