He was talking about having the Merge Mining implemented.
Kano makes a good argument against it and I believe Kano has as good or better understanding of pool software than most. However, my understanding of the arguments against merge mining have to do with speeds and resources with the actual symptoms being stales and possibly orphans.
As the months go by I understand more about mining but do not claim to be as knowledgeable as any pool op, much less Kano, slush, or any of the people who have been in the scene for as long and as heavy as they have.
However I have spent much more time doing my own research for what makes the most common sense to me, and what applies to the smaller miners like me.
My opinion is probably too simplistic but I look at what I guess (or if possible know) the largest bottleneck likely to be on a 'larger' pools systems. In china it is likely to be bandwidth with possibly a dash of the memory pool and how the software is setup. See today's / yesterday's ramblings from me regarding the F2pool and Antpool issue of SPV mining. Why are pools in china the only major pools doing it?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=700411.msg11791346#msg11791346 In that same line of questioning why were only specific pools listed as "good" pools early in the announcement, and then later the list was changed? Just because those pools who changed to match a current specification doesn't mean they are suddenly good pools, and visa versa, I don't know for sure myself the pools which were listed as "bad", or the pools not listed as either are good or bad. I am still
very interested in why Slush was not mentioned at all when it is larger and smaller than many mentioned and has a decent size population of the mining community. Was / is slush SPV mining? How can we as miners tell who is or isn't?
I think merge mining can and should be part of a pool for several reasons. At this time it does not impact my decision to mine somewhere or not to do so. If I had the choice to mine at a pool I trusted which also merge mined UNO and NMC, it would impact my decision. I believe it will take a few coins to make cryptocurrency work correctly. I think there are good pools who can implement merge mining without it impacting performance. I also believe there are plenty of pools doing it who do it poorly and cost their miners bitcoin and that it is wrong to do. Those are my opinions, as I do not have proof, and I certainly see where Kano's logic on the matter holds weight. Again, I am respectful of his knowledge and experience, but I do believe it can be implemented in such a way it would not negatively impact the pool with the right resources.
I'm not interested in a pool or a coin which doesn't have obvious leadership and goals, with a couple of goals which are important to everyone.
I understand people want to make a profit. Set that aside and assume all pools do want a profit. The amount each wants is debatable.
The main goal of the pool should be to enhance the bitcoin and cryptocurrency community in ways which are positive experiences for their customers and users of the commodities / products.
How that goal intertwines with the profit goal is the part which is extremely interesting. The 'smarter' pool operators will figure out ways to accomplish both at the same time without making decisions which have a high chance of harming their customers or their own reputation. It is such a simple business model for me to say.
I have no doubt Kano and CK have probably known about SPV mining along with most of the 'major' pool operators out there. Why are we only hearing about the Chinese pools doing so?
Does this mean the Chinese pools put profits ahead of their customers and the bitcoin ecosystem?
There cannot be a doubt most if not all 'major' pool operators knew this or something similar is a possibility.
As a secondary goal I believe it is a pool owner(s) / operator(s) responsibility to openly state where all initial official communications will be provided and have a 'forum' of communications be in an environment which is unmoderated. Like a celebrity, as a business owner you put yourself in a position to be heard, and for you to hear people's opinions. Trolls included. We all know the trolls M/O these days and ignore buttons are easily clicked, but there should always be an unmoderated place where anyone may be heard that other customers of that service can see what anyone has to say.
Tertiary goals could go different directions but I believe it is the pool operator's responsibility to help police other pools. Even if it is viewed as someone trying to steal customers from someone else, etc, but who better to tall us what XFX-pool is doing wrong than another pool operator. Who else is going to be on top of upcoming changes, and positions of instability than a pool operator? They also risk impacting their own reputation when doing such, which in turn affects their customer base in many ways.
I will pick on Kano again because I do have a thing for the way he runs his pool. I like the personal touch he embraces.
Kano does visit other pool threads and point out items of concern. He doesn't come across as the pool police, but he does point out issues which could or in the case of Elgius are impacting their pool's miners, their customers, and who knows what other things are lurking behind decisions to do those things. One major decision such as what Kano pointed out causes me to question the leadership overall at Elgius.
At this point the choice to SPV mine also has me concerned about the leadership of those pools. While I did not currently have any chinese pool set as a primary, I did have F2pool as a secondary, but not antpool for other reasons. In general this incident has made me reconsider using any pool based in mainland china at all. Obviously I am hoping to understand more regarding the intricacies of the decision and the process of SPV mining, but everything I've found so far shows me it is a choice based in profit which was known to have a potentially huge issue. Actually more than one 'potential' issue. Kano could come out tonight and say he supports SPV mining and here is why. Since I have trust in the previous things Kano has explained, while I may not agree with everything 100% I lend more credibility to what he does say, and would intensely investigate and contemplate his comments.
Further to the third goal I think we need more information regarding pool policies and choices overall. Most of us blindly trust our pool is making choices to help us because it makes sense that helping the miners helps the pool. This is not true and the leadership of a pool makes every decision.
That doesn't mean they don't listen to people on the forum in Kano's thread, or Slush on facebook, (although he should have someone monitoring this thread constantly), or every pool doesn't ask what their customers want and while some implement those requests, some may make it appear that they have implemented a request, and some do not because they feel it may be bad for the pool.
We must determine who is making the best choices and doing the best job. It is hard for most of us to do such. Very hard indeed. At times it can be difficult to understand a specific data point from organofcorti's (I hope I spelled that correctly
) web site / charts, but that doesn't stop me from trying. Where I know pool operators not only get it right away, they could explain, and if they chose manipulate data points.
I think every choice a pool owner makes is very important and speaks to their character, just like any business owner and I take my little bit of hashrate more serious than I take most purchases in my life in the recent past and for the foreseeable future. Maybe that will change after next year, but at the moment I have high expectations. Some of which were taught to me by people like organofcorti because he does get his hands dirty and start laying out points of interest to show people items of importance regarding where they mine.
In my personal view, Antpool, F2pool, and any other pool in mainland china is out of my list of choices at the moment.
BTCGuild was the first pool I mined at, but I felt like I suffered through 60 days of luck which as a new miner had me disheartened. Since it closed It is not a choice.
Kano, Slush, Bitminter, CK solo, and some of the multi-pools are the only choices I see. Kano, Slush, Bitminter, are really my only viable choices in my opinion, and from what I've experienced.
I would enjoy hearing from anyone why they agree or disagree with the comments I've made in this post, or the one in the F2pool thread. I would like to keep it civil. and I certainly do not mean anything as a personal attack. My choices are based on what I've been through and learned.
I hope everyone is having a Happy 4th and for the people not celebrating it I hope you are having a great day wherever and no matter what day it is. I will continue to keep an open mind, and hope we all do so.
