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

[tnkflx]

I guess by witching to stratum, mining Namecoins will also be obsolete?

They've been obsolete for a while now

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[slush]

I guess by witching to stratum, mining Namecoins will also be obsolete?

Current Stratum backend has no namecoin support, so - yes. From my view the Namecoin project is dead. Although there was some buzz, press coverage and support from Bitcoin community, Namecoin developers were unable to finalize DNS infrastructure and they also didn't solve major architectural weaknesses.

I'd like to see some alt-chain for storing timestamped, key-value data like Namecoin, but in current state the Namecoin project is unmaintained and I have no plans with adding NMC support back to the pool.

[Epoch]

... and I expect that all people who're serious with mining already updated their mining rigs with Stratum-enabled software.

If Stratum was all roses and rainbows I'd be happy to use Stratum. Unfortunately, it hasn't been that way for me. I may be in the minority, but I've had a lot of trouble trying to get Stratum working on my setup (currently bfgminer 2.10.5, win7/64, bfl fpga's only). The pools in my rotation include bitminter, ozcoin, and slush.

I'll investigate further, and this is probably best posted in the bfgminer/cgminer threads, but if I use the "--no-stratum" flag in my command line mining works fine for days/weeks. If I remove it (and mining defaults to Stratum), mining will work for a few hours but eventually all of my FPGAs will get into a 'WAIT' state from which they never recover until restarting the mining software. I don't know what triggers this condition, or if it is a problem with bfgminer or the pools' Stratum implementation.

The reality is that, for whatever reason, I've had better success with getwork/vardiff than with Stratum; ozcoin and bitminter, for example, ask for difficulty-8 shares from me which reduces pool traffic to them by a factor of 8 ... doesn't this serve to accomplish a similar result (in terms of load/traffic to the pool) as Stratum does?

[eleuthria]

Congratulations on the plan to eliminate getwork slush.  I've been waiting for the day I can implement a similar plan to phase it out entirely.

[slush]

I'll investigate further, and this is probably best posted in the bfgminer/cgminer threads, but if I use the "--no-stratum" flag in my command line mining works fine for days/weeks. If I remove it (and mining defaults to Stratum), mining will work for a few hours but eventually all of my FPGAs will get into a 'WAIT' state from which they never recover until restarting the mining software. I don't know what triggers this condition, or if it is a problem with bfgminer or the pools' Stratum implementation.

Hm, this sounds like a bug in the miner. Can you report it to bfgminer/cgminer developers, please? I've been playing with the pool core for long time and as I can say, it is rock solid. My connection between proxy and the pool wasn't interrupted for weeks.

... I've had better success with getwork/vardiff than with Stratum; ozcoin and bitminter, for example, ask for difficulty-8 shares from me which reduces pool traffic to them by a factor of 8 ...

If there's some bug in miner in validating shares, then 8x lower probability of hitting the bug obviously lead to higher stability. Actually there was a bug in cgminer/bfgminer in submitting corrupted shares, which leaded to reconnecting to the pool time to time, but I though it has been fixed in recent version...

[jkminkov]

Plan of removing the getwork support

Once the hashrate of stratum backend reaches 90% of total pool hashrate, the fee for getwork miners will rise to 10%.

nice plan, pickpocketing clueless miners.

[tnkflx]

Plan of removing the getwork support

Once the hashrate of stratum backend reaches 90% of total pool hashrate, the fee for getwork miners will rise to 10%.

nice plan, pickpocketing clueless miners.

You shouldn't be clueless if you mine...

[organofcorti]

Plan of removing the getwork support

Once the hashrate of stratum backend reaches 90% of total pool hashrate, the fee for getwork miners will rise to 10%.

nice plan, pickpocketing clueless miners.

Clueless miners? If you mean n00b, I doubt it. GUIminer does stratum natively.

If you mean long term miners who have no idea of what changes have occurred, then honestly they shouldn't be mining. A miner needs to keep him or herself up to date and be prepared to learn constantly. As a miner you can't just "set and forget".

If you mean CPU botnets, well I personally see that as a good thing.

[jkminkov]

learning through paid education, that is what I see here.

[eleuthria]

learning through paid education, that is what I see here.

Last I heard, slush promoted Stratum heavily to users who aren't already using it.  Same as BTC Guild, and I'm sure almost every other pool that implemented Stratum or GBT.  There is absolutely no reason for a miner to still cling to the outdated getwork protocol.  Worst case scenario they should run the Stratum Proxy.  The only resistance I've seen from running native miners are people on Phoenix.  If you can run phoenix, you can run the proxy, it is not difficult (easier than setting up phoenix, thats for sure), and offers immediate performance benefits.

This isn't a case of pushing brand new technology too fast.  It's a case of miners actively refusing to modernize and update to a protocol that is better in every single way.

[RoboCoder]

Plan of removing the getwork support

Once the hashrate of stratum backend reaches 90% of total pool hashrate, the fee for getwork miners will rise to 10%.

nice plan, pickpocketing clueless miners.

If you have ever been on his pool - there are HUGE RED warnings if you are using getwork.  There are notes everywhere!

Not only would you have to be clueless - you would have to be blind to miss this requirement and how to handle it.

Not only that, Slush will help anyone who asks.  And has been warning people for a considerable amount of time.

He is NOT picking pockets.  And he is probably one of the nicest and most helpful people (especially to newbies) that I have "met" since i have been involved with mining.

Back off man.

[slush]

Thank you for support :-). My motivation is to consolidate the infrastructure, not to rob pool clueless miners...

[cosurgi]

Jeff Garzik says that using vardiff=32 (variable, self adjusting difficulty) implemented in the pool stops Avalon ASIC from restarting, probably too high network load caused problems.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140539.msg1501877#msg1501877

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140539.msg1510263#msg1510263

I'm afraid that we need vardiff, to remain competitive.

[slush]

I'm working on vardiff, it will be available very soon. Of course I'm fully aware that ASICs won't work on dif1 very well.

[hmmmstrange]

Having 6 non-stratum blocks in a row is a little unnerving.

[slush]

Having 6 non-stratum blocks in a row is a little unnerving.

Where?

[cosurgi]

Having 6 non-stratum blocks in a row is a little unnerving.

Where?

#16446 - #16451

[slush]

#16446 - #16451

? Only block 222002 (16446) is version 1, the rest are version 2. Why do you think it is version 1?

[slush]

OVH (datacentre where the pool is hosted) has some problems with datacentre connectivity, they're working on it, but pool seems to be unreachable for most of people now :-(.

[slush]

Oh, it seems that connectivity is recovering again. I'm sorry for troubles.