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

[wizkid057]

Greetings Eligius miners,

First, let me apologize for the stability issues with the pool server today.  This morning during some routine maintenance some core hardware at the data center we are using failed, knocking many systems offline, including the rack containing Eligius.  This hardware was able to be fully replaced within 25 minutes and all services resumed at that time.

The pool's current vardiff setup (starting with diff 2) caused some lag when everyone reconnected (and hadn't yet had their difficulties adjusted upward).  This subsided on its own after about 30 minutes.

A separate issue caused a few hosts used in our load balancing and DNS round robin to experience intermittent network connectivity, enough to auto-remove them from the DNS.  Once there were too few interfaces for inbound connections, the pool was not able to get data fast enough to sustain mining as normal.  This has been corrected and settings adjusted so that it doesn't happen again.

The stats issues are generally due to fail-safe events at inconvenient times.  For example, last night's was less than 20 minutes after I had gone to bed, not noticed until morning.  There are several events that trigger the failsafe events, the majority of which are corrected very easily.  I will be automating the user-intervention portion of some of these soon.

In any case, I am going to be taking the time to overhaul the entire networking setup for Eligius tonight and tomorrow.  That said, you may experience brief connection interruptions as make modifications.  I will try to keep them to a minimum, but some will be unavoidable.

Please make sure you have a fail-over pool configured in bfgminer/cgminer.  If your mining software doesn't support fail-over pools then use software that does or just ride it out.  I personally use Bitminter for fail-over, then solo if Eligius and Bitminter are down.

After these changes/upgrades are done I don't anticipate any further pool connectivity interruptions.

Thank you for mining Eligius!

-wk

[wizkid057]

I'll get a manual payout together this afternoon.

Going to have to push this back to tomorrow morning, got called away again this evening and I'm kind of beat.

[jtoomim]

Hey wizkid057,

Would it be possible to have the stats display per-worker revenue (in BTC, cumulatively)? I would like to be able to use one payment address, but still see at a glance which miners have paid for themselves and which ones have not. I recognize you're too busy to implement it now with the recent chaos. Would it be possible to make this work retroactively so that in a few weeks (when you have time) we can see the earnings that are being made now?

If you do this, I'll dump 50 mBTC into the 1Stats address.

Alternately, if you point me to the relevant section of code, I can try to construct a patch myself.

[Luke-Jr]

Hey wizkid057,

Would it be possible to have the stats display per-worker revenue (in BTC, cumulatively)? I would like to be able to use one payment address, but still see at a glance which miners have paid for themselves and which ones have not. I recognize you're too busy to implement it now with the recent chaos. Would it be possible to make this work retroactively so that in a few weeks (when you have time) we can see the earnings that are being made now?

If you do this, I'll dump 50 mBTC into the 1Stats address.

Alternately, if you point me to the relevant section of code, I can try to construct a patch myself.

Pretty sure what you're asking here is a major overhaul, and balances are not tracker per-worker.

[un_ordinateur]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

I do know it would probably be a lot of work to put in place though, so I really don't expect that to be done in the short term. However, I'm throwing in the idea, so if luke-jr, wizkid, or anybody else is inspired by it, it might be done. I'd be the first to mine on that pool. (I've done a few searches on the internet, and it seems that someone has already forked eloipool to do an scrypt implementation; and requested a merge with the main eloipool branch)

As always, great work you two!

[Luke-Jr]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

It's because we're honest that we won't get involved with scams like Litecoin.

[HellDiverUK]

So I went to order something from the store on Eligius.  I added it to the cart.  Then I go to where?  I don't see anywhere to do payments etc?  Am I blind?

[Luke-Jr]

So I went to order something from the store on Eligius.  I added it to the cart.  Then I go to where?  I don't see anywhere to do payments etc?  Am I blind?

The message "HashBuster Micro added to your cart." has a link for "your cart".
http://eligius.st/~gateway/cart

I'll note the lack of another way to get there to Gateway69..

[CeeCee]

Connectivity Issues and Coming Resolutoin

was this done already?

[spooderman]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

It's because we're honest that we won't get involved with scams like Litecoin.

Why is litecoin a scam? Please point me to a convincing thread.

[5120-01-518-6126]

Question on payouts -- sometimes my payouts show up in the wallet as "Received with", sometimes they show up as "Mined" -- what's the difference, other than "Received" matures in 6 confirmations while "Mined" doesn't mature until 120 confirmations?

[5120-01-518-6126]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

It's because we're honest that we won't get involved with scams like Litecoin.

lol, and yet bfgminer supports scrypt 

[un_ordinateur]

Question on payouts -- sometimes my payouts show up in the wallet as "Received with", sometimes they show up as "Mined" -- what's the difference, other than "Received" matures in 6 confirmations while "Mined" doesn't mature until 120 confirmations?

Essentially, "Recieved" transactions are bitcoins that came from another account. "Mined" transactions are bitcoins that were generated; as part of the block reward. They did not come from anybody; they "appeared" out of thin air.

The Eligius mining pool usually distributes each miner in the pool it's reward as part of the "generation" transaction of each block. Other pools put the reward in an account they control, and send it to the miners when they request it. Many here believe Eligius system is superior (apart from the inconvenience of waiting for the 120 confirmation maturation time) because Eligius never actually controls any bitcoins: Therefore Eligius cannot be hacked and stolen some coins, neiter can the pool operator run away with the money.

However, it occasionnaly happens that there is a problem, and the reward system cannot correctly put each miners reward in the generation transaction correctly. In those cases, the reward is indeed sent to an Eligius-controlled address, and sent to the miners ASAP, usually not more than a day after it was due. However, in those cases, you see the reward as a "recieved" transaction, and not a generated transaction. However those issues are occasionnal.

EDIT: Fixed some typos

[5120-01-518-6126]

Question on payouts -- sometimes my payouts show up in the wallet as "Received with", sometimes they show up as "Mined" -- what's the difference, other than "Received" matures in 6 confirmations while "Mined" doesn't mature until 120 confirmations?

Essentially, "Recieved" transactions are bitcoins that came from another account. "Mined" transactions are bitcoins that were generated; as part of the block reward. They did not come from anybody; they "appeared" out of thin air.

The Eligius mining pool usually distributes each miner in the pool it's reward as part of the "generation" transaction of each block. Other pools put the reward in an account they control, and send it to the miners when they request it. Many here believe Eligius system is superior (apart from the inconvenience of waiting for the 120 confirmation maturation time) because Eligius never actually controls any bitcoins: Therefore Eligius cannot be hacked and stolen some coins, neiter can the pool operator run away with the money.

However, it occasionnaly happens that there is a problem, and the reward system cannot correctly put each miners reward in the generation transaction correctly. In those cases, the reward is indeed sent to an Eligius-controlled address, and sent to the miners ASAP, usually not more than a day after it was due. However, in those cases, you see the reward as a "recieved" transaction, and not a generated transaction. However those issues are occasionnal.

EDIT: Fixed some typos

Great explanation -- ty.

[j03]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

It's because we're honest that we won't get involved with scams like Litecoin.

Why is litecoin a scam? Please point me to a convincing thread.

Yeah I'm interested too, since it's coming from you. The developer of LTC works at Coinbase. Seems like a smart bloke.

[Luke-Jr]

I just had an idea I want to throw here, and you'll do whatever you want with it:
It would be great you could run a similar pool for Litecoin! It's one of the few trustable altcoin, and it's pretty much the last place we can spend CPU and GPU hashing power and not spend more in electricity.
Eloipool and wizstats are really well done software, and you guys seem really honest and devoted to your pool, so I believe it would be as awesome with Litecoin.

It's because we're honest that we won't get involved with scams like Litecoin.

Essentially it comes down to there being a void of any reason people would adopt Litecoin as a currency.

Bitcoin by nature can only provide the same value put into it, so in this "raw" state it functions as nothing more than a pump-and-dump scam as it simply redistributes money from the buyers to the sellers.
The reason Bitcoin itself escapes this category is that it is a major technological innovation, bringing something new (trustless currency) that has value to the world.
By being adopted as a currency, Bitcoin can benefit even those who buy into it last.

Litecoin and other scamcoins like it, on the other hand, do not bring anything new to the table.
They are just mere clones that retain the pump-and-dump nature of Bitcoin, but without the innovation that makes Bitcoin viable as a currency.
Litecoin specifically made three irrelevant changes:

• Change of mining proof-of-work from SHA256d to scrypt. This was done as an attempt to make GPU mining impractical. Not only is that a bad idea (CPU-only mining would put cryptocurrency in the hands of illegal botnets), it also failed. Present-day scammers will try to claim scrypt is ASIC-proof or ASIC-resistant; this is also false and impossible in theory. If anything, scrypt is more vulnerable to ASIC mining since it performs poorly on consumer hardware. Finally, some people try to pass scrypt off as a memory-hard proof-of-work; while it is true that the scrypt algorithm itself is a memory-hard key-strengthening algorithm, it is not a memory-hard proof-of-work algorithm since it requires just as much memory to verify as it does to find (the key property of proof-of-work algorithms is that the work requires more of <resource> than the verification); Litecoin's scrypt parameters also use so little memory, that it can be performed without memory at all.
• Faster target block time. This is often passed off as "faster confirmation", but in reality it isn't at all. To get the same security as 6 bitcoin blocks confirming a transaction, you need around 24 litecoin blocks (there are a lot of factors involved that weigh into this). In the end, the faster blocks just bloat the blockchain more - and not just the entirety of the blockchain, but the headers-only minimal blockchain that would be used by light clients.
• Larger currency supply. But we all know 1 BTC is divisible to 8 decimal places. There are more mBTC than LTC, so no "silver to gold" is needed in an alternate blockchain.

[j03]

@Luke-Jr: I appreciate the thoughtful post. I don't have an understanding of the technical side of things as you do. I'd have to say I agree. I know that an ASIC is already in the works for Litecoin. I generally feel like altcoins can hurt bitcoin by simply detracting attention.

[eleuthria]

Thank you Luke.  By far the best detailed post of why most of the currently existing altcoins being called scamcoins is a legitimate term.  To date, I can only think of 3 that are not, directly, in that category:

Namecoin:  Is not designed or marketed as a currency, but instead as a PoW-secured name value store, which has been adapted into a decentralized DNS system.
Peercoin:  Attempt at a proof-of-stake alternative to the Proof-of-Work system used by Bitcoin.  Not taking a stance on if that is meaningful in any way, but at least it's something marginally different.
Primecoin:  Attempt at a proof-of-work currency that has a "useful biproduct" as the result of all the electricity used.  I personally feel it's still a complete waste of electricity, but at the very least you're getting *something* out of it rather than just a hash.

As a result, I would not call the above "scamcoins", though I certainly don't feel any of them really have a value above pennies a piece if that.

If there are some I've missed, I'm sorry, but that's what happens when every week has a new scamcoin competing for attention.  I've not ventured into the alternate currencies subforum in months as a result.

[ScaryHash]

Hey Wiz,

I just got TWO payouts  in about 2.5 hours.

While I'm not complaining (given the price of BTC), it seems a little weird.

My little mining cluster is certainly not that ...uberhashable (is that even a word?).

I just wanna make sure nothing is screwed up. Sending you a pm in a sec.

ScaryHash

[wizkid057]

Hey Wiz,

I just got TWO payouts   in about 2.5 hours.

While I'm not complaining (given the price of BTC), it seems a little weird.

My little mining cluster is certainly not that ...uberhashable (is that even a word?).

I just wanna make sure nothing is screwed up. Sending you a pm in a sec.

ScaryHash

You most likely didn't.  You probably got paid by the block we mined which BTC Guild orphaned.  Those payments were then internally reversed (since they can never be spent) and you were paid in a subsequent block.

Edit/note: responded to PM also.