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

[Henchman24]

uhm.. first btc block by multipool, i see they had also a few nmc blocks..

If they're the same bad actor that has plagued BTCGuild and Eligius, they've demonstrated that withholding blocks is a feature, not a bug in their software.  They can turn it on/off at their discretion.

[Minor Miner]

uhm.. first btc block by multipool, i see they had also a few nmc blocks..

If they're the same bad actor that has plagued BTCGuild and Eligius, they've demonstrated that withholding blocks is a feature, not a bug in their software.  They can turn it on/off at their discretion.

I do not think they are the same person.    But since we all know that around 20% of miners income was lost for a couple months at eliguis and btc guild, we all need to be vigilant.
I keep pulling from the top 50 and put the names in excel.  then I go to BTC blocks solved and pull that.    And I look for unlucky people.    Because I am paying too much in electricity to get robbed.    Hopefully others will do the same because I travel a lot and cannot be the only neighborhood watchman.

[gb1971]

whoop there it is...........nothing wrong @ multipool

[Henchman24]

whoop there it is...........nothing wrong @ multipool

So you created a brand new account to trumpet multipool's first block as definitive proof nothing is wrong?

[strongenough24]

Interesting given our current discussion:

https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=441465.msg7282674#msg7282674

Maybe the user "multipool" is not multipool.us?

Wow...

But on Multipool's home page https://www.multipool.us/ they have this announcement:

Jun 08 1:53 PM Our switch to Bitminter is now complete and things seem to be operating perfectly. Our stale rate on Bitminter is only 0.02%! Please send email if you notice any issues.

[SgtMoth]

another orphan....

[Entropy-uc]

We had some good luck and then some even luck. We haven't been having bad luck for some time. Look at the reward graphs at https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards

The slightly bad luck I was talking about was Multipool alone. With their mining alone it is slightly bad luck that they haven't found a block yet. Which is completely normal.

The pool as a whole is currently having even luck, though, because others are finding blocks. Some miners in the pool are having good luck while others have bad luck. The pool is evening this out. This is one of the nice things that pools do.

The reward model at Bitminter does not punish you for coming and going. You can mine part time at the pool and the pay is still fair. Mining more does not change the pay you are going to get for the mining you already did. Like Blackjack, the hands you already played are done, there is no way to influence the winnings any more for those hands. But unlike Blackjack, the winnings have not been revealed yet. If you mine 12 hours per day at Bitminter, then you will on average make 50% of what you would get for mining 24/7. I say on average because the luck during the 50% you mine may not be the same as the 50% you don't mine. But over time that will even out.

Bitminter is not vulnerable to pool hopping. That's a technique where you hop between pools, timing it so that you get paid more than your fair share. The reward model at Bitminter was chosen specifically to make this impossible. Whether you earn more or less at Bitminter when you jump in and out of the pool is completely random. There is no way to predict whether mining pay at Bitminter in the next few hours will be higher or lower than other pools. Pool hopping was a way that some miners earned a lot more bitcoins at vulnerable pools, at the cost of the miners who were not pool hopping. I believe there are still a couple pools that are vulnerable to pool hopping. But the art/scam of pool hopping seems to be forgotten - I don't think any miners are doing it anymore.

You could try to switch between pools based on religious or superstitious beliefs. Maybe you believe luck is not random but related to karma or sin. Or maybe you believe that past luck influences future luck (this is called Gambler's Fallacy, you can read about it on Wikipedia). Maybe you belong to a Cargo Cult (also on Wikipedia) - you saw someone restart his miner and then he found a block. Now you believe restarting the miner increases the chance of finding blocks. All those beliefs go against all logic and science. I have never heard of anyone who is able to earn more bitcoins this way. But if you want to try it, you can. Bitminter won't punish your earnings for mining part time in the pool.

Doc are you even paying attention?

BTCGuild and Eligius users have both been ripped off by large users that withheld blocks.

Being suspicious of an anonymous company that somehow claims to charge no fees mining BTC at your pool (guaranteeing themselves a 1% loss if they are honest) isn't being superstitious, it's being practical.

[flound1129]

uhm.. first btc block by multipool, i see they had also a few nmc blocks..

If they're the same bad actor that has plagued BTCGuild and Eligius, they've demonstrated that withholding blocks is a feature, not a bug in their software.  They can turn it on/off at their discretion.

WTF?  Conspiracy theory much?

[flound1129]

We had some good luck and then some even luck. We haven't been having bad luck for some time. Look at the reward graphs at https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards

The slightly bad luck I was talking about was Multipool alone. With their mining alone it is slightly bad luck that they haven't found a block yet. Which is completely normal.

The pool as a whole is currently having even luck, though, because others are finding blocks. Some miners in the pool are having good luck while others have bad luck. The pool is evening this out. This is one of the nice things that pools do.

The reward model at Bitminter does not punish you for coming and going. You can mine part time at the pool and the pay is still fair. Mining more does not change the pay you are going to get for the mining you already did. Like Blackjack, the hands you already played are done, there is no way to influence the winnings any more for those hands. But unlike Blackjack, the winnings have not been revealed yet. If you mine 12 hours per day at Bitminter, then you will on average make 50% of what you would get for mining 24/7. I say on average because the luck during the 50% you mine may not be the same as the 50% you don't mine. But over time that will even out.

Bitminter is not vulnerable to pool hopping. That's a technique where you hop between pools, timing it so that you get paid more than your fair share. The reward model at Bitminter was chosen specifically to make this impossible. Whether you earn more or less at Bitminter when you jump in and out of the pool is completely random. There is no way to predict whether mining pay at Bitminter in the next few hours will be higher or lower than other pools. Pool hopping was a way that some miners earned a lot more bitcoins at vulnerable pools, at the cost of the miners who were not pool hopping. I believe there are still a couple pools that are vulnerable to pool hopping. But the art/scam of pool hopping seems to be forgotten - I don't think any miners are doing it anymore.

You could try to switch between pools based on religious or superstitious beliefs. Maybe you believe luck is not random but related to karma or sin. Or maybe you believe that past luck influences future luck (this is called Gambler's Fallacy, you can read about it on Wikipedia). Maybe you belong to a Cargo Cult (also on Wikipedia) - you saw someone restart his miner and then he found a block. Now you believe restarting the miner increases the chance of finding blocks. All those beliefs go against all logic and science. I have never heard of anyone who is able to earn more bitcoins this way. But if you want to try it, you can. Bitminter won't punish your earnings for mining part time in the pool.

Doc are you even paying attention?

BTCGuild and Eligius users have both been ripped off by large users that withheld blocks.

Being suspicious of an anonymous company that somehow claims to charge no fees mining BTC at your pool (guaranteeing themselves a 1% loss if they are honest) isn't being superstitious, it's being practical.

a) I'm not anonymous, I'm very un-anonymous actually.  Multipool is a company registered as CryptoFish, LLC in California as it states in our footer.  I've posted numerous articles online using my real name.  Our thread here is 275 pages: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167635.0

b) I don't lose anything by proxying our users' hash to Bitminter, the fees are passed through to the miners.

c) My fee is 1.5% on the altcoins that we mine when we're not on bitcoin.  People also donate.  Since we're on Bitcoin about 80% of the time, we need a stable pool we can proxy our hash to.  Unfortunately in order to attract BTC hash, you cannot charge a fee.  This is because the two of the three largest BTC pools do not charge a fee (cex and Eligius).  So it's not a simple matter to attract hashrate if you charge a fee, especially if you're a 'new' pool.  Many miners expect the pool to be free, which is not reasonable imo, but there it is.

d) We just moved to Bitminter a few days ago and I still haven't had time to change all the references to cex.io on the site.  We are fully on Bitminter now, assuming we're on BTC and not on another coin.

We have never mined on BTC Guild.

[DrHaribo]

Doc are you even paying attention?

Yes, I am. Is there something I haven't done that you would do with every miner who is slightly unlucky, if it was your pool?

If a pool only allows miners with good luck, and kicks you out as soon as you have slightly bad luck, is there really any point to that pool?

BTCGuild and Eligius users have both been ripped off by large users that withheld blocks.

Yes, I've been watching that. And today I read at Reddit that someone is doing the same with Ghash. On purpose. And encouraging others to do the same.

This is not a good development.

But accusing anyone who hits slightly bad luck is not the solution.

I believe there was a proposal to make block withholding impossible, but it required a hardfork. Maybe that's what needs to be done.

[flound1129]

The[y] seem to be solving blocks since they joined.

https://www.multipool.us/stats.php?curr=btc

Yes, they claim to be solving blocks at cex.io, but apparently 100% of their hashrate has been mining at Bitminter.

I wonder if they could be submitting work to both pools simultaneously?

What you see on our stats page are the payouts from the pools we proxy our hash to.

[flound1129]

You do not understand what you are talking about. And at the same time you do understand what you are talking about.  Wow that must be very hard on your mind.

Here is what I agree with.   Your theory is: multi pool's gear sucks and they jump all over the place with  broken gear they are stuck with  

Let me clear this up.  Multipool doesn't own any gear, other than a 30GH BFL little single in my garage.

We proxy BTC hash from our users to larger pools (currently Bitminter) to reduce our Bitcoin payout variance.  We pay out the rewards received from the larger pool on a proportional basis based on shares submitted since the previous payout.

Our software is a custom stratum proxy that rewrites the worker name and saves each share to the DB on our side after the share is accepted by Bitminter.  Other Stratum commands are proxied unaltered.

There is no way for me to withhold blocks, in fact doing so would decrease our profits by around 20% so what incentive do I have to do this on a pool whose sole purpose is to maximize profits?  I would lose all my users.  Shit, I lost about 50TH just because of the low profits while getting into Bitminter's PPLNS.  We have been operating for over a year.  If you want to know how trustworthy we are, come into our thread and ask our users. You people need to do some research before throwing around baseless accusations (not you Philip, but others).

[gb1971]

thank you for clearing this up +1

[freddyfarnsworth]

another orphan....

That Never Happens here, we are responsible for all our prodigy.. till all of a sudden

[Minor Miner]

uhm.. first btc block by multipool, i see they had also a few nmc blocks..

If they're the same bad actor that has plagued BTCGuild and Eligius, they've demonstrated that withholding blocks is a feature, not a bug in their software.  They can turn it on/off at their discretion.

WTF?  Conspiracy theory much?

WTF?  Who are you to call him out?   Get your ass educated about what is going on over the last 6 months and has been CAUGHT (by users) at other pools.
Your comment is ignorant and rude.   Guess michael (the owner of BTCGuild) is a conspiracy nut too?

When do you think we will get back to a 3 month 100% luck?  It's currently just below 90%

99% luck would be "neutral" considering orphans are about a 1% chance.  The luck graph does not factor that in.  The 3-month luck will likely be back in the upper 90s (or who knows, low 100s if we're lucky) around August 10th.  That's (approximately) the point where the impact of the block withholders will no longer be a part of the 3-month average.

[Minor Miner]

You do not understand what you are talking about. And at the same time you do understand what you are talking about.  Wow that must be very hard on your mind.
Here is what I agree with.   Your theory is: multi pool's gear sucks and they jump all over the place with  broken gear they are stuck with  

Let me clear this up.  Multipool doesn't own any gear, other than a 30GH BFL little single in my garage.
We proxy BTC hash from our users to larger pools (currently Bitminter) to reduce our Bitcoin payout variance.  We pay out the rewards received from the larger pool on a proportional basis based on shares submitted since the previous payout.
Our software is a custom stratum proxy that rewrites the worker name and saves each share to the DB on our side after the share is accepted by Bitminter.  Other Stratum commands are proxied unaltered.
There is no way for me to withhold blocks, in fact doing so would decrease our profits by around 20% so what incentive do I have to do this on a pool whose sole purpose is to maximize profits?  I would lose all my users.  Shit, I lost about 50TH just because of the low profits while getting into Bitminter's PPLNS.  We have been operating for over a year.  If you want to know how trustworthy we are, come into our thread and ask our users. You people need to do some research before throwing around baseless accusations (not you Philip, but others).

If there were complete sets of miners that did not solve blocks, that has nothing to do with YOUR PERSONAL (or your pool's) trustworthiness.   You would not know.   If you are a stratified pool of small users, it is VERY unlikely that your pool would be a good place to "hide" bad gear, it would take too much effort making many accounts.

[Minor Miner]

I really think a bunch of people are having a hard time understanding this whole "bad miners" issue.
In my opinion there are TWO possibilities:
1.  This seems to be more popular now (but not my favorite):  There is a large group that is "witholding blocks".   They point their miners at a pool and when one of their miners have a valid solution, they do not send it in.    I do not like this theory as much as 2).    Why withhold?  You just are screwing the people in the pool and producing bad luck for the pool (and costing yourself some money).    The only reason I could see to do this is because you dominate the market and cannot send all the hash you have at your own pool without people going ballistic about the 51% attack.   But it still does not make sense to me from an economic point of view (unless luke/wizkid/eleuthria really pissed someone off and they hold a big grudge).
2.  This is where I still stand:   Someone designed a chip, rushed it, and screwed up.   The chip hashes (so it gets credit for work) but after some point it just could not solve a block.   Eleutria suggested that 2.4 B difficulty could have been the number where the miners stopped solving blocks.   He (and others) also suggested it was just bad software and the problem was easily solved AND that it was ONLY a dark miner (someone who made their own machines).   That would mean the problem was found and solved and it had not spread far (because the dark miner did not sell their products to the public).
The only place that number 2. gets troubling is IF it was the chips and not the software (or it is more than one type of miner that has a flaw) and IF the chips are in any machines sold to the public (because how would you ever know if your 3TH/s did not work properly since it may never solve a block anyway).

You can read about this at other threads and if you mine elsewhere you likely already know, but I do think that people should read and form their own opinion about this issue.   We all know that a LOT of people in BTC are not altruistic so if someone did produce a bad miner, do you think they would scrap them?   Or mine with them?   They certainly would not be solo mining so they would likely point them at large pools (why you should mine at smaller pools and you should encourage your friends to also) and they would likely sell the miners to people.

[DevonMiner]

So ... to completely change the subject ... nice to see those VERY outdated KNC adverts on the site have been resold ... to ... Spondoolies-Tech.

[MoreBloodWine]

I believe there was a proposal to make block withholding impossible, but it required a hardfork. Maybe that's what needs to be done.

If this can bee one, I say every pool should do it. If they did I'd lik to think everyones numbers would change for the better.

[flound1129]

WTF?  Who are you to call him out?   Get your ass educated about what is going on over the last 6 months and has been CAUGHT (by users) at other pools.
Your comment is ignorant and rude.   Guess michael (the owner of BTCGuild) is a conspiracy nut too?

the conspiracy theory I was referring to is that Multipool is the bad actor who has been withholding blocks, if he had done a fucking iota of research then he would be able to see that could not be the case.