[OLD] Eligius: ASIC, no registration, no fee CPPSRB BTC + 105% PPS NMC, 877 #

Greetings Eligius Miners!

After much debate, there are going to need to be some minor changes to the current reward system/payout system.

As most everyone knows, Eligius pays directly from the generation/coinbase transaction. Also, Eligius miners enter the payout queue for payment via coinbase once they reach 100 TBC (~0.167 BTC) or they have been inactive for two weeks.

Unfortunately someone has decided to exploit the 7 day timeout caveat by changing their payout address after very few shares. Our payout queue contained 800 addresses earlier, but only had 50 BTC or so in payments listed. (An average way below the minimum.)

This entity seems to have started mining a bit over a week ago, and now their addresses are starting to hit the payout queue. When the coinbase payout transaction reached about 500 addresses, this popped up issues with Avalon miners and stratum proxy miners because for whatever reason they were not able to handle hashing the larger coinbase transaction. So, for the time being I have implemented a minimum payout for coinbase payout at 10 TBC (0.01048576) regardless of the 7 day timeout.

Now, the very small "dust" payouts will be done manually, however this is not an ideal solution, as it supports abuse of our payout system and just adds a lot of clutter overall to the pool and the blockchain and just isn't good for the network in general.

As a more solid solution, I will be implementing an absolute minimum payout amount, tentatively discussed to be set at 2 TBC (0.00131072 BTC). If a pool username/address has not mined at least 2 TBC, and their balance does not increase for 60 days or more, then that balance will be forfeited. Since the total of these amounts should be pretty insignificant, I will be setting them to be aggregated occasionally and subsequently donated to the pool.

Summary of how things will work now, effective within 48 hours:

I will be paying out all current "dust" amounts in the payout queue manually so that these changes are not retroactive.
After this is done, the new rules will be in effect.
Currently active miners, regardless of hashrate, will be uneffected by these changes.
Miners who reach the minimum payout amount of 100 TBC (~0.167 BTC) will enter the payout queue as normal.
Miners who reach a balance of at least 10 TBC (0.01048576 BTC) and then become inactive^* for 7+ days will enter the payout queue as normal.
Miners who reach a balance of at least 2 TBC (0.00131072 BTC) and then become inactive^* for 7+ days will NOT enter the payout queue for a coinbase based payout and will instead be paid out manually, periodically, at the pool's discretion.
Miners who reach a balance of less than 2 TBC and then become inactive^* for 7+ days will NOT enter the payout queue for a coinbase based payout and will NOT be paid manually. If the miner remains inactive^* for a total of 60 days or more, then their balance will be donated to the pool.
Miners who meet the above provision for balance forfeiture, but also have shelved shares or SMPPS extra credit will not lose these amounts, however any future rewarding of these shelved shares/extra credit to a balance at the pool will once again fall under the above provisions as normal.

^*: "Inactive" is, and has been defined at Eligius, as: no new valid shares submitted and no new shelved shares rewarded to account balance for 7 days.

One potential side effect of this new policy that some may need to be aware of:

Miners who actively mine, but do change their address occasionally should not change addresses until their balance is at least 2 TBC, otherwise this small dust amount may be forfeited.

I feel that 2 TBC (0.00131072 BTC) is a small enough amount to eliminate any real issues with legitimate miners losing any credit. Many pools implement limits where you can never be paid less than 0.1 or 0.01 BTC and such, so, I feel this amount is reasonable, however, is subject to change. Any legitimate miner who does fall under the 60 day timeout provision with a balance less than 2 TBC is welcome to contact me directly on IRC or via email with a signed message for their address requesting a payout of their dust balance be included in the next batch of manual payouts, and I will do so, at my discretion.

Again, my apologies for these changes. Please just realize that they are not as confusing as they sound, and I assure you they should not impact any legitimate miners of the Eligius pool.

I'm sure there will be questions about this, so, feel free to post them or contact me and I will be glad to address concerns!

Thanks, and as always, happy mining! Cheesy

-wk

Note: A signed version of this message is available here. Edit: includes some minor typographical errors which were corrected in this post.