[1423GH] ABCPool PPS - Proxy Pool For High & Steady Mining Rewards

[MintCondition]

Indeed, ABCPool falls within the definition of 'pooled mining' as featured on the Official Bitcoin Wiki for a long, very long time:

Pooled mining is a mining approach where multiple generating clients contribute to the generation of a block, and then split the block reward according the contributed processing power. Pooled mining effectively reduces the granularity of the block generation reward, spreading it out more smoothly over time.

Nice attempt at playing semantics; unfortunately, you fail. By your interpretation of the above definition, any ISP would be a bitcoin pool too.

Nice attempt at a slippery slope argument, too bad it's utter nonsense. Does an ISP split the block reward of the shares that are passed through it? Does it reduce the granularity of the block generation reward? Does it spread it out over time?

The description in the Wiki is actually clear and narrow enough to be a useful guideline.

Whats described above is not a definition of a pool, but an explanation of what pooled mining does. Its widely understood that a pool generates blocks. You dont.

Before the mobile era, it was widely understood that phones have cords attached to them. Then it turned out that cordless phones can also be used to talk to each other over a distance.

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[MintCondition]

For those that insist on the term 'proxy', at least consider the more informative 'proxy pool' moniker. It recognizes both the pooled nature of pools like ABCPool and the fact that they forward (part of the) hashpower.

Interesting. So you do mine some of your own blocks with your own bitcoind (or equivalent)?

We have our own bitcoind in the mix too, which comes up with a block now and then.

[MintCondition]

I would be interested in the response to RJK's question as well, however, my personal opinion is that even if they don't, any (standard non-bitcoin) definition of pooling resources would include running them through a proxy and make "proxy pool" a reasonable description, allowing one to claim "proxy and pool" or "pool and proxy" if they mined their own blocks as well.  However, all of this is moot so long as users know how their hashrate is used.

Good points!

Indeed, when falling back to the plain English meaning of a pool of resources (which people new to Bitcoin will do automatically) the argument gets even more compelling. ABCPool pools miner hashpower together on one end, and pool work suppliers together on the other end.

[jamesg]

For those that insist on the term 'proxy', at least consider the more informative 'proxy pool' moniker. It recognizes both the pooled nature of pools like ABCPool and the fact that they forward (part of the) hashpower.

Interesting. So you do mine some of your own blocks with your own bitcoind (or equivalent)?

We have our own bitcoind in the mix too, which comes up with a block now and then.

Interesting how the story is evasive and constantly changing.

Most of my disgust with abcpool.co up to this point has been the fact that you guys are really good at typing explanations that mean nothing.

Why not just be honest and upfront from the get go? Why evade answering direct questions when asked?

[DILLIGAF]

Why evade answering direct questions when asked?

Seems to be the standard operating procedure for most of the pool ops around here...

[kano]

...
Before the mobile era, it was widely understood that phones have cords attached to them. Then it turned out that cordless phones can also be used to talk to each other over a distance.

That's why they gave the different ones a new name ... coz they were no longer just 'phones' ... they are 'mobile phones' (GSM/3G/whatever) or 'cordless phones' (they didn't have cords but connected to a standard phone line via some form of wireless technology)

[MintCondition]

For those that insist on the term 'proxy', at least consider the more informative 'proxy pool' moniker. It recognizes both the pooled nature of pools like ABCPool and the fact that they forward (part of the) hashpower.

Interesting. So you do mine some of your own blocks with your own bitcoind (or equivalent)?

We have our own bitcoind in the mix too, which comes up with a block now and then.

Interesting how the story is evasive and constantly changing.

Most of my disgust with abcpool.co up to this point has been the fact that you guys are really good at typing explanations that mean nothing.

Why not just be honest and upfront from the get go? Why evade answering direct questions when asked?

I'm sorry you feel that way. We're trying to balance being upfront with protecting our comparative advantage, just like any other service out there does. Sometimes people accuse us of lying, and it hurts because we have always been honest in our statements.

Being honest does mean we have to keep things a bit vague sometimes to prevent giving any clues to the competition. No other pool than ABCPool has been able to offer such a reliable service for so long with such low risk and such a low fee, and we like to keep it that way.

We've also been honest in our service to our miners. We've always kept any promise we made, and when there were issues we acted in good faith in resolving them quickly and satisfactory.

Now i'd like to get back to the original discussion.

Let me rephrase my answer to the original question so that any perceived evasiveness is gone: 'Yes'. So yes, we mine at other services and send shares to our own bitcoind instances.

Gigavps, I'm eager to hear your response to the arguments of The00Dustin and myself regarding the appropriateness of the 'pool' or 'proxy pool' label for a service like ABCPool.

[MintCondition]

...
Before the mobile era, it was widely understood that phones have cords attached to them. Then it turned out that cordless phones can also be used to talk to each other over a distance.

That's why they gave the different ones a new name ... coz they were no longer just 'phones' ... they are 'mobile phones' (GSM/3G/whatever) or 'cordless phones' (they didn't have cords but connected to a standard phone line via some form of wireless technology)

Indeed! Even traditional phones gained one: they're now called 'landline telephones'. Analogous to those changes, a pool that proxies shares would then be called a proxy pool.

And how about a pool that proxies part of its shares?

[kano]

...
Before the mobile era, it was widely understood that phones have cords attached to them. Then it turned out that cordless phones can also be used to talk to each other over a distance.

That's why they gave the different ones a new name ... coz they were no longer just 'phones' ... they are 'mobile phones' (GSM/3G/whatever) or 'cordless phones' (they didn't have cords but connected to a standard phone line via some form of wireless technology)

Indeed! Even traditional phones gained one: they're now called 'landline telephones'. Analogous to those changes, a pool that proxies shares would then be called a proxy pool.

And how about a pool that proxies part of its shares?

Yep - glad you agree Though the thread title on each post randomly disagrees ....... (like this one)

As for your question, like before, come up with a name that is clear - not clandestine.

[MintCondition]

In the wake of the Slush pool hack we are evaluating the way payouts are handled at ABCPool. We've already implemented several ways to limit exposure to theft after we were hacked last year. Still we think we can do even more to protect your coins. More info on this will follow later.

[MintCondition]

In the wake of the Slush pool hack we are evaluating the way payouts are handled at ABCPool.

NEWS: Auto-payout changes to lower the impact of a security breach.
The news that shocked the Bitcoin world earlier today was that several Bitcoin services were compromised after the super-admin password of their provider Linode had leaked. An enormous amount of Bitcoins was stolen. The Bitcoins were stored in wallets on these servers. This allows them to be easily transferred to customers, but also to a potential hacker.

ABCPool was not affected, as we are hosted on Amazon EC2.

Many services (possibly including the services that were hacked today) employ 'cold storage': An off-site wallet that contains the part of the balances that is not directly needed. The cold storage is chosen to be a place that's difficult to reach for a hacker. Cold storage decreases the impact of a hack because only the hot Bitcoins can be stolen. The trick is then to keep the size of the hot wallet as small as possible.

ABCPool has had such a cold storage facility since the security incident we had last year. In light of recent events we felt we needed to review the payment and storage procedures for the pool once more. We've now deployed several changes that make the pool an even less interesting target to hack than before. By making the payment schedule more dynamic, we ensured that our hot wallet is now continuously hovering near 0.

What does this mean for ABC Miners?
* Lower impact in case of a security incident, which means a higher chance of us being able to reimburse you for any losses.
* Payout timing is less predictable. If you're in a rush, request a manual payout.
* Payouts are now processed all day long, not only at 11:00 and 23:00.
* The payout threshold has been replaced by an autopay toggle.
* Payouts are still nicely rounded amounts. Any amount left on your account balance will be part of a future payment.

We will be monitoring payouts closely for a while and play with the knobs to create an optimal balance between security and payment speed.

Let us know what you think or if you encounter any problems.

Happy Hashing everyone!

MC

[kano]

Actually ... if you were a pool you could just say screw the block-chain and put everything in the coinbase transaction like Eligius and P2Pool do ... but that only works if you directly access the bitcoind you are mining on and it also accepts the getmemorypool command.

[MintCondition]

you could just say screw the block-chain and put everything in the coinbase transaction like Eligius and P2Pool do ... but that only works if you directly access the bitcoind you are mining on and it also accepts the getmemorypool command.

That might be an option for blocks ABCPool is mining itself. From what I understand it's quite complex to set up right, so not many pools are supporting it. When I read about it (which was months ago) there were also problems for people paying out directly to an exchange. Is that still the case?

Eligius prides itself on being experimental, and p2pool is a different kind of pool altogether. Which mainstream pools put payments in the coinbase transaction?

[kano]

you could just say screw the block-chain and put everything in the coinbase transaction like Eligius and P2Pool do ... but that only works if you directly access the bitcoind you are mining on and it also accepts the getmemorypool command.

That might be an option for blocks ABCPool is mining itself. From what I understand it's quite complex to set up right, so not many pools are supporting it. When I read about it (which was months ago) there were also problems for people paying out directly to an exchange. Is that still the case?

Eligius prides itself on being experimental, and p2pool is a different kind of pool altogether. Which mainstream pools put payments in the coinbase transaction?

I've only seen those two do it when I've looked through the block chain (which I do on rare occasions )
If another pool does it then they must be small time and rarely get blocks.

I'm not sure of the issues involved but obviously since p2pool pays out everything that way it can work.

The issue I can think of up front would be the requirement to have a different address per payment.
I guess the solution is tell them to not mine

[antirack]

Is there any way to set the auto-payout on ABCPool.co to be at least 1 BTC?

[Chlorine]

Is there any way to set the auto-payout on ABCPool.co to be at least 1 BTC?

For the moment, this is not possible. However, we will make this available within a couple of days.

regards,
Chlorine

[jjiimm_64]

Is there any chance to get more information added to the json string?

for instance the 24 hour totals would be nice:
24-hour running totals: 99.7% valid (179931), 0.27% stale (487), 0.03% invalid (47).

[MintCondition]

Is there any chance to get more information added to the json string?

for instance the 24 hour totals would be nice:
24-hour running totals: 99.7% valid (179931), 0.27% stale (487), 0.03% invalid (47).

Great suggestion Jjimm, and I've just implemented it for you. Since the info was already on the stats page it wasn't too difficult.

Enjoy!

[jjiimm_64]

Is there any chance to get more information added to the json string?

for instance the 24 hour totals would be nice:
24-hour running totals: 99.7% valid (179931), 0.27% stale (487), 0.03% invalid (47).

Great suggestion Jjimm, and I've just implemented it for you. Since the info was already on the stats page it wasn't too difficult.

Enjoy!

Thank you sir.  i c them

    [running_valids] => 385569
    [running_stales] => 1141
    [running_invalids] => 475

[MintCondition]

NEWS: Anti-botnet measures kicked in to keep ABCPool healthy
Today for the first time, increased botnet activity on ABCPool has caused our algorithms to block some extremely inefficient users.

Efficiency is the number of shares submitted per requested work. For CPU miners and botnets that number is usually very low. The lower a miners efficiency, the more load it puts on the server. Eventually it begins to affect well-behaving users, who will then see degraded performance.

Since the DDoS attack in January, users below a certain efficiency threshold may be subject to an automatic temporary block. That way they can not cause trouble for well-behaving users. The efficiency threshold is dynamic, based on current conditions.

Blocked users are not able to get work and submit shares. They can still use the website and request payouts.

There may still be glitches in the algorithms that manage blocking. We don't like to block anyone if it is not absolutely necessary. So should you ever discover that you are blocked and don't understand why, please send us a PM and we'll investigate ASAP!

What can you do to prevent being blocked:
* Don't point your botnet at ABCPool
* Don't mine with your CPU. It costs a lot more in electricity than it will every earn you in BTC anyway. Use a GPU.
* Use the latest version of a popular mining client that is known to behave, like cgminer, phoenix, diablominer, guiminer, poclbm, etc.

Happy hashing everyone!