Re: Mining pools list

[crazyates]

I was trying to think of some way to quickly inform newcomers as to whether a pool is ASIC ready or not, and I was wondering if we could make a scoring system for the pools? I'm basing this strictly off the information you've already provided (great job, BTW!).

+2 Stratum or GBT support
+2 Variable or Dynamic Difficulty (+1 for user definded difficulty)
+1 Non-hoppable payment method
+1 Pay Orphans
+1 TX fees.
-1 for every 1% fee
Highest potential score: 7

What do you think? Some of the results were skewed as a lot of PPS pools have higher fees, which hurt their score in this setup.

Pools over 1Th/s:
Bitminter +6
OzcoinDGM +5
EclipseDGM +5
BTCGuildPPLNS +4
OzcoinPOT +4
Slush +4
OzcoinPPS +3
Bitlc +2
BTCMine +1
BTCGuildPPS +1
EclipsePPS +1
Coinotron -1
Hashrack -1
50BTC -1
DeepbitProp -2
DeepbitPPS -8

Pools over 100GH/s:
Itzod +6
MTRed +5
Eligius +4
BTC.P2PCoins.net +1
Maxbtc +1
Polmine +1
Bitparking 0

[organofcorti]

I was trying to think of some way to quickly inform newcomers as to whether a pool is ASIC ready or not, and I was wondering if we could make a scoring system for the pools? I'm basing this strictly off the information you've already provided (great job, BTW!).

+2 Stratum or GBT support
+2 Variable or Dynamic Difficulty (+1 for user definded difficulty)
+1 Non-hoppable payment method
+1 Pay Orphans
+1 TX fees.
-1 for every 1% fee
Highest potential score: 7

What do you think? Some of the results were skewed as a lot of PPS pools have higher fees, which hurt their score in this setup.

Pools over 1Th/s:
Bitminter +6
OzcoinDGM +5
EclipseDGM +5
BTCGuildPPLNS +4
OzcoinPOT +4
Slush +4
OzcoinPPS +3
Bitlc +2
BTCMine +1
BTCGuildPPS +1
EclipsePPS +1
Coinotron -1
Hashrack -1
50BTC -1
DeepbitProp -2
DeepbitPPS -8

Pools over 100GH/s:
Itzod +6
MTRed +5
Eligius +4
BTC.P2PCoins.net +1
Maxbtc +1
Polmine +1
Bitparking 0

Hey crazyates,

I was thinking of something similar after I saw a post by you elsewhere. I'd like something simpler though  - not just because I'm lazy but to make it easier for new miners. I was thinking of just listing "ASIC ready" for every pool that has local work generation and vardiff.

Your point scoring system does make sense, but

+1 Non-hoppable payment method
+1 Pay Orphans
+1 TX fees.
-1 for every 1% fee

are not specifically to do with ASIC readiness.

What do you think?

[crazyates]

Hey crazyates,

I was thinking of something similar after I saw a post by you elsewhere. I'd like something simpler though  - not just because I'm lazy but to make it easier for new miners. I was thinking of just listing "ASIC ready" for every pool that has local work generation and vardiff.

Your point scoring system does make sense, but

+1 Non-hoppable payment method
+1 Pay Orphans
+1 TX fees.
-1 for every 1% fee

are not specifically to do with ASIC readiness.

What do you think?

Ya you're right, as those options don't really have anything to do with ASICs. I got a little carried away with trying to compare all of the different pool features. I almost added a +1 for email notification of idle workers haha!

Anyways, some soft of agreed upon criteria for being labeled as "ASIC ready" would be awesome! If that's just simply Stratum/GBT and VarrDiff/selectable diff, I'm ok with that!

[organofcorti]

.... Anyways, some soft of agreed upon criteria for being labeled as "ASIC ready" would be awesome! If that's just simply Stratum/GBT and VarrDiff/selectable diff, I'm ok with that!

Anyone disagree?

[eleuthria]

.... Anyways, some soft of agreed upon criteria for being labeled as "ASIC ready" would be awesome! If that's just simply Stratum/GBT and VarrDiff/selectable diff, I'm ok with that!

Anyone disagree?

I'd say Stratum/GBT and Vardiff/User Selectable works, though VarDiff is certainly "more ready" than user-selectable only since it doesn't require the user to know anything about proper settings other than a host/port.

[organofcorti]

.... Anyways, some soft of agreed upon criteria for being labeled as "ASIC ready" would be awesome! If that's just simply Stratum/GBT and VarrDiff/selectable diff, I'm ok with that!

Anyone disagree?

I'd say Stratum/GBT and Vardiff/User Selectable works, though VarDiff is certainly "more ready" than user-selectable only since it doesn't require the user to know anything about proper settings other than a host/port.

I think I'd better work on explanations for each column heading somewhere so the difference between automatically varying difficulty and user defined difficulty is clearer.

I'll also probably have to remove an existing column to fit in an "ASIC ready" column, so if anyone has an opinion about which existing column should (or should not) be deleted, speak up now.

[crazyates]

.... Anyways, some soft of agreed upon criteria for being labeled as "ASIC ready" would be awesome! If that's just simply Stratum/GBT and VarrDiff/selectable diff, I'm ok with that!

Anyone disagree?

I'd say Stratum/GBT and Vardiff/User Selectable works, though VarDiff is certainly "more ready" than user-selectable only since it doesn't require the user to know anything about proper settings other than a host/port.

I think I'd better work on explanations for each column heading somewhere so the difference between automatically varying difficulty and user defined difficulty is clearer.

I'll also probably have to remove an existing column to fit in an "ASIC ready" column, so if anyone has an opinion about which existing column should (or should not) be deleted, speak up now.

IMO, Tx fees are more important than orphans, but I do really like keeping the information that's already there.

[organofcorti]

Updated with a new "ASIC ready" column. No columns needed to be removed, but I did have to squish them together a bit. I'm basing the Yes/No on the "Local work" and "Variable Difficulty" column.

Let me know if anything is incorrect.

[freifallspoiler]

The website is offline for some time now. 

[organofcorti]

The website is offline for some time now. 

Details?

[freifallspoiler]

I see a banner on top that states: "This page (http://bitminter.com/) is currently offline." and then tells me I just see a cached copy of the site.

[organofcorti]

I see a banner on top that states: "This page (http://bitminter.com/) is currently offline." and then tells me I just see a cached copy of the site.

So you mean BitMinter is offline? You should report that in the BitMinter Thread.

[luffy]

for me personally the best pool is MTRED since it pays everything (orphans, TX,no fee) to miners
and stratum working great without downtimes. I still don't understand why it isn't ASIC ready,
is it the unknown "variable difficulty"? and what that means?
thanks

[organofcorti]

for me personally the best pool is MTRED since it pays everything (orphans, TX,no fee) to miners
and stratum working great without downtimes. I still don't understand why it isn't ASIC ready,
is it the unknown "variable difficulty"? and what that means?
thanks

MTRED has variable difficulty now? Can you post a link that provides details? Once I can add the type of variable difficulty I'll change MTRED's status to "ASIC ready".

[luffy]

i don't know about it. I don't know what this term is all about!
i meant if "ASIC ready" depends in  "variable difficulty" in your list. I guess it is  


edit:
i found a post about this #894:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=15929.880
it seems variable difficulty works but no details are provided

edit#2:
confirmed.
MTRED uses variable difficulty, it is configurable in workers and i see the report in cgminer

[slush]

Can you please change "Variable difficulty: user-defined" for my pool? I just released it...

[organofcorti]

Updated.

Can you please change "Variable difficulty: user-defined" for my pool? I just released it...

Done! Thanks for letting me know.

[organofcorti]

Updated, with some dead pools removed.

[stevegee58]

I noticed eligius isn't listed as being "ASIC ready".  I was under the impression it was.

[organofcorti]

I noticed eligius isn't listed as being "ASIC ready".  I was under the impression it was.

It should be - there are ASICs there! I can't find details about the vardiff they use (not that I looked hard) - do you have a link?