[4+ EH] Slush Pool (slushpool.com); Overt AsicBoost; World First Mining Pool

[slush]

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We are the world's first cryptocurrency mining pool founded in 2010.
Since then we have together mined over 1 million BTC.

Reasons to mine on Slush Pool

• low flat fee of 2 % (network fees are shared with miners!)
• stable income thanks to our significant network share (~ 15 blocks a day)
• neat interface with dashboard and worker monitoring
• advanced security with 2FA and payout address locking
• servers in Europe, North America and Asia
• free withdrawals above 0.01 BTC
• Overt AsicBoost compatible

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Original post:
Once people started to use GPU enabled computers for mining, mining became very hard for other people. I'm on bitcoin for few weeks and didn't find block yet (I'm mining on three CPUs). When many people have slow CPUs and they mining separately, each of them compete among themselves AND against rich GPU bastards ;-), because everybody counts sha256 hashes from the same range. Two separate CPUs with 1000khash/s isn't the same as one 2000khash/s machine!. But new feature of the official bitcoin client called 'getwork' now enables work of many computers together, so they don't compete. Because there is now standalone CPU miner (thanks to jgarzik!) and 'getwork' patch is in official client now, I have an idea:

Join poor CPU miners to one cluster and increase their chance to find a block!

How that should work? There will be web page where you can register, enter your wallet address and get URL and your personal rpcuser/rpcpassword for your CPU/GPU miners. When you start own miner with these credentials, server will send you work which was not calculated yet by other members of cluster.

But when your client find winning hash, you do not get full reward for block (50BTC right now), but only proportional part, which you calculate. When you offer 1000khash/s for one day and whole cluster performance will be 20000khash/s and it takes two days to find a block, your reward will be (50/20/2=)1.25BTC.

Advantages? When you have poor standalone computer, you need to wait many weeks or even months for finding full 50BTC reward. When you join cluster like this, you will constantly receive small amount of bitcoins every day or week (depends on full cluster performance).

Disadvantages? You need to trust in central authority (me) that I don't steal block for myself. But I'm goofing around for few week and I'm amazed with bitcoin idea, so I don't plan to steal anybody right now :-).

Another possible problem is that somebody will ask for new work very often, but in fact he will not count real hashes. In this case it will look like he has very strong CPU and he should get big part of reward if cluster find a block. But there is a simple defense against cheaters: Central server sometimes send work which leads to 'winning' hash. Worker which don't return this hash as matching will be permanently banned (login/password and IP address). This was succesfully solved by letting miners calculate proof-of-work. It is not anymore possible to be a part of cluster and not count hashes.

Are you interested in?

[ribuck]

Two separate CPUs with 1000khash/s isn't the same as one 2000khash/s machine!

Actually, they are equal. The low-power machines aren't "racing" against the high power machines. For any given difficulty level, it doesn't even matter how many other machines are generating. If all the other machines dropped off the network, it wouldn't increase the number of blocks you generate (until the next difficulty level adjustment).

The only thing that counts significantly is the difficulty level and your khash/s. There are some relatively minor effects due to network latency, but they're not a big deal.

[td]

I will offer a Six-Way AMD Processor to the Cooperative Mining Group. I tried generating for weeks on it to no avail. I have given up in the mean time and have instead purchased coins for use. I would love to turn the value of my tiny 9,000/k/hash/s into something productive. If nothing else as part of an experiment to make your software more secure. There is another thread already on the forum for the source code to Cooperative Mining but I am not sure that it was complete or successful. There appeared several people participating but no additional work from them. Perhaps it was so successful that they no longer wish to have additional participants into their group- I am unsure. My rate contribution may not win me blocks by myself but as a larger group hopefully I could be helpful. Please let me know if you move forward with this.

[BitLex]

i always liked the idea of distributed mining,
with CPUs its actually the only chance you got to get some coins on a regular basis now and even using a GPU it already takes days to generate a block on your own, rising for sure.

call me in at least for beta-testing, there's always some cores around to share.

[bober182]

Sure seems fair its better then waiting 1 year for 50 bitcoin. Now I wait 1/50 of a year for 1 bitcoin yay!

[slush]

For any given difficulty level, it doesn't even matter how many other machines are generating.

You are true for long term. But I think many people with poor CPUs simply switch off their minings because they see it will take ages until they receive single bitcoin from that. When you are in cluster of cooperative miners, you will receive small amount (say 0.01 BTC if you contribute 0.02% to cluster performance) but more often. I feel that it may be a motivation for people to not shut down their miners.

I think it is extremely important for bitcoin economy to diversify mining across whole network and not leave mining on few lucky guys with fast GPUs.

The only thing that counts significantly is the difficulty level and your khash/s.

Of course. The more khash/s in cluster, the more blocks found by cluster and more often payments to cluster members.

[FreeMoney]

For any given difficulty level, it doesn't even matter how many other machines are generating.

You are true for long term. But I think many people with poor CPUs simply switch off their minings because they see it will take ages until they receive single bitcoin from that. When you are in cluster of cooperative miners, you will receive small amount (say 0.01 BTC if you contribute 0.02% to cluster performance) but more often. I feel that it may be a motivation for people to not shut down their miners.

I think it is extremely important for bitcoin economy to diversify mining across whole network and not leave mining on few lucky guys with fast GPUs.

The only thing that counts significantly is the difficulty level and your khash/s.

Of course. The more khash/s in cluster, the more blocks found by cluster and more often payments to cluster members.

I like the idea, but your rhetoric is awful.

Lucky guys with GPUs? Do you think those are distributed via lottery or something?

[grondilu]

Isn't cooperative mining a form of communism ?

Personnaly I gave this a thought and I think it's useless and much harder to do than one might think.

First I thought it was a problem if only a few nodes were capable of mining.  Now I don't care anymore.  Even if only one was mining all new bitcoins, I wouldn't care much.  This node would do all the work recquired, and in the best way.   Plus, anyone can take its place if it can hash more.

[slush]

Lucky guys with GPUs? Do you think those are distributed via lottery or something?

It is just my feeling of inferiority that I have few Mhash/s :-D

Don't take it personally, I'm OK with GPU miners. But I'd like to give real chance to get few btc for many users with poor computers. That's all.

[slush]

Isn't cooperative mining a form of communism ?

Do you really think cooperation is communism? There is nothing as 'free bitcoins for everybody' in cooperative mining.

[FreeMoney]

Isn't cooperative mining a form of communism ?

Personnaly I gave this a thought and I think it's useless and much harder to do than one might think.

First I thought it was a problem if only a few nodes were capable of mining.  Now I don't care anymore.  Even if only one was mining all new bitcoins, I wouldn't care much.  This node would do all the work recquired, and in the best way.   Plus, anyone can take its place if it can hash more.

There is nothing wrong with voluntary communism. Not sure if you were implying that there is or not. I think someone has worked out the details of making it work, but I'm not sure.

[BitLex]

useless and much harder to do than one might think

i agree on the harder part, there'd be some problems to solve and hurdles to take,
but i don't think it's useless.

any bit of computing-power, be it from CPUs or GPUs, makes our network stronger.
it'll help even those that aren't generating at all, by protecting their coins.

people are willing todo lots of stuff, if you give them at least something in return.
currently you practically don't get anything for adding your cpu/s to the cloud, you probably have to pay for it, so why do it anyway?
most people won't, maybe they will if you give them just a few coins, or bitcents for what they do.

of course bitcoin in general is not about generating at all, but it's a nice way to attract it to a lot more people.

[farmer_boy]

This is fundamentally flawed. I can join the "effort" and figure out how long it generally takes to perform one unit of work. After that time I send a message "ah, too bad I didn't find anything". Then someone does find an answer and I collect.

Now, if I find the answer, I would simply communicate that to the rest of the network (not the central server) and there is no way for you to figure out that I double crossed you.

The distributed method there is now is a good way to mine. Possibly it would be better if it was easier to solve and that you would get less bitcoins, OTOH, people are still generating coins.

[slush]

This is fundamentally flawed. I can join the "effort" and figure out how long it generally takes to perform one unit of work. After that time I send a message "ah, too bad I didn't find anything". Then someone does find an answer and I collect.

Do you mean somebody can cheat by simply asking for work, but not counting hashes? I talked about it already - I will send task which leads to 'winning' hash and when worker does not return it, I will ban them.

Now, if I find the answer, I would simply communicate that to the rest of the network (not the central server) and there is no way for you to figure out that I double crossed you.

Also this kind of cheat will be detected by technique described above. You will succeed at most once before you will be banned by central server.

The distributed method there is now is a good way to mine. Possibly it would be better if it was easier to solve and that you would get less bitcoins, OTOH, people are still generating coins.

Partially agree. But until one mined block will be for more than 1 BTC, cooperative mining should be still better for slow computers, because possible reward in coop can be also in BTC cents or less.

[bitcoin2]

puddinpop has released a Pooled/Remote Mining - client:
https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1458.0;all

Is this client gpu-ready?

[jgarzik]

puddinpop has released a Pooled/Remote Mining - client:
https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1458.0;all

Is this client gpu-ready?

Your answer is here in the thread where you originally posted this question.

[bitcoin2]

puddinpop has released a Pooled/Remote Mining - client:
https://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1458.0;all

Is this client gpu-ready?

Your answer is here in the thread where you originally posted this question.

The Remote mining in the official bitcoin release has no "send back" - function but we are searching a pooling-miner like puddinpops.

[ribuck]

The cheating problem has a trivial solution.

The distributed miners work to find a hash at a difficulty level that is considerably lower than the network requires. Whenever they find one, they send it back. When one of those hashes is difficult enough to meet the needs of the network, it generates 50 bitcoins which are distributed to those who have been sending in hashes at the easier level.

There's no way to look for easy hashes without also having a chance to find the occasional difficult hash. And when you find a difficult hash, there's nothing better to do with it than to send it back to the mining co-ordinator (because it's a hash that pays them 50 bitcoins, not one that pays you 50 bitcoins).

With this scheme there is no incentive to cheat, and no need for "banning".

[slush]

And when you find a difficult hash, there's nothing better to do with it than to send it back to the mining co-ordinator (because it's a hash that pays them 50 bitcoins, not one that pays you 50 bitcoins).

Oh, so when I got work from coordinator which leads to winning hash, I cannot send it to bitcoin network as "my own" hash? I don't think so. I thought it is possible to not return hash to coordinator and put it directly to bitcoin network in own transaction...

[ribuck]

Oh, so when I got work from coordinator which leads to winning hash, I cannot send it to bitcoin network as "my own" hash?

In a pooled mining situation, the winning hash cannot be used as "your own".

The hash incorporates all of the transactions in the block, including the one that pays 50 BTC to the generator.

If you are hashing for pooled generation, the winning hash is only useful to the pool.

If you are hashing for yourself, then obviously the winning hash is useful to you. But in that case the "low-difficulty" hashes that you generate are useless to the pool, so the pool will not pay you a share of the generated 50 BTC.

It is a solved problem to prevent cheating with pooled generation.