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

[m3ta]

Yup, down again. For 13 mns now.

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[veleten]

again

[m3ta]

Back up, downtime was 15 minutes and a bunch of stales.

[DrHaribo]

Mining service is back up again. Apologies for the downtime.

I had to extract some data before restarting it. Working on the issue now.

[DrHaribo]

The ASICminer devices.. I don't know. Not easy to get communicate with those guys, I guess they are too busy. But I read somewhere that the USB device works like an Icarus FPGA, and those are supported in BitMinter client. So it may work. I would certainly like to hear about it if someone gets a chance to try it out.

I have ordered an AM Erupter USB miner, I'm waiting for the GB to complete and ship. I will write about my experience with BitMinter client + Erupter USB as soon as I get it, if do one did in the meantime.

Thanks, that would be awesome. I hope it works.

I don't see the joke. I've been 8 hours mining and don't see any payments in my transaction history, I don't know if this pool is working or not.

This pool uses the PPLNS reward system, not PPS. Rewards have been running stable for almost 2 years. It's just that there is some delay with this reward system - it's how we can pay better than most other pools.

Without the prepay perk you need to wait for blocks to be confirmed before you get your share from them. This takes about 20 hours (120 confirmations). Even without prepay there is a delay from you do the work until you get paid. Work is registered in a shift when you send it in. The work in the 10 latest completed shifts get paid when a block is found. Your work is usually paid several times before it is no longer in the 10 latest shifts. It currently takes over 4 hours before it stops being paid from new blocks. Without prepay, add a 20 hour delay before the coins reach your account.

[stslimited]

is "Unconfirmed Transactions" accurate?

Mine has been stuck at the same number for 8 hours, yet I see my earnings in each individual block if I go look


sorry to be so picky about this, but I have to earn back my mining hardware, in a limited time, haha

[sceptre]

talk about some bad luck lately

BTW, good pool and website. Only thing missing for me is a "Miner down alert".

[matt4054]

is "Unconfirmed Transactions" accurate?

Mine has been stuck at the same number for 8 hours, yet I see my earnings in each individual block if I go look


sorry to be so picky about this, but I have to earn back my mining hardware, in a limited time, haha

If you have the pre-paid perk enabled (My Account > Donations and perks, the "immediate pay" options at the end of the page), you are getting paid for every block as soon as it is found and gets at few confirmations (I believe, possibly just one).

The last block that appeared in the block list when you posted was at height 237798. The block in the main chain (the "real" one) at this height was from ASICMiner, not BitMinter. Than means it was probably a stale block, and it still show as "processing" in the list until it is found to be stale. Maybe* this will happen when the next block is found, but as far as I understand, this block will never make it to the main chain and miners will not be paid for it (and it's perfectly normal because it yielded no earnings to the pool).

So, basically, I think you have not been paid in the last 8 hours because of a very unlucky round (6 hours), with an unlucky outcome (i.e. stale), followed by another unlucky round (4 hours), and while I wrote these line, we found one at height 237825 (phew!).

Now, the bad luck is probably going to end, and you will see your unconfirmed total increasing (it will be confirmed immediately if you enable the pre-pay perk w/ a small donation).

Finally, if you're not yet aware of how PPLNS works, you had to "fill" the last 10 shifts when you started mining, meaning initial revenues were lower than expected. But should you stop mining now, you will still earn revenues until you don't have any remaining work shares in the last 10 shifts, so it's a "symmetrical" delay in payments when you start/stop mining.

Hope that helps...

tl;dr: We have been very unlucky in the last 8 hours. Keep mining and with some luck your earnings will catch up with expected ones.

*edit: maybe => yes indeed!

[DrG]

is "Unconfirmed Transactions" accurate?

Mine has been stuck at the same number for 8 hours, yet I see my earnings in each individual block if I go look


sorry to be so picky about this, but I have to earn back my mining hardware, in a limited time, haha

If you have the pre-paid perk enabled (My Account > Donations and perks, the "immediate pay" options at the end of the page), you are getting paid for every block as soon as it is found and gets at few confirmations (I believe, possibly just one).

The last block that appeared in the block list when you posted was at height 237798. The block in the main chain (the "real" one) at this height was from ASICMiner, not BitMinter. Than means it was probably a stale block, and it still show as "processing" in the list until it is found to be stale. Maybe* this will happen when the next block is found, but as far as I understand, this block will never make it to the main chain and miners will not be paid for it (and it's perfectly normal because it yielded no earnings to the pool).

So, basically, I think you have not been paid in the last 8 hours because of a very unlucky round (6 hours), with an unlucky outcome (i.e. stale), followed by another unlucky round (4 hours), and while I wrote these line, we found one at height 237825 (phew!).

Now, the bad luck is probably going to end, and you will see your unconfirmed total increasing (it will be confirmed immediately if you enable the pre-pay perk w/ a small donation).

Finally, if you're not yet aware of how PPLNS works, you had to "fill" the last 10 shifts when you started mining, meaning initial revenues were lower than expected. But should you stop mining now, you will still earn revenues until you don't have any remaining work shares in the last 10 shifts, so it's a "symmetrical" delay in payments when you start/stop mining.

Hope that helps...

tl;dr: We have been very unlucky in the last 8 hours. Keep mining and with some luck your earnings will catch up with expected ones.

*edit: maybe => yes indeed!

What?  How can you say such a thing?  Past "luck" has no bearing on future "luck".  If you tossed heads 25 times in a row on a nickel you may feel it to be a special nickel but it will still have a 50/50% chance of landing on tails or heads on the next toss (assuming it's not loaded or a 2 headed coin ie cheating).

In the long run (long as in 1 year of mining) the rewards so approach close to 100% of expected, but that's not to say bad or good luck won't continue.

Having said that I'm still taking offers to move away from certain pools as I can offer stats showing I am the most cursed miner 

[matt4054]

What?  How can you say such a thing?  Past "luck" has no bearing on future "luck".  If you tossed heads 25 times in a row on a nickel you may feel it to be a special nickel but it will still have a 50/50% chance of landing on tails or heads on the next toss (assuming it's not loaded or a 2 headed coin ie cheating).

You know it probably better than me, and you are right about the 50/50% chance of outcome when tossing a coin no matter what the past results were. But it's very subtle as you know, and if you consider a series of tosses, the odds of an "all heads" or "all tails" series is 1/n 1/(2^(n-1)) where n = number of tosses, or am I wrong? So the chance of having a series of n bad rounds is (twice) lower than n-1 bad rounds, or am I wrong again?

Edit: Ahem I always sucked at math. But you get the idea, I hope

[DrG]

What?  How can you say such a thing?  Past "luck" has no bearing on future "luck".  If you tossed heads 25 times in a row on a nickel you may feel it to be a special nickel but it will still have a 50/50% chance of landing on tails or heads on the next toss (assuming it's not loaded or a 2 headed coin ie cheating).

You know it probably better than me, and you are right about the 50/50% chance of outcome when tossing a coin no matter what the past results were. But it's very subtle as you know, and if you consider a series of tosses, the odds of an "all heads" or "all tails" series is 1/n 1/(2^(n-1)) where n = number of tosses, or am I wrong? So the chance of having a series of n bad rounds is (twice) lower than n-1 bad rounds, or am I wrong again?

Edit: Ahem I always sucked at math. But you get the idea, I hope

Yes I get at what you're trying to say.  The chance of something rare happening twice is 1/rare as likely.  Akin to having lightning strike a human being twice.  But if you consider a human being who has already been struck by lightning, his chance of being hit again should be the same as you and me (assuming he doesn't have a metal scalp or something silly).

So if the first run of bad luck happened, the chance for it to happen again is now the same as it was before it happened the first time.  According to OoC the pool didn't exhibit anything that deviated significantly from the expected distribution.

All you new miners missed BTCGuild's horrible 3 month run in middle/late 2011.  So many threads were made accusing E of scamming/stealing.  And 18 months later he has to increase fees to keep people away from his pool 

People either need to spread their mining power, accept a 8-10% fee at a PPS pool, or just live with PPLNS/Slush/DGM based scoring.

[matt4054]

People either need to spread their mining power, accept a 8-10% fee at a PPS pool, or just live with PPLNS/Slush/DGM based scoring.

I don't want to promote any competing pool here so I won't mention its name but there is another major pool running pure PPS at 3% fees. I never really understood why BTC Guild was so dominant (not implying they are bad at anything here, just others aren't bad either). And another one on CPPSRB (quite as linear and variance-proof as PPS, just without the bankruptcy risk for the pool operator) that only keeps tx fees profits for the pool (so the actual payout rate is ALWAYS 100% PPS in the long run, except if they cease operations and end up with unrecoverable shelved shares).

Thank you for mentioning this famous unlucky round, I feel like a noob now :-)

[DrHaribo]

PPS at 3% fees

So 3% fee, and 1.5% loss of transaction fee income and 6.5% loss of namecoin. Total = 3 + 1.5 + 6.5 = 11%

But I agree that 7.5 + 1.5 + 6.5= 15.5% is more expensive.

Anyway, the difference in average income between BitMinter at 1% fee and a "3% PPS" pool is 10%. It looks like a 2% difference. But it is actually a 10% difference. An important word there is "average". You may want to pay 10% to take luck out of the equation. It looks rather expensive to me, though.

I remember the uproar when OzCoin introduced a 3% fee (later reduced). And yet there are people mining with a big smile and getting 14.5% less than the average payout at BitMinter. I guess those are two different groups of miners. What I could do is offer miners a choice between 1% and 15% fee, to cater for both groups.

[DrG]

You can mention other pools.  It's not like it's hidden data.  I assume you're talking about 50BTC.  Well I was mining on there yesterday and thanks to the downtown I lost about 3 hours of revenue.  The OP claims the shares were counted but on a pure PPS system it's very easy to see that my earnings are exactly 7/8th of what was expected yesterday, so 3 hour downtime.  Which happens to coincide with the 3 hours missing on the graphs.

This wouldn't be a big deal if the pool OP shut down the pool or redirected traffic.  Any sensible miner not new to the game would have backups.  The problem occurs when they OP says there's nothing to worry about and basically miners are spinning their wheels.  I even found a block for them yesterday.  But since CGMiner didn't detect a disconnect it didn't switch over to backups.

And this is where you can tell the good pools from the bad.  BTCGuild has proven itself time and time again.  Sure it gets hit with DDoS but E is very much on top of it.  That is probably the most stable pool.  So what does it matter if you pay a 5% higher fee if the pool allows 5% more income due to more reliability.

As this thread is about Bitminter we all know Dr. H is very much on top of his creation.  I'm sure for most pool ops it has become a full time job.  I used to mine here and will happily switch back - the only thing holding me off is the lack of miner offline notification.  It's pretty much summer here in Southern California and some of my older cards are not tolerant of this heat.  2 cards are already running 1/2 speed and goes Sick/Dead quite often - can't wait for ASIC.

So again choice of a pool is determined by the end user.  Those who can micromanage a 200 GPU farm as their daily job can afford to sit at a pool with no notifications.  I'll happily pay a higher fee for a pool that has better reliability as long as it doesn't concentrate the network.

[DrG]

Looks like Dr. H beat me to the punch!  Pretty much what he said.

And now OzCoin is down.  I mined there for 5 months, but it's not very reliable for me right now.  I would happily pay Graeme and his team 6% fee for stability.


Dr. H - any timeline for getting idle miner notification working?

[stslimited]

is "Unconfirmed Transactions" accurate?

Mine has been stuck at the same number for 8 hours, yet I see my earnings in each individual block if I go look


sorry to be so picky about this, but I have to earn back my mining hardware, in a limited time, haha

If you have the pre-paid perk enabled (My Account > Donations and perks, the "immediate pay" options at the end of the page), you are getting paid for every block as soon as it is found and gets at few confirmations (I believe, possibly just one).

The last block that appeared in the block list when you posted was at height 237798. The block in the main chain (the "real" one) at this height was from ASICMiner, not BitMinter. Than means it was probably a stale block, and it still show as "processing" in the list until it is found to be stale. Maybe* this will happen when the next block is found, but as far as I understand, this block will never make it to the main chain and miners will not be paid for it (and it's perfectly normal because it yielded no earnings to the pool).

So, basically, I think you have not been paid in the last 8 hours because of a very unlucky round (6 hours), with an unlucky outcome (i.e. stale), followed by another unlucky round (4 hours), and while I wrote these line, we found one at height 237825 (phew!).

Now, the bad luck is probably going to end, and you will see your unconfirmed total increasing (it will be confirmed immediately if you enable the pre-pay perk w/ a small donation).

Finally, if you're not yet aware of how PPLNS works, you had to "fill" the last 10 shifts when you started mining, meaning initial revenues were lower than expected. But should you stop mining now, you will still earn revenues until you don't have any remaining work shares in the last 10 shifts, so it's a "symmetrical" delay in payments when you start/stop mining.

Hope that helps...

tl;dr: We have been very unlucky in the last 8 hours. Keep mining and with some luck your earnings will catch up with expected ones.

*edit: maybe => yes indeed!

so is the 1.50% perk + 1% pool fee worth it, to avoid the dry spell? just curious

yeah I just did the math, I think this more than alleviates the risk of bad luck, and I still get namecoins, compared to other pools

[matt4054]

so is the 1.50% perk + 1% pool fee worth it, to avoid the dry spell? just curious
yeah I just did the math, I think this more than alleviates the risk of bad luck, and I still get namecoins, compared to other pools

I browsed through 20-something pages of block history to estimate that there are less that 2% (it was 2% at the time, before 1% fee) orphan blocks, so I would mainly see it as as the "interests" on the pre-pay advance + "insurance" for orphaned blocks. It depends on your expectation.

At any rate I think the excellent work of DrHaribo deserves at least a small donation, so if not for the arguments above, you can do it just to support him ;-)

[Pentel]

I've always donated to the site, 'cos it's a very easy to use site and full of info. And "when" my BFL 5GH/s and 25GH/s ASIC's come along I know it will work right out of the box 

[GuiltySpark343]

Haha, pathetic luck today. After 24 hrs at 9.5 TH/s, we only found 8 blocks!

[GuiltySpark343]

I browsed through 20-something pages of block history to estimate that there are less that 2% (it was 2% at the time, before 1% fee) orphan blocks, so I would mainly see it as as the "interests" on the pre-pay advance + "insurance" for orphaned blocks. It depends on your expectation.

Are you sure you counted "orphan" blocks? Remember, stale blocks do not count and even with the perk, you do not get BTC for stales. I believe actual orphan blocks are much, much less than 1.5%.