[1050 TH] BitMinter.com [1% PPLNS,Pays TxFees +MergedMining,Stratum,GBT,vardiff]

[DrHaribo]

trying this new pool with 6 machines ...  gigabyte 6959 cards and  6870 cards lol ....

Welcome to the crew!

Cool pictures. When I look at that I understand why I am getting further down on the top10 list lately.  

I may change the stats to update more frequently. I'm just a bit unsure how much it will add to the server load once we have a lot of users, so I don't want to make it too frequent.

Anyone else with pictures of their rigs?

[1714310552]

1714310552

[FalconFour]

For some reason, after seeing that picture above, I feel very, very... very... very very very insignificant.  



My 212MH/s one-and-only rig, cleverly disguised as an old piece-of-junker. Then again, I dunno if it's really a disguise anymore.  

edit: Oh, and it runs outside on the porch, since I live on the 2nd floor (so that's only accessible from the inside, unless someone throws a rope up - dedication!!), and we're in middle of dry weather... it completely negates the need for running air-conditioning to remove the generated heat. Sad thing is, I'm already running a tight consumption-to-return rate on the electricity, and having burned $2.50 on electricity to generate less than ~0.4 Bitcoin, I'm really quite frustrated with mining at the moment... :?

[DrHaribo]

My 212MH/s one-and-only rig, cleverly disguised as an old piece-of-junker. Then again, I dunno if it's really a disguise anymore. 

Hehe

What's the thing on top of the case? For measuring electricity consumption? I need to get me one of those.

I bet you're not the only one frustrated with mining. Bitcoin at $7 now! I remember when it was $30. I guess that's why the hashrate/difficulty is dropping - I bet a lot of people are unhappy with profitability now.

[FalconFour]

Hehe

What's the thing on top of the case? For measuring electricity consumption? I need to get me one of those.

I bet you're not the only one frustrated with mining. Bitcoin at $7 now! I remember when it was $30. I guess that's why the hashrate/difficulty is dropping - I bet a lot of people are unhappy with profitability now.

Yeah, it's a Kill-A-Watt EZ, programmed with an average electricity cost of $0.15/kWh. It shows the current total cost (displayed in full pic), cost/week, cost/month, cost/year, etc., as well as power factor (1.0 is "perfect" and this system is at 0.99), and any other metric you could imagine to measure/monitor power. Right now it's looking right on the edge of profit - if I sell my "almost-1-bitcoin" I've made over the past couple weeks, I might pay the power bill... :/ Nowheres near paying off the $100 GPU, though

Just curious, what happened to the pool's block-finding? We seem to be stuck on the same block since the 2nd, that's running almost 5 days on the same block... just a streak of really bad luck?

edit: Oh, and the other thing attached to it is my powerline Ethernet adapter, enabling me to keep the thing completely outside without hanging any wires out the door, or installing a wireless adapter

[DrHaribo]

Just curious, what happened to the pool's block-finding? We seem to be stuck on the same block since the 2nd, that's running almost 5 days on the same block... just a streak of really bad luck?

Yes, bad luck. This is the problem with the proportional payment method. A lot of people leave when the pool has bad luck.

I've been looking at some of the new payment methods, like double geometric. But now I am again leaning towards a shift-based PPLNS. I will try to get a new system in soon, to get things stabilized.

[FalconFour]

Aye, it's definitely a problem when your pool bases itself around a proprietary client as well... personally, I got to thinking there was a bug in the client or something. Admittedly, going 2...3 days and still seeing 0 balance, I wasn't much encouraged I think I need to stick to a share-based system just to maintain my sanity - with only one truly-functioning GPU, I need to make sure it keeps paying for itself

[DrHaribo]

There's never been that kind of bug in the client nor server. But yeah, I can understand that it feels like "nothing is happening".

It just takes a while when we are unlucky and get 4-5 million share blocks.

New payment system (shift-based PPLNS) coming soon. Hopefully that will help get the hashrate higher and keep it there.

[P4man]

Admittedly, going 2...3 days and still seeing 0 balance, I wasn't much encouraged I think I need to stick to a share-based system just to maintain my sanity - with only one truly-functioning GPU, I need to make sure it keeps paying for itself

I dont think you get an electricity invoice every 2-3 days (and I hope you dont actually need the BCs to pay for them), so with the 150 free BTCs being handed out, you will almost certainly make more BCs per month on this pool. Dont get me wrong, Im also mining with just one rig, still waiting for the first "paycheck" so I know how it feels, but I bet it will feel better once that check comes in . Getting dozens of 0.01 BCs  from slush also gets boring you know, and still doesnt add up to a whole lot .

[P4man]

Ive talked in my game community about mining BTCs using BitMinter (through syndication) but as expected there is quite some resistance against it. There is the usual arguments that I can handle ("its a scam" and blah blah), but the biggest complaint surprised me somewhat, its that bitminter is closed source and they worry if it wont steal bitcoins or do other more nefarious things.

 I know this is a very deliberate choice for you, but I wonder if you shouldnt consider an opensource license thats more restrictive than GPL. The idea would be that people can verify what the app does, not allowing them to copy your code. Im no expert on open software licenses, but Im sure there are plenty of those. Is that something you'd consider doing?

[DrHaribo]

Regarding some people not trusting a closed-source client, I'll have to think about how best to solve this.

The problem with opening the source is that this alone does not solve the trust problem. When you start the client, Java WebStart checks the server to see if there is a newer version. If there is, it replaces the binary code you have with new code from the server. So I could show you some clean source code, and then serve you bad binary code the next time you start up the program. Kind of like a bait and switch.

The same thing goes for open-source miners. If you just download a binary compiled by someone else, how do you know which source code they compiled it from? They could have put anything into the binary. You have to download the source code and compile it yourself. Preferably you should also do a security review on it yourself, but you can of course hope that someone else did, if it is a popular program and the source has been available for a while.

I see Java WebStart as one of the big benefits of this miner. You don't have to download, compile or even install anything. Just click and off it goes.

Maybe it helps to just open source it even if that by itself gives no real security. Security theatre often works to calm people.  Just kidding.

Anyway, I'm still thinking about all this ...

[P4man]

Maybe it helps to just open source it even if that by itself gives no real security. Security theatre often works to calm people.   Just kidding.

Kidding or not, its actually true. But if you want to infect 30 ? or so users with malware (users that actually generate profits for you), thereby also guaranteeing the end of your pool the moment its discovered,  there are probably easier ways to do it.

Agreed with your points btw and I had thought of them, its just that "hiding" your source makes people suspicious. Having the source in public and people being able to compile it from source if they wish, simply inspires more trust even if it doesnt prove the binary (or whatever you call that with java, bytecode?) is actually the same.

Anyway, I do think its good people are getting suspicious and demanding OSS, even windows gamers. While I wish they were more consistent in that demand, like for their OS heh,  I definitely see that as progress. Just 2 weeks ago I witnessed the same on a forum for a flight sim I play (Rise Of Flight). A long time member posted some "optimization" app. When I read it, I was almost certain lots of people would have fallen for it, given the average PC incompetence on that forum (typically old farts with no clue about computers) Surprisingly  everyone was immediately highly suspicious, afaik no one even installed it even though it came clean on virus scans; I scanned it myself, and uploaded to some multi av scanner online, came back clean. Decompiling showed it was malware, but people are learning not to just trust any app. For anyone interested, here is the thread (first post obviously edited by a moderator since):
http://riseofflight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=23491

Ok, sorry for off topic. HURRAY we got another block

[DrHaribo]

We are switching payment system!

The switch will happen after the next block is created. So block #17 will be proportional. Block #18 and up will be the new system.

I have implemented a shift-based variation of PPLNS like mentioned before. Here is how it works:

Each proof of work is given a score equal to one divided by the difficulty at the time it was submitted. Proofs of work are grouped in shifts. A shift is completed when its total score passes 0.1. Whenever new coins are minted, they are divided between contributing members proportionally to the total score each member has within the last 10 completed shifts. You can see the completed shifts at https://bitminter.com/shifts.

The purpose of this switch is to make pool hopping pointless, thereby stabilizing payouts for 24/7 miners.

More statistics coming soon. Let me know what you would like to see.

The following changes were put into production today:

• Shift-based variation of PPLNS implemented.
• Fixed bug that could make a miner disappear from the top 10 live stats, making it show only 9 miners.
• Changed pool speed, worker speed and top 10 speeds to be exponential moving averages. This should stabilize the numbers somewhat.

[P4man]

We are switching payment system!ing payouts for 24/7 miners.

Sounds good!

More statistics coming soon. Let me know what you would like to see.

Id like see my share of the current block, and how many shares have been completed in the current block. Also please expand the top 10. Im never going to make top 10, but Id like to see my stats in the ahm.. top 100 (once I fix my rig) 

[SgtMoth]

my bitminter app(miners, 2 different machines) went haywire on me today, my guiminer was fine(3x480). my 6990 was jumping from 70-90% usage and my 5870 just plain froze. i restarted, all seems fine now?  any ideas?

[SgtMoth]

though, i should mention my guiminer had 6800/58 stale per card today

[P4man]

my bitminter app(miners, 2 different machines) went haywire on me today, my guiminer was fine(3x480). my 6990 was jumping from 70-90% usage and my 5870 just plain froze. i restarted, all seems fine now?  any ideas?

Are you monitoring volts and temps? Might be a very long shot, but for a short while I thought it was bitminter, as it had frozen up,  and needed restarting, but the problem as it  turned out, was overheating due to voltage spikes (1.65v!); voltage spikes caused by, you wouldnt believe it... monitoring voltages and temps.

If you run one or two monitoring apps simultaneously, like GPU-Z and everest or afterburner, this can happen.  Restarting bitminter "cured" the problem, because of the GPU load drop, the GPU clocked down and the voltages corrected themselves. But the problem had nothing to do with bitminter, everything with the hardware monitoring apps.

Read more here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=44495.msg532849#msg532849

Dont know it this problem exists with radeon 6xxx cards, but its very real with 5xx0 cards.

[DrHaribo]

my bitminter app(miners, 2 different machines) went haywire on me today, my guiminer was fine(3x480). my 6990 was jumping from 70-90% usage and my 5870 just plain froze. i restarted, all seems fine now?  any ideas?

I just noticed the BitMinter client has a much higher memory usage after it has been running for a long time. It wasn't like this before. A memory leak must have sneaked its way into the latest version. I will get right on that. Maybe it is related to the problem you had - not sure.

[SgtMoth]

the one that froze was a clean install of windows 7, no monitoring at all.  the other machine with the usuage jumping, (lol, youll love this) is a sli board with a 5870 in slot one and the 6990 in slot 2,(cooler on the bottom)this was the first time it screwed up.  usually i get barely any stales(3-4/day/per card) on guiminer.  i find my 480's run better with guiminer.  on a side note, i couldnt get the 6990 to work on this other board, too old i think, otherwise i would have the 5870's together.  the only monitoring i have is afterburner, and its only on the 6990/5870 system, im pretty sure the voltage isnt shown because of the 6990.  the cards are alittle dirty so my highest temp ive seen is 80(current temp 79.77,and 69) and not overclocked(7647/3/0 for 8 hrs,ave 1100/mhps, running better).  gotta go to work now, pay for powerbill......

[DrHaribo]

Found a nasty bug causing memory to leak. This and two other fixes in the new beta version:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=31163.msg534764#msg534764

Please try the beta and see if it works better.

[worldinacoin]

I just tried bitminter, that is really cool!  Such a pity that I did not discover it earlier on.  Using my oldest machine on nvidia to mine is still quite fast!  The best thing is it is so simple!  Do not have to go through all the configurations as in others.