[NEW POOL & MINER] - BitcoinPool.com - Jump In! ~NO FEES~ :)

[FairUser]

We are proud to announce a new bitcoin mining pool has opened: http://bitcoinpool.com

Please feel FREE to join the pool.  http://bitcoinpool.com/newuser.php

Our official forums where questions can be asked is at:
http://www.bitcoinpool.com/forum/

Our pool pays miner for the percentage of work done based on;
(the number of shares your miner has contributed) divided by (total number of shares in the round) times 50. Our server is now in Beta, payout functionality has been fully tested and debugged these last two weeks.  Additional features will be appearing in the next few weeks as the pool grows in popularity.

This pool does not support the “pay-per-share” method (bitpenny's pool) or “weight based shares" (slush's pool) which favors faster cards and devalue's shares over time after they've been solved.  

Now let's cover some of the finer points of the bitcoin pool.

- WE DO NOT FORCE DONATIONS OR TAKE A PERCENTAGE OF THE PAYOUTS.  WE DO NOT REQUIRED ANY SIGNUP FEES OR ANY OTHER FORMS OF FORCED PAYMENTS.  We do encourage and are thankful for any donations we receive.  Our donation address is:   1AMnDUgnZTZJUcSR5Eevt6PnxWLmdq75Zn

- We have set a maximum number of users to 2000.  We will be able to increase this number if a majority of the miners on our server are mining with our efficient bitcoin miner.

- The solved block is equally paid out to all those who contributed in the round.  

- Anti-fraud protection.  We only accept shares from the current block, in the current round.

- Anti-flood protection.  Our server ensures that user's are not making an excessive number of useless requests to our server, and bans them by account and IP address in the event abuse is detected.

- We show the stats of all users in the pool because we believe in being transparent.  By showing all the stats of each users, everyone can determine for themselves if something is not right (like the server operator taking bitcoin's off the top).  

- We are the only bitcoin pool that shows the efficiency of the bitcoin miners.  This is VERY important because we can now see which miner's are causing an excessive load on the server.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

- We are the only bitcoin pool that has released a modified version of a bitcoin miner (m0mchill's) that can achieve 100% efficiency.  The more efficient each user is, the more users we can support on the server, and that means we will find more blocks at a faster rate for the pool.

- The listed shares and efficiency of each user is reset at the beginning of the next round.

- You can use multiple miner's on a single account, however you will not be able to see the individual stats of each miner if you choose to do so.


MINING EFFICIENTLY

For the sake of understanding what we mean by “Efficiency”, let us define it for you.
EFFiciency = (The number of submitted shares) / (The number of requested getworks) * 100.

   Geebus and I raised a very important question in m0mchill's thread, and that question was “why doesn't the miner work through all (2^32 or) 4,294,967,296 hashes?”  The answer we got was not a satisfactory or a legitimate response to the original question, and we objected with real stats showing that decreasing your askrate for getwork request does NOT increase the probability that you will find a share or answer quicker.  In fact, you can find more than 1 answer/share per getwork, and that simply requesting a new getwork every 10 or 20 seconds is not the best route to finding shares.

The bottom line from our research was this:
- The same number of shares can be found in a 10 hour period using a askrate of 10 seconds OR our more efficient miner.  You will get about the same number of shares either way.

- Because the same number of shares are found in a given period, there is no reason why people should be using a decreased askrate.  The goal is to look for bitcoin's more efficiently, and when the miner's efficiency is closer to 100%, the amount of resources and bandwidth on the server is DRAMATICALLY reduced, and that means we can support MORE USERS.

- More user's means we as a pool can find blocks faster!

In order to make this happen, we had to make some changes to m0mchill's miner.  We now use what is referred to as a “variable askrate”, which means that the miner looks at the average speed of your card as it processed the previous getwork, and adjusts the askrate so your card will search the entire getwork for any possible answers.  In addition to being more efficient, we also show the current getwork you're working on, how much of that getwork has been processed, your efficiency, the percentage of invalid/stale shares, and the percentage of empty getworks.

Here's a screen shot of our miner, and as you can see it's a bit different than m0mchill's original miner.



If you would like to see the efficiency of your existing miner, then join our pool and run your miner for a couple of hours to see how efficient it really is.  When you're ready to get a more efficient miner, you can download our miner and watch your efficiency rise dramatically.  For all those who said we didn't know what we were talking about, you would be well advised to try this miner before making anymore comments.  We spent months working on the code of m0mchill's miner, countless hours of testing and statistical analysis, and it is by far the most efficient miner out right now.  But why should you believe us, just because we said so?  No, you should try it yourself and compare it to your existing miner, then make up your own mind about whether or not this is a more efficient miner.

You can download our modified miner from:  http://bitcoinpool.com
You can sign up for a new account at:  http://bitcoinpool.com/newuser.php
Additional Frequently Asked Questions can be found at:  http://bitcoinpool.com/faq.php

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.  We will do our best to answer your questions.  
We are excited to launch this new pool and invite everyone to come jump in with us.  

We look forward to seeing you all in the pool,

Fairuser & Geebus

[1714232603]

1714232603

[1714232603]

1714232603

[geebus]

Just an FYI, our site is still in beta, and we're CONSTANTLY updating, tweaking, enhancing, etc...

Let us know if you run into any bugs or major catastrophic issues.

At the time of writing this, we've already solved 10 blocks (9 confirmed & paid, 1 awaiting confirmation) .

[geebus]

I'm also working on a GUI version of the miner based on Kiv's code. He's done a great job! Don't forget to donate to him if you use it.

[os008]

Our pool pays miners equally for each share they submit to the server.  Our pool does proportional payments based on the number of shares your miner has contributed to the current round.  This pool does not support the “pay-per-share” method seen by some other mining pools, or stupid “weight based” shares which favor faster cards and punishes the fair and hard working miners who have limited resources.

Just so that i understand, you meant you don't like the option of either having Proportional or Pay-per-Share? Because if PPS is unfair, the user can simply choose Proportional. Other than that, how is your system not weight-based? I kept reading that sentence more than once trying to understand it; the whole quote above actually. Can you please elaborate? Thank you.

[FairUser]

Our pool pays miners equally for each share they submit to the server.  Our pool does proportional payments based on the number of shares your miner has contributed to the current round.  This pool does not support the “pay-per-share” method seen by some other mining pools, or stupid “weight based” shares which favor faster cards and punishes the fair and hard working miners who have limited resources.

Just so that i understand, you meant you don't like the option of either having Proportional or Pay-per-Share? Because if PPS is unfair, the user can simply choose Proportional. Other than that, how is your system not weight-based? I kept reading that sentence more than once trying to understand it; the whole quote above actually. Can you please elaborate? Thank you.

Sorry about that, it's 5 AM and I'm tired.

The "pay-per-share" pools pays you a fixed amount (in bitpenny's case it's 0.000809494650699530728099606591 BTC) for each share you submit.  

We pay out the based on the percentage of work you've done:
(Number of shares you submitted) / (Total number of shares in round) * 50.
That will tell you how many of the 50 bitcoins that you get paid.

Thanks for pointing that out.  Just updated first post to better explain that.

[Anonymous]

I hope there are no nasty surprises in your closed source code

[FairUser]

I hope there are no nasty surprises in your closed source code

The poclbm-mod.zip for the Miner includes the source code for it.
You might want to download it and see for yourself.

We based the server on the open source poold from Jeff Garzik, with some heavy modifications though.
http://yyz.us/bitcoin/poold.py

[xenon481]

[...] or “weight based shares" (slush's pool) which favors faster cards and devalue's shares over time after they've been solved.  

If you are going to make such an accusation, can you please show any mathematical/statistical proof of this?

Yes, the variance is slightly larger and the fewer shares/proofs of work you have submitted the more likely that variance significantly affects you, but it doesn't take long at all for you to converge towards the expected average level of generation/payout. It only takes a CPU Miner around 1 week to generate 1000 proofs of work and as is plainly seen in the graph below, the difference in variance between Share based and Score based at 1000 shares/proofs submitted over the entire lifetime of the miner is essentially non-existent. And again, this only takes ~1 week for a CPU miner.

[geebus]

[...] or “weight based shares" (slush's pool) which favors faster cards and devalue's shares over time after they've been solved.  

If you are going to make such an accusation, can you please show any mathematical/statistical proof of this?

I'll step in and elaborate here... Where we say "favors faster cards" we mean from share-to-share.

We're not aiming to be fair to someone a week from now, or two weeks from now. We're looking to be fair for right now, because not everyone mines constantly. We want to be able to provide credit for work that is done, when it is done, and have it maintain it's value for what it is.

By the end of a round, 1 share should = 1 share, not 5% of 1 share.

[Raulo]

If it's not push-based and still based on getwork, by reducing askrate, you are increasing the chance of stale solutions. With 20s askrate, you are working on stale blocks 10/600=1.7% of the time and more when the blocks are found faster than every 600s.

[[Tycho]]

If it's not push-based and still based on getwork, by reducing askrate, you are increasing the chance of stale solutions. With 20s askrate, you are working on stale blocks 10/600=1.7% of the time and more when the blocks are found faster than every 600s.

Actually i think that 20s askrate will give more than 1.7% stale. But i hope that they ask at least once per minute to include new transactions :)

[xenon481]

[...] or “weight based shares" (slush's pool) which favors faster cards and devalue's shares over time after they've been solved.  

If you are going to make such an accusation, can you please show any mathematical/statistical proof of this?

I'll step in and elaborate here... Where we say "favors faster cards" we mean from share-to-share.

We're not aiming to be fair to someone a week from now, or two weeks from now. We're looking to be fair for right now, because not everyone mines constantly. We want to be able to provide credit for work that is done, when it is done, and have it maintain it's value for what it is.

By the end of a round, 1 share should = 1 share, not 5% of 1 share.

So your argument is purely based on the irrational emotions of the miner as opposed to mathematical certainty of the statistics.

[kseistrup]

If your efficiency is lower than 1% at the end of a round, you will be flagged as inefficient and temporarily banned for 20 minutes while the user hopefully attempts to fix the problem.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I assume that the required efficience excludes CPU miners, is that correct?

Cheers,

[[Tycho]]

By the end of a round, 1 share should = 1 share, not 5% of 1 share.

So your argument is purely based on the irrational emotions of the miner as opposed to mathematical certainty of the statistics.

As slush said, most people don't really understand statistics or probability, so they will search for the pool that seem "more suitable" for them. And I saved their souls :)

[qed]

I was going to have a look at the m0mchil's client source today. I think i'm gonna do it now.

[nster]

If your efficiency is lower than 1% at the end of a round, you will be flagged as inefficient and temporarily banned for 20 minutes while the user hopefully attempts to fix the problem.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I assume that the required efficience excludes CPU miners, is that correct?

Cheers,

I'm trying out their miner and I'm getting 90+% efficiency with an OCed 6870

[geebus]

If it's not push-based and still based on getwork, by reducing askrate, you are increasing the chance of stale solutions. With 20s askrate, you are working on stale blocks 10/600=1.7% of the time and more when the blocks are found faster than every 600s.

Thats a non-issue. Here are some real-world statistics for you, based on one of my cards currently mining:

Radeon HD5770
161.9 Mhash/s

Askrate is variable based on speed at time of getwork, but stays at roughly 24s.

3809 shares submitted
21 of those were stale.

That equals 0.55%, less than a third of your theoretical loss.

0.55% is negligible when it comes to working on stale blocks, especially considering network propagation times on the bitcoin network could just as easily cause you to be working on stale blocks for the same half percent of the time. Total 1% loss, and it's technically not even 1% total loss, it's merely 1% of not gaining.

[geebus]

If your efficiency is lower than 1% at the end of a round, you will be flagged as inefficient and temporarily banned for 20 minutes while the user hopefully attempts to fix the problem.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I assume that the required efficience excludes CPU miners, is that correct?

Cheers,

Efficiency is based on the number of shares submitted vs. the number asked for.
A CPU can be just as efficient as a GPU.

For the time being however, we've disabled automatic blocking of accounts with lowered efficiency.

[xenon481]

If your efficiency is lower than 1% at the end of a round, you will be flagged as inefficient and temporarily banned for 20 minutes while the user hopefully attempts to fix the problem.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I assume that the required efficience excludes CPU miners, is that correct?

Cheers,

I believe so (effectively), from what I've read so far. But not due to efficiency; instead, due to Stales.

- Anti-fraud protection.  We only accept shares from the current block, in the current round.

Stale Rate is dependent upon two variables; Ask Rate and the entire network's Block Solution Rate.

The longer that a Miner goes without doing a GetWork, the more often that it will be working on something that is no longer valid because the proper solution has already been found. The more often that the network solves blocks, the more often that this situation occurs.

By asking a CPU Miner (or any miner that isn't at least some X% of the network's total power) to process the entire getwork solution space before performing another GetWork, you are dooming that Miner to a very significant percentage of Stale shares.

[nster]

If your efficiency is lower than 1% at the end of a round, you will be flagged as inefficient and temporarily banned for 20 minutes while the user hopefully attempts to fix the problem.  If this is a problem for you, please update your miner to our modified version of m0mchill's miner that is MUCH more efficient.

Pardon me if this is a stupid question, but I assume that the required efficience excludes CPU miners, is that correct?

Cheers,

I believe so (effectively), from what I've read so far. But not due to efficiency; instead, due to Stales.

- Anti-fraud protection.  We only accept shares from the current block, in the current round.

Stale Rate is dependent upon two variables; Ask Rate and the entire network's Block Solution Rate.

The longer that a Miner goes without doing a GetWork, the more often that it will be working on something that is no longer valid because the proper solution has already been found. The more often that the network solves blocks, the more often that this situation occurs.

By asking a CPU Miner (or any miner that isn't at least some X% of the network's total power) to process the entire getwork solution space before performing another GetWork, you are dooming that Miner to a very significant percentage of Stale shares.

In this sense it is favoring people with faster cards right?