It is interesting that you'd make the comment about fees being the necessary evil on a pool that avoids paying them (by increasing the block size quite a lot)
Could you provide some proof that traditional pool payouts have less of an impact on block size when compared to P2Pool payouts? I do believe this is what you are insinuating with the quoted comment.
Just quickly browsing some blocks and this is what I find.
A deepbit block with what I am assuming are deepbit pool payouts. (1VayNert is deepbit).
http://blockexplorer.com/b/17300521.192 kB (may be slightly off, I did this manually and could have missed a payment or two) of transactions with the 1VayNert address.
A P2Pool block with the obvious payout.
http://blockexplorer.com/b/1730037.603 kB of P2Pool payout (at least this information is easy to audit).
Is this conclusive? Obviously not.
The reason I'm posting this is because I think you should provide some evidence before making veiled accusations that P2Pool or Eligius are adding to the size of the block chain at a rate that is greater than any other pool.
Can you show that it isn't by design or can you only pick a simple example and not even understand what that example represents?
(Also interesting that you ignored the point of the post and zeroed in on the extra bracketed text
- I presume that means you have no comment on the point of the post?)
Anyway ...
P2Pool pays each person who provides at least one share every 3 blocks, the amount they are due every block no matter how small it is.
Assuming a normal pool pays each person with a single transaction every block they mine, then yep a normal pool is using approximately 7.5 times the amount of blockchain space ... according to those 2 blocks (of course a normal pool doesn't pay everyone every time a block gets mined ... but anyway)
I take that was the point of why you mentioned those 2 specific blocks but didn't bother to show any understanding of what they represent?
Of course, you can't change that payment process with P2Pool - it's fixed by design.
With any pool that deals with balances and payments, that can be reduced by simply aggregating payments (as normal pools already do)
But of course they would need to have less than 1 payment per 7.5 blocks the pool mines per person (which I have no idea of the statistics - and by the looks of that block, DeepBit might not?) if they paid each person with a separate txn.
Anyway ... if DeepBit people are being paid on average more than once every 7.5 DeepBit blocks then DeepBit is using more blockchain space than P2Pool
Is this true? Feel free to apply some brain power ...
However, the point being that it is possible on a standard pool to aggregate payouts and to pay multiple people per txn, but if normal pools are not aggregating payments and also not paying multiple people per txn then they too are wasting block space ... which can be changed, unlike P2Pool that cannot.
The opposite way to consider it is imagine that every miner was using P2Pool (yeah OK P2Pool can't handle that - but what the hell just imagine it anyway - what certain P2Pool zealots have wet dreams about) then every person who generates a share on average once every 3 blocks or more will get on average a payment in every P2Pool block
To put that in perspective: to receive on average one share per 3 blocks (at the moment roughly 14hrs) with a P2Pool share difficulty of roughly 670, you would require approx 60Mh/s ... to thus get a payment every P2Pool block.
Based on P2Pool being roughly 330GH/s - that's roughly 4.5 blocks a day:
Interesting, if P2Pool is making 4.5 blocks a day and a normal pool is paying every person on average once every 5/3 days, they are using roughly the same amount of block-chain space.
Thus me saying a 'lot' is certainly an exaggeration.
If pools pay single transactions per person and on average each person more often than once every 5/3 days then normal pools are using more blockchain space than P2Pool.
