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

[DrHaribo]

Damn, I turned on cheat mode for the wrong type of coin 

[1685259228]

1685259228

[1685259228]

1685259228

[DeathAndTaxes]

Another option is a new donation cause ('Minting bonus' or something like that?). The payout for each block could be whatever is in the donation box at the time. Or it could be CDF percent of the donations. So if you get an easy 10% block, you get 10% of the current donations. For a block like today 99.9% of the available donated funds.

To be fair one thing you may wish to do is make the "minting bonus" only payable to those who enable "minting bonus" donation.

Could make it something like 2% max donation.  If you donate the max and solve a block you get the payout.  If you donate say 1% instead you get half the payout, 0.5% gets you 1/4 the payout.  The payout is based on the optional minting donation/fee set by the miner at the time the block is found.

That way the minting bonus money circulates among "players".  More likely to encourage donations that way.

[scrubadub]

No one is flipping out about the 0h00m block found by Germ after 282 works submitted?

[xkrikl]

No one is flipping out about the 0h00m block found by Germ after 282 works submitted?

It is interesting achievment! DrHaribo placed it as news on BitMinter home page.
I think that even better is that we have 4 BTC blocks in 24 hrs - lets go for more ... fingers crossed.

[Finny]

To be fair, we deserved it after that 4 day one...

[ZodiacDragon84]

Agreed!

[DrHaribo]

Another option is a new donation cause ('Minting bonus' or something like that?). The payout for each block could be whatever is in the donation box at the time. Or it could be CDF percent of the donations. So if you get an easy 10% block, you get 10% of the current donations. For a block like today 99.9% of the available donated funds.

To be fair one thing you may wish to do is make the "minting bonus" only payable to those who enable "minting bonus" donation.

Could make it something like 2% max donation.  If you donate the max and solve a block you get the payout.  If you donate say 1% instead you get half the payout, 0.5% gets you 1/4 the payout.  The payout is based on the optional minting donation/fee set by the miner at the time the block is found.

That way the minting bonus money circulates among "players".  More likely to encourage donations that way.

Good idea. I like the thought that if you contribute something you get something in return.

Only downside is that it doesn't help against block withholding. But with PPLNS miners at least have some incentive to not withhold blocks. So maybe it's not needed.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Yeah the only option to fight block witholding is an unavoidable "minting bonus", and I honestly wonder how effective a minting bonus is.  Say someone joined BM (or p2pool) with the intent to drive down luck by witholding blocks.  To have any detectible effect they would need to be large.  Say at least 10% of the pool.  The "cost" of the attack is a % of their hashing power which is the same % as their share of the pool's hashing power.

Example:
BM hashing power: ~130 GH/s
Attacker hashing power: ~13 GH/s
BM % of pool's hashing power: =~10%.
IF attacker withhold all blocks all miners lose 10% revenue.
Attacker's cost is 10% of 13GH/s = 1.3GH/s lost revenue (for as long as the attack continues).

A minting bonus doesn't really change that cost much.   A 1% minting bonus mans the attacker loses 1.3 GH/s (normal) plus 1% of the blocks he finds (0.01 * 13 = 0.13 GH/s).  A 1% bonus has increased the cost to the attack by 0.13 GH/s (~10%). 

Since there is no economic value to withholding blocks the attackers motivation is non-economical.  The minting bonus doesn't really materially change the cost. 


Sadly the "real fix" would be blind hashing (miner doesn't know if the hash solves a block or not) and that simply isn't possible with Bitcoin without a breaking protocol change.  Maybe the "next" blockchain will incorporate ideas like that.

[ZodiacDragon84]

Nice job on your solved block Doc!

[DrHaribo]

Nice summary about block withholding, DnT. Should perhaps go on the bitcoin stackexchange?

Since there is no economic value to withholding blocks the attackers motivation is non-economical.  The minting bonus doesn't really materially change the cost. 

Yeah, the hope would just be to discourage it by making it as expensive as possible. I think at least that PPLNS has an advantage over PPS-based payout models in this. If you hurt the pool 10% then you hurt yourself 10% too.

But you are probably right that adding a minting bonus to this wouldn't be a big deal. If someone is willing to lose a considerable income from their mining just to hurt your pool, then an extra 1% loss is not going to stop them.

Sadly the "real fix" would be blind hashing (miner doesn't know if the hash solves a block or not) and that simply isn't possible with Bitcoin without a breaking protocol change.  Maybe the "next" blockchain will incorporate ideas like that.

Yeah, perhaps something for the altchains to think about. But I have the feeling most of them just want to make a quick buck, not contribute something useful.

Nice job on your solved block Doc!

Thanks! I got two blocks only 3 days apart - quite happy with that.

[ZodiacDragon84]

I have a 5870 that went down a few weeks ago before I had a few funerals to attend. I just got most of my crap back together and working normal. Working on my card now, and I hope to be back up there Hash-wise with you Doc!

[scrubadub]

Dr, I think the luck page is a little broke. All but a couple of points show 0% CDF for me.

[ZodiacDragon84]

I have a 5870 that went down a few weeks ago before I had a few funerals to attend. I just got most of my crap back together and working normal. Working on my card now, and I hope to be back up there Hash-wise with you Doc!

So far, the fixed 5870 is holding up. We shall see how they go through this night.

[DrHaribo]

Dr, I think the luck page is a little broke. All but a couple of points show 0% CDF for me.

Oops! Sorry about that. I'll try and get a fix in with some other updates tonight.

So far, the fixed 5870 is holding up. We shall see how they go through this night.

Looking good!

[DrHaribo]

Another website update. Here are the news:

• Perk support completed. One perk added so far:
• Prepay perk. If you have this perk activated you get paid when the block is created (unless stale). No waiting for 120 blocks, and you keep the coins if it later becomes orphaned and worthless.
• Start off new users with the prepay perk activated for both BTC and NMC.
• Stale blocks now listed as "stale" (previously not shown). These are blocks that have never been part of the longest chain. There is no pay for these, even with the prepay perk.
• Small bugfix on login page: switch keyboard focus to input field after you click an OpenID provider logo (was not working).
• Don't extrapolate stales in live stat shift display (forgotten in the last update).
• Site navigation and info/error messages (if any) stick to the top when scrolling down. This was done so you can see new messages appearing as you interact with something far down on a page. Having navigation always available also seems handy.
• Fix luck statistics. Since a backend update a few days ago it's been displaying blocks we didn't make (with 0% CDF).

You may have to clear your browser cache before the navbar & messages will stick when scrolling.

As always, please let me know ASAP if you experience any difficulties.

[scrubadub]

Stats->blocks: "all" filter seems to only show BTC, otherwise looks good.

[Isokivi]

Hi,

Me and my 6 gpu farm are back, I lost faith with p2pools luck (12% missing since forever). Any big changes that could require my immediate attention in the last 2 months ?

[P4man]

Me and my 6 gpu farm are back, I lost faith with p2pools luck (12% missing since forever).

Excellent "pool hopping". You just missed a month that was a lot worse than p2pool, but our luck seems to have finally turned this week.

[DrHaribo]

Stats->blocks: "all" filter seems to only show BTC, otherwise looks good.

Oops! Thanks for letting me know. Fixed now. I guess sorting the blocks by height wasn't such a good idea - it put all the namecoin blocks at the end.

Me and my 6 gpu farm are back, I lost faith with p2pools luck (12% missing since forever). Any big changes that could require my immediate attention in the last 2 months ?

Nice to see you back on the team.

Like P4man said the luck was not good. A lot of users left and we are only now back to the same number of active users. You can be glad you missed the block that took 11 million proofs of work. But we did have a block with only 282 proofs of work after that, which partly makes up for it.

New on the feature side is the donation and perk system. I have been working on other things too, but it's mostly behind-the-scenes stuff that you won't notice yet. There is more stuff on the way, though.

[DrHaribo]

Quick bugfix this morning. Account details was still showing unconfirmed amounts after they were already paid out with the prepay perk. Should now be correct.