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

[davout]

No, it is Django.

Guess I should at least have opened the source up

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[slush]

Somebody sent me the first donation, thank you very much :-).

[zipslack]

About opening source: I like coding it and currently do not need a help, thanks. I wish to open critical app parts for 'security review' soon, but I probably do not open source it fully. It is a service, as mybitcoin or mtgox is.
Pool is strongest when there is plenty of mhash/s, so I have no motivation in creating another pools.

I understand that. Nevertheless I would feel more comfortable if the source were available. That way we could continue the project if you ever get bored and decide to quit or are unable to continue for some reason outside your control.

Maybe we could buy the source from you. How much would you ask for it?

About competing pools:

Generating inside a pool doesn't increase your overall Bitcoin reward. It just offers you smaller rewards more often. The larger the pool the smaller your share of each generated block, but a larger pool will generate blocks more often. Pool size should have no impact on each member's reward over a long timeframe.

If what I wrote above is true, there's no incentive to create competing pools and no incentive to discourage anyone from creating competing pools.

[slush]

That way we could continue the project if you ever get bored and decide to quit or are unable to continue for some reason outside your control.

Mtgox and MyBitcoin are close source. I think shutting down those sites will have much larger impact on bitcoin network and nobody is asking for opensource it. I honestly promise that I'm not cheating and do not plan to do that. I also promise that I will fully open sources if I get bored by running service.

Code:

Generating inside a pool doesn't increase your overall Bitcoin reward.

You do not need to tell me this, I already know it. But it is exactly the same as single versus pooled mining. Pooled mining does not increase my reward in any way, but receiving smaller pieces frequently is much more safe than waiting week for a block. It has also psychological effect.

 There is nothing else than I want to see my children is growing. And I'm looking forward pool will generate block almost every hour :-). I believe all bitcoiners will understand this, at least until they will periodically receive corresponding rewards from my server.

[zipslack]

Why don't you want to release the source?

[davout]

+1

I'd like to see where my 600mh/s are going

[BitLex]

Why don't you want to release the source?

why do you want the source to be open?

one could say "security issues", but you have to trust the server-admin anyway, no matter what,
if he wants to cheat, he could change the code at any time, so there's actually no point in releasing the code.

i'm sure there's reasons to ask for it, but if you think about it, it wouldn't change anything,
it would just enable others to create new (and eventually cheating) pools, which is one of slush's reasons not to do it.

if he doesn't want to, that's ok to me, there's no need to know the code, cuz it wont proove anything anyway.

just my 2coins  


back to main-topic:

i just noticed, that one of my miners stopped working about half an hour ago,
no error, no msg, no nothing, it just stopped.

Code:

....
17/12/2010 17:07, 41c048d4, accepted
17/12/2010 17:07, ebacc174, accepted
17/12/2010 17:09, 90652a78, accepted
17/12/2010 17:10, e2e90be3, accepted
39112 khash/s

hashcount just froze like that.

the same thing happened once already yesterday on my 2nd pool-miner and never happened before on local getwork-servers.

check your miners more often, might happen to you too.

[davout]

Why don't you want to release the source?

why do you want the source to be open?

one could say "security issues", but you have to trust the server-admin anyway, no matter what,
if he wants to cheat, he could change the code at any time, so there's actually no point in releasing the code.

i'm sure there's reasons to ask for it, but if you think about it, it wouldn't change anything,
it would just enable others to create new (and eventually cheating) pools, which is one of slush's reasons not to do it.

if he doesn't want to, that's ok to me, there's no need to know the code, cuz it wont proove anything anyway.

just my 2coins 

There is obviously no need to open the code, I mean, it's not a trust issue, like I want to *check* the code.
I'd love to *study* it tho, and maybe *improve* it

[zipslack]

why do you want the source to be open?

Because right now slush and his server are each a single point of failure. If either one becomes unavailable we have to go back to mining individually. OTOH if the source is available any one of us can take over in that event.

it would just enable others to create new (and eventually cheating) pools, which is one of slush's reasons not to do it.

I'm not too worried about that. I expect that over time we will be able to tell whether or not a pool operator is cheating.

Oh, and about this:

Mtgox and MyBitcoin are close source. I think shutting down those sites will have much larger impact on bitcoin network and nobody is asking for opensource it.

I'm not asking for them to be open sourced because I don't use them. All the bitcoin software I do use is open source, except this one.

[BitLex]

Because right now slush and his server are each a single point of failure. If either one becomes unavailable we have to go back to mining individually. OTOH if the source is available any one of us can take over in that event.

yep, that's true, just like MtGox and MyBitcoin, all single points of failure and still not open, or "mirrored".

I expect that over time we will be able to tell whether or not a pool operator is cheating.

and i expect that over time slush will release the code anyway, cuz he got bored of people asking (or coding himself),
or other pools coming up using different code and other methods, maybe puddinpop improves his code, who knows?

of course it's nice to see for yourself, from the code, how it works
and it sure would be nice to have multiple developers working to improve it, some miner-devs to implement new features,
but it's still his choice.

anyway, i just take what i get.   

[jgarzik]

What I like about slush's approach is that it works with unmodified CPU/GPU miners.

It seems reasonable that we could work on a patch for mainline bitcoin that supports pooled remote mining.  AFAICS, the modifications required of mainline bitcoin would be

• add user database, and support multiple RPC user/password combinations
• create a variable fPoolTarget, specifying a reduced hash target for miners in the pool
• create a variable bool fMinerPool, indicating pooled miner mode
• in getwork RPC, reduce hash target value to fPoolTarget, if fMinerPool is true
• in getwork RPC, if CheckWork() succeeds, credit user for solved hash, if fMinerPool is true and hash found is >= fPoolTarget

Everything else can be implemented outside bitcoind, in a script.

[slush]

2010-12-17 18:14:24.706142
Testnet: False
Send 82.12 to 1B7SvpLs2bmB8mGX2Bqdqn8UToTB1qgwUd
Send 0.63 to 17PSyYGLGQj7okX3Aj6cWDXRoxqwD4cByA
Initial balance: 86.82, sent total 82.75 for 2 people, time 0.3 sec

Next block confirmed. All rewards are cleared now. The rest is under its send threshold. Looking forward next block!

P.S. 82.12 is my reward for three blocks; there was not enough balance in last sending and I had more than 60% share on first found block.

[slush]

It seems reasonable that we could work on a patch for mainline bitcoin that supports pooled remote mining.

Honestly, I think it is definitely not the feature what people need in bitcoin client itself. If we are talking about mining and bitcoin client, I think better feature is to allow mainline client to _connect_ to another client's getwork, so common people can make private mining pool by itself or connect directly to public pool. In case of private pool, there is not even need of accounting. In fact, I think it should be extremely easy to allow this, but my C knowledge is too poor to submit patch.

And if you need any general feature request for client, I'm more interested in subscriptions/repeating payments feature. Of course it can be also done by standalone software and RPC, but we need this inside client itself, because merchant then can rely on this feature.

This is little bit offtopic here, so if you have anything to those ideas, please open new thread.

[zipslack]

anyway, i just take what i get.   

Of course it's his choice whether or not he releases the source. I am very interested, however, in knowing why he doesn't want to release it. This is the last I'm going to say about it in this thread though.

[Mahkul]

Is there any commission going to the pool server? If there is no wonder he doesn't want to release the source; I wouldn't be too happy about doing that either.

[Essjay]

Is there any commission going to the pool server? If there is no wonder he doesn't want to release the source; I wouldn't be too happy about doing that either.

Exactly.

Don't ask him to open the source.

Make him an offer. This is Bitcoin...

[slush]

I am very interested, however, in knowing why he doesn't want to release it.

I'm groofing around for few months and didn't read single criticism that mtgox or mybitcoin are closed source. Or even Flattr, service for opensource project donations. All three are handling your money, but mining server do not keep any large amounts and you can even calculate that it does not hide money (in mtgox and mybitcoin and flattr you can check this only by 'run the bank'). Personally I'm surprised why suddenly everybody care in opensource pool _service_. This is internet service like thousands others. Please don't flood discussion about open/close source in this thread, it should be discussion about service and it's support for pool users. My reason for close source is _exactly_ the same as for mtgox, mybitcoin and flattr projects.

[Mahkul]

I am very interested, however, in knowing why he doesn't want to release it.

I'm groofing around for few months and didn't read single criticism that mtgox or mybitcoin are closed source. Or even Flattr, service for opensource project donations. All three are handling your money, but mining server do not keep any large amounts and you can even calculate that it does not hide money (in mtgox and mybitcoin and flattr you can check this only by 'run the bank'). Personally I'm surprised why suddenly everybody care in opensource pool _service_. This is internet service like thousands others. Please don't flood discussion about open/close source in this thread, it should be discussion about service and it's support for pool users. My reason for close source is _exactly_ the same as for mtgox, mybitcoin and flattr projects.

+1

[slush]

I updated server and had to restart service. Many workers probably crashed down - hashrate is slowly going down. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do with that. Please ask your miner author to improve error handling. Miner should catch an exceptions around all network methods and data parsing or restart itself when receive corrupted data.

From my experiences, Diablo's miner is very stable in these cases (but I already see it crashed during tests). It would be great if also other authors improve their error handling, as internet is nothing rock stable.

[puddinpop]

anyway, i just take what i get.  

Of course it's his choice whether or not he releases the source. I am very interested, however, in knowing why he doesn't want to release it. This is the last I'm going to say about it in this thread though.

We already have an alternative to this closed source cooperative mining service.  It's fully open source, nothing's hidden.  Anyone is free to look at and modify the code.  Due to the way work is distributed, every client can verify they are getting their share before they start hashing.  If the server crashes and burns immediately after a block is generated, you'll still get your share.  Anyone can run a pool server.  Please check it out and help make it better : Pooled/Remote Mining