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

[Biffa]

It doesn't look like it, from their wiki page it seems that they wait to get rewards from slush before sharing it out to their users.

https://wiki.multipool.us/mediawiki/index.php/Mining_Reward_and_Share_Calculations

[Freemine-001010]

It doesn't look like it, from their wiki page it seems that they wait to get rewards from slush before sharing it out to their users.

https://wiki.multipool.us/mediawiki/index.php/Mining_Reward_and_Share_Calculations

good find, thanks for the info 

[FatnSlo]

What is wrong with this pool? Pool is stuck at 90% luck for awhile now.

[kano]

So ... I had a discussion with gmaxwell about ... a while ago ... and he said that the large pools don't purposely make empty blocks any more since it's no longer necessary due to bitcoind being fast enough to not need to do it

(though my pool has proven it was never necessary anyway by never having empty blocks, due to never ignoring all transactions if any are available)

Anyway, today slush produced an empty block 603351

They also found the block before it, 603350.

Now when they found block 603350 and 603351, my bitcoind debug.log shows:

Code:

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965699 txs: 2506 of 8755 fees: 0.43025836 sigops 17480

UpdateTip: new best=0000000000000000000668604f0acc91d12483ea4837f742dffb910d8c7fd84c height=603350 version=0x20002000 log2_work=91.322655 tx=473721413 date='2019-11-11 20:31:12' progress=1.000000 cache=79.0MiB(579629txo) warning='55 of last 100 blocks have unexpected version'

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965648 txs: 2468 of 6252 fees: 0.20234402 sigops 18841

UpdateTip: new best=000000000000000000136973e9bfdfc7151d9929d33fa95827a4107ec5115eed height=603351 version=0x20400000 log2_work=91.322681 tx=473721414 date='2019-11-11 20:31:41' progress=1.000000 cache=79.0MiB(579654txo) warning='56 of last 100 blocks have unexpected version'

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965469 txs: 2463 of 6290 fees: 0.20634536 sigops 18749

i.e. there were at least 8755 transactions available before they found block 603350, of which they used about 2500, and over 6200 transactions available for block 603351 after processing block 603350.

i.e. they purposefully created an empty block 603351 value 12.5 BTC instead of it being at least 12.70234402 BTC and using over 2400 transactions.

So I beg to differ with gmaxwell about his claim that slush pool doesn't code to find empty blocks during a block change

[DaveF]

So ... I had a discussion with gmaxwell about ... a while ago ... and he said that the large pools don't purposely make empty blocks any more since it's no longer necessary due to bitcoind being fast enough to not need to do it

(though my pool has proven it was never necessary anyway by never having empty blocks, due to never ignoring all transactions if any are available)

Anyway, today slush produced an empty block 603351

They also found the block before it, 603350.

Now when they found block 603350 and 603351, my bitcoind debug.log shows:

Code:

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965699 txs: 2506 of 8755 fees: 0.43025836 sigops 17480

UpdateTip: new best=0000000000000000000668604f0acc91d12483ea4837f742dffb910d8c7fd84c height=603350 version=0x20002000 log2_work=91.322655 tx=473721413 date='2019-11-11 20:31:12' progress=1.000000 cache=79.0MiB(579629txo) warning='55 of last 100 blocks have unexpected version'

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965648 txs: 2468 of 6252 fees: 0.20234402 sigops 18841

UpdateTip: new best=000000000000000000136973e9bfdfc7151d9929d33fa95827a4107ec5115eed height=603351 version=0x20400000 log2_work=91.322681 tx=473721414 date='2019-11-11 20:31:41' progress=1.000000 cache=79.0MiB(579654txo) warning='56 of last 100 blocks have unexpected version'

CreateNewBlock(): block weight: 3965469 txs: 2463 of 6290 fees: 0.20634536 sigops 18749

i.e. there were at least 8755 transactions available before they found block 603350, of which they used about 2500, and over 6200 transactions available for block 603351 after processing block 603350.

i.e. they purposefully created an empty block 603351 value 12.5 BTC instead of it being at least 12.70234402 BTC and using over 2400 transactions.

So I beg to differ with gmaxwell about his claim that slush pool doesn't code to find empty blocks during a block change

Or, they are running hardware that is stressed to the max and cannot keep up. Or they have something very poorly configured.

I believe in the concept of never believe people are doing something wrong deliberately. It's usually just incompetence. (Look at the Trezor vulnerabilities)

They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.

-Dave

[Steamtyme]

They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.
-Dave

This could be the case but it's still a poor excuse not to improve. Their entire service is based on mining blocks and the transaction/rewards to be as profitable as possible for their miners. Transactions are the biggest reason for a miner to choose a PPLNS pool, so not doing everything possible to avoid empty blocks is just letting down your clients. On the flip side of that Miners exist to process these transactions, so if there is even 1 in the mempool it should damn well be in the block. I haven't been on slush for quite some time, but I think the problem has been they are big enough they don't care. There have been a lot of complaints about things like the merged mining rewards, and nothing has come of it. Unfortunately a lot of people just get complacent and don't reevaluate often enough, and if they are still make mad bank on the fees for the blocks mined without facing any real consequence where's there incentive to improve.

[DaveF]

They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.
-Dave

This could be the case but it's still a poor excuse not to improve. Their entire service is based on mining blocks and the transaction/rewards to be as profitable as possible for their miners. Transactions are the biggest reason for a miner to choose a PPLNS pool, so not doing everything possible to avoid empty blocks is just letting down your clients. On the flip side of that Miners exist to process these transactions, so if there is even 1 in the mempool it should damn well be in the block. I haven't been on slush for quite some time, but I think the problem has been they are big enough they don't care. There have been a lot of complaints about things like the merged mining rewards, and nothing has come of it. Unfortunately a lot of people just get complacent and don't reevaluate often enough, and if they are still make mad bank on the fees for the blocks mined without facing any real consequence where's there incentive to improve.

I didn't say it was an excuse for them not to improve. IF it's anything I listed it's a WORSE reason not to improve.
Nothing was particularly difficult to fix. Hardware is simple, to stressed add more. Configuration check around till you find the issue.

I started on slush a looong time ago. Left and never looked back. As you said between the merged mining and things like this it looks like they just don't care.

-Dave

[kano]

They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.
-Dave

This could be the case but it's still a poor excuse not to improve. Their entire service is based on mining blocks and the transaction/rewards to be as profitable as possible for their miners. Transactions are the biggest reason for a miner to choose a PPLNS pool, so not doing everything possible to avoid empty blocks is just letting down your clients. On the flip side of that Miners exist to process these transactions, so if there is even 1 in the mempool it should damn well be in the block. I haven't been on slush for quite some time, but I think the problem has been they are big enough they don't care. There have been a lot of complaints about things like the merged mining rewards, and nothing has come of it. Unfortunately a lot of people just get complacent and don't reevaluate often enough, and if they are still make mad bank on the fees for the blocks mined without facing any real consequence where's there incentive to improve.

I didn't say it was an excuse for them not to improve. IF it's anything I listed it's a WORSE reason not to improve.
Nothing was particularly difficult to fix. Hardware is simple, to stressed add more. Configuration check around till you find the issue.

I started on slush a looong time ago. Left and never looked back. As you said between the merged mining and things like this it looks like they just don't care.

-Dave

If the most important part of the pool code, to generate the work to be sent to the miners, was 'unfathomable' code to the 'new' people running the pool for the past few years, then that is an even greater reason to run away from slush

It's central to how the pool code works, it must work correctly every single time, it must generate a set of data (work) based on the transactions returned by bitcoind, to be sent to the miners.
It is the same base work to be sent to all miners (as slush also said in his argument about why work difficulty was not part of the strartum work data sent to the miners) that then a minor addition is added to differentiate the work for each miner.

If instead they have extra code paths to generating the work, then indeed they are purposefully generating empty blocks, since there really is only one way to generate it properly - based on the transactions available in the mempool.

So yes indeed it certainly must be "they don't care"

[Freemine-001010]

hey at least their luck seems to be changing  

195.81 %
10 Blocks

122.11 %
50 Blocks

94.05 %
250 Blocks



once the 50 blocks gets to 150%  or the 250 blocks get to 97.5%     ill point 50% of my gear back here

[DPoS2]

So yes indeed it certainly must be "they don't care"

1 block in two months?  Do you even pool?    Maybe Slush can hire you to run their servers or something

[Steamtyme]

1 block in two months?  Do you even pool?    Maybe Slush can hire you to run their servers or something

Quite well in fact. The last 3 months of stats, have more blocks than expected, sure not a lot of them but that's not how you need to look at things when comparing pool size and earnings. That one block was equivalent to something like 26 days of mining for me elsewhere, and another one will still give me a damn good payout.  Though given your signature I'm sure you're aware of the advantages of his pool. A lot can change with a few people waking up and realising their 100PH or more would save 1000's in fees and non-empty blocks if they moved over to a pool with hella good support and infrastructure. It's obvious I moved most of my hash away but still have some on Kano's pool, and if things work out, I will move it all back in a heartbeat.

[Vietjan]

once the 50 blocks gets to 150%  or the 250 blocks get to 97.5%     ill point 50% of my gear back here

Well, there you go. 250 blocks is at 98.13% now.

[Freemine-001010]

once the 50 blocks gets to 150%  or the 250 blocks get to 97.5%     ill point 50% of my gear back here

Well, there you go. 250 blocks is at 98.13% now.

SWEET !! the hashover begins at 7 pm pmt, 

[Artemis3]

They might not want to generate empty blocks, they might not even be trying to. They just are.
-Dave

This could be the case but it's still a poor excuse not to improve. Their entire service is based on mining blocks and the transaction/rewards to be as profitable as possible for their miners. Transactions are the biggest reason for a miner to choose a PPLNS pool, so not doing everything possible to avoid empty blocks is just letting down your clients. On the flip side of that Miners exist to process these transactions, so if there is even 1 in the mempool it should damn well be in the block. I haven't been on slush for quite some time, but I think the problem has been they are big enough they don't care. There have been a lot of complaints about things like the merged mining rewards, and nothing has come of it. Unfortunately a lot of people just get complacent and don't reevaluate often enough, and if they are still make mad bank on the fees for the blocks mined without facing any real consequence where's there incentive to improve.

Well, they ARE doing something, just maybe not what you were expecting:

Empty block mining elimination In Stratum V2, it is equally as efficient for pools to send full blocks for miners to begin working on as it is for them to send empty blocks (i.e. blocks that don’t contain any transactions). Since there is no extra delay caused by sending a full block, the incentive to send an empty block is eliminated.

Stratum V2 No extra delay to send a full block vs. an empty block.

Stratum V1 Slower to send a full block than an empty block.

You could say they conceded defeat and decided to address the issue at the protocol level between miners and pool rather than within the pool itself.

Discussing V2 probably deserves its own thread, i wonder why they haven't started one yet. The proposal is still open to change and even a large Chinese pool has shown interest in implementing it.

[kano]

Alas this is FUD - completely

Stratum V1 Slower to send a full block than an empty block.

Firstly, there is no "Stratum V1" it is simply just "Stratum"

The processing time to calculate the work is in microseconds or nanoseconds.
The Stratum data packet size to send full block work is smaller than any standard internet data transfer packet size.
The Stratum data packet size of full block work is typically less than 1400 bytes.

So the extra time would certainly be less than a millisecond and probably less than a microsecond.
So they are simply using FUD to make people think that it matters in Stratum, since that extra amount of time is effectively irrelevant.

HOWEVER, their pool specific changes to Stratum, will make this data packet MUCH larger.

[DaveF]

Twisting the knife a bit.
Look another empty block # 607,275 yes it was quick, but 14 seconds should have been enough time to get some work done. At least you would hope it would.
Might be time for them to retire the old 486 that they are running the pool on and get a nice new i7 or something.
That or I don't know, update the code.

The next block was 23 seconds after their block and had 185 transactions in it.

-Dave

[DaveF]

And again yesterday.
They found 2 blocks back to back 25 seconds apart. But the 2nd block had just the coinbase transaction.
There were transactions in the mempool at the time.

-Dave

[disclaimer201]

Hi there,

I have been away from mining for a longer time. I opened a new account but was wondering if my original account "disclaimer201" still exists somewhere at Slush? I think I lost it and access to it when the pool website switched to the new design.

If it's gone okay, but it would be nice if there was some way to retrieve it. On top of the fun, I also discontinued using my old mail address, but I could reactivate it just for the purpose of recovering the account, if possible.

Thanks, happy new year 2020 to everyone and good luck mining to all!

[MoparMiningLLC]

Hi there,

I have been away from mining for a longer time. I opened a new account but was wondering if my original account "disclaimer201" still exists somewhere at Slush? I think I lost it and access to it when the pool website switched to the new design.

If it's gone okay, but it would be nice if there was some way to retrieve it. On top of the fun, I also discontinued using my old mail address, but I could reactivate it just for the purpose of recovering the account, if possible.

Thanks, happy new year 2020 to everyone and good luck mining to all!

you may want to look into other pools atm - slush is not paying their merged mining (going on 2 years) and their luck is take a turn for the worse

[Freemine-001010]

95.48 %
10 Blocks

93.64 %
50 Blocks

98.07 %
250 Blocks