[204 GH/s] yourbtc.net closing it's doors on 2011-12-08

[urstroyer]

In order to support Merged Mining and get a fair reward of namecoin blocks we did major updates on the pool:

- Loyality Payout has been done and the feature is now removed
- Therefore all upcomming NMC earnings are distributed on Double Geometric Method just like BTC
- NMC earnings are automatically converted into BTC on current exchange rates and put into the payout queue
- All stats are independent for each chain (BTC & NMC) in the frontend
- According charts will be updated soon

[jamesg]

In order to support Merged Mining and get a fair reward of namecoin blocks we did major updates on the pool:

- Loyality Payout has been done and the feature is now removed
- Therefore all upcomming NMC earnings are distributed on Double Geometric Method just like BTC
- NMC earnings are automatically converted into BTC on current exchange rates and put into the payout queue
- All stats are independent for each chain (BTC & NMC) in the frontend
- According charts will be updated soon

Not to mention that stales are lower than ever!!! I am running under .1% since I repointed the farm earlier today.

[teukon]

In order to support Merged Mining and get a fair reward of namecoin blocks we did major updates on the pool:

- Loyality Payout has been done and the feature is now removed
- Therefore all upcomming NMC earnings are distributed on Double Geometric Method just like BTC
- NMC earnings are automatically converted into BTC on current exchange rates and put into the payout queue
- All stats are independent for each chain (BTC & NMC) in the frontend
- According charts will be updated soon

Awesome!

What's the current plan for the transaction fee rewards?

[urstroyer]

In order to support Merged Mining and get a fair reward of namecoin blocks we did major updates on the pool:

- Loyality Payout has been done and the feature is now removed
- Therefore all upcomming NMC earnings are distributed on Double Geometric Method just like BTC
- NMC earnings are automatically converted into BTC on current exchange rates and put into the payout queue
- All stats are independent for each chain (BTC & NMC) in the frontend
- According charts will be updated soon

Awesome!

What's the current plan for the transaction fee rewards?

Yes of course:

The method handles transaction fees as is as long as you determine B correctly. It needs to be the total block reward corresponding to a share's getwork.

Did some homework after Meni's feedback, in order to determine B (block reward + transaction fees) correctly when a share was submitted:

bitcoind version 0.5 will get a "getmemorypool" call, which is capable to get the btc amount of transaction fees, if the current network block would be solved at that moment.

So the distribution of transaction fees will be included into DGM on yourbtc.net as soon as it's technically possible.

[Pontius]

In order to support Merged Mining and get a fair reward of namecoin blocks we did major updates on the pool:

- Loyality Payout has been done and the feature is now removed
- Therefore all upcomming NMC earnings are distributed on Double Geometric Method just like BTC
- NMC earnings are automatically converted into BTC on current exchange rates and put into the payout queue
- All stats are independent for each chain (BTC & NMC) in the frontend
- According charts will be updated soon

Great Chris! I just adjusted my donation rate in order to appreciate your efforts.

[teukon]

Did some homework after Meni's feedback, in order to determine B (block reward + transaction fees) correctly when a share was submitted:

bitcoind version 0.5 will get a "getmemorypool" call, which is capable to get the btc amount of transaction fees, if the current network block would be solved at that moment.

So the distribution of transaction fees will be included into DGM on yourbtc.net as soon as it's technically possible.

Yep, I read this and appreciate the problem.  I just wondered what do you plan to do with the transaction fee rewards between now and when bitcoind 0.5 comes out?

[urstroyer]

Not sure yet, if you have any suggestions let me know.

[teukon]

Not sure yet, if you have any suggestions let me know.

I don't have any good suggestions.  What I would do is to include the transaction fee rewards with the blocks for now and begin to scale the share values appropriately once bitcoind 0.5 comes out.  This means that the pool will be less than perfect on the pool hopping front for now but instinct tells me that it's a big improvement over the loyalty bonus approach.

Perhaps Meni has some better ideas.

[teukon]

Also, I'm a little confused about how block generation works so I'll lay down my current understanding.  Feel free to correct me.

Each new job is basically a header containing, among other things, a list of transactions to be verified.  This means that the "block reward + transaction fees" as far as a miner of this pool sees them will only change when new work is pushed.  Consequently, the pool would only need to find the total transaction fees for each of the jobs it sends out and not the transaction fees currently up for grabs on the network when a share is submitted.

A competing pool could react to new transactions by compiling and sending out new jobs more frequently (perhaps whenever it can increase the block reward + transaction fee by 0.1 BTC).  The shares at a pool would consequently be more valuable on average and so they could offer higher income for their miners.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Not sure yet, if you have any suggestions let me know.

I don't have any good suggestions.  What I would do is to include the transaction fee rewards with the blocks for now and begin to scale the share values appropriately once bitcoind 0.5 comes out.  This means that the pool will be less than perfect on the pool hopping front for now but instinct tells me that it's a big improvement over the loyalty bonus approach.

Perhaps Meni has some better ideas.

I find it odd that with the current version one can't get the block reward. As a temporary measure until the new version I'd do one of the following:
1. If "Transaction fees are paid" is not important for the pitch, I'd just keep them.
2. If it is, base all score calculation on B=50. When a block is found, in addition to the payment specified by the method, pay the transaction fees for the block to participants in proportion to their score.

Each new job is basically a header containing, among other things, a list of transactions to be verified.  This means that the "block reward + transaction fees" as far as a miner of this pool sees them will only change when new work is pushed.  Consequently, the pool would only need to find the total transaction fees for each of the jobs it sends out and not the transaction fees currently up for grabs on the network when a share is submitted.

Yes, except that only the Merkle root of the transaction list is in the header, not the entire list.

A competing pool could react to new transactions by compiling and sending out new jobs more frequently (perhaps whenever it can increase the block reward + transaction fee by 0.1 BTC).  The shares at a pool would consequently be more valuable on average and so they could offer higher income for their miners.

Yes, if transaction fees are rapidly changing, the pool (and, in a proper scoring method, the miners) are incentivized to work on an up-to-date header with higher fees. This should be balanced with the resource cost of frequently pushing work.

[teukon]

A competing pool could react to new transactions by compiling and sending out new jobs more frequently (perhaps whenever it can increase the block reward + transaction fee by 0.1 BTC).  The shares at a pool would consequently be more valuable on average and so they could offer higher income for their miners.

Yes, if transaction fees are rapidly changing, the pool (and, in a proper scoring method, the miners) are incentivized to work on an up-to-date header with higher fees. This should be balanced with the resource cost of frequently pushing work.

Ah good.

So, in the long run (assuming Bitcoin bitcoin becomes large and transaction fees become the primary incentive to mine) then the profitability of mining will fluctuate significantly on a minute by minute basis.  Miners could then start hopping the PPS pools (provided they are still alive) and true 24-7 mining will disappear.  I wonder what miners will then do to limit the wear on their equiptment, particularly considering that the hardware may be Bitcoin mining specific.

Of course, this is hardly significant at this stage but it's nice to get the mathematics right.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

A competing pool could react to new transactions by compiling and sending out new jobs more frequently (perhaps whenever it can increase the block reward + transaction fee by 0.1 BTC).  The shares at a pool would consequently be more valuable on average and so they could offer higher income for their miners.

Yes, if transaction fees are rapidly changing, the pool (and, in a proper scoring method, the miners) are incentivized to work on an up-to-date header with higher fees. This should be balanced with the resource cost of frequently pushing work.

Ah good.

So, in the long run (assuming Bitcoin bitcoin becomes large and transaction fees become the primary incentive to mine) then the profitability of mining will fluctuate significantly on a minute by minute basis.  Miners could then start hopping the PPS pools (provided they are still alive) and true 24-7 mining will disappear.  I wonder what miners will then do to limit the wear on their equiptment, particularly considering that the hardware may be Bitcoin mining specific.

Of course, this is hardly significant at this stage but it's nice to get the mathematics right.

In the future, PPS pools won't be literally "specified payment per share", but rather "specified fraction of share's value per share". That is, pB(1-f) given immediately per share where f is known and fixed, p changes every two weeks and B is variable.

If the thermal cycle cost is higher than the electricity cost, and there are really no other profitable things to do, they will probably keep mining 24/7 after all.

[teukon]

In the future, PPS pools won't be literally "specified payment per share", but rather "specified fraction of share's value per share". That is, pB(1-f) given immediately per share where f is known and fixed, p changes every two weeks and B is variable.

Agreed.  By PPS I was referring to a fixed amount per share.  I agree that a variable share value would make sense and that this could well be considered PPS (the miner has variance no worse than that forced by share difficulty and the pool takes the risk for a fee).  I have a similar ambiguity/confusion problem with the term PPLNS.  Ah well.

If the thermal cycle cost is higher than the electricity cost, and there are really no other profitable things to do, they will probably keep mining 24/7 after all.

True but that's an interesting 'if'.  There are many ways the market might address this oscillation.

[freakfantom]

Is something wrong with the site? My hashrate is stuck at Hashrate: 1.46 GHash/s. Hm... it seems to me top 20 is also frozen. Is it just me?

[jamesg]

Is something wrong with the site? My hashrate is stuck at Hashrate: 1.46 GHash/s. Hm... it seems to me top 20 is also frozen. Is it just me?

The pool server is accepting shares but it looks like one of the jobs for calculating the hash rate is stuck. Just keep mining and I'll ping urstroyer on IRC.

[urstroyer]

Backround script for share calculation messed up.

Its running smooth again. Every submitted share was credited, no worries. Got some blocks!

[teukon]

Backround script for share calculation messed up.

Its running smooth again. Every submitted share was credited, no worries. Got some blocks!

I'm glad to see things seem to be back to normal.

However, Namecoin block 25574 was remarkably unlucky (1304912 shares all at difficulty 156504.39 puts this block in the top 0.024% of unlucky blocks).  Of course, such poor luck can happen but such an extreme example occuring at the same time as the reward system was changed and the pool was having problems with stats is too much to ignore.

Have you checked for any missing Namecoin blocks?  Do you keep a log of the nonces for shares (or is such a log automatically kept by PoolServerJ)?

[jamesg]

I'm glad to see things seem to be back to normal.

However, Namecoin block 25574 was remarkably unlucky (1304912 shares all at difficulty 156504.39 puts this block in the top 0.024% of unlucky blocks).  Of course, such poor luck can happen but such an extreme example occuring at the same time as the reward system was changed and the pool was having problems with stats is too much to ignore.

Have you checked for any missing Namecoin blocks?  Do you keep a log of the nonces for shares (or is such a log automatically kept by PoolServerJ)?

While I agree the circumstances are a bit unusual, I have had multiple dealings with urstroyer and know that he is doing everything in his power to make sure the pool runs smoothly and wants the pool to succeed.

[urstroyer]

This very long round could be a result of a bug at recent psj release which only affected nmc blockchain.
See this post here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33142.msg599834#msg599834

If there was a technical issue, it's clearly fixed now.

Payed out 20 BTC on my own and several nmc blocks found before frontend was finished (transaction loyality bonus). I think it should cover it really well.

[teukon]

While I agree the circumstances are a bit unusual, I have had multiple dealings with urstroyer and know that he is doing everything in his power to make sure the pool runs smoothly and wants the pool to succeed.

To be sure, I do not doubt urstroyer's integrity one whit.  I only meant to highlight what is almost certainly a technical problem.  I care far more about the reputation and apparent professionalism of the pool than I do about any personal lost income.

I'm glad it appears to be fixed and hope that this pool proves itself solid in the next few weeks.