What reward does the person who finds the block receive in slush's pool?

[chem.drew]

Hey guys,

I am new to these forums but not new to BitCoin mining. Currently my setup includes about 15-25 rigs at any given time.

My question here is in regards to the reward for finding a block. How is this handled on slush's pool? Does the user that find the block just get that added to their statistics and then block value is then distributed to everyone involved in current round based on score? Or does the person who found the block receive a higher reward?

Could someone knowledge put a few numbers to my question please? Just simply trying to find out how to best use my processing power.


c.d

[Tarlusk]

Does the user that find the block just get that added to their statistics and then block value is then distributed to everyone involved in current round based on score?

Yes.

[sabe]

It is equally shared, almost all big pools behave that way. Usually the only differences are whether the pool takes a cut (0~3%), whether transactions fees from transactions added to the blocks are shared and whether the pool pays out for invalid blocks.

[chem.drew]

With that logic I feel that having a probability of finding a block once every 2 weeks it would be stupid to mine in a pool.

(Of course this ASSUMES that you will find a block once every 2 weeks; but I am well over 3Ghash/s and this is pretty doable.)

I think I will be switching to solo for a few weeks to test the water. Slush was giving me on average about 15 BTC a week.

c.d

[Tarlusk]

In terms of bitcoins gained from generating new blocks, your expected gain will be the same regardless of whether you're in a pool or mining.

The advantage to being in a pool is that you greatly decrease the variance of those bitcoins. However you have to pay the pool's fee, usually less then 3%.

The advantage to solo mining is that you also get transaction fees when you mint a block. I don't know how much this typically is, but I don't think it's currently very large.

What you need to compare is whether you'd prefer low variance and a small fee or high variance is a small gain.

[chem.drew]

Yeah ok I think I see it now. So a steady 15 BTC guaranteed per week at current difficulty or a possible 50 BTC every two weeks. I think I will gamble for the next week and see if I get lucky. Then over time I will probably put most of my power towards the pool while keeping a few strong machines on solo.

Thanks for the elaboration.


So how long are we newbies? ... o_O

[sabe]

Yeah ok I think I see it now. So a steady 15 BTC guaranteed per week at current difficulty or a possible 50 BTC every two weeks. I think I will gamble for the next week and see if I get lucky. Then over time I will probably put most of my power towards the pool while keeping a few strong machines on solo.

Thanks for the elaboration.


So how long are we newbies? ... o_O

That's not correct math. If you have a "steady" 15 BTC per week, then it would take you slightly over 3 weeks on average for 1 block actually.

[chem.drew]

So using http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php and putting in my current hash rate and $16USD to 1BTC I get ฿20.42. 2 weeks ฿40.84. 3 weeks would be ฿61.26. So technically it would be about 2.5 weeks per block.

But we seem to be pretty much on the same page.


(I was guessing my "steady" BTC income since a couple rigs went down over the week)

c.d

[bitcon]

so i take it youre not going solo then?  if you decide to go solo, post back when you find a block.

[sabe]

If you use a pool with very low "fees" like BTCGuild or Eligius, on average the number of coins you get over 1 year would be the same as solo (less than 1% difference). These pools are pay per share and your reward is proportionate to your effort.

If you mine solo without adequate power (say about a block a day) then luck will be a huge factor on smaller time frames (weeks~months).

[chem.drew]

I think I will be putting about 85-90% of my power towards the pool and have about 600Mhash/s for solo. Will probably be tweaking the ratio but I think less variance would be best.

Thanks for all your input guys.

I guess I should be ecstactic with getting about 2.5-3.5 BTC daily from pools.

c.c

[chem.drew]

Ok so I started with a decent ratio and had a few computers running on SOLO.

One of the computers was not connected to the same network as any of the others and in fact was just by itself. Because of this I have it with its own personal wallet file and have it running BitCoin Client as a Server and have GUIMiner connected to localhost.

When I got back to my screen today I saw this (see below)

https://i.imgur.com/Bwct8.png

Notice the Blocks: 1. Ok I am assuming this has something to do with a found block.

My question.. Does this mean I did successfully finish a block and am now awaiting my 50BTC reward? As this is my first encounter with a block on SOLO I am just a little confused.

How long does the 50BTC take to arrive? I found the block at about 1AM PT and my wallet does not have any transactions.

Thanks in advance.

[nonameo]

eh... I don't think so. only 5 hashes and difficulty 1? also I would think that finding a block would come with some fanfare.

[chem.drew]

Here's the deal. That computer restarted and I was unable to get it back online until recently. So when I re-opened the GUIMiner it had defaulted to some different settings (I forgot to hit SAVE SETTINGS before leaving it unattended) and as such when I switched it back to SOLO and gave it the username/password it had ALREADY put Block:1.

With that being said, the computer could have done 1000-3000 hashes in the time in ran before it restarted. So the hash in the picture is in the few seconds from clicking start mining to taking the screenshot and posting here.

So.... any other ideas? I searched on www.blockexplorer.com with my address being used on the BitCoin Server and did not find any transactions.

How long does it take for it to appear and process? I am assuming it would have to have several confirmations first?

c.d