Pool hopping... ethical or not?

[max in montreal]

Being content taking what you have earned doesn't make you a pansy, it makes you honest.

Ok so we admit that I am honest. I do the work, and the pool pays me to do it. We are telling them their accounting is off, and they must correct it, but they do not.

So back to your example whith the cashier...you tell her, hey you gave me 20$ extra, and her reply is so what...and you keep going back to the same store and every time she gives you 20$ extra, you let her know, but every time you tell her, she says so what...and she owns the store too. Explain to me how that is being dishonest?

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[Clipse]

Holier than thou mode detected..................................

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Nice try. The problem with this is that it assumes things which are not true or not proven.

First, you have not made an argument that a pool hopper is dishonest; you have simply claimed it as if it were obvious. I asked for an argument and you give me nothing.

It is obvious, gaming the system for an unfair share is dishonest.  The scenario I described is evident of an example of how you are gaining money while others are losing it.  See my first statement, you simply passed over it and refused to even give it due consideration because you have your rationalization in your head.  It's like trying to convince a Christian that the idea that the earth is 6,000 years old is ridiculous, you have your vision of the world, and without realizing it you dismiss the evidence to the contrary. 

Your first statement? I read and gave due consideration to everything you posted. You have not yet shown that pool hopping is "gaming the system for an unfair share." Try to focus on that, and show SOMETHING that backs up this statement, if you can. Claiming I ignored something that wasn't there to begin with is useless.

More to the point, why should someone NOT switch to whatever pool he thinks will pay him the most for his shares? Sure, if "everyone" did it, then pool operators might finally switch to "fair" payout methods when their hashing rate drops to the floor. But many operators have little interest in doing so. And that's a practical argument rather than a moral one.

Second, it is not true that a pool being hopped pays miners in a fair manner. The reason people are able to make money hopping is that the pool offers to pay miners more under certain circumstances and less under others. Thus proportional payout schemes are inherently unfair. It can be argued that if the payout scheme WERE fair, then no one would hop the pool.

Proportional payouts are perfectly fair, if miners were honest.  The fact that they aren't means that the pools have to find alternatives.  The PPS scheme is problematic, since it pays regardless of a block being found, and the pool operator can lose money.  I'm sure there are other payout schemes, and hopefully they will be implemented, but that takes time and shouldn't even be necessary if it weren't for the pigs at the trough.

While you're at it, what constitutes an "honest miner" in your mind?

And yes, there are perfectly fair payout schemes which make pool hopping unprofitable, such as Menni Rosenfeld's geometric method. But most miners don't want to use pools which use this method. Why not?

Finally, you have not addressed the issue that the miners supposedly being "cheated" -- including yourself -- go out of their way to seek out pools with such unfair payout schemes!

Again, I did, remember, I mine at btcguild where they go out of their way to discourage people like you.  Problem is, there are still people who try to game the system, and I find that despicable

I haven't mined at BTC Guild for several weeks and I had no plans to start mining there again.

[max in montreal]

wait a second wait a second, wait just one second...why is it better to mine in a pool in the first place? somebody else finds a block and you profit...that is so not cool...

[max in montreal]

I just looked at the votes...25ish for yes and about 14ish for no. by the way, the person voting no comment...by voting you left a comment...

so about 35% think its wrong? I would have thought it would have been closer to 50/50.

[Sukrim]

Proportional payouts are perfectly fair, if miners were honest.

Every pool hopper is a 100% honest miner! They submit shares like everyone else and receive their fair proportional share of the block as everyone else. The only difference is that some miners seem to decide that it is "fair" to just stick to a single pool, even if it means that you're mining at a loss.

I would call it unfair and dishonest to demand such stuff (mining at a loss) from others.

[max in montreal]

I think that is the best argument!

[Xephan]

Personally, I don't agree with pool-hopping, since that feels like taking advantage of others so while I could, I don't do it.

Objectively, I can't say it's unethical if it's something everybody who wants to can do it and if the pool operators does not object to it. If a hopper is using a pool to hop despite the owner doing something about it, then I would consider it falling on the side of unethical. It's like you telling somebody NO but he/she keeps doing it (eating your food, shitting on your floor, whatever) just because you are not slapping them or bringing out your shotgun yet.

So in practice, I would say if the pool owner is doing things like delaying stats and obfuscating details, despite whatever reasons they might have for not being able to implement a more thorough/better solution, then it would be unethical and disrespectful if a poolhopper continue to use those pools for hopping.

[organofcorti]

An ethical assessment means the 'hoppers in question must know what they're doing causes other people problems. I started hopping from pools that took to long to solve a block mostly from boredom. I actually thought I was taking a coinage hit to do so at the time, but it didn't worry me overly.

Then I read about pool hopping and started to demand pools that I used change to scoring which I thought would work (eg Meni's algo). I started to move to other pools but every new pool that pops up is proportional. The only way to encourage pools to not be proportional is to hop them and then let the miners there a) know what you're doing and b) let them know they're losing cash by you doing it. Bitp.it is a good case in point and now they are no longer a prop pool (Yay! for bitp.it!)

So your question is hinging on whether people know what they're doing is 'bad'. There are likely a lot of 'hoppers doing what I did - jumping off a pool when it got boring, and not knowing it causes problems for full time miners. Are they unethical? Or is it only unethical if you use hopping software? Then is it less unethical if you detune the software to have less of an effect on the pools you use? Are ethical levels infinitely divisible?

The only solution is to get rid of prop pools. Even if every intentional 'hopper stopped now, there would still be plenty of unintentional hoppers hopping. Pools need to redo scoring systems so that unintentional hoppers and folks lots of downtime (eg when other people need their computer) are not penalised.

My preferences:
Meni's algo
XXPPS (ESMPPS, SMPPS, PPS)

[MaGNeT]

Proportional payouts are perfectly fair, if miners were honest.

Every pool hopper is a 100% honest miner! They submit shares like everyone else and receive their fair proportional share of the block as everyone else. The only difference is that some miners seem to decide that it is "fair" to just stick to a single pool, even if it means that you're mining at a loss.

I would call it unfair and dishonest to demand such stuff (mining at a loss) from others.

You are never mining at loss... Sometimes the pool is lucky, sometimes it's not... Variance is a bitch...

You only want the luck and leave the non-poolhoppers with the bad-luck of variance...

It's unfair, but if it makes you feel good, go ahead...

[Grinder]

It is obvious, gaming the system for an unfair share is dishonest.

Only if you have promised not to do it. Putting in a share in a pool is not a promise to continue putting in shares 24/7.

[MaGNeT]

It is obvious, gaming the system for an unfair share is dishonest.

Only if you have promised not to do it. Putting in a share in a pool is not a promise to continue putting in shares 24/7.

You just convinced me.
I think everyone should start poolhopping.
More profit for everyone!

[Clipse]

It is obvious, gaming the system for an unfair share is dishonest.

Only if you have promised not to do it. Putting in a share in a pool is not a promise to continue putting in shares 24/7.

You just convinced me.
I think everyone should start poolhopping.
More profit for everyone!

Please do and look at the outcome, we will all benefit in this forum cause believe it or not, we arnt the only people using pools (this forum probably only a fraction of current pool users )

[Sukrim]

You are never mining at loss... Sometimes the pool is lucky, sometimes it's not... Variance is a bitch...

As soon as you submit a share in a round that takes longer than 100% of the difficulty, this share will be worth _less_ than what it should be worth (according to PPS calculations).

Once a share is provably worth less than it should be worth (which is the case with Prop. pools that have long rounds) I am willingly mining at a loss to "support" a pool or whatever. As I did not sign any contracts with pools stating that I'll only mine with them, when I start making losses, I move on.

Show me the TOS of any prop. pool that forbid pool hopping! All they do is delay stats to make it more difficult etc. but still noone explicitly forbids it.

[enmaku]

I think everyone is confusing the word 'ethical' with 'immoral'.

Morality is usually used to define a values based code (e.g religious) while ethics describes a code based on reason.

My morality tells me that ill-gotten gains include the BTC of those who mined in my absence.

My ethics tell me that pool hopping is a potentially profitable 'technique' where it is allowed.

For those who don't agree, do the same thing people do when they realize their country is run by a hooded society of child sacrificing men-- move to another, fight to have it changed, OR STFU.

The term "ethical" comes from the Greek "ethos" while "moral" comes from the latin "mores" - both meaning the exact same thing: "customs."

It is a modern misnomer to think that one is different from the other as they are simply transliterations of the same word and it would make more sense to say that we're confusing "personal ethics/morals" with "societal ethics/morals" - the prior being entirely subjective and the latter being largely objective and measurable. Of course since this would appear to be the first real attempt at actually measuring the objective beliefs on pool hopping, the result of this pool should determine the objective morality.

I do agree with your last sentence, though. No one is forced to mine at any hopper-friendly pools and many have explicitly chosen to mine at such places because they prefer the payout schema to hopper-resistant methods like PPLNS et. al. There are a scant few who mine at such pools not understanding a thing about the risks (most newbies mine at the huge pools like DeepBit, Eligius or BTC Guild anyway, all hop resistant) and the onus of choosing the right pool for yourself is on YOU.

[EskimoBob]

What if pool hoppers put a positive spin to the the game?

Les say, you hop to pool X and then you jump to next, when you are at your N rate from difficulty and so on.
What if you hop back to the pool X, when they are in trouble and are cranking at 50+ h block? Jump in, help them out, suck some honey from the first shares and move on. But do not forget to hop back, when they actually need you,  
For example, look at the Triplemining.  52 hours and counting, 3 855 573 share and no end is sight.
    
Poolhoppers can bring 50-80 GH/s power to any pool.
Pool-hoppers, its time to give something back to a small pool. It will be really cool and I can bet, most small pools will make the real time stats etc available to you and you probably end up earning more than now.

Cheers!

[Clipse]

What if pool hoppers put a positive spin to the the game?

Les say, you hop to pool X and then you jump to next, when you are at your N rate from difficulty and so on.
What if you hop back to the pool X, when they are in trouble and are cranking at 50+ block? Jump in, help them out, suck some honey from the first shares and move on. But do not forget to hop back, when they actually need you, 
For example, look at the Triplemining.  52 hours and counting, 3 855 573 share and no end is sight.
    
Poolhoppers can bring 50-80 GH/s power to any pool.
Pool-hoppers, its time to give something back to a small pool. It will be really cool and I can bet, most small pools will make the real time stats etc available to you and you probably end up earning more than now.

Cheers!

Sure thang... I would accept this proposal as long as all pools are proportional. No reason for me to do this with hopping if I dont have a chance to earn more by clearing a small block, that way I wouldnt mind helping out to clear a long block later.

[MaGNeT]

What if pool hoppers put a positive spin to the the game?

Les say, you hop to pool X and then you jump to next, when you are at your N rate from difficulty and so on.
What if you hop back to the pool X, when they are in trouble and are cranking at 50+ h block? Jump in, help them out, suck some honey from the first shares and move on. But do not forget to hop back, when they actually need you,  
For example, look at the Triplemining.  52 hours and counting, 3 855 573 share and no end is sight.
    
Poolhoppers can bring 50-80 GH/s power to any pool.
Pool-hoppers, its time to give something back to a small pool. It will be really cool and I can bet, most small pools will make the real time stats etc available to you and you probably end up earning more than now.

Cheers!

We don't need grasshoppers... We need miners...

[enmaku]

What if pool hoppers put a positive spin to the the game?

Les say, you hop to pool X and then you jump to next, when you are at your N rate from difficulty and so on.
What if you hop back to the pool X, when they are in trouble and are cranking at 50+ h block? Jump in, help them out, suck some honey from the first shares and move on. But do not forget to hop back, when they actually need you,  
For example, look at the Triplemining.  52 hours and counting, 3 855 573 share and no end is sight.
    
Poolhoppers can bring 50-80 GH/s power to any pool.
Pool-hoppers, its time to give something back to a small pool. It will be really cool and I can bet, most small pools will make the real time stats etc available to you and you probably end up earning more than now.

Cheers!

This is actually a pretty decent idea. The pool-hopping scripts I've played with so far all have "backup" pools that are mined when none of your other pools are under the magic 43% mark. I doubt it would be that tough to change the logic up a bit to mine whatever pool has the highest share count during these times instead and I'm sure it would make us all the more welcome at already hopper-friendly pools (or pools which are undecided). I'd be happy to see such a change. I'll see if I can bash it out myself and I'll also suggest it to those who control the code for the major projects.

[Xephan]

It is a modern misnomer to think that one is different from the other as they are simply transliterations of the same word and it would make more sense to say that we're confusing "personal ethics/morals" with "societal ethics/morals" - the prior being entirely subjective and the latter being largely objective and measurable. Of course since this would appear to be the first real attempt at actually measuring the objective beliefs on pool hopping, the result of this pool should determine the objective morality.

I'll go out on a limb and claim that since about 2/3 don't do it, despite about half of that not thinking it's unethical, that as perhaps objectively most of us don't find a technical reason against it (like in my personal case) but subjectively feel it's not the right way to do things.

Pretty much like there isn't any rule that says we can't be nasty to newcomers so technically/objectively nothing wrong if somebody be nasty to newcomers. But most of us wouldn't deliberately be nasty to those who come after us because individually, we just don't feel it's right even if there isn't an explicit rule against it.