p2pool not paying out?

[LogicalUnit]

Hello,

I've been mining on p2pool @ 6.5GH/s for a couple of weeks, and I haven't seen any payouts yet. Is this normal? Is there a better pool I can use (one resistent to ddos attacks)?

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[Sonny]

With your hashrate, the variance is pretty high when mining at p2pool.

You may try the other pools like BTC Guild or Eligius, if you like.

[LogicalUnit]

Could you please explain variance and how it affects an entry-level miner?

[Kenshin]

Could you please explain variance and how it affects an entry-level miner?

For last hash rate it is better to use a pool.

This explain about variance.
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=5264.0

[mitty]

Could you please explain variance and how it affects an entry-level miner?

Not directly answering your question (see post above mine), but some basic info on why p2pool has such a high variance:

Solo mining requires you to find a "share" (proof of work) with difficulty equal to or greater than the Bitcoin network difficulty.

p2pool is a separate network where the block creation time target is set to 10 seconds instead of Bitcoin's estimated 10 minute block time.

The result of this is that it's a lot easier to find a p2pool block than a Bitcoin block because the p2pool network difficulty is much lower than the Bitcoin network difficulty.  

p2pool blocks merge mine Bitcoin blocks: that means a valid p2pool block is also a valid Bitcoin block, however the valid p2pool block must meet the Bitcoin network difficulty in order to be accepted on the Bitcoin network.

What happens in p2pool is you mine p2pool blocks, called "shares", by finding a hash that has difficulty equal to or greater than the p2pool network difficulty.  If the share also happens to have a difficulty greater than or equal to the Bitcoin network difficulty, then the share is also submitted to the Bitcoin network and everyone using p2pool who has recently submitted p2pool shares (hashes >= p2pool difficulty but maybe less than Bitcoin difficulty) get paid from the block.

However the system isn't perfect.  p2pool blocks are found 60 times faster than Bitcoin blocks which means the difficulty should be much lower, however many people are now using very powerful mining hardware so the p2pool difficulty is still quite high for small miners.  You only get paid when you find p2pool shares and with 6.5 GH/s it will take a very long time to do this.  You should see a "expected time to share" value on the p2pool stats page (if you are running it locally) which should give you an idea of how long it may take before you find a payout-earning share.

Hence you will have better luck using a regular pool.  Most regular pools can accept shares of any difficulty and usually automatically adjust the share difficulty based on your mining speed so you should see consistent (although small) payouts depending on the overall hash rate of the pool.

Good luck!

[LogicalUnit]

Thanks, mitty, that was really helpful. Once again I get burned for not doing proper research!

[Kenshin]

Thanks, mitty, that was really helpful. Once again I get burned for not doing proper research!

Join the P2Pool when you have more hashing power in the future. Little step at a time.

I started on a mining pool. Now I have my own P2Pool in my home network. Running as a node of the P2Pool.

[Prelude]

Thanks, mitty, that was really helpful. Once again I get burned for not doing proper research!

Join the P2Pool when you have more hashing power in the future. Little step at a time.

I started on a mining pool. Now I have my own P2Pool in my home network. Running as a node of the P2Pool.

What would you say the minimum hashrate should be to mine on p2pool?

[Kenshin]

Thanks, mitty, that was really helpful. Once again I get burned for not doing proper research!

Join the P2Pool when you have more hashing power in the future. Little step at a time.

I started on a mining pool. Now I have my own P2Pool in my home network. Running as a node of the P2Pool.

What would you say the minimum hashrate should be to mine on p2pool?

I started out with 355MH/s, then 2GH/s, and now I have 1.9TH/s.

I think you need to have around 500 GH/s to 1 TH/s, then you should be alright.

[Gator-hex]

P2Pools pay per block.
You get 3-5 payouts a day typically, of virgin bitcoins.
However! You need enough GH to get over the 0.001BTC dust level or you will never see your payout!
With Bitcoin that is about 15-20GH! P2Pool recommend 40GH.

If you run for 24hrs and see no payout you probably don't have enough GH, although it could just be a very unlucky block that day if you do have the GH.

You can find a list of P2Pools at http://p2pool.hostv.pl/ just use your bitcoin address and no/any password (some clients won't mine unless you type something).

[Sonny]

However! You need enough GH to get over the 0.001BTC dust level or you will never see your payout!

For ordinary pools (like btcguild), you can set the share difficulty yourself (as low as 1, as high as 1024 at this moment), and you can find valid shares frequently if you set it up based on your hashrate.
As you submits the shares, your balance in the pool goes up, and you can ask for a payout when you reaches the minimum payment threshold.

For p2pool, you can't set the share difficulty yourself. The share difficulty is much much higher, and you will not find a share in days if you don't have much hashrate. So, you are not build up any balance at all.
Also, p2pool uses the PPLNS scheme. So, if you submit a share, and if your share is in last N shares before a block is found, you will get a payment for that block.


TL;DR: Instead of "enough hashrate to get over the dust level", it should be "enough hashrate to find a p2pool share within reasonable time".