[0 GH/s 0% fee SMPPS] ArsBitcoin mining pool!

[miscreanity]

Sad to hear that, added to the post above as well!

Sad to hear what? That I don't display a gajillion decimal points on the site?  Or, doubles aren't precise enough for you either?

This is personal preference of a purist nature and anyone unhappy with double floats is welcome to find another pool. This is along the lines of the 80/20 rule wherein 80%+ of the complaints are raised by 20% or less of the participants.

Other than the recent disconnects, Ars and Eligius are the most consistent pools for me. Thanks for putting in the effort.

[gentakin]

I will tell you why it makes sense to store it as a double. Currently, each PPS share is worth 0.000031989190 BTC. If you round that to a satoshi, then you only get 0.00003198 BTC.

You could save it in 1/1000000 satoshi (feel free to add zeroes), which still is an integer and therefore allows precise addition and multiplication. Floats and doubles simply tend to give off-by-small-amounts results when calculating, and those add up with time. Floating point arithmetic shouldn't be used with financial data. http://speleotrove.com/decimal/

However, numbers with 1/1000000-satoshi-units might be too large for either PHP (without extensions for arbitrary size integers) or the database system, so double is probably a good compromise. It seems to work well.

[BurningToad]

The remaining sources of occasional connection issues are:
1) Sometimes the 5 min stats calcs can cause issues.  This is usually when there hasn't been a new block on the bitcoin network in a while (30 min+) which is a trigger for some behind the scenes work.  I can improve this in the future.

I improved this cause of RPC errors as well.

[NetTecture]

Personally I love that pool. Stales are too high, though. Last days on BTC I got less than .2% stales, here I am at 0.57%. Stales seem to be a little too often. Server not powerfull enough?

[RandyFolds]

Sorry, but storing monetary values in floats is just... something I really don't like. At all.

Having more than 8 decimals ready is nice, but using floats for that is just not the style of coding I support at all. Bitcoins are atomic units.

I am sure BurningToad would be happy to review any coding you submit to him for possible inclusion into his pool. I don't doubt that he could use some help, what with running this 0% fee pool that has sextupled in size in three weeks all by his lonesome.

Frankly, I don't think you've got much to bitch about...

[manifold]

Hi, thousand thanks for your pool. Finally I can mine anytime I want as long and short as I want without worrying about "missing a lucky block". It's perfect for people like me not mining 24/7.
I get a steady stream of BTC directly related to my power usage and I don't have to worry about the pool's hashing speed.
Thanks!

[gade202]

Is there an optimum surplus level for the BTC pool?

[BurningToad]

Is there an optimum surplus level for the BTC pool?

I can't verify the math, but I asked Meni Rosenfeld to do some numbers for me here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=27870.msg376769#msg376769

Using some assumptions that won't hold steady (like pool hash rate), according to Meni, the probability that the SMPPS buffer will be negative exactly a year from now is about 33%.  The probability that the SMPPS buffer would be negative at any point during the next year is 66%.  So we haven't reached an "extremely safe" buffer amount by any means.  

[BurningToad]

Hello,

The pool has grown beyond its ability to scale well and provide a high level of stability and service.  See hashrate graph here:
http://stats.nuradu.com/

Therefore, I am temporarily closing registrations until I can provide a solid level of service to current members.  I am also thinking about the possibility of a mandatory fee in the future of 0.5% to 1%, but I am undecided.  This fee would help cover my costs and give me the ability to add additional servers if needed to help scale and support more users.  If I implement a fee, I would give at least 24 hour notice and email all current members.

Now that registrations are closed, my top priority is to scale the current code/server to be able to support a higher load.  Once again, though, there is still currently no mandatory fee.

Thanks for your understanding!

[geek-trader]

BurningToad:

We appreciate your efforts in running this pool.  It is one of the most stable and reliable pools around.  We know you don't get paid, and in fact, do not make enough in donations to even cover costs.  We do realize the many, many hours of work you put into this.

Do what you need to do to keep this pool at it's current high quality, and we will support you.

[Meatball]

Agreed here.  Been extremely happy with my mining here on Ars and major props to BT for keeping all this going! 

+1 for a mandatory fee of 1%.  Least we can do is cover the costs of the servers and make sure things stay stable and can scale up as the pool grows.

Thanks!

[gentakin]

I am also thinking about the possibility of a mandatory fee in the future of 0.5% to 1%, but I am undecided.

My donations are set to 1%, so yeah.. I think you should set a mandatory fee to pay for the server.

I noticed your pool resets miner connections after 50sec (if I interpret that wireshark output correctly). I had poclbm set to request new work after 57sec, which caused the connection to drop and poclbm to reconnect every minute when I submitted no share between two getworks. I'm not sure what the default setting is, now I'm using 45sec and the connection is stable. If some miners use default ~50sec (with X-Roll-NTime), this could put some "easy to get rid of" load on the server, although probably not that much.

Have you tried reducing the priority of maintenance processes? (If those maintenance things like backups are still a problem.) I guess ionice could help.. Never tried that though.

[BurningToad]

I have the required knowledge to help scale the server, it is just a lack of time to implement things at the moment.  I was out of town this weekend when the server grew so much.

Right now it is all a DB scaling issue.  So I can improve the front-end code to be less DB intensive, or spin up another server to handle website/stats/payout calculations.  These all take time though, so I am trying to buy myself some by closing registrations.

[spudhed]

has the pps share rate dropped? the site says:

Current PPS Value   0.000029570125 BTC

edit

my bad difficulty just went up

[RandyFolds]

Agreed here.  Been extremely happy with my mining here on Ars and major props to BT for keeping all this going! 

+1 for a mandatory fee of 1%.  Least we can do is cover the costs of the servers and make sure things stay stable and can scale up as the pool grows.

Thanks!

Make that three for the mandatory fee. You oughta' be getting paid for this, rather than paying for us to use this.

Thanks again for all the help over IRC and all the work you've put in to create this. I've got nothing but good things to say about the pool and it's members.

[miscreanity]

Please feel free to correct me if my assumptions or math are wrong in any way. From the pool stats page, the latest round currently has about 3.86 million shares valued at 0.000029570125 BTC per share and a donation weight of 0.4480.

3860000 * 0.004480 = 17292.8 shares
17292.8 * 0.000029570125 = 0.511350258 BTC

This has been a very slow round, taking over 18 hours to find a new block. If the frequency remains at an average of 1 block every 24 hours, then:

0.511350258 * 30 = 15.3405075 BTC/month

At the recent Mt. Gox exchange low of approximately $13/BTC, that comes out to roughly $200/month.

I don't know what the server costs are, but from the above analysis, 0.5-1% fee implementation seems a very reasonable rate to cover bandwidth and processing expenses, as well as at least some of BT's time spent on the pool.

Aside from that, it would appear that the decline in USD/BTC rate has met with enough demand to suggest a bottom. As the rate rises, the incurred overhead costs should marginalize further, providing a much-deserved increase in return for BT.

[RandyFolds]

Please feel free to correct me if my assumptions or math are wrong in any way. From the pool stats page, the latest round currently has about 3.86 million shares valued at 0.000029570125 BTC per share and a donation weight of 0.4480.

3860000 * 0.004480 = 17292.8 shares
17292.8 * 0.000029570125 = 0.511350258 BTC

This has been a very slow round, taking over 18 hours to find a new block. If the frequency remains at an average of 1 block every 24 hours, then:

0.511350258 * 30 = 15.3405075 BTC/month

At the recent Mt. Gox exchange low of approximately $13/BTC, that comes out to roughly $200/month.

I don't know what the server costs are, but from the above analysis, 0.5-1% fee implementation seems a very reasonable rate to cover bandwidth and processing expenses, as well as at least some of BT's time spent on the pool.

Aside from that, it would appear that the decline in USD/BTC rate has met with enough demand to suggest a bottom. As the rate rises, the incurred overhead costs should marginalize further, providing a much-deserved increase in return for BT.

That current donation weight includes a lot of people who were around in the formative days who recognized a good thing and are giving large percentages to support the growth of the pool. I won't reduce my donation if a mandatory 1% is implemented. I would love to see the donation weight rise above 1% and our volume to continue to skyrocket. BT has obviously worked hard to whip this together, and he's helped me out a million times on the IRC. C'mon everyone...make it rain btc.

[The_JMiner]

Yea karma coming back for all those short rounds now. Oh well I think we have a good enough buffer (I hope).

[coblee]

At the recent Mt. Gox exchange low of approximately $13/BTC, that comes out to roughly $200/month.

I don't know what the server costs are, but from the above analysis, 0.5-1% fee implementation seems a very reasonable rate to cover bandwidth and processing expenses, as well as at least some of BT's time spent on the pool.

I think BT mentioned that it costs roughly $8-$9 per day for the server costs alone. That adds up to $240-$270 a month. So with a %.5 fee, it almost covers that. I think 1% fee seems fair to cover the server costs and BT's time. Plus if there's a need increase number of servers, that will cost money too.

BT has really done a tremendous job with ArsBitcoin. I'm all for having a fee and help keep a good thing going.

[miscreanity]

I think BT mentioned that it costs roughly $8-$9 per day for the server costs alone. That adds up to $240-$270 a month. So with a %.5 fee, it almost covers that.

Yes, about 0.63% would cover the 13.5BTC or $270/month, all else being equal. Hmm... I think I'm going to increase my donation...

Hey BT - just go for a 1% fee. It's a good buffer if BTC languishes around the current price level and you can always lower it as the pool grows.