ABCPool.co: Pay-per-Share pool that pays for stales! (newbie support thread)

[MintCondition]

This thread is the ABCPool.co support thread for new forum users. It exists because new forum users are restricted and can therefore not post in the main ABCPool.co thread.

If you encounter any problems or have questions regarding ABCPool.co, please ask them here.

Also see the main ABCPool.co discussion thread in the 'Mining'->'Pools' forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33586.0;all

--------------------------
ABCPool.co has some advantages that are hard to find anywhere else in the same combination:
* Predictable Income: Pay-per-Share (PPS) means you know how much you get.
* We pay for Stale Shares and orphan blocks: Because we think a pool should be responsible for delivering new work to you in time! NB: Proportional pools that offer this, always do so from your own pocket. With PPS, stale share rewards are a real bonus.
* Immediate payouts: no more waiting for ‘estimated/unconfirmed reward’ to become available!
* Come & Go as you like: Pay-per-Share is immune to pool hopping

Of course you’ll also find the common features at ABCPool.co:
* Long Polling & NTime-Roll support
* Less than 0.1% invalid shares on average
* No penalty for invalid blocks
* Automatic and Manual payout
* Up to the minute stats
* Easy sign-up


A bit of background: As creators of ABCPool, we have always had a preference for PPS mining. We’d noticed for some time that there was a distinct lack of Pay-per-Share mining pools. That's why we decided to fill that gap in the Bitcoin community by introducing ABCPool.co.

We only charge ABCPool.co a 4% nominal fee, which comes down to around 2.1% effectively due to stale shares compensation (0.4% pool-wide average) and orphan block compensation (1.5% average). (NB: Other PPS pools currently charge as much as 10% nominal fee)

If you have any questions about ABCPool.co, feel free to ask them in this forum thread, or see our main thread in the 'Mining'->'Pools' forum.

[1714173424]

1714173424

[1714173424]

1714173424

[MintCondition]

NB: Established forum users, please post in the main ABCPool thread at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33586.0;all.

[MintCondition]

ABCPool is accepting new users again!

After a growing very fast in a few weeks we closed registration for a while to verify everything was running smoothly. ABCPool is now ready for more growth, so registration is open again!

[mute20]

You guys have exactly the same setup as arsbitcoin what gives

[MintCondition]

You guys have exactly the same setup as arsbitcoin what gives

Ars (and Eligius) have the concept of a buffer, from which miners are paid. If the buffer is empty (or negative) due to bad luck, you will receive payment at a later moment or not at all, depending on the specifics.

ABCPool has no such thing. You always know in advance what you'll get, even if the pool has bad luck.

[st4rdust]

Just want to plug for my favorite pool. Couldn't be happier with ABCPool.co and I've got all my miners pointed to your servers.

For anybody considering a pure PPS pool, which is the only logical choice in terms of mining for profit, ABCPool.co offers the highest price per share of any of the PPS pools, and in addition to that, the fact that they pay for stale shares is an added bonus on top of their already-superior payout of 0.000027690079662032 BTC/share.

[Brunic]

Can't post in the other thread because of newbie mode.

Just wanted to tell you that I'm really interested in your pool, it seems great. We have 5 GHash that are probably going to join you soon. 

[siggy]

Just pointed 2 Ghash your way.

lots more to come once the new hardware gets here

Any chance we could get a "Last 24 Hours Earned" counter on the stats page?

Regards,
Sigg

[siggy]

OK,  so I have a question about this 120 second invalid share thing.

I understand this is the default value in the software, but WHY?  Why is an otherwise valid share that takes 121 seconds to generate tossed in the trash?  A 119 second solution that solves a block is fine, but a 121 second block solving solution is not?

From reading the forums, my best guess is that this was originally put in place way back in the dark ages to discurage the use of _very_ slow (read: CPU) miners.  Well, thats great if the dificulty is only 100K, but now that the dificulty has increased nearly 20-fold, shouldn't this warrent a second look? 

A miner putting out 80 Mhash may not exactly be top of the line, but it is still very viable if you get rid of the 120 second limitiation.

Also, it seems to me that if you have a miner that supports long-polling, the 120 second limit becomes completely pointless.

Are there some system resource issues on the back end that I'm not aware of? Or something like that?

Since I'm stuck in newbie-land, if someone could re-post this to the main thread, it would be appreciated.

thanks,
Sigg

[siggy]

I soooo hate replying to myself .. but since I saw in the main thread that you guys are wanting to concentrate on stale and invalid shares...

have you seen this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38629.0

more details here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getwork#rollntime

Looks like they have a mod to phoenix that gets them down to near zero (with some server side support).   I'm currently running over 3% between stales and invalids.. I'd love to knock that down. 

Regards,
Sigg

[xzion]

Great for miners Mint, but what about you?

how does the pool cope with a 8-10mill share round, where you're paying out 5 times more than you're earning?

[ccbiker]

I think this pool is awesome. can't wait for more stats if they make it onto the site

[MintCondition]

I soooo hate replying to myself .. but since I saw in the main thread that you guys are wanting to concentrate on stale and invalid shares...

have you seen this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38629.0

more details here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getwork#rollntime

Looks like they have a mod to phoenix that gets them down to near zero (with some server side support).   I'm currently running over 3% between stales and invalids.. I'd love to knock that down. 

Regards,
Sigg

Thanks for the suggestion Sigg. Our stale rate has been rising along with pool hashrate, and that's a concern. Time rolling is indeed one of the ways we are considering for lowering our stales. As a miner that doesn't have to keep you awake at night, because we pay for stales anyway

[MintCondition]

how does the pool cope with a 8-10mill share round, where you're paying out 5 times more than you're earning?

No-one likes to see too many 10mill share rounds, that's for sure. In the long run however, they are offset by those 100k rounds. Our buffer protects us from streaks of bad luck.

NB: please don't double-post. Use either this thread, or our main discussion thread.

[MintCondition]

I think this pool is awesome. can't wait for more stats if they make it onto the site

Thanks for the compliment ccbiker Getting (payed!) stales down is our first priority, and after that we'll add some extra stats for you!

[siggy]

Thanks for the suggestion Sigg. Our stale rate has been rising along with pool hashrate, and that's a concern. Time rolling is indeed one of the ways we are considering for lowering our stales. As a miner that doesn't have to keep you awake at night, because we pay for stales anyway

Glad to know yer monitoring this thread.  Any chance you could give us your thoughts on my 120-second post above?   

I agree that the stales are your problem, not ours  (though I'd really like to see them come down also, so far I like you guys) ..  The 120 second rule is, however, adversely impacting the invalid share count.  While a 1% invalid rate isn't exactly keeping me up at night, I'd still like to see it closer to zero

Regards,
Sigg
 

[MintCondition]

OK,  so I have a question about this 120 second invalid share thing.

I understand this is the default value in the software, but WHY?  Why is an otherwise valid share that takes 121 seconds to generate tossed in the trash?  A 119 second solution that solves a block is fine, but a 121 second block solving solution is not?

From reading the forums, my best guess is that this was originally put in place way back in the dark ages to discurage the use of _very_ slow (read: CPU) miners.  Well, thats great if the dificulty is only 100K, but now that the dificulty has increased nearly 20-fold, shouldn't this warrent a second look? 

A miner putting out 80 Mhash may not exactly be top of the line, but it is still very viable if you get rid of the 120 second limitiation.

Also, it seems to me that if you have a miner that supports long-polling, the 120 second limit becomes completely pointless.

Are there some system resource issues on the back end that I'm not aware of? Or something like that?

Since I'm stuck in newbie-land, if someone could re-post this to the main thread, it would be appreciated.

thanks,
Sigg

I missed this post earlier, so I'll reply to it now. I don't think it has anything to do with excluding CPU miners. Although a CPU has less power than a GPU, CPU miners still contribute to the network security. Maybe even significantly, because there are so many more CPUs out there than GPUs. It just wouldn't be healthy to exclude CPU miners.

I also don't think long-polling changes the situation regarding the age-limit.

A much more logical reason is that old work causes the pool to miss out on transaction fees. How is that? New transaction (and their fees) keep coming in over time, and make the next block more valuable with every second that passes since the previous block. If someone hands in work that is 120 seconds old, that solution will not contain the transactions from the last 120 seconds. Remember that there are on average only 600 seconds between blocks. This means that work that is 120 seconds old misses out on (on average) 20% of possible transaction fees. Those 20% are passed on to the finder of block n+2 however, so the effect cancels out. Unless there is some pool that decreases or increases its age-limit, because that will shift the fees in favor of one of the parties.

Since most pools seems to use 120 seconds, ABCPool will do the same. This keeps the whole ecosystem in balance.

[siggy]

A much more logical reason is that old work causes the pool to miss out on transaction fees. How is that? New transaction (and their fees) keep coming in over time, and make the next block more valuable with every second that passes since the previous block. If someone hands in work that is 120 seconds old, that solution will not contain the transactions from the last 120 seconds. Remember that there are on average only 600 seconds between blocks. This means that work that is 120 seconds old misses out on (on average) 20% of possible transaction fees. Those 20% are passed on to the finder of block n+2 however, so the effect cancels out. Unless there is some pool that decreases or increases its age-limit, because that will shift the fees in favor of one of the parties.

OK.. thats a much more logical explination than I've been able to find... thanks.

On a different note:  Are you guys tweaking the back end right now?  looking at my miners, they're reporting that I'm getting over 50% rejects today.  Switching over to my backup, they went down to <1% , so I don't think its on my side...

Thanks,
Sigg

[Chlorine]

NEWS 18:45 UTC: ABCPool was not operating normally from 18:02 UTC to 18:21 UTC. At this moment ABCPool is operating normally again. The cause is investigated. Our apologies.

[Chlorine]

One may have noticed that I am not the regular author of ABCPool forum posts. Normally I am working behind the scenes. As the pool grows and grows, MintCondition has asked me to be his first backup. For our miners nothing will change.

Happy mining!