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

[CoolGecko]

Hi everyone. I'm new to bitcoin mining and have a question about Eligius. As I understand, in order to merge-mine namecoins, I simply need to add my namecoin address to the options page. Before submitting the changes I need to "sign" the message generated by Eligius. I have done all of this using bitcoin-qt to generate the signature and the signature was accepted by Eligius. I have read that it takes only an hour for the changes to take place but now it's 24 hours later and don't see any indication that I am now merge-mining namecoins. I expected to see an indication on the web page with my user statistics (http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/<My bitcoin address>) but didn't see any.

I tried going to a user statistics page with my namecoin address (http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/<My namecoin address>), but got the message ""Error: Username <my namecoin address> not found in database." How can I know that I am mining namecoins?

There's nothing you can see besides the NMC going into your wallet from time to time.

Thanks robix, I thought that might be the case. To get some experience, I'm using an antminer U1 while waiting for a larger pre-ordered machine. I'll have to set the threshold as low as possible, so I can find out whether it's working in a reasonable amount of time.

[robix]

Hi everyone. I'm new to bitcoin mining and have a question about Eligius. As I understand, in order to merge-mine namecoins, I simply need to add my namecoin address to the options page. Before submitting the changes I need to "sign" the message generated by Eligius. I have done all of this using bitcoin-qt to generate the signature and the signature was accepted by Eligius. I have read that it takes only an hour for the changes to take place but now it's 24 hours later and don't see any indication that I am now merge-mining namecoins. I expected to see an indication on the web page with my user statistics (http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/<My bitcoin address>) but didn't see any.

I tried going to a user statistics page with my namecoin address (http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/userstats.php/<My namecoin address>), but got the message ""Error: Username <my namecoin address> not found in database." How can I know that I am mining namecoins?

There's nothing you can see besides the NMC going into your wallet from time to time.

Thanks robix, I thought that might be the case. To get some experience, I'm using an antminer U1 while waiting for a larger pre-ordered machine. I'll have to set the threshold as low as possible, so I can find out whether it's working in a reasonable amount of time.

Your welcome. If your NMC address is set correctly, that is it shows up on your My Eligius page, it should work.

[HellDiverUK]

Amen to that. I cannot believe I blew almost 11 BTC on those piece of shit Blue Fury usb miners.

Oh well... it's just money. *sigh*

 

I sold 10BTC for £40, and I thought I was doing well.

I agree about the BlueFuzzies, what a pile of crap.  At least I sold mine for a few quid on Fleabay.

[azdarknet]

Amen to that. I cannot believe I blew almost 11 BTC on those piece of shit Blue Fury usb miners.

Oh well... it's just money. *sigh*

 

I sold 10BTC for £40, and I thought I was doing well.

I agree about the BlueFuzzies, what a pile of crap.  At least I sold mine for a few quid on Fleabay.

Man I remember talking about bitcoin in 2010 and thinking naw its not going to be anything.....don't have any stories about letting coins go for small amounts of money but hind sight is always 20/20.

[CoolGecko]

There's nothing you can see besides the NMC going into your wallet from time to time.

And if you don't feel like syncing your NMC wallet constantly, you can check your address in the NMC block explorer:

http://explorer.dot-bit.org/

Thanks baddw. That's interesting, I didn't know about the block explorer. I did find a transaction under my NMC address, so I guess it's working. I'll be on the lookout for more transactions.

[baddw]

Some questions just to make sure I'm understanding Eligius correctly:

On my stats page, there is a "Shares Rewarded" column.  This is currently at around 95% (was around 89% earlier today).  This means that 5% of my total shares have been "shelved", i.e. could be paid out during the lucky times?

What would happen if the pool goes on a crazy lucky streak, enabling *all* shelved shares to be paid out?  What happens on the next block(s), does it essentially collapse to strict PPS when the shelved shares are at 0?  Is there any way to know how old the oldest shelved shares are, and how many BTC would be "owed" to them if this were to happen?  Has it ever happened?

Also, how can NMC be 105% payout?  Is it just because a lot of miners have not set up NMC, so the pool has some extra to distribute?  Are NMC payouts generated in the same way as BTC payouts (i.e., included in the mining reward) or are they held by the pool and then paid out?  What is the minimum payout for NMC?

Thanks for any info!

[HellDiverUK]

Also, how can NMC be 105% payout?  Is it just because a lot of miners have not set up NMC, so the pool has some extra to distribute?  Are NMC payouts generated in the same way as BTC payouts (i.e., included in the mining reward) or are they held by the pool and then paid out?  What is the minimum payout for NMC?

That, and Eligius was merged mining NMC for a period of time before paying out any at all, so has a large quantity in reserve.  NMC are manually paid out on some schedule, I'm not sure what it is.

[Slesh]

Hi to all
 may I ask one newbie question about reward system?

 A this time a run about 600 GH/s and I expect that I will see almost the same reward per one block.
 But as I see every block I get different rewards.
 If the round is short - about 15-30 minutes I got around 0.003 BTC and If the round takes longer time i get more. For example now goes one round 52 minutes and I see 0.0053 BTC.
 Hashrate is almost the same and i got almost twice. How is this possible?
 Round = block? right?
 Don't beat me for this question I switch to eligius a few days ago.

thanks for any explanation or link with it.

[freebit13]

Hi to all
 may I ask one newbie question about reward system?

 A this time a run about 600 GH/s and I expect that I will see almost the same reward per one block.
 But as I see every block I get different rewards.
 If the round is short - about 15-30 minutes I got around 0.003 BTC and If the round takes longer time i get more. For example now goes one round 52 minutes and I see 0.0053 BTC.
 Hashrate is almost the same and i got almost twice. How is this possible?
 Round = block? right?
 Don't beat me for this question I switch to eligius a few days ago.

thanks for any explanation or link with it.

My understanding is that PPS (pay per share) means exactly that; you get paid per share accepted so if the round is longer before the block is found then you will submit more shares therefore get more reward, so you should get a reasonably consistent amount per day, not per block. I would think the length of time for the block to be found would have an effect on the luck which with shorter rounds would allow more of the RB (recent backpay) to be activated so there would possibly also be a slight increase there due to that.

Disclaimer: do not take this information as the complete truth... just take a look at my newbie status 

[Slesh]

Hi to all
 may I ask one newbie question about reward system?

 A this time a run about 600 GH/s and I expect that I will see almost the same reward per one block.
 But as I see every block I get different rewards.
 If the round is short - about 15-30 minutes I got around 0.003 BTC and If the round takes longer time i get more. For example now goes one round 52 minutes and I see 0.0053 BTC.
 Hashrate is almost the same and i got almost twice. How is this possible?
 Round = block? right?
 Don't beat me for this question I switch to eligius a few days ago.

thanks for any explanation or link with it.

My understanding is that PPS (pay per share) means exactly that; you get paid per share accepted so if the round is longer before the block is found then you will submit more shares therefore get more reward, so you should get a reasonably consistent amount per day, not per block. I would think the length of time for the block to be found would have an effect on the luck which with shorter rounds would allow more of the RB (recent backpay) to be activated so there would possibly also be a slight increase there due to that.

Disclaimer: do not take this information as the complete truth... just take a look at my newbie status 

should be. I mined for about half a year on Slush pool and now switched for few week to Eligius... so I used to get still the same percentage of the block (not PPS).

[baddw]

Round = block? right?

Not quite, my understanding is that a "round" is blocks found by Eligius pool.  So if we find 2 blocks in a row, the round will be short.  If we go several blocks without finding one, it will be a longer round.

E.g. at the moment, last block found by Eligius was #281910.  Current block on the network is #281917.  If we find block #281917 (actually, we just did), this "round" will be blocks #281911 - #281917.

In a basic PPS system, each share is worth a given BTC.  Since we expect 1,789,546,951 shares = 25 BTC, each share = 1.397*10^-8 BTC.  Every share that you put in is worth that much.  However, you can't always get paid on those, because the pool doesn't always find the blocks.  So your older shares get put on the "shelf" to get paid out when the pool is lucky.  I am not sure where the cutoff is to be put on the shelf vs. being included in the current round.  (I understand PPLNS better than I do CPPSRB, but I know that the Eligius system is pretty much the best / most consistent.)

I am also a newb, this is just my understanding, and I welcome any corrections.

[wizkid057]

Catching up on the thread here...

KnC miners can still use stratum.mining.eligius.st:12234 - I have not verified that this helps with newer firmwares over the main server, though.

As for NMC, there are no stats for it currently.  NMC payouts happen roughly daily.  I have plans to make some stats for NMC, but that particular item on the TODO list is not a high priority.  Also, Eligius is able to pay 105% NMC because a) not all users choose to merge mine NMC and NMC earnings for users without an NMC address setup are not tracked, and b) this has built up a buffer of namecoin that is unlikely to be depleted even by paying out 105% NMC PPS.

Increasing the minimum work difficulty to 8 will have no effect whatsoever on anyone mining at ~8Gh or above.  For people with less hash rate than this, it will result in slightly higher variance on the pool stats pages, but that is it.  Earnings are unaffected.

Also, CPPSRB is *not* a straight PPS system.  Under a straight PPS system, you would get paid for every share regardless of whether the pool has found enough blocks to cover the costs of doing so.  Straight-PPS is a pool-takes-all-of-the-risk system.  CPPSRB is designed to be as close to Straight-PPS as possible, and lower miner reward variance as much as possible, but may or may not come out to the same earnings as straight PPS.  Long term averages put CPPSRB at paying out just under 99% PPS, with 0% fees, which is better than any other pool with a fee can say.  For some more details on CPPSRB, see the CPPSRB FAQ page.


CPPSRB is *not* proportional.  You do not just "get your percentage of the block reward."  It has been proven that proportional reward systems are exploitable/hopable.  CPPSRB is not.  If you are a constant miner who has been through some of Eligius's more unlucky periods, you may have enough shelved shares so that the estimated earnings work out to appear close to proportional, but this is just the system catching up your shelved shares.  Once they're caught up this won't be the case.  Again, for some more details on CPPSRB, see the CPPSRB FAQ page.

Hope this helps.

-wk

P.S. - Seems everyone has a hindsight horror story about the rise in BTC/USD..... don't we all

[wizkid057]

Round = block? right?

Not quite, my understanding is that a "round" is blocks found by Eligius pool.  So if we find 2 blocks in a row, the round will be short.  If we go several blocks without finding one, it will be a longer round.

E.g. at the moment, last block found by Eligius was #281910.  Current block on the network is #281917.  If we find block #281917 (actually, we just did), this "round" will be blocks #281911 - #281917.

In a basic PPS system, each share is worth a given BTC.  Since we expect 1,789,546,951 shares = 25 BTC, each share = 1.397*10^-8 BTC.  Every share that you put in is worth that much.  However, you can't always get paid on those, because the pool doesn't always find the blocks.  So your older shares get put on the "shelf" to get paid out when the pool is lucky.  I am not sure where the cutoff is to be put on the shelf vs. being included in the current round.  (I understand PPLNS better than I do CPPSRB, but I know that the Eligius system is pretty much the best / most consistent.)

I am also a newb, this is just my understanding, and I welcome any corrections.

This post came in as I was writing my previous.

This is mostly accurate.  The "cutoff point" for what gets shelved and what doesn't is a matter of how far back into the CPPSRB share log can be paid 100% PPS.  If it takes us less than the network-difficulty number of shares to find a block (> 100% luck), then every share submitted since the last block found will be paid, plus some shares that were "shelved" in previous rounds.  If the block takes us more than the network-difficulty number of shares to find (luck < 100%) then the most recently submitted 25 BTC worth of shares are paid 100% PPS (generally the latest network-difficulty number of shares), and the rest remain in the share log "shelved."

This results in much lower variance for the miner because no share is ever forgotten by CPPSRB, where with other systems such as PPLNS, shares in unlucky times are simply underpaid or lost entirely.

-wk

[freebit13]

....
Also, CPPSRB is *not* a straight PPS system.  Under a straight PPS system, you would get paid for every share regardless of whether the pool has found enough blocks to cover the costs of doing so.  Straight-PPS is a pool-takes-all-of-the-risk system.  CPPSRB is designed to be as close to Straight-PPS as possible, and lower miner reward variance as much as possible, but may or may not come out to the same earnings as straight PPS.  Long term averages put CPPSRB at paying out just under 99% PPS, with 0% fees, which is better than any other pool with a fee can say.  For some more details on CPPSRB, see the CPPSRB FAQ page.


CPPSRB is *not* proportional.  You do not just "get your percentage of the block reward."  It has been proven that proportional reward systems are exploitable/hopable.  CPPSRB is not.  If you are a constant miner who has been through some of Eligius's more unlucky periods, you may have enough shelved shares so that the estimated earnings work out to appear close to proportional, but this is just the system catching up your shelved shares.  Once they're caught up this won't be the case.  Again, for some more details on CPPSRB, see the CPPSRB FAQ page.

Hope this helps.

-wk

P.S. - Seems everyone has a hindsight horror story about the rise in BTC/USD..... don't we all

Thanks for the clarification WK, I'll take a read through the FAQ now.

And thanks again for getting the stats back up, I can swear my hashrate stabilizes and increases slightly when I stare at the graph and refresh every 5 mins  

[EDIT]
OK, so I had a read and a dejavu coz I'd read it a while ago and think I'm still correct in the assumption that an increase in pool luck could be responsible for a larger payout due to more shelved shares being released, but perhaps I'm incorrect in assuming that round time has anything to do with pool luck? I know it's not strictly PPS, but it should work out to almost PPS over a longer time period and an increase/decrease in pool luck would affect that daily payout sizes... no?
[/EDIT]

[baddw]

[EDIT]
OK, so I had a read and a dejavu coz I'd read it a while ago and think I'm still correct in the assumption that an increase in pool luck could be responsible for a larger payout due to more shelved shares being released, but perhaps I'm incorrect in assuming that round time has anything to do with pool luck? I know it's not strictly PPS, but it should work out to almost PPS over a longer time period and an increase/decrease in pool luck would affect that daily payout sizes... no?
[/EDIT]

Round time is directly proportional to pool luck.  At the moment, based on pool size compared to the overall BTC network, expected round time is a little more than 1 hour.  If the round time is less than that, then Luck % is higher.  If it is more than that, then Luck % is lower.  See the blocks page for examples.  You can see that, e.g. the round ending with block #281888 took 1h:06m and was 99.1% lucky (indicating slightly longer than expectation).  The round ending in block #281919 took 21m:19s and was 306% lucky (indicating roughly 3x faster than expectation).

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/blocks.php

[freebit13]

[EDIT]
OK, so I had a read and a dejavu coz I'd read it a while ago and think I'm still correct in the assumption that an increase in pool luck could be responsible for a larger payout due to more shelved shares being released, but perhaps I'm incorrect in assuming that round time has anything to do with pool luck? I know it's not strictly PPS, but it should work out to almost PPS over a longer time period and an increase/decrease in pool luck would affect that daily payout sizes... no?
[/EDIT]

Round time is directly proportional to pool luck.  At the moment, based on pool size compared to the overall BTC network, expected round time is a little more than 1 hour.  If the round time is less than that, then Luck % is higher.  If it is more than that, then Luck % is lower.  See the blocks page for examples.  You can see that, e.g. the round ending with block #281888 took 1:06 and was 99.1% lucky (indicating slightly longer than expectation).  The round ending in block #281919 took 21:19 and was 306% lucky (indicating roughly 3x faster than expectation).

http://eligius.st/~wizkid057/newstats/blocks.php

Yes and that would also make it proportional to the number of shares per round because longer rounds have more shares submitted so there's lower likelihood of shelved shares being payed out and a higher likelihood of shares being shelved... so a bunch of short (lucky) rounds would result in fewer shares being shelved and more of the previously shelved shares to be paid out and that would create a spike in the payout that Slesh noticed... imho

[azdarknet]

Thanks WK for the hard work this last weekend and the explanation!

[Cheeseater]

I have a question about the pool contributors and I am not trying to be troll or stir up a shitstorm. There is one contributor that tops the chart and takes 20% of the earnings every round. Does this not hurt everyone else? Or is it helping everyone else? Would the pool be significantly hurt without them or would everyone's shares and payouts go up without them. It would seem logical that everyone would see a jump in earnings without them. Remember it's just a question not any accusation. Thanks
     

[baddw]

I have a question about the pool contributors and I am not trying to be troll or stir up a shitstorm. There is one contributor that tops the chart and takes 20% of the earnings every round. Does this not hurt everyone else? Or is it helping everyone else? Would the pool be significantly hurt without them or would everyone's shares and payouts go up without them. It would seem logical that everyone would see a jump in earnings without them. Remember it's just a question not any accusation. Thanks
      

They get 20% of the payouts, but they create 20% of the coins generated by the pool.  This is how pooling works: everybody contributes in the same proportion that they take away.  My rig might be 1/1000th of the power and I receive 1/1000th of the coins generated.  It's the same for everybody.  (EDIT: Although it can vary slightly, depending on the payout scheme.  The CPPSRB is the fairest scheme around, IMO, but still has a tiny amount of variance.)

If they left, theoretically we would all earn the same as we do now.  Personally I am glad to have some heavy hitters in the pool.

[Cheeseater]

Makes sense Thanks