Yiimp pools (zpool/ahashpool/hashrefinery) making large payments to non-miners?

[winfij]

Hi all,

For the last month, I've been mining on the three main yiimp based auto-exchange pools (zpool/ahashpool/hashrefinery)

From digging into the bitcoin payment transactions made by those pools for payouts, I note that all three seem to be sending a significant fraction of the payment to a recurring address which is not a miner on the pool.
If this is an address used by the admins for payment of their profits, the amount seems overly high, so I was wondering if anyone knew what these payments were for?

Taking the non-miner addresses I point out below and pasting them into the wallet lookup on the respective pool site confirms that they're not simple miner payments unlike the other high value payouts, they have no mining history in the pools.

Here are a few examples from recent payment transactions:

zpool:
transaction details: https://btc.com/a5009c46d5c84ce0fb38ab6d4a993f04835002f51c874497c45bd56944b73245
total transaction = 12.65 BTC
non-miner payment = 0.888 BTC (7%)
non-miner address: 3PXm62KkfoGyTTCBJLoBhMjBAjmaVJzE9W

ahashpool:
transaction details: https://btc.com/14fc5341f9fe6cf586cf918ac82f1bdcef5cf7463dc870208d500122792c9259
total transaction = 16.47 BTC
non-miner payment = 7.106 BTC (43%) !!
non-miner address: 322Wa5sFRHTkVQkvK9AYMpfUifUeG5gkvG

hashrefinery:
transaction details: https://blockchain.info/tx/e33e7026a8ca23ffa3f6e16c9d9d0ec9df1371ea4c257939aa42e04077584637
total transaction = 0.876 BTC
non-miner payment = 0.031 BTC (3.5%)
non-miner address: 1QEALjQWTYawwiaLKKdrcGihjBNJtXpbxq



If these are indeed profit extractions, maybe someone could explain why they're so high - those pools declare fees in the 1-2% range.
Clearly the admins could hide these payments simply by separating them from the miner payment (and paying another tx fee), so it'll be interesting to see if those addresses remain in the transactions lists going forwards, now I've posted this.

Any miners on these pools can do the same lookup themselves, simply click on the link for one of your recent payments, scroll to the bottom of the list of payment addresses (which are normally ordered by descending value) and you'll find an out of order large one at the end, typically the same address for the respective pool as listed above.

The values don't seem to be a constant percentage, but they're bigger than I expected for pool fees, especially for ahashpool.

I'm not making any accusations here, just trying to understand what I see so I can make an informed decision on which pools to use, so if anyone can shed light I'd appreciate it.

Thoughts?

[1715656503]

1715656503

[1715656503]

1715656503

[1715656503]

1715656503

[1715656503]

1715656503

[1715656503]

1715656503

[1715656503]

1715656503

[pitch_black]

Apart from the pool fee and the coded exchange rates, there is one more way to skim some miner funds. I'm mining something with 2 GH/s, I get 1.7-1.9 on the website no matter if I leave the varrdiff or set the local diff with the password parameter (and it's overridden sometimes). Is to be expected? Not really, not in the long term, but ahash is so obvious about it, that you can put the same miners in hashrefinery and you will see the difference. Also I've no idea if this is only a frontend bug of yiimp, but when you send 30 shares a sec and you get one rejected, you will still get some insane percentage of "rejected". You get some percentage even if it is rare as a hummingbird on the North pole. As long as you have one rejected share, you get at least 1%...

You are not making accusations, but you should, as this is greedy.

[lathrodectus]

Good catch.
I can confirm the situation.


Zpool:

tx: https://btc.com/0ba48c67fb5bac0e4dc989b5be76f94431854551a4c9283598092c645a129624
total tx size: 10.68118423 BTC
non-miner payment:  0.87609444 BTC (8.2%)
non-miner address: 3AuwDnKg4jnaqPqAywtBtXm42LBR6z9SnY

Hashrefinery:

tx: https://blockchain.info/tx/82a003c714a1a41fa5c8acb8c52fcda5fa808a4cf02199aabe7a03856da4842b
total tx size: 4.0765696
non-miner payment: 0.11857822 (2.9%)
non-miner address: 1QEALjQWTYawwiaLKKdrcGihjBNJtXpbxq

[crackfoo]

Can't speak for other pools, but for me those payouts are combined earnings from masternodes, PoS wallets and fees.

And it's not really an accurate representations of the fees.  There are a lot of miners getting paid in their altcoin of choice but the pool's fee's are always converted to BTC.

The more miners using altcoin as payout will give a false impression in the BTC payouts of the "large fee"

anyway, just a light dusting of FUD on this one but should clear it up enough for you.

thnx

[lathrodectus]

Can't speak for other pools, but for me those payouts are combined earnings from masternodes, PoS wallets and fees.

And it's not really an accurate representations of the fees.  There are a lot of miners getting paid in their altcoin of choice but the pool's fee's are always converted to BTC.

The more miners using altcoin as payout will give a false impression in the BTC payouts of the "large fee"

anyway, just a light dusting of FUD on this one but should clear it up enough for you.

thnx

Makes sense. Zpool and Hashrefinery payment sizes are really small to question any bad intent. But Ahashpool needs an explanation.

Concerning Zpool, I'm mining on Zpool for a long time and my realised earnings are always higher than Nicehash.
So although you can find a lot FUD about this pool I'm totally confident they are paying better than many other options.

[fanatic26]

This is why you should mine your own currency to wallets you control and not just hope that these garbage auto switching pools are being honest.

Why give up a portion of your profits just because you are too lazy to manually convert? Ill never understand it.

[lathrodectus]

This is why you should mine your own currency to wallets you control and not just hope that these garbage auto switching pools are being honest.

Why give up a portion of your profits just because you are too lazy to manually convert? Ill never understand it.

Auto-profit switching is your answer.
Two days ago while every other pool was doing around 1.85mBTC/MH/day for scrypt. I earned 2.45mBTC/MH/day from zpool.

[Lubrifiant]

This is why you should mine your own currency to wallets you control and not just hope that these garbage auto switching pools are being honest.

Why give up a portion of your profits just because you are too lazy to manually convert? Ill never understand it.

in this way you can mine on multiple algo on multiples coins = more profit (in theory)

In addition, i'm in Europe, would like to be paid in €
pool > BTC (wallet in bistamp) > EUR (via bistamp BTC/EUR) is the easiest way and less expensive.

If I have to mine a single coin, I got less profit, I need to transfer this alt coin to bittrex for example, convert in BTC or ETH = fees
And transfer to bistamp for EUR = fees

[dragonmike]

ahashpool:
transaction details: https://btc.com/14fc5341f9fe6cf586cf918ac82f1bdcef5cf7463dc870208d500122792c9259
total transaction = 16.47 BTC
non-miner payment = 7.106 BTC (43%) !!
non-miner address: 322Wa5sFRHTkVQkvK9AYMpfUifUeG5gkvG

Ok, 43% is massive. It would be good to get a statement from the pool operator. Crackfoo took the trouble to come in here and explain... But Ahashpool has 35 more percentage points to justify. Has anybody reached out to them?

[pitch_black]

ahashpool:
transaction details: https://btc.com/14fc5341f9fe6cf586cf918ac82f1bdcef5cf7463dc870208d500122792c9259
total transaction = 16.47 BTC
non-miner payment = 7.106 BTC (43%) !!
non-miner address: 322Wa5sFRHTkVQkvK9AYMpfUifUeG5gkvG

Ok, 43% is massive. It would be good to get a statement from the pool operator. Crackfoo took the trouble to come in here and explain... But Ahashpool has 35 more percentage points to justify. Has anybody reached out to them?

Sure, as if they have a thread here or care to talk with people... 

[EVERYUSERNAMEISTAKEN]

Well I guess this has become the ahashpool discussion thread to some degree.

On my end, it appears they've removed their 0.005 BTC transfer option after ~10 days, despite the fact that fees haven't increased drastically since a few days ago. Guess I'm stuck here with my pants down until I reach 0.01 BTC again (they transferred me 0.005 BTC 2 days ago). Perhaps I'll email them and see if they can make an exception.

EDIT: I've contacted them and apparently they're still doing 0.005 BTC minimum transfers every 10 days, they just don't explicitly state it on the website for whatever reason.

[paskevic]

Well I guess this has become the ahashpool discussion thread to some degree.

On my end, it appears they've removed their 0.005 BTC transfer option after ~10 days, despite the fact that fees haven't increased drastically since a few days ago. Guess I'm stuck here with my pants down until I reach 0.01 BTC again (they transferred me 0.005 BTC 2 days ago). Perhaps I'll email them and see if they can make an exception.

EDIT: I've contacted them and apparently they're still doing 0.005 BTC minimum transfers every 10 days, they just don't explicitly state it on the website for whatever reason.

how and where do you contact them?

[JaredKaragen]

Can't speak for other pools, but for me those payouts are combined earnings from masternodes, PoS wallets and fees.

And it's not really an accurate representations of the fees.  There are a lot of miners getting paid in their altcoin of choice but the pool's fee's are always converted to BTC.

The more miners using altcoin as payout will give a false impression in the BTC payouts of the "large fee"

anyway, just a light dusting of FUD on this one but should clear it up enough for you.

thnx

Makes sense. Zpool and Hashrefinery payment sizes are really small to question any bad intent. But Ahashpool needs an explanation.

Concerning Zpool, I'm mining on Zpool for a long time and my realised earnings are always higher than Nicehash.
So although you can find a lot FUD about this pool I'm totally confident they are paying better than many other options.

+1000

I have been very consistent with zpool.  Always more profitable than switching to another location in my attempts throughout time.

I will also mind you that close to 1BTC was sent regularly not long ago on each payment just in TX fees alone....


But for a pool that does sha256 mining specifically on BTC;  phillipma has put a thread out on how they can basically make a KILLING on the fees alone by not splitting the fees among the miners.   Look for the thread, its insane but correct math and manner of thinking.

[guytechie]

Sent an email to ahashpool support (email at bottom of the pool page).  They’ve responded to most of my emails, so hopefully I hear back from them regarding this thread.

[dragonmike]

Sent an email to ahashpool support
.

So did I, and here's their reply:

The information on the thread are completely malicious.  The poster only picked 1 transaction out of our hundreds and created a malicious accusation.  How dumb do people have to be to believe a pool can take 43% as profit and still be competitive to other pools in direct comparisons and tests.

The answer and the truth is simple.  We, ourselves, as pool operators, also own about 1000 mining rigs.  (Ahashpool  started as a private pool for our own miners, we opened it for public because we wanted other miners to have a stable reliable pool to use.)

The address mentioned in the thread is where we point our miners to mine.  We do not show the wallet page of our miner to the public, because, it's our own mining rigs. The public doesn't need to check how our private rigs are doing.  So when you enter that address in our public web, it won't show any info.

And because it's our own rigs, we do not pay our mining rigs daily like we pay the public, we accumulate a large amount and then we pay our mining rigs every few days or even every week.  That's why the amount is large, because it is not 1 days earning, it is many many days earning combined.  And that's why you don't see that address everyday in our daily payout everyday, you only see it occasionally, and always in large amounts because we pay our mining rigs not daily.

My feeling is the poster is spreading FUD maliciously to drive traffic to try new pools.  I am confident ahashpool will win any completion in any long term test.

[guytechie]

I got a response back that's the same:

We do not participate in forums.  In our opinion, forums are not for customer service.

The information on the thread are completely malicious.  The poster only picked 1 transaction out of our hundreds and created a malicious accusation.  How dumb do people have to be to believe a pool can take 43% as profit and still be competitive to other pools in direct comparisons and tests.

The answer and the truth is simple.  We, ourselves, as pool operators, also own about 1000 mining rigs.  (Ahashpool  started as a private pool for our own miners, we opened it for public because we wanted other miners to have a stable reliable pool to use.)

The address mentioned in the thread is where we point our miners to mine.  We do not show the wallet page of our miner to the public, because, it's our own mining rigs. The public doesn't need to check how our private rigs are doing.  So when you enter that address in our public web, it won't show any info.

And because it's our own rigs, we do not pay our mining rigs daily like we pay the public, we accumulate a large amount and then we pay our mining rigs every few days or even every week.  That's why the amount is large, because it is not 1 days earning, it is many many days earning combined.  And that's why you don't see that address everyday in our daily payout everyday, you only see it occasionally, and always in large amounts because we pay our mining rigs not daily.

My feeling is the poster is spreading FUD maliciously to drive traffic to try new pools.  I am confident ahashpool will win any completion in any long term tests.

Here's my response:

I don't think calling the poster malicious is appropriate.  "If you see something, say something."  So looking for an explanation for the phenomenon is not malicious.

But thank you for the explanation.  I am glad you were able to clear it up in a semi-professional manner.  Since you do not comment of forums, I'll take this answer to them.  I believe answers to legitimate questions is great transparency.  I also believe being visible in the forums give you credibility and lets you address questions such as this much more quickly.

If this question was not answered and it was left to spread, you may start to see your user-base shrink.  And without being in the community, you won't know why until it's too late.

That said, it's your pool and you can, of course, manage it however you feel is right.

Thanks again for the response.

PS: The "semi-professional" is because while the explanation was actually in a well-worded manner, accusing the OP of spreading FUD, and calling names ("how dumb do people have to be") isn't.

My thoughts: The Ahash's pool operator should give themselves more presence by creating a thread.  It's not just for "support" but also a sense of community.  It's also a great way to address questions that everyone has without responding to individual emails.  As of now, it's almost like they just don't want to deal with people.  I'm not sure how far you can get that way, especially when running a public mining pool.  Problems will always arise that will affect everyone who's mining at the pool, so it's easier to make an announcement rather than answer individual emails.

[pitch_black]

My thoughts: The Ahash's pool operator should give themselves more presence by creating a thread.

This.

The forum might not be the place for customer support, but it also gives legitimacy and another way to contact the pool owners. It also serves as great place to seek news and advice, and the pool is not without flaws (higher estimates than zpool, payments do not reflect that in my opinion).

There is an algo that died on the pool. How do you tell them? Well... you can write them an email. Really.

[d00f]

I don't have a dog in this fight as I mine all the pools, but I do think the OP was pretty accusatory. You often see posts claiming this pool and that pool are skimming 20% off the top. I'm heavy into analyzing how things work, and I highly doubt anyone could get away with that having such a long running and popular pool. Take 10,000 miners on a specific pool, more guys like me are going to have written tools to watch and analyze their earnings. It would have been better to simply ask what a specific thing is. Both explanations posted make perfect sense to me.

[winfij]

Well, the responses seem reasonable to me, I assume hashrefinery is likely in the same situation as zpool and paying out a reasonably big chunk of earnings in altcoins.

To respond to some of the finger pointing here, I wasn't trying to stir up trouble, but thought the observation was interesting.
IMO there's no way anyone could have predicted the two explanations from zpool and ahashpool as to what those payments were without asking.

For the record, I'm currently a happy miner on zpool, after trying out all three.

[d00f]

For the record, I'm currently a happy miner on zpool, after trying out all three.

I too prefer zpool. It's just a guy with some kids working hard each day to make a living. When people hit him up on discourse, he works hard to fix their problems. It's nice to have a pool run buy an ordinary hardworking guy you can contact.

[JaredKaragen]

Well, the responses seem reasonable to me, I assume hashrefinery is likely in the same situation as zpool and paying out a reasonably big chunk of earnings in altcoins.

To respond to some of the finger pointing here, I wasn't trying to stir up trouble, but thought the observation was interesting.
IMO there's no way anyone could have predicted the two explanations from zpool and ahashpool as to what those payments were without asking.

For the record, I'm currently a happy miner on zpool, after trying out all three.

I didn't take it as finger pointing myself;  in fact, without people like you actively thinking about it and wondering;  more issues like this could potentially get swept under the carpet, never to be seen.

Ive been with zpool since day one;  I was a transplant from xpool which was the same sort of deal;  but you could put in a payout address for each coin mined if you wished....  I personally prefer the way zpool is now compared to the xpool days.   less mess.  less fuss.