Join a pooled bitcoin mining effort

[Ricochet]

Hi, I'm relatively new to the Bitcoin community (only discovered it a few days ago) and am still trying to get my feet wet here, but I've run this mining client for a day or two and wanted to give my two cents regarding the "contributed" vs "connected" issue.

As people before have said, it really depends on whether you view it as a chance effort (which it actually is) or a contribution effort.  Personally I'd feel rather ripped off if I'd been running the server for a week solid, only to have the block found when my connection randomly died for a split second, and not receive anything at all for my contributed CPU time.  At the same time, I understand FreeMoney's point that when in "contributed" mode, you won't get barely anything unless you joined immediately after the previous block was discovered.

So why not try a hybrid of the two?  In other words, work in contributed mode, but only consider contributions for the past X amount of time, where X is some percentage of the average time between block discoveries.  

Let's say for instance that on average, it takes 7 days for the mining group to discover a new block.  How about every few minutes we recalculate the contribution percentages based on the past 24 hours?  That way, the person who contributed 50 high-end servers to the effort still gets his share if he happens to drop offline for a brief moment, but if he goes offline for an extended period of time, his claim gets redistributed to those who were present around the time the block was actually discovered.  While technically less accurate than connected mode, it makes people feel better about their contributions without the stacked unfairness suggested by FreeMoney.

I don't know how difficult it would be to code this type of thing up, but it's food for thought at least.  

[FreeMoney]

Welcome.

I don't think that would be hard to at all. I actually assume it would just be a variable change. Right now it looks at something like contributed in the last minute as a proxy for current hashing speed. Increasing this to an hour or even a day might be reasonable. But again given the choice between joining two otherwise equal pools the one with the least dead weight will tend to be preferred.

I don't think any of this has to do with fairness as long as there is no deception. I was only suggesting that it total contributed might not be an equilibrium.

[pc]

Looks like the server is down…

Code:

Attempting to connect to 173.255.205.10:8335
Attempting to connect to 173.255.205.10:8335
Attempting to connect to 173.255.205.10:8335

etc…

[BitLex]

yep, server seems down right now,
keep mining on your own machine as long as it takes, maybe you are (very very very) lucky.  

[inertia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV-3wV7gfo8

[inertia]

Ok!  Everybody back in the pool! 

[FreeMoney]

Maybe it would be useful to have a backup server? You could have users enter two IP addresses and have it try the second if the first goes down. Seems easy to me, but I wouldn't know.

[doublec]

Looks like the server is down…

Yep, the server program exited overnight - not sure why. I've restarted it.

[Immanuel]

I'm running the CPU and CUDA client at the same time. Am I doing it wrong? One client claims to have 1100 khashes and the GPU has 5000 khashes; however, everything is really sluggish.

[BitLex]

Am I doing it wrong?

what GPU/CPU do you use?

the cuda-client is still experimental and sadly burns the CPU by ~50% (on a dual-core)
and at the same time only loads the GPU to 50%.

that's why i usually don't use the cpu-client on the same machine,
but i just tried and it gets ~1000khash/s, like on my other machine per core too,
and it doesnt really slow down the cuda-miner, it still gets it's <18M.

it's more efficient though (at least on my config) to start a second cuda-client,
results in 100% CPU, ~70% GPU load and a few more Mhashes (<18M single, 2x~13M 2 instances).

but everything will be even more sluggish.

[Immanuel]

Am I doing it wrong?

what GPU/CPU do you use?

the cuda-client is still experimental and sadly burns the CPU by ~50% (on a dual-core)
and at the same time only loads the GPU to 50%.

that's why i usually don't use the cpu-client on the same machine,
but i just tried and it gets ~1000khash/s, like on my other machine per core too,
and it doesnt really slow down the cuda-miner, it still gets it's <18M.

it's more efficient though (at least on my config) to start a second cuda-client,
results in 100% CPU, ~70% GPU load and a few more Mhashes (<18M single, 2x~13M 2 instances).

but everything will be even more sluggish.

It's just a low-end 9500GT with an Intel E5200 Dual-core for the CPU. I should of put a second CUDA client up before I left home.

[skull88]

Got it running, but if you want to attract more people, the process to get it running could be simpler.
Especially because this is a good incentive for new users so they get faster new coins, but imho these user will make less effort to get it running.

[Immanuel]

This is going to be very significant. I can't help but to imagine 1000s of users on this in the future.

[FairUser]

I got 3 GPU's (two GTX 470 and one GTX 260), 2 CPU's (one AMD Quad-Core and one Intel Dual-Core) throwing a combined total of ~71,000 khash/s into the pool (~35%).  I could throw more at it, but last time I did that it crashed the server.....whoops.

The pool is running @ ~208037 khash/s while writing this.
Yet, since it's inception, this pool has only gotten 1 block while several hundred blocks have been solved?

What's going on here?   
Really, this is just nuts that all these clients and we still can't get more blocks.  I've heard rumor there is someone with 20-30 GPU's crunching away at this, and if that's the case then even a pooled effort is still going to be several 100,000 khash/s behind that guy.

Is the server running bitcoind with a CPU or GPU?  If it's not running with a GPU, I'm willing to try using one of my my system's as a server and see if having a GPU helps reach more than 208,037 khash/s and/or handle several hundred clients (avoiding the 102 limit).

[doublec]

Got it running, but if you want to attract more people, the process to get it running could be simpler.
Especially because this is a good incentive for new users so they get faster new coins, but imho these user will make less effort to get it running.

What advice would you give to make getting it running simpler? I'm not too concerned about getting lots of people. The server is running close to capacity already. I'd investigate ways of setting up fallback servers, or handling load, but the cost of running one server is already expensive given the pool makes no money itself. I'm only running this as a service for those who want to try puddinpop's code at this stage.

[FreeMoney]

I got 3 GPU's (two GTX 470 and one GTX 260), 2 CPU's (one AMD Quad-Core and one Intel Dual-Core) throwing a combined total of ~71,000 khash/s into the pool (~35%).  I could throw more at it, but last time I did that it crashed the server.....whoops.

The pool is running @ ~208037 khash/s while writing this.
Yet, since it's inception, this pool has only gotten 1 block while several hundred blocks have been solved?

What's going on here?   
Really, this is just nuts that all these clients and we still can't get more blocks.  I've heard rumor there is someone with 20-30 GPU's crunching away at this, and if that's the case then even a pooled effort is still going to be several 100,000 khash/s behind that guy.

Is the server running bitcoind with a CPU or GPU?  If it's not running with a GPU, I'm willing to try using one of my my system's as a server and see if having a GPU helps reach more than 208,037 khash/s and/or handle several hundred clients (avoiding the 102 limit).

It's probably averaged 80,000kahsh only and there has been some down time. We're getting into mildly unlucky territory maybe.

[FreeMoney]

Got it running, but if you want to attract more people, the process to get it running could be simpler.
Especially because this is a good incentive for new users so they get faster new coins, but imho these user will make less effort to get it running.

What advice would you give to make getting it running simpler? I'm not too concerned about getting lots of people. The server is running close to capacity already. I'd investigate ways of setting up fallback servers, or handling load, but the cost of running one server is already expensive given the pool makes no money itself. I'm only running this as a service for those who want to try puddinpop's code at this stage.

Eventually servers will charge a little. People will pay to be in a big group with no downtime.

I think he means easy would be: download, install wizard, get prompted for a bitcoin address, click okay.

[doublec]

I think he means easy would be: download, install wizard, get prompted for a bitcoin address, click okay.

I considered doing this but ended up taking the easy path of just distributing puddinpop's binaries directly. It wouldn't be hard to make the CPU miner easier but the GPU one is problematic since it's very dependent on what hardware the user has. If someone puts together a friendlier installer I'd be more than happy to use it.

[doublec]

The pool is running @ ~208037 khash/s while writing this.
Yet, since it's inception, this pool has only gotten 1 block while several hundred blocks have been solved?

For the majority of the time the pool was operating at less than 100,000 khash/s. It's normal that no blocks have been mined recently. It'll happen given time.

Is the server running bitcoind with a CPU or GPU?  If it's not running with a GPU, I'm willing to try using one of my my system's as a server and see if having a GPU helps reach more than 208,037 khash/s and/or handle several hundred clients (avoiding the 102 limit).

It doesn't matter whether the server is running a CPU or a GPU. It doesn't do any mining so it doesn't use any GPU code.  That said there's nothing stopping you from running your own pool of course on a beefier server. Go for it!

[FairUser]

Let me be clear about the following.  Doublec, I'm not focusing on you here, and I do thank you for running the first set of servers.  I fully understand the cost of running servers, and can appreciate you letting everyone hammer on it while we run this experimental/buggy code.

That being said, I know this has been brought this up before, and now it is being brought up again.

The amount of bitcoin's being reported since the update from about a week or so  ago seems to be cut in half.  This was brought up before and it was quickly disregarded.  So now I'm asking the other people that are running clients that are contributing to the pool to look at their numbers and see if it's off for you too.

Here we go. 
Here's the numbers being reported @ the time of writing this.
Server Status : 96 clients, 203464 khash/s
Address <removed> will receive 8.10162 BTC if this block is solved

I have a total of eight remote mining instances running. 
8733+9600+8733+9600+8966+9600+7833+12366 = 75,431 khash/s between my two boxes which is CPU's and GPU's combined.

75,431 khashes (my systems) / 203,464 (server khash/s) = 0.3707338890417961
0.3707338890417961 * 100 = %37.07338890417961

That's about %37.07 (0.3707.. * 100) of the total khash/s that the server is reporting.

Now we show what %37.07 of 50 bitcoins should be.
For every 1% of a block (50 bitcoins) is 0.5 bitcoins.
50(bitcoins/block) / 100(%) = 0.5 (bitcoins/block)
0.5 * 37.07% = 18.535 bitcoins

WHY AM I ONLY GETTING "8.10162 BTC if this block is solved"?  I should be getting 18.535, which is about what I saw before the update a week ago.  I know there has been talk about distribution methods, but I don't care what you call it when the math is wrong and the amount paid out and is far less than what it should be.

Here's a some tables for other to quickly look up about what range they should be getting back. 

To get a percentage use this equation: (your khash/s) divided by (server khash/s) then multiply it by 100.

CPU USERS LOOK HERE
BITCOINS PER PERCENTAGE (%.05 increments) BETWEEN 0.01% and 1.00%
50 * 0.01% = 0.005 bitcoins
50 * 0.05% = 0.025 bitcoins
50 * 0.10% = 0.050 bitcoins
50 * 0.15% = 0.075 bitcoins
50 * 0.20% = 0.100 bitcoins
50 * 0.25% = 0.125 bitcoins
50 * 0.30% = 0.150 bitcoins
50 * 0.35% = 0.175 bitcoins
50 * 0.40% = 0.200 bitcoins
50 * 0.45% = 0.225 bitcoins
50 * 0.50% = 0.250 bitcoins
50 * 0.55% = 0.275 bitcoins
50 * 0.60% = 0.300 bitcoins
50 * 0.65% = 0.325 bitcoins
50 * 0.70% = 0.350 bitcoins
50 * 0.75% = 0.375 bitcoins
50 * 0.80% = 0.400 bitcoins
50 * 0.85% = 0.425 bitcoins
50 * 0.90% = 0.450 bitcoins
50 * 0.95% = 0.475 bitcoins
50 * 1.00% = 0.500 bitcoins

GPU USER'S LOOK HERE
BITCOINS PER PERCENTAGE (%5 increments) BETWEEN 1% and 100%
-------------------------------------------
50 * 1% = 0.5 bitcoins
50 * 5% = 2.5 bitcoins
50 * 10% = 5 bitcoins
50 * 15% = 7.5 bitcoins
50 * 20% = 10 bitcoins
50 * 25% = 12.5 bitcoins
50 * 30% = 15 bitcoins
50 * 35% = 17.5 bitcoins
50 * 40% = 20 bitcoins
50 * 45% = 22.5 bitcoins
50 * 50% = 25 bitcoins
50 * 55% = 27.5 bitcoins
50 * 60% = 30 bitcoins
50 * 65% = 32.5 bitcoins
50 * 70% = 35 bitcoins
50 * 75% = 37.5 bitcoins
50 * 80% = 40 bitcoins
50 * 85% = 42.5 bitcoins
50 * 90% = 45 bitcoins
50 * 95% = 47.5 bitcoins
50 * 100% = 50 bitcoins


IS ANYONE ELSE SEEING THIS, OR HAVING I COMPLETELY LOST MY MIND?