ckpool.org CLOSED

[userghost]

What would be the benefit of joining a smaller pool like ck,  over a larger pool like slush or kano.    Is it just because reward share is higher when a block is solved?   If so,  does this just mean we are hoping to get lucky and go on a hot streak?     I was under the impression that it all "evens out" over the long run.   I am new to this and still learning !    

0% fee, so saves more money over the long run. And yes, since you get paid for higher dif shares you can potentially earn more (or less) than other pools. In theory this pool is the 2nd most profitable.

[1713947540]

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[1713947540]

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[1713947540]

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[-ck]

What would be the benefit of joining a smaller pool like ck,  over a larger pool like slush or kano.    Is it just because reward share is higher when a block is solved?   If so,  does this just mean we are hoping to get lucky and go on a hot streak?     I was under the impression that it all "evens out" over the long run.   I am new to this and still learning !    

0% fee, so saves more money over the long run. And yes, since you get paid for higher dif shares you can potentially earn more (or less) than other pools. In theory this pool is the 2nd most profitable.

There is also coinbase generation meaning you don't need to wait to confirm your payout or worry about pool wallet hacks. Additionally because smaller payouts are interleaved it means you don't get lots of small fragmented payouts which ends up leading to bigger fees when you finally spend your coin. Finally even dust payouts eventually get paid out too.

[minefarmbuy]

The way the pool is scored and fee for most, camaraderie for some.

[philipma1957]

What would be the benefit of joining a smaller pool like ck,  over a larger pool like slush or kano.    Is it just because reward share is higher when a block is solved?   If so,  does this just mean we are hoping to get lucky and go on a hot streak?     I was under the impression that it all "evens out" over the long run.   I am new to this and still learning !    

very hard to answer .

 but for me  it is fairly simple I like -ck and want to support him.
To a certain degree i don't care what pool is best.
It is more or less  what pool operator I like and trust the most.
  As for the why of -ck vs kano or slush pretty simple math -ck is better then the 2 of them.

He pays all tx money and charges no fees

That makes him better  then any plns pool.

I would argue pps can be best but it is too complex to explain or calculate.

 It flexes up and down between this pool and some pps pool but I still stay here most of the time.

both f2pool and viabtc do better then -ck some of the time.  But most of the time -ck is better.

[userghost]

Highest PPS that I know of is connectbtc 110% instead of Via and f2p at 105%(?) Also isnt via PPS+?

@110% im getting paid for shares for a 13.75BTC block which we havent even come close to hitting in the past 4+ months.
CK takes my halong T1 miners though as connect btc is bitmain owned and they wont be implementing ASICBoost anytime soon, so I happily split my miners between the 2. With luck, CK could be more profitable, or have more profitable months, but if TX fees stay low PPS seems to be the most profitable way to go.

[-ck]

Highest PPS that I know of is connectbtc 110% instead of Via and f2p at 105%(?) Also isnt via PPS+?

@110% im getting paid for shares for a 13.75BTC block which we havent even come close to hitting in the past 4+ months.
CK takes my halong T1 miners though as connect btc is bitmain owned and they wont be implementing ASICBoost anytime soon, so I happily split my miners between the 2. With luck, CK could be more profitable, or have more profitable months, but if TX fees stay low PPS seems to be the most profitable way to go.

If fees stay low, PPS from the pools will not be sustainable at that rate anyway since the money has to come from somewhere and the blocks won't be reimbursing them for the amount they give out, and it's not like they'd pay you to mine there unless they actually wanted your extra hashrate for nefarious purposes or something stupid. There was an analysis done many years ago by Organofcorti, who unfortunately is no longer active on the forums due to his family, that showed how much money in reserve a PPS pool would have to have to cope with the worst possible luck stretches and it was astoundingly high. Add to that the fact that PPS pools are the number one potential target for block withholding attacks, it's amazing that more haven't gone under (there are plenty of pools that have come and gone though.)

[userghost]

Highest PPS that I know of is connectbtc 110% instead of Via and f2p at 105%(?) Also isnt via PPS+?

@110% im getting paid for shares for a 13.75BTC block which we havent even come close to hitting in the past 4+ months.
CK takes my halong T1 miners though as connect btc is bitmain owned and they wont be implementing ASICBoost anytime soon, so I happily split my miners between the 2. With luck, CK could be more profitable, or have more profitable months, but if TX fees stay low PPS seems to be the most profitable way to go.

If fees stay low, PPS from the pools will not be sustainable at that rate anyway since the money has to come from somewhere and the blocks won't be reimbursing them for the amount they give out, and it's not like they'd pay you to mine there unless they actually wanted your extra hashrate for nefarious purposes or something stupid. There was an analysis done many years ago by Organofcorti, who unfortunately is no longer active on the forums due to his family, that showed how much money in reserve a PPS pool would have to have to cope with the worst possible luck stretches and it was astoundingly high. Add to that the fact that PPS pools are the number one potential target for block withholding attacks, it's amazing that more haven't gone under (there are plenty of pools that have come and gone though.)

How does block withholding work? I always thought it would be the pool that did the withholding, is it the miner that does it instead? What nefarious purposes can hashrate be used for (besides block withholding)?

[-ck]

How does block withholding work? I always thought it would be the pool that did the withholding, is it the miner that does it instead? What nefarious purposes can hashrate be used for (besides block withholding)?

A pool stands nothing to gain by withholding a block - they lose the block reward! Block withholding works by the miner withholding the block from the pool, but still getting paid by the pool - that only works if the upstream pool pays you whether the pool finds blocks or not; i.e. for PPS only. The miner gets their payout regardless, but the pool gets nothing, thus harming the pool, but also advantageous to the miner is the fact it keeps mining difficulty lower.

Pools have used their hashrate in the past to secretly merge mine other coins, including at least one known public instance of destroying an altcoin. The main concern with a pool getting enough hashrate is obviously double spending, but a pool would need to be 1/3 of the network hashrate or more so that's unlikely to happen just because of a high PPS rewards percentage... unless antpool started offering too high for comfort.

[wh0]

BLOCK! (527356)
13hr 20mins! 

[philipma1957]

BLOCK! (527356)
13hr 20mins! 

well that was hours ago   but it was a "lucky" block  well under 100%

would  be nice if it hits again while my lamb ribs are roasting in the oven and my wife and I walk on the beach.

We are just about to drive to the beach for a nice  pre diner walk.

[ComputerGenie]

Watching the chain to see if we win a double race... likely the only adrenaline-inducing thing left in mining. 
Watching the pool you mine in lose that race... likely the worst feeling left in mining. 

[cryptosvt]

Thank you for the answers guys.   I have a measly 170 t/h up and running with slush and due to hit payout threshold in a day or so~      When that happens I will make the switch and come join the party!   

[-ck]

Watching the chain to see if we win a double race... likely the only adrenaline-inducing thing left in mining.  
Watching the pool you mine in lose that race... likely the worst feeling left in mining.  

Alas it was a foregone conclusion. It wasn't much of an orphan race at all, so even the fast block change code in the pool couldn't have prevented us losing that one.

For people wondering what he's talking about, we had a block orphaned. What happened was the block had already been solved by another pool, but a miner submitted a stale share 700ms later that was also a block solve. There was almost no chance it was going to be successful, but the pool will try to use it as a block solve anyway, forcing bitcoind to accept the block, in the unlikely event it wins the orphan race (or solves two blocks back to back). Realistically the pool can just ignore it since it was stale but we'll try anything to get a block.

Here are the pool logs where you can see it says it's submitting a stale share block solve:

Code:

[2018-06-14 18:11:25.412] Block hash changed to 00000000000000000037e634734805d4a48f7d50125ecc55a2f137e2722a32f3 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.100] Possible stale share block solve diff 10130992321539.841797 ! 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.100] Submitting block data! 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.107] SUBMIT BLOCK RETURNED: inconclusive 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.171] Hash for block height 527471 confirms block was ACCEPTED 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.176] Solved block 527471 by 36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V.0 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.176] User 36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V:{"hashrate1m": "142P", "hashrate5m": "142P", "hashrate1hr": "136P", "hashrate1d": "83.7P", "hashrate7d": "56.6P"} 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.176] Worker 36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V.0:{"hashrate1m": "107P", "hashrate5m": "107P", "hashrate1hr": "102P", "hashrate1d": "73.4P", "hashrate7d": "54.6P"} 
[2018-06-14 18:11:26.272] Block hash changed to 0000000000000000001bc87b3d85516a0b00bf873a43dbef986125c269c210d8 
[2018-06-14 18:32:31.978] Hash for block height 527471 confirms block was ORPHANED

At the end the pool sees that it lost the orphan race and moves to the new block. Unfortunate, but one of the realities of mining. The only fortunate part is the pool code already takes into account what should happen in the case of an orphan, to prevent the interleaved payouts getting out of sync. It will also NOT artificially reset the diff back to 0% since we didn't win a block.

You can see the full details of what would have been a block in this sadly named block file:
http://ckpool.org/blocks/527471.orphaned

[ComputerGenie]

...At the end the pool sees that it lost the orphan race and moves to the new block. Unfortunate, but one of the realities of mining. The only fortunate part is the pool code already takes into account what should happen in the case of an orphan, to prevent the interleaved payouts getting out of sync...

I do have to say that I was watching the pool at the same time and I love that it got marked as unconfirmed until the 2nd block and then marked as orphaned. One of the reasons that I love you as a coder is that you're one of the few that actually make a stratum based on protocol, rather than pure cron checks and/or some other dumb shit I've seen.

[User name used]

99% of the challenge of coding is resolving the 1% of exceptions that need to be planned for and handled correctly when they occur.

[wh0]

Our difficulty % was around 125%

Code:

 "solvedby": "36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V",
 "date": "[2018-06-13 13:28:53.840]",
 "hash": "00000000000000000031552854fde522e73177585ecd463dea64fb503c4e0083",
 "shares": 6085301242740,
 "diff": 123.2

I was wondering where is this 'solvedby' URL?
Thanks!

[pavesi]

Our difficulty % was around 125%

Code:

 "solvedby": "36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V",
 "date": "[2018-06-13 13:28:53.840]",
 "hash": "00000000000000000031552854fde522e73177585ecd463dea64fb503c4e0083",
 "shares": 6085301242740,
 "diff": 123.2

I was wondering where is this 'solvedby' URL?
Thanks!

Are you looking for the URL to actually see the block info ?  Here:  https://btc.com/stats/pool/CKPool
Height:  527,282

[-ck]

Our difficulty % was around 125%

Code:

 "solvedby": "36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V",
 "date": "[2018-06-13 13:28:53.840]",
 "hash": "00000000000000000031552854fde522e73177585ecd463dea64fb503c4e0083",
 "shares": 6085301242740,
 "diff": 123.2

I was wondering where is this 'solvedby' URL?
Thanks!

http://ckpool.org/blocks/

[wh0]

BLOCK! (527356)
13hr 20mins! 

well that was hours ago   but it was a "lucky" block  well under 100%

Ops! 
Forgotten to take into account the timezone. Was too excited! 

Timestamps in the /blocks URL are UTC-5?

[wh0]

Our difficulty % was around 125%

Code:

 "solvedby": "36JMs8rogpizjkkp6eeKMmm3SLbSNo5H9V",
 "date": "[2018-06-13 13:28:53.840]",
 "hash": "00000000000000000031552854fde522e73177585ecd463dea64fb503c4e0083",
 "shares": 6085301242740,
 "diff": 123.2

I was wondering where is this 'solvedby' URL?
Thanks!

http://ckpool.org/blocks/

Thanks! Didn't noticed the above info was at the bottom of the blocks.