NoFeeMining oddity

[dinak]

Hey all.

Total newbie on Bitcoin and mining here so please excuse me if this is a stupid question.

I'm doing pooled mining at NoFeeMining.com that has been running for 3.8+ M round shares without hitting a block. That looks like a very high but still plausible number to me, comparing with other pools. But, I just noticed something funny in my miner log.

2011-07-03 20:37:12: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:37:12, long poll: new block 0000014e08433721
2011-07-03 20:38:28: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:38:28, long poll: new block 00000a7b5f098e8c
2011-07-03 20:38:41: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:38:41, long poll: new block 00000a414e8c50c2
2011-07-03 20:40:21: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:40:21, long poll: new block 00000c053bfab1a5
2011-07-03 20:40:59: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:40:59, long poll: new block 00000812b4836532
2011-07-03 20:58:21: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:58:21, long poll: new block 0000053764665b05
2011-07-03 20:59:48: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 20:59:48, long poll: new block 000005a9ae2970ab
2011-07-03 21:00:02: Listener for "noFee P": 03/07/2011 21:00:02, long poll: new block 000000adcdedd735

According to blockexplorer.com these are valid blocks that are in use. But nofeemining.com has not paid a single coin to the miners. Have I misunderstood something of how bitcoin works or is the nofeemining admin scamming everybody in the pool and keeping the rewards for himself?

[fascistmuffin]

Long poll means that the next block in the chain was found by someone else, and to prevent work from pointing to the wrong block in the chain, the miners update the location of the last found block in the chain.

As for not getting any income from the pool: The pool is running at ~14.9GH/s, which is smaller than some single people can put out. When the pool eventually solves the block you'll get your payout then, and it should be a decent size since there's significantly less people to split the reward to.

If you want consistently and steady payouts, then move to a bigger pool. The amount that you get will come out to be approx. the same since you'll be splitting the reward with a lot more people, but more often.

[dinak]

Okay. Thanks.

Btw. Is there a handy way to check that pool operators are not cheating?