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

[IYFTech]

The sooner someone forks p2pool from the donation demanding invisible-dev here, the sooner the community can start developing p2pool to make it compatible with all the available mining hardware.

Forking is only useful when the original dev doesn't develop and doesn't accept patches. Obviously you didn't bother to educate yourself on the current state of p2pool by reading the list of past year's commit.

His wording may be wrong/incorrect but his point isn't.

IYFT simply stated he wants to move p2pool forward, not put this on hiatus like forrestv said.

Exactly, thank you.

I'm beginning to think that gyverlb is actually forrestv?......

[Yurock]

I'm against donations in a form of a fee. P2Pool has a number of disadvantages for miners comparing to centralized pools. There are large pools with zero fees. By asking money from miners we scare them further away. ASICs are expensive and have a limited useful life, so miners are generally only concerned about short-term ROI. Miners are not who care about future of Bitcoin. They are not ones we should expect donations from.

Instead we should appeal to those who have a stake in the Bitcoin world. There are large bitcoin holders and Bitcoin businesses. We should set up bounties, grants and subsidies directed towards mining decentralization. This way we can also fund P2Pool development.

[IYFTech]

  I'll just put my flack jacket on.........

[gyverlb]

The sooner someone forks p2pool from the donation demanding invisible-dev here, the sooner the community can start developing p2pool to make it compatible with all the available mining hardware.

Forking is only useful when the original dev doesn't develop and doesn't accept patches. Obviously you didn't bother to educate yourself on the current state of p2pool by reading the list of past year's commit.

His wording may be wrong/incorrect but his point isn't.

IYFT simply stated he wants to move p2pool forward, not put this on hiatus like forrestv said.

Yes, IYFT simply stated. Some people here are really good at stating things (between sad facts and blatant lies with gross exaggerations in between).

IYFT wants to move p2pool forward? Where is his code that forrestv didn't want to merge?

Or is it that he thinks that simply stating things will move p2pool forward. That's more or less the definition of a spoiled child.

P2pool is free, open-source, no-one forces anyone to use it and to give anything to the author (or don't they know how to read?) but that's not enough, the author doesn't have the right to his own life and should develop new code in a timely manner just because some people would like to have their needs fulfilled?
Guess what: all more and less stable pools donate to the maintainer more than what we give forrestv although they don't have to solve the same technical problems (and most of them fall to DoS attacks on occasion, which I've yet to witness on p2pool). Without forrestv everyone on p2pool would pay between 2 or 3% of their income to pool operators or risk suffering downtimes or even losses when pools vanish into thin air (if you don't know what I mean, you probably didn't mine for long: pools with 0 fees are a little too good to be true, some simply cheat you of merged-mined coins for example...). Everybody using it (correctly with compatible hardware) is earning money.

It doesn't do what you need? Don't use it until it does, end of story. It does? What is your reason not to thank the author for your additional gains which you wouldn't have without him (greed excluded of course)?

[gyverlb]

The sooner someone forks p2pool from the donation demanding invisible-dev here, the sooner the community can start developing p2pool to make it compatible with all the available mining hardware.

Forking is only useful when the original dev doesn't develop and doesn't accept patches. Obviously you didn't bother to educate yourself on the current state of p2pool by reading the list of past year's commit.

His wording may be wrong/incorrect but his point isn't.

IYFT simply stated he wants to move p2pool forward, not put this on hiatus like forrestv said.

Exactly, thank you.

Don't see anything constructive from you.

I'm beginning to think that gyverlb is actually forrestv?......

Which basically shows everyone here with any will to check facts that you're a bit quick on the writing and slow on the fact checking.

[phillipsjk]

I don't believe anybody disabled donations because of a lack of development - pool donations have been comparably low for a very long time, since before this development hiatus - so I don't think I'm being "punished" for not working hard enough or obviously enough. I don't think that most miners ever think about their donation amount again after setting it or pay attention to development. (I don't blame them for not dedicating their lives to tweaking P2Pool. )

When setting up my P2Pool node, I did some math and tried to assess the state of the code. I think the calculation I used was something like: 25BTCx$1000/BTCx1%=$250/block. Let's assume the price is $500 and P2Pool gets one block/day. 25BTCx$500/BTCx1%x30days/month=$3750/month or $45,000 per year. It did not appear to me that anybody was working on the code full-time (or even half-time).

I set my pool donations to 0.1% It is a level that triggers a "consider donating more" message in the log. Part of the reason is that the code does not work with mining proxies. I have examined the code and determined what the problem is. The slush stratum proxy that I looked at tries to auto-detect stratum support by sending a dummy getwork request first. However, P2Pool also auto-detects the protocol the miner is using. In this case, it falls back to the getwork protocol, which the mining proxy does not support. I could not see an easy way to disable the autodetection because it is also required for overloading the pool stats. I even thought of a possible simple work-around, but have not gotten around to testing it yet: Make use of the x-stratum (would have to look up the exact name) header that the proxy expects. TL;DR: I figure I can donate patches rather than BTC... If I can just find the time.

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.

[miningwithus]

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.

It is absolutely intentional, forestv has even gone out of his way to make it hard to change his donation address easily within the code:
https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/blob/39767a2c7da3b22efc8d90623dcda12b6ab4f419/p2pool/data.py#L52

These are forrestv's addresses that he gets donations to:

https://blockchain.info/address/1Kz5QaUPDtKrj5SqW5tFkn7WZh8LmQaQi4 Total Received 210.78862928 BTC
https://blockchain.info/address/1J1zegkNSbwX4smvTdoHSanUfwvXFeuV23 Total Received 36.7754832 BTC
http://ltc.blockr.io/address/info/LeD2fnnDJYZuyt8zgDsZ2oBGmuVcxGKCLd Total received 1,709.79411620 LTC

[minerpool-de]

Our german Litecoin (LTC) P2Pool Node is now online with 0% Fee! The Server is a Dell Poweredge with 8 x Xeon, 32 GB RAM and 2 x 1 TB WD Raid 1 HDD. Lets rock.

This way to Pool: http://litecoin.minerpool.de:9327
User : Litecoin Address
Password: any

[gyverlb]

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.

I'm not a fan of automatic donation either: the main reason why I disable it myself is that I prefer distributing my donations to developers manually to better keep track of my donations (I have donated to ckolivas, lukejr and kano too).
But I understand why it makes sense for forrestv, most users wouldn't donate anything otherwise.

Currently (https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/graphs/contributors), forrestv is by far the largest contributor, with more than 75% of the commits (not counting merges for code or content contributed by other developers which isn't free).
So it's not a problem currently: no other developer can claim having contributed meaningfully without looking like a troll. The second contributor way behind forrestv with ~1% of the commits is coblee who provided the litecoin support (which served as a base for other scrypt support). I'm not sure who gets the donations when using p2pool for litecoin, it might be coblee.
If someone else took over or even contributed large enough amounts of code they would have to ask forrestv if they can receive part of the donations or fork if they can't agree on this.

[Collider]

sp30s should once again work with p2pool and 1000 6TH devices will be delivered in August.

Some of those will surely use p2pool.

[gyverlb]

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.

It is absolutely intentional, forestv has even gone out of his way to make it hard to change his donation address easily within the code:
https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/blob/39767a2c7da3b22efc8d90623dcda12b6ab4f419/p2pool/data.py#L52

Hard to change?

You just pointed to the single line needed to change to change the donation address.  

[gyverlb]

Easy, bud. I'm not your enemy, here.

So let's go at these one by one.

1) Moving forward isn't always "code-based", that's a close-minded way to think, no? Even something as trivial as spreading awareness is moving p2pool forward. Talking about ideas, basic brainstorming.. all things that help p2pool move forward. So maybe his contribution is bringing up the topic to discuss so people who are competent can further discuss.

That's not like he just started and he is alone on this. Competent devs don't often engage in technical discussions here, they mainly use github and irc.

2) Actually no, by default you are paying the author. If "nobody was forcing you" then by default it would be 0% and you would opt-in for give author.

That's twisting reality, having to opt-out isn't the same has being forced to do something.
Plus it means that the only people who pay without realizing it are the ones who don't bother to read the doc. These people are usually wasting everyone's time asking the very same questions that the documentation answers. I see it as instant karma.

3) Heard of ghash.io , it's this small mining pool with 10% fees, no merged coins and the worst UI  

And you seriously believe that they provide their time and hosting fees for free? I'm not sure what their business model is, but I don't believe for a second it's throwing money out the window.

4) I've thanked him and donated plenty. Who's the one dishing out for donations, better check that definition of greed.

In closing you're missing the point. p2pool can be huge. HUGE. I'm sorry if the author doesn't feel that way but at this point it is bigger than him and his personal issues. Which brings me back to the original quote from IFYT: Find someone else to do.

« greed »: have you computed his earnings with best and worst case scenario (depending on when he sold his donations) and compared it to the amount of work done (count the lines of code in p2pool to have a rough estimate and ask a dev if you aren't one for an estimation of the time he would need to produce the same)? Until someone compared the two there's nothing to say about greed.

« p2pool can be huge »: that's a free statement ignoring all technical difficulties. Of course if all the technical problems raised by trying to bring lower variance to slower miners were magically solved by another dev and forrestv wouldn't cooperate I would have a far different look on the situation. But the actual situation is simple: no one else has contributed significantly yet and the only one working on solutions is forrestv.

« Find someone else »: and whom do you have in mind?

[cathoderay]

You? 

Not really - I'm joking. Really, I am.

[phillipsjk]

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.

Currently (https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool/graphs/contributors), forrestv is by far the largest contributor, with more than 75% of the commits (not counting merges for code or content contributed by other developers which isn't free).
So it's not a problem currently: no other developer can claim having contributed meaningfully without looking like a troll. The second contributor way behind forrestv with ~1% of the commits is coblee who provided the litecoin support (which served as a base for other scrypt support). I'm not sure who gets the donations when using p2pool for litecoin, it might be coblee.

That does not invalidate my point: why make more than trivial commits if miners are being asked to pay another developer in an opt-out manner?

The P2Pool.info thing sounds like it might need it's own maintainer, for example. We had somebody asking for historical data in the thread here to set up a replacement. They may be a good candidate to take it over.

[gmaxwell]

That does not invalidate my point: why make more than trivial commits if miners are being asked to pay another developer in an opt-out manner?

Having been around p2pool for longer than most— I can't agree with your views here. The donation income on P2pool has always been a trivial amount— sure, aggregates sound impressive when you don't realize that most of it was at $10 price levels— and I understand forrestv spent a fair amount buying mining hardware (since vendors have never eagerly tried to work with p2pool).  If someone was contributing substantially I don't have any doubt that forrestv would happily share donations with them.

From my own perspective p2pool exists in something of a design minima— it does everything _I_ want well.  There are some tweaks here or there that I might like (e.g. support for failover to another bitcoind) which don't even reach the level of want for me to go dig into the codebase and to it.   Further development of P2pool would be things like reorganizing the sharechain to support other payout schemes or reduce variance for small miners... this isn't small work that most people are just going to go out in do— I think my experience in bitcoin core tells me that contributors in that space almost don't exist.  For myself I'm perfectly happy with my level of share variance on P2Pool, so I can certantly understand why others aren't rushing in.

[minerpool-de]

Our german Litecoin (LTC) P2Pool Node is now online with 0% Fee! The Server is a Dell Poweredge with 8 x Xeon, 32 GB RAM and 2 x 1 TB WD Raid 1 HDD. Lets rock.

This way to Pool: http://litecoin.minerpool.de:9327
User : Litecoin Address
Password: any

Congrats

Make sure to get listed here http://p2pool.litecointools.com/?v=1&ctry=7

mhhh. I cant add my Node? Is here nobody for a short Intermezzo with the Node? My Zeusminer comes in approx a week

[nreal]

So we should donate to an expert who makes the frontend that works and has maybe the same info as p2poolinfo once had..

I'll be done with recreating p2pool.info in a few weeks, no donations requested.

Link: http://minefast.coincadence.com/p2pool-stats.php

The front end will be ongoing project for a while until I think it's right...

Link Node: http://minefast.coincadence.com/index.php
Link Miner: http://minefast.coincadence.com/miner.php?id=19vXrwKGUhK4cCU8tA4kWZgbChcmh9a6qj

Looks very good to me, great work 

[ovidus]

Me and my development team here at Templar Crypto Research currently are analyzing the code of p2pool to see the viability of implementing fixes as well as new features such as a gui as well as some of the requested changes, hopefully it shouldn't be to difficult

[norgan]

Me and my development team here at Templar Crypto Research currently are analyzing the code of p2pool to see the viability of implementing fixes as well as new features such as a gui as well as some of the requested changes, hopefully it shouldn't be to difficult

Great to hear and look forward to your input.

[mdude77]

Another thing I'd add to the list...

Fix being able to get lots of transactions without GetBlocktemplate Latency going through the roof.  OR something that alleviates the problem.  Long term p2pool isn't going to cut it if it can't get transactions.

M