What are Pool Hoppers?

[dougman]

In a lot of the pool threads, I come across the term "Pool Hoppers" in a negative connotation.

What does it mean, and why is it bad?

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[Wuked]

Please see this : http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=24966.0

And come to https://mineco.in for fair mining

[JoelKatz]

In a lot of the pool threads, I come across the term "Pool Hoppers" in a negative connotation.

What does it mean, and why is it bad?

A pool hopper is someone who times their contributions of shares to a pool such that he obtains an expected higher than average payout per share sent to that pool (sending his share to other pools or solo mining when the expected payout per share is below average). It's bad because it reduces the average payout to everyone else. Note that pool payout schemes can be adjusted to make pool hopping impossible and pay per share pools are immune to pool hopping.

Here's a simple way to understand it. Say a pool pays out 50 BTC divided by the number of shares it receives while searching for a block. Say it will need, on average, X shares to find a block. If it already has 1,000 shares towards finding a block, it will still need, on average, X more to find that block.

So, if a pool has accumulated N shares towards a block, we expect it will need N+X shares to find a block. So the expected payout per share is 50/[N+X]. This means that the longer the pool goes without finding a block, the less each share contributed towards that block is worth. Pool hoppers will abandon a pool as soon as N exceeds about 40% of X.

[joulesbeef]

I would say most pools offer some sort of pool hopping protection.
I think an easy way to explian


we calc how long on average it takes to find a block.. say that is 100% and lets just say that it takes 100 shares to find a block on average, and lets say each share is 1 coin average(we wish and we are pretending each block has 100 instead of 50 for easy math)




pool one
we hoppers mine 50shares but it takes them 200 shares to find a block, so each of our shares is worth 1/2 average. our take from here is 25 coins.

you mine 200 shares and earn 100 coins (but note it took twice as long)

when you are mining share 51-100 we are on pool 2 you dont hop, you stay at pool one

pool two
we mine 50 shares and they find a block in 100.. so we get 50 coins here.. which is average.

now you are on share 101 at pool one and we have moved to pool 3

pool three

we mine 50 shares and they find the block in 50 shares, very lucky.. we get 2x average and get 100 coins for our 50 shares.


and you are on share 151-200.. we are on pool 4

pool four

another average pool, we mine 50 they find a block in 100 we get 50 coins.
we are done and you are done.

you earned 100 coins in 200 shares.

we earned 25, 50, 50, and 100 in the same amount of time of 200 shares.

we ended up with 125, you got 100.

IT's a lot more complex than that(the math isnt even really correct as we dillute your shares while there and then your shares go up when we leave but it basically works out like this in the long run) and JoelKatz is more correct, but this is basically hopping for the non math minded., basically we try to find as many 'lucky pools" pools finding blocks in 100%(average time) or less time, to minimize our share loss in pools that take a lot longer than 100%(and sometimes they can go to 500% it;s nuts)


anyways pools are constantly adding protection or screwing with hoppers by lying about stats, we constantly update our methods and software which greatly limits the gains from hopping. It's still worth it or we wouldnt do it but it is more of a pain.

[dougman]

but then pool hopping is just based on luck, and people cannot be lucky all the time.
over the long run, wouldn't it average out?

In the end, the mining pool wins even if there were pool hoppers or not, since they take a percentage and take all the transaction fees in the future.

[JoelKatz]

but then pool hopping is just based on luck, and people cannot be lucky all the time.

The pool hopper does not have to be lucky all the time. He just has to have the average amount of luck to get an above average payout for his shares. That's why he pool hops.

over the long run, wouldn't it average out?

No, it won't. Not unless the pool hopper is consistently so unlucky that it exceeds the statistically expected advantage of pool hopping.

In the end, the mining pool wins even if there were pool hoppers or not, since they take a percentage and take all the transaction fees in the future.

The mining pool doesn't win. The people who aren't pool hopping will eventually desert the pool because they'll be getting below average payouts. A pool with only pool hoppers will stall the first time it has bad luck finding a block. There will be nobody left contributing shares to the pool.