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

[n0creativity]

181 TH/s total network hash rate

http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

Yeah it hit that yesterday I think, but current is 160TH/s...
https://blockchain.info/stats

[1714251354]

1714251354

[1714251354]

1714251354

[1714251354]

1714251354

[Trongersoll]

man, i just saw the latest graph. my daily performance was real suckage today. even dragged my 7 day average way down.

[bitzip]

man, i just saw the latest graph. my daily performance was real suckage today. even dragged my 7 day average way down.

Today sucked big time.  The pool luck was very low. 

Hey I spent some bitcoin on mining hardware that I'd like to earn back.  Everyone in the bitcoin mining community needs to stop mining for a few weeks, so I can earn my coins back.  OK   

[RoboCoder]

Wow.  37 BTC block?  12 BTC in fees!!  That was nice.

Somebody must have screwed up!

[bspurloc]

man, i just saw the latest graph. my daily performance was real suckage today. even dragged my 7 day average way down.

Today sucked big time.  The pool luck was very low. 

Hey I spent some bitcoin on mining hardware that I'd like to earn back.  Everyone in the bitcoin mining community needs to stop mining for a few weeks, so I can earn my coins back.  OK   

that is waht syn floods are for derpa!

[MinermanNC]

man, i just saw the latest graph. my daily performance was real suckage today. even dragged my 7 day average way down.

Today sucked big time.  The pool luck was very low. 

Hey I spent some bitcoin on mining hardware that I'd like to earn back.  Everyone in the bitcoin mining community needs to stop mining for a few weeks, so I can earn my coins back.  OK   

I finally left my beloved Shush's pool a week ago, and moved on as planned and converted all my gpu miners to Litecoin. I only wish I had done it a month ago now. The earnings rate for me is almost 40% higher than were I was at in here just a little over a week ago. So now I sit and wait for my asics,,,, one day maybe, once they arrive I will be back at 45 g/hash, but even then I fear that will not be enough by the time I get em in? But like Arnold says  "Ill be back" lol,,,,,

[JoelKatz]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that this payout strategy is obviously vulnerable to hopping.

If there's any time a miner can identify where he gets a higher payout than he would get solo mining, the pool is vulnerable to hopping. Obviously, the payouts can't always be better than solo mining. So if it's sometimes better, it must also sometimes be worse. If a miner can tell when it's better, he can mine only when it's better.

Say it's the very beginning of the round. If I mine a block before anyone else submits a share, I get the whole 25 BTC. So the payout at the very beginning of a round is as good as solo mining. And if I don't mine a block and someone else does very shortly after me, I get a non-zero payout. Thus mining at the beginning of a round is better than solo mining.

I must be missing something because this is pretty obvious.

[vs3]

Wow.  37 BTC block?  12 BTC in fees!!  That was nice.

Somebody must have screwed up!

Woooah!

http://blockchain.info/tx/024e7b211ff8fdc5371c5df9dd02bedca22f153fb41620ce1d41a6d6bbabc15f

12.6 BTC in fees!

[5120-01-518-6126]

Wow.  37 BTC block?  12 BTC in fees!!  That was nice.

Somebody must have screwed up!

Woooah!

http://blockchain.info/tx/024e7b211ff8fdc5371c5df9dd02bedca22f153fb41620ce1d41a6d6bbabc15f

12.6 BTC in fees!

Yeah, a 942 BTC transaction.

[DoomDumas]

Wow.  37 BTC block?  12 BTC in fees!!  That was nice.

Somebody must have screwed up!

Wow, indeed what a nice block to find on the pool you mine

http://blockchain.info/block/00000000000000c17a0863b994c6e551d02f581e39ea2e1212c4a55e2af1d8fc?site=slush

Joy !

[gourmet]

I am curious about the large fluctuations in the total network hashrate. I mean 20,000 GH/s is the size of Slush's entire pool, how does that much compute power come and go so quickly?  Its like someone with 40 BFL Mini Rigs is dropping in and out of the network.

Network hashrate is calculated from the count of blocks found, there's no other way to determine it. But block frequency varies according to the luck. As we can't determine current luck, we have to take it into account always being 100 %. Sure this is not true, and so we are observing variations in network hashrate that don't exist in fact.
Certainly I don't want to say there aren't any variations. They are. But I can't tell how big they really are. Can someone go further and calculate the probable contribution of this effect to the total variation?

• Miners' workers can tell their hashrate exactly.
• The pools calculate their hashrates from shares of difficulty 1 or more. With ASICs comming, there'll be more of "more", and the accuracy will go down. Well only absolutely, maybe, and the relative accuracy can be maintained, as the hashrate increases also.
• The whole network has no means to determine its total hashrate other than from the blocks found, as stated above. [edit:] With increasing difficulty, variations will increase and the accuracy will continue going down.

[edted after n0creativity's reply]:
The pools get 2³² less haashes from the miners than the miners themselves calculate. (Or even less, when client difficulty set to > 1.) But they don't obtain them equaly in time, rather with variable frequency according to the luck.

The whole network only gets blocks of current difficulty from both pools and solo miners. (So currently it gets other 19M times less hashes than the pools do.) There's nothing like shares at the network level. Shares' only purpose is to enable reward distribution among pools' clients.
And again, luck (variation) applies.

[trasla]

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that this payout strategy is obviously vulnerable to hopping.

If there's any time a miner can identify where he gets a higher payout than he would get solo mining, the pool is vulnerable to hopping. Obviously, the payouts can't always be better than solo mining. So if it's sometimes better, it must also sometimes be worse. If a miner can tell when it's better, he can mine only when it's better.

Say it's the very beginning of the round. If I mine a block before anyone else submits a share, I get the whole 25 BTC. So the payout at the very beginning of a round is as good as solo mining. And if I don't mine a block and someone else does very shortly after me, I get a non-zero payout. Thus mining at the beginning of a round is better than solo mining.

I must be missing something because this is pretty obvious.

Mining at the beginning of a round is only better _if_ a block is found quick, because if not, the exponential rise of score per share submitted will make your early shares obsolete quite fast. If you could predict how long a round takes, you could just mine in the short ones. But switching to solo or another pool after a certain time in the round will very likely result in no reward (or a very very small) for the round, since shares submitted by others after you leave will get a much higher score for them.

Besides, in your example, if someone else submits a share and you mine a block very shortly after, you only get part of it - thats not better than solo.

[ibfr33k]

243758 is not ours 

[n0creativity]

I am curious about the large fluctuations in the total network hashrate. I mean 20,000 GH/s is the size of Slush's entire pool, how does that much compute power come and go so quickly?  Its like someone with 40 BFL Mini Rigs is dropping in and out of the network.

Network hashrate is calculated from the count of blocks found, there's no other way to determine it. But block frequency varies according to the luck. As we can't determine current luck, we have to take it into account always being 100 %. Sure this is not true, and so we are observing variations in network hashrate that don't exist in fact.
Certainly I don't want to say there aren't any variations. They are. But I can't tell how big they really are. Can someone go further and calculate the probable contribution of this effect to the total variation?

Miners' workers can tell their hashrate exactly.
The pools calculate their hashrates from shares of difficulty 1 or more. With ASICs comming, there'll be more of "more", and the accuracy will go down. Well only absolutely, maybe, and the relative accuracy can be maintained, as the hashrate increases also.
The whole network has no means to determine its total hashrate other than from the blocks found, as stated above. [edit:] With increasing difficulty, variations will increase and the accuracy will continue going down.

Thanks for the "Oh yeah.... DUH"  moment, gourmet.  Haha!   
That makes sense, I guess I thought the network as a whole was aware of every share submitted by miners regardless if they are solo or pool.
Learn something new every day.  I guess I need to read whitepaper from satoshi again... and pay more attention this time.
Happy Friday to everyone, btw. And a shout out to all the Chicago Blackhawk fans on here (if any)! Lord Stanley's Cup has returned to its rightful place!

[gourmet]

Thanks for the "Oh yeah.... DUH"  moment, gourmet.  Haha!  
That makes sense, I guess I thought the network as a whole was aware of every share submitted by miners regardless if they are solo or pool.
Learn something new every day.  I guess I need to read whitepaper from satoshi again... and pay more attention this time.
Happy Friday to everyone, btw.

Thanks.
I've just made some addition and formating to the original post, for even better understandability, I hope.

Yeah, the link.

[bspurloc]

243758 is not ours 

   
stinkers!

[gbx]

this is not directed at any one person but in general to the @AMD 7870 posts above: I just recently upgraded my gaming rig to 7870 ghz edition (hit a 185$ deal on newegg ~2 weeks ago?) and i run it on win7 latest drivers and I get ~405 Mh/s average just using guiminer, which everyone loves to hate it seems, but it runs fine with latest drivers... so I am happy. I am more of a gamer than a miner tho, so my priorities are skewed.

for people who are more knowledgeable i am wondering: my gpu clock is set at 1100. what kind of Mh/s would I be getting if I did do a driver-downgrade and ran cgminer instead...? would it really be so much higher than the ~405Mh/s that i currently get with guiminer?

You should be able to squeeze more out of it.  Check out cgminer and ditch guiminer.

1  http://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333  74.0 c 99% 444.53 Mh/s 11751 / 27 0.23% 7800 Series 69% (2605) 1185 Mhz 1035 Mhz 1.25v

[JoelKatz]

Mining at the beginning of a round is only better _if_ a block is found quick, because if not, the exponential rise of score per share submitted will make your early shares obsolete quite fast.

No, that's not true. Mining at the beginning of a round is better no matter what. It's better because if you find a block before anyone else submits a share, you get the same reward as if you were solo mining and if a block is found shortly after you submit a share, you get a non-zero payout. Thus mining at the very beginning of a round is better than solo mining and clearly it cannot always be better than solo mining.

All you must do to show that a pool is vulnerable to hopping is show that there is some point that an attacker can identify at which the expected return exceeds the expected return for solo mining. If I understand this payout method correctly, it has such a point -- before the first share is submitted in a round.

If you could predict how long a round takes, you could just mine in the short ones. But switching to solo or another pool after a certain time in the round will very likely result in no reward (or a very very small) for the round, since shares submitted by others after you leave will get a much higher score for them.

That's all true, but has nothing to do with anything. Sure, there are lots of ways one could hop pools that don't work. The question is whether there are any ways that do.

Besides, in your example, if someone else submits a share and you mine a block very shortly after, you only get part of it - thats not better than solo.

I agree. That's why the pool is vulnerable to hopping. There are good times to mine and worse times to mine. (Assuming I correctly understand how the pool pays out, which I hope I don't, since this is really an obvious flaw.)

[trasla]

Okay, yeah, sure, if you manage to submit the first share, thats always good.
But if somehow someone else just got some shares in on his own before your first share in the round reaches the server, your plan will not work any more. So you should tell me how to make sure no one calculates and submits a share faster than you, and then tell me how big the advantage of a single share with better average payout is. You would get one of those per round.

Even if the very first share you calculate after getting provided with work for the new round is a winning one - i bet there will ne other shares reported to the server when yours is verified, and with a high probability. So your average payout for submitting the winning share will be far below solo mining. Solo mining it will always be 25 + x, in the pool, if 10 other workers submitted their first difficulty 1 one share at the same, you get far less.

[Tsunamirain]

Problems?