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

[olefourtyniner]

Can you explain how having a 500 g/hash compared to 200 g/hash will be more profitable to the miners? Because I am considering this and not seeing it.

It won't be more profitable. It all has to do with probabilities. Over time, everything will average out.

500 g/hash is somewhat more likely to make payouts more consistently over short durations. Each block requires a random amount of time to solve. So at 200 g/hash, you might solve one block in 40 minutes, or it might take you 2 hours. That means in one day you could have as many as many as 36 solved blocks, or as few as 12.

When your doing 500g/hash, you'll be solving blocks quicker, which means probabilistically, you should approach the average quicker.

In either case either pool could win or lose the random lotto, and vastly out or underperform the average for any span of time, it's just increasingly unlikely the faster you go, and the longer you're at it.  (hence why pooling is more consistant than solo mining).

Testing out one pool for a couple of days, and switching won't tell you anything, because you might randomly outperform or underperform the average on those time scales, regardless of the pool.

[1714222373]

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[1714222373]

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[olefourtyniner]

P.S. The only real difference is the fee charged by the pool. Slush charges 2% versus Deepbit which charges 3%. So over the long run, you'll make more with slush.

[eleuthria]

P.S. The only real difference is the fee charged by the pool. Slush charges 2% versus Deepbit which charges 3%. So over the long run, you'll make more with slush.

Other differences include long polling support and invalid protection.  Additionally, latency between your workers and the pool can have an effect.  Simply comparing fees isn't the only factor to consider.  If it was, everybody would drop Slush & Deepbit to join BTCMine, bitcoinpool, Eligius, or my pool.

That said, in my time using both pools, I found no noticeable difference even when running 3 gHash on each pool.  The fee difference was roughly equivalent to the increased efficiency on Deepbit, so it was a negligible net difference.

[Tarion]

Hi,
how can I interpret:
Found blocks
Current shares
Score

at http://mining.bitcoin.cz

I think Found blocks are the valid blocks I found but what are the Current shares? I got 1 after ~2h mining. And how is the score interpreted.

Would be nice to have an FAQ with answers. I am not going to search this whole thread for it.

[olefourtyniner]

P.S. The only real difference is the fee charged by the pool. Slush charges 2% versus Deepbit which charges 3%. So over the long run, you'll make more with slush.

Other differences include long polling support and invalid protection.  Additionally, latency between your workers and the pool can have an effect.  Simply comparing fees isn't the only factor to consider.  If it was, everybody would drop Slush & Deepbit to join BTCMine, bitcoinpool, Eligius, or my pool.

Great points! All good reasons to not just go for the highest g/hash pool. Hoping around pools and then saying/thinking one makes more after a couple days is the worst way to pick a pool.

[Dayofswords]

Hi,
how can I interpret:
Found blocks
Current shares
Score

at http://mining.bitcoin.cz

I think Found blocks are the valid blocks I found but what are the Current shares? I got 1 after ~2h mining. And how is the score interpreted.

Would be nice to have an FAQ with answers. I am not going to search this whole thread for it.

Found blocks-  YOu found the awnser to the whole block, dude, CONGRATZ

Current shares- valid hashes for a lower difficulty of the block(iffy on why)

Score- Not a clue!

[Meni Rosenfeld]

is that really a myth? I know I read that on some pools official faq, oh well....

Maybe it was on bitcoinpool. Their operators are an obnoxious bunch spreading FUD to promote themselves.

Can you explain how having a 500 g/hash compared to 200 g/hash will be more profitable to the miners? Because I am considering this and not seeing it.

In the language of this post, a larger pool gives you less variance, but it doesn't affect your expectation.

Score- Not a clue!

slush's pool resists the pool-hopping cheat by using a score-based reward system. Each share submitted increases your score by a certain amount which is based on how old the round is. The displayed stat is the total score obtained by this worker in this round.

This, by the way, is what started the myth that if you disconnect from slush's pool, the magical tooth fairy comes and steals your moneys.

[BitterTea]

Current shares- valid hashes for a lower difficulty of the block(iffy on why)

Score- Not a clue!

Every hash you do for a pool has one of the three following outcomes. The hashed result is...

1) Smaller than the current difficulty's target == you found a block.
2) Smaller than the lowest possible difficulty's target == you found a share.
3) Larger than the lowest possible difficulty's target == try again.

Holy-Fire explains above what Score means.

[Tarion]

Okay thank you. I have go more into hash "calculation" later to understand the whole system

But is it correct that I get only BTC for Shares? So if I cannot find even shares in one round I get no reward?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Okay thank you. I have go more into hash "calculation" later to understand the whole system

But is it correct that I get only BTC for Shares? So if I cannot find even shares in one round I get no reward?

That's true. But shares are pretty easy to find. Unless you're mining on a CPU or something, you'll very rarely go through an entire round without finding any share.

For participants which are very small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of shares and position they find.

For participants which are not too small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of blocks the pool finds.

[onarchy]

What I meant was not that the number of Gigahashes seems to have gone down (this is obviously the case). There seems to be something that happened two days after the crash. Before the crash I got about 19 Bitcoins per day. On the day of the crash I got 0. Then on day 1 after I got 17, and the day after I got only 8. So I was wondering if something happened on day two also.

[olefourtyniner]

What I meant was not that the number of Gigahashes seems to have gone down (this is obviously the case). There seems to be something that happened two days after the crash. Before the crash I got about 19 Bitcoins per day. On the day of the crash I got 0. Then on day 1 after I got 17, and the day after I got only 8. So I was wondering if something happened on day two also.

The mining difficulty went up across the network at 05/09/11 @ 4:17:24pm EST (the same day slush happened to restore the pool). You might have noticed a drop in bitcoins generated because of that. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty

[marcus_of_augustus]

Okay thank you. I have go more into hash "calculation" later to understand the whole system

But is it correct that I get only BTC for Shares? So if I cannot find even shares in one round I get no reward?

That's true. But shares are pretty easy to find. Unless you're mining on a CPU or something, you'll very rarely go through an entire round without finding any share.

For participants which are very small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of shares they find.

For participants which are not too small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of blocks the pool finds.

So you are saying that participants that are very small in relation to the pool actually have a different variance than the pool itself?

I thought you posted some math somewhere that said the opposite to that?

[Doktyr]

I have moved 90% of my miners back to Slush since the outage(I have some CPUs in deepbit atm).  I think he is a stand up guy and is doing his best.  Been in the pool since late March and would love to see a roadmap and expected timeline of features and failure protection.

I appreciate his post-mortum on events and can very well believe an attack could have brought the pool down.  Specifically:

-Any date on long-polling?  Every little bit helps and when I switched to deepbit for the few days it was amazing to see the block change and miner switch.

-Could we maybe implement IP Address reputation?  I am on a dynamic IP address but it rarely changes.  If a worker that has existed for 10 days is connecting maybe it could be considered "Graylisted" and not part of getwork spam?  This may work for the initial attack response to block all traffic from low reputation IP Addresses.  Just like share aging you could do the same for account share/ip reputation.

-As has been mentioned before - any chance you would take on a partner?  Someone who can watch the ship when you are away?  At the least tell people you will be on vacation for a weekend and not actually do it so it cannot be reliably predicted when you will not be present.

I do work as a Network Administrator and feel your pain - I carry a cellphone and cellmodem most places I go to support my employer.  But I am not the only guy who can fix issues if I am unreachable.  I think people will start returning when some of these issues are addressed.  Tycho should not be at or near 50% total hash rate for the good of the system.


Anyhow thanks for all the work you have done, I am happy to pay 2% and I am sure the future for this pool is as good as deepbit.

Dok 

[rezin777]

I have moved 90% of my miners back to Slush since the outage(I have some CPUs in deepbit atm).

Tycho should not be at or near 50% total hash rate for the good of the system. 

You complain about network health in the same post that you mention mining for the very pool that you think is a cause for concern...

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Okay thank you. I have go more into hash "calculation" later to understand the whole system

But is it correct that I get only BTC for Shares? So if I cannot find even shares in one round I get no reward?

That's true. But shares are pretty easy to find. Unless you're mining on a CPU or something, you'll very rarely go through an entire round without finding any share.

For participants which are very small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of shares they find.

For participants which are not too small in relation to the pool, the variance is caused by the variance in the number of blocks the pool finds.

So you are saying that participants that are very small in relation to the pool actually have a different variance than the pool itself?

I thought you posted some math somewhere that said the opposite to that?

Those calculations, as I explained, were specifically for the case that the miner is very small. In this case the variance is completely caused by the variance in the number and position of the shares submitted and are not affected at all by the size of the pool. These calculations do not work when the miner is substantial in relation to the pool, for this you need different calculations. The summary is that the greater the percentage of the miner in the pool, the greater the variance, so bigger pool = smaller portion = less variance.

[warweed]

You will be happy to know i have desided to stay with slushs pool althou i would very respectfully request if possible a way to (easily) tell if a miner is connected or now as in deepbits blue or red

i just ordered another 14 cards which will bring my count up to about ~9.323 ghash/s and will continue to exponentially increase over time till i either A) run out of space or B) power cost required to mine / Air Conditioning it has been decided that all miners will mine till they cover the initial investment of the hardware and cost of operation then 35% of the net future profit will be re invested back into hardware in the current mtgox daily transfer limit of 1000 dollars

btw is there currently anyway to automate the transfer process so mtgox just exactly ever 24 hours transfers a g note to LR ? this is getting tedious

[Meni Rosenfeld]

btw is there currently anyway to automate the transfer process so mtgox just exactly ever 24 hours transfers a g note to LR ? this is getting tedious

mtgox has an API. You can use https://mtgox.com/code/withdraw.php?name=blah&pass=blah&group1=BTC&btca=bitcoin_address_to_send_to&amount=# to send bitcoins (I haven't used it this way myself). Write a scheduled script on your end that accesses this page every day.

[warweed]

btw is there currently anyway to automate the transfer process so mtgox just exactly ever 24 hours transfers a g note to LR ? this is getting tedious

mtgox has an API. You can use https://mtgox.com/code/withdraw.php?name=blah&pass=blah&group1=BTC&btca=bitcoin_address_to_send_to&amount=# to send bitcoins (I haven't used it this way myself). Write a scheduled script on your end that accesses this page every day.

this only works by withdrawing btc back to your wallet not from mtgox to LR

[CD-RW]

How come everyone seems to move to other pools?
Whats wrong?