[CLOSED] BTC Guild - Pays TxFees+NMC, Stratum, VarDiff, Private Servers

[eleuthria]

One of the getwork pools died, it is being restarted.  People keep putting massive load on getwork pool servers, and I'm not going to make more of them when a much better alternative exists.

UPDATE: The dead server is back online.

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[eleuthria]

3 major changes happening this month, just wanting to include it on the forums so people can ask questions (since they can't on the website notice):

1) Reward halving at the end of November.  The site has been updated to account for different rewards per block and will flip over to the new PPS rates within a couple minutes of the change.
2) Merged mining removal.  The primary pools will no longer offer merged mining.  Those wishing to continue merged mining will be able to opt in by using a new server [this will be announced 72 hours before it is disabled on the current pool servers].
3) PPLNS.  I am working on adding in a toggle to workers where you can move them between PPS and PPLNS when using the Stratum servers.  My goal is to release this roughly in-line with merged mining removal/reward halving.

PPLNS will be offered at a reduced fee, and can be switched on/off through the website.  I need to get a lot of work done to make the statistics tracking of PPLNS as transparent as possible, and keep the "instant update" feel that PPS currently offers.  The current plan is PPLNS will be 3% fee, and WILL pay for orphaned blocks (similar to Deepbit's proportional system), removing the need to wait for confirmations before payments are available.

[eleuthria]

PPLNS Outline

I'm currently working on an updated Stratum server which includes the ability for PPLNS to function properly.  I have decided that I will now outline how PPLNS will work on BTC Guild.  This is not set in stone, and some variables can be tweaked depending on community feedback.

Shift-Based PPLNS
Since network difficulty is likely to be reaching into the 10s/100s of Millions once ASICs materialize, the concept of pure Pay per Last N Shares is inefficient when dealt with using raw share data.  Being forced to keep 50-300 million shares in a database for when a block is calculated is highly inefficient both in terms of storage and round processing time.

BTC Guild will be using Shift-based PPLNS.  When submitting shares, they will be bundled into shifts, which means the pool only needs to keep track of how many shares you submitted into a single shift.  The current plan is to have each shift last only 1 hour.  When a block is found, the previous 24 hours worth of shifts will be paid out based on the number of shares they submitted vs total shares submitted during those shifts.  The current shift is not paid for the block, to remove any ability to pool hop into a round when many blocks are found in a short period.

As the network changes and BTC Guild's share of the network speed increases/decreases, this may be adjusted to a longer or shorter range of shifts receiving each payment.  The current target payout range is roughly 20x Difficulty, which means on average a shift will receive 20 block payments (but may be much lower or higher depending on 24-hour luck).  PPLNS is hop proof, but is still subject to pool variance as all non-PPS methods are.


Per Worker / Stratum Only
PPLNS will be an option you can set on any individual worker, and can be toggled on the fly through the web interface.  These will only affect workers that utilize the Stratum server.


Transparency/Statistics
When PPLNS is enabled, you will be able to click a details link on the Block History page.  This page will show you the shifts paid by a block, including your contribution/payment for each of those shifts.  You will also be able to view a Shift History page, which will identify your share statistics and payment for every shift.  Your total PPLNS earnings will also be included as a special row on the Earnings History page, so you have a comprehensive listing of all BTC earned with BTC Guild.

Detailed shift information will be presented similar to how the old Proportional Payouts were shown, for those that remember that from last year.


Why PPLNS and not XXPPS/DGM/???
Those that frequented IRC in the past might remember that I stuck with proportional for a long time (and attempted anti-hop measures to stay proportional) for a very simple reason.  Proportional payout methods were easy for users to understand.  It's the same reason I ended up moving to PPS.  Score-based methods and DGM are difficult for a user to audit their own reward payments, because the value of a share changes based on factors/timing that they can't see.

Shift-based PPLNS is very similar to proportional, in that a detailed view of reward calculations can be seen and understood by the user, and checked for accuracy.  It's also easy to correct manually if something happens that shouldn't have (like a shift not being closed when it should have been).

Everybody has their preferred flavor of payment method.  I decided on PPLNS because it's easy to audit/correct, fits well with a mixed PPS/PPLNS pool, and offers a hop-proof payout method for users that don't mind variance with a lower fee.

[organofcorti]

This is great news, eleuthria. Adding PPLNS and making it so easily "switch offable" will give your miners a bit of flexibility when it comes to rewards. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

The current plan is PPLNS will be 3% fee, and WILL pay for orphaned blocks (similar to Deepbit's proportional system), removing the need to wait for confirmations before payments are available.

Are you concerned about ASICs adding such a significant amount of hashrate per difficulty period (and so reduce the mean time between block solves for a given difficulty period) that orphaned blocks will increase? I'm not sure how significant an issue it might become or whether it will be a problem at all, but if I was mining atm I'd mine at a non-PPS pool (just preference) that pays for orphaned blocks - perhaps to the detriment of the pool.

[fcmatt]

Is there any good use for my built up amount of namecoins? Is there someone who might appreciate them being sent to them besides
converting to some tiny amount of btc?

[kwoody]

what's the recommended miner for stratum protocol?  which software will work best with btcguild once all the changes are made? poclbm?

[eleuthria]

what's the recommended miner for stratum protocol?  which software will work best with btcguild once all the changes are made? poclbm?

I've recommended cgminer for almost a year now.  Great all-in-one solution that gives you a lot of control if you need it, but is also click-and-run for non powerusers compared to poclbm.

[420]

The hell I wasn't told NMC merged mining ended

[eleuthria]

The hell I wasn't told NMC merged mining ended

It hasn't ended yet.  I'm just removing a lot of the NMC-specific stats from the default interface until the merged mining opt-in is in place.  Your rewards still accumulate, and you can see the stats on My Account, Earnings History, and Payout History.

[420]

The hell I wasn't told NMC merged mining ended

It hasn't ended yet.  I'm just removing a lot of the NMC-specific stats from the default interface until the merged mining opt-in is in place.  Your rewards still accumulate, and you can see the stats on My Account, Earnings History, and Payout History.

THANK YOU!

[eleuthria]

More updates for the coming changes now that I'm back to digging into the Stratum server to allow user switchable payout methods (PPS/PPLNS).

With the coming changes, it will be possible to specify a difficulty on BTC Guild's stratum based servers.  Specifying a difficulty will be done using the worker password field using diff_1, diff_2, diff_4, etc.  The difficulty -must- be a power of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) due to how variable difficulty is designed in my implementation.  If you do not use a power of 2, it will use the default vardiff settings.

When a user specifies a difficulty, this will be marked as your minimum difficulty, regardless of how slow submissions come in.  It will also follow different rules for increasing.  Instead of a 12-20 shares per minute target, it will only increase your difficulty if you exceed 30 shares per minute during a 5 minute window [sometimes faster in extreme cases].

These changes are not live yet, this is just a preview of some of the changes I'm trying to squeeze in before the reward halving hits.

[Frequency]

More updates for the coming changes now that I'm back to digging into the Stratum server to allow user switchable payout methods (PPS/PPLNS).

With the coming changes, it will be possible to specify a difficulty on BTC Guild's stratum based servers.  Specifying a difficulty will be done using the worker password field using diff_1, diff_2, diff_4, etc.  The difficulty -must- be a power of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) due to how variable difficulty is designed in my implementation.  If you do not use a power of 2, it will use the default vardiff settings.

When a user specifies a difficulty, this will be marked as your minimum difficulty, regardless of how slow submissions come in.  It will also follow different rules for increasing.  Instead of a 12-20 shares per minute target, it will only increase your difficulty if you exceed 30 shares per minute during a 5 minute window [sometimes faster in extreme cases].

These changes are not live yet, this is just a preview of some of the changes I'm trying to squeeze in before the reward halving hits.

Could it be a reason the site is or has some downtime now?? i can,t open the site for some minutes now..i ll just wait and try later??

Thx

[beekeeper]

Web page and api server are down. Workers get jobs and submit them, so mining server seems to be working.

[Frequency]

Web page and api server are down. Workers get jobs and submit them, so mining server seems to be working.

Yep check it out my rigs work also so thats okay..

[bitcoindaddy]

More updates for the coming changes now that I'm back to digging into the Stratum server to allow user switchable payout methods (PPS/PPLNS).

With the coming changes, it will be possible to specify a difficulty on BTC Guild's stratum based servers.  Specifying a difficulty will be done using the worker password field using diff_1, diff_2, diff_4, etc.  The difficulty -must- be a power of 2 (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.) due to how variable difficulty is designed in my implementation.  If you do not use a power of 2, it will use the default vardiff settings.

When a user specifies a difficulty, this will be marked as your minimum difficulty, regardless of how slow submissions come in.  It will also follow different rules for increasing.  Instead of a 12-20 shares per minute target, it will only increase your difficulty if you exceed 30 shares per minute during a 5 minute window [sometimes faster in extreme cases].

These changes are not live yet, this is just a preview of some of the changes I'm trying to squeeze in before the reward halving hits.

This is awesome!  Let us know when we can start using it.   Great job Eleuthria.

[Joshwaa]

Web page is still down. Eleuthria?

[dmcurser]

seems like the whole pool is down none of my miners are mining

[segabtc]

i am getting work and submitting shares. cant get to web page but pool server appears to be running on this end.

[dmcurser]

hmmm idk then bc i got 4 works and a mmq and they not working lol

[Plazzman]

I had to point mine to mine1.btcguild.com as mine2 and mine3 wouldn't connect.
I too am unable to get to website.