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

[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%.

[matt4054]

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%.

Yes, I counted only the orphans and not the stale ones. But I think you misread my post* because I was saying indeed that the orphans ratio was less than 2%, or even much less than 1.5%, so basically I agree with you.

My point was that the pool was worth a 1.5% donation anyway (full disclosure I am only donating at 0.5% right now but I was at 2.5% with the perks enabled, prior to the 1% fee).

*edit: either misread my post or my grammar was too broken, sorry about that

[DrHaribo]

Hi Doc not to beat a dead horse but any chance you will have litecoin pool in the future.

I'm working on stability issues right now. Haven't even had a chance to look at Litecoin at all yet. Can't make any promises.

[DrHaribo]

BitMinter is changing the minimum auto cash out threshold from 0.001 to 0.01.

The problem with 0.001 cashouts is that it gives you a "wallet full of pennies" and you will be forced to pay fees to send all those tiny amounts elsewhere later. With over 5000 active miners it is also starting to cost the pool a bit to do free cash outs, especially of such tiny amounts that demand a fee. So essentially we were spending money to help newbies shoot themselves in the foot.

Starting now, the website won't allow setting thresholds below 0.01. If you already have your threshold set below that, then it is recommended to change it to 0.01 or higher. If you don't, then that change will be forced on saturday june first (2013.06.01). Contact me (operator@bitminter.com) if you have any problems.

[dodegkr]

Can I ask is it bad to have a miner as powerful as realasicminer in the pool ?

[matt4054]

BitMinter is changing the minimum auto cash out threshold from 0.001 to 0.01.
[+explanation on why edited out]

I always thought BitMinter already had a 0.01 threshold for payouts, every other pool I know of are already at 0.01. And I totally support your analysis on protecting the newbies from shooting themselves in the foot and avoid them piling up tons of very small coins without knowing what they're doing.

Can I ask is it bad to have a miner as powerful as realasicminer in the pool ?

No, it doesn't really change anything for others. To get the idea, if the pool hashrate goes x10 while your hashrate stays the same, you will be paid 10x less for each block found, but it will happen 10x more often.

[redtwitz]

Can I ask is it bad to have a miner as powerful as realasicminer in the pool ?

It's good, actually.

The higher the pool's hashrate, the lower the miners' daily variance. The expected rewards remain the same, but the actual rewards fluctuate less.

Now, a single fast miner will mine at a high worker difficulty, which means boosting the pool's hashrate without putting a strain on the pool's network and CPU usage.

[dodegkr]

BitMinter is changing the minimum auto cash out threshold from 0.001 to 0.01.
[+explanation on why edited out]

I always thought BitMinter already had a 0.01 threshold for payouts, every other pool I know of are already at 0.01. And I totally support your analysis on protecting the newbies from shooting themselves in the foot and avoid them piling up tons of very small coins without knowing what they're doing.

Being new I assumed it was safer to take coins at 0.001 to my wallet, to protect against the pool being hacked or going away ...
Why does it matter what my wallet was built with?
If the wallet now holds BTC50 and I pay out BTC10 surely it matters not that the BTC50 was saved up pennies ?

[matt4054]

Being new I assumed it was safer to take coins at 0.001 to my wallet, to protect against the pool being hacked or going away ...
Why does it matter what my wallet was built with?
If the wallet now holds BTC50 and I pay out BTC10 surely it matters not that the BTC50 was saved up pennies ?

I will try a simple analogy:
If you have 500 coins worth $0.10 in your wallet, you have $50.
If you have one $50 note in your wallet, you have $50 as well.

Now if you go to a shop, and try to pay a $50 item with 500 $0.10 coins, the cashier may look at you in a weird way and you will get many haters if there is a queue behind you. That does not happen with the $50 note.

This is because altough theoretically with the same value, in practice, dealing with 500 small coins for a $50 payment bears a much higher side-cost (read money handling) than a $50 note. The same applies to Bitcoins, and it translates as much higher transaction fees.

[GuiltySpark343]

Why does it matter what my wallet was built with?
If the wallet now holds BTC50 and I pay out BTC10 surely it matters not that the BTC50 was saved up pennies ?

Think about it this way. If you're paying for a new cellphone that costs $200, it's way easier to count two $100 bills, than it is for the cashier to count 20,000 pennies. That would take the cashier a long time, causing long lines and people behind you getting angry for waiting.

In the BTC world, if you were paying 2 BTC with a wallet that accumulated 20 x 0.1 BTC, it's a smaller byte size transaction. Now if you were paying that 2 BTC with 2000 x 0.001 BTC, the byte size of that transaction goes up a lot, and it would have to be transmitted across the BTC network consuming bandwidth. I believe the reference Bitcoin-QT wallet (and Multibit) would enforce a transaction fee for doing that if you were ever to send a payment somewhere.

EDIT: Lol matt4054 had same analogy I did

[dodegkr]

that would mean btc is following fiat style methods, thats disappointing but i follow.
thanks

[sturle]

If the wallet now holds BTC50 and I pay out BTC10 surely it matters not that the BTC50 was saved up pennies ?

Yes, the fee is calculated from the size of the transaction in KB.  If you send 1 BTC consisting of 1000 0.001 coins..  Hmm, no.  That would be impossible, I think, because the transaction will have too many inputs to be valid.  If you send 0.1 BTC consisting of 100 0.001 sized inputs, the transaction will be approximately 18 KB large.  That means at least 0.009 BTC in fees, given a base fee of 0.0005 BTC per KB.  Which means 9 more 0.001 sized inputs have to be added just to pay the fee, which increases the fee to 0.01 BTC, and another 0.001 sized input has to be added to cover that as well.  If the input coins are young (recently received), it will cost even more.  You end up paying 10% of the transaction value in fees.
 
A transaction of 0.1 BTC from one 0.1 BTC input received a long time ago (more bitcoin-days destroyed), is only 180 bytes of inputs and will normally be free if the input is old enough.