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

[eleuthria]

The Stratum based servers will be restarted around 12 PM (PST).  Expected downtime is about 5 seconds per server.  This restart will get the ball rolling for PPLNS, which will be made available tomorrow.

This update will remove Merged Mining from the Stratum servers.

Which server can I still connect to for merged mining?

All of the getwork pools still support merged mining.  Tonight I'll be setting aside one specific server as the "dedicated merged mining server" and adding a DNS entry to allow people to switch over during the next few days before it is disabled on the other getwork pools.

[fcmatt]

Yes i know i dont use a backup pool.
But making a lot of changes while ppl are away during a holiday is a great way to take people down for many hours as they cannot restart miners. Rather you do changes during biz hours on a normal week then during a holiday so ppl can quickly discover a problem. Just my two cents. Run it like a biz.. Not a hobby to mess around with when u have time off.

Just saying if u get tempted...

[eleuthria]

PPLNS is working behind the scenes on Stratum, and the getwork pools will be updated to acknowledge the PPLNS system (but you won't be able to use PPLNS on the getwork pools).

The PPLNS option will become available after the block reward is reduced to 25 BTC, so that I can have a few days of testing PPLNS with my own account to make sure the reward calculations and stat tracking are working properly.  You will probably see some PPLNS references show up over the next 48 hours as the testing is taking place.

The merged mining specific server will be added tomorrow, giving everybody 3 days to move to that server if they want to deal with merged mining.  Merged mining will be completely disabled on November 26th (around noon PST) for all pools except for the merged mining server.

[bitcoindaddy]

PPLNS is working behind the scenes on Stratum, and the getwork pools will be updated to acknowledge the PPLNS system (but you won't be able to use PPLNS on the getwork pools).

The PPLNS option will become available after the block reward is reduced to 25 BTC, so that I can have a few days of testing PPLNS with my own account to make sure the reward calculations and stat tracking are working properly.  You will probably see some PPLNS references show up over the next 48 hours as the testing is taking place.

The merged mining specific server will be added tomorrow, giving everybody 3 days to move to that server if they want to deal with merged mining.  Merged mining will be completely disabled on November 26th (around noon PST) for all pools except for the merged mining server.

Will you change the fee structure for PPLNS use since it involves less risk for you?  Any plan to lower the PPS fees with higher the difficulty like HHTT since the load on your server is much less?

[eleuthria]

PPLNS is working behind the scenes on Stratum, and the getwork pools will be updated to acknowledge the PPLNS system (but you won't be able to use PPLNS on the getwork pools).

The PPLNS option will become available after the block reward is reduced to 25 BTC, so that I can have a few days of testing PPLNS with my own account to make sure the reward calculations and stat tracking are working properly.  You will probably see some PPLNS references show up over the next 48 hours as the testing is taking place.

The merged mining specific server will be added tomorrow, giving everybody 3 days to move to that server if they want to deal with merged mining.  Merged mining will be completely disabled on November 26th (around noon PST) for all pools except for the merged mining server.

Will you change the fee structure for PPLNS use since it involves less risk for you?  Any plan to lower the PPS fees with higher the difficulty like HHTT since the load on your server is much less?

PPLNS is going to be a 3% fee with invalid (orphaned) blocks paid.  No changes to PPS, considering even at 5% I'm at the third month straight of losing money (not even counting costs to run the servers).

[eleuthria]

New Merged Mining Server Information

Users that wish to continue merged mining should direct their miners to:  mergedmining.btcguild.com  port 8332.

This server is up and running as of this post.  In approximately 72 hours, the other getwork pools will be restarted with merged mining disabled.

[420]

Works

[eleuthria]

A new poll is up just to gauge the difference in who looks at the forums vs who looks at the website.  After over a month since cgminer added support, the Stratum side of BTC Guild has finally started to close in on 50% utilization.



You can expect to see some more PPLNS information show up this weekend, with the final launch soon after the 25 BTC reward drop.  The following settings will be used for PPLNS when made available:

'N' will be 30 million (roughly 10x difficulty).  So any block solves will have their reward (25 BTC - 3% fee = 24.25 BTC) split evenly among the past 30 million shares.  The payment per share is floored at the 14th decimal place to minimize the effects of rounding even over the course of a year, without getting into any goofy floating point math.

To ease the payment process, shares are bundled into shifts of 3 million shares at a time, and each block pays the last 10 completed shifts.  At the current pool speed, a shift takes around 50 minutes to complete.

N will be adjusted in two ways as difficulty and pool speed change:
1) Shifts will be increased/decreased in size to keep the time for a shift to complete between 30 minutes and 1 hour.
2) The payment range on blocks will be increased to keep 'N' at roughly 10x difficulty.

These factors don't affect the fairness of payments, they only increase/decrease the expected variance or maturation time on shares.  With PPLNS, there is a fine balance.  A lower 'N' value results in shares getting paid more for each block solve, but only being paid for a shorter period of time (higher variance).  A higher 'N' value results in shares getting paid less for each block solve, but they are paid for a longer time (lower variance).'

[os2sam]

Will we have to take action to switch to PPLNS? or will it be done automatically?

I prefer to take action to switch manually.  I want to stay with PPS for now.  It's nice and simple.
Thanks,
Sam

[eleuthria]

Will we have to take action to switch to PPLNS? or will it be done automatically?

I prefer to take action to switch manually.  I want to stay with PPS for now.  It's nice and simple.
Thanks,
Sam

PPS will be the default.  You will be able to swap workers between PPS and PPLNS as long as they're using a Stratum server.  Getwork servers will only work on PPS (even if you try to change it to PPLNS).

I'll be working on an option for new users so they can sign up and see the two payment methods side by side and select the default method for their workers as well.  In the long run, PPLNS should pay more (lower fee), but you'll have to deal with the frustration of some days making 2-3x more than expected, while making far less than expected on others.

[os2sam]

Will we have to take action to switch to PPLNS? or will it be done automatically?

I prefer to take action to switch manually.  I want to stay with PPS for now.  It's nice and simple.
Thanks,
Sam

PPS will be the default.  You will be able to swap workers between PPS and PPLNS as long as they're using a Stratum server.  Getwork servers will only work on PPS (even if you try to change it to PPLNS).

I'll be working on an option for new users so they can sign up and see the two payment methods side by side and select the default method for their workers as well.  In the long run, PPLNS should pay more (lower fee), but you'll have to deal with the frustration of some days making 2-3x more than expected, while making far less than expected on others.

Sounds great.  I've never quibbled about fee's.  I think you deserve it for your work, both in the community and your pool.
Thanks,
Sam
 

[eleuthria]

An update to users who use guiminer:  guiminer has been updated with the latest poclbm, meaning you can now utilize Stratum with GUIminer (poclbm kernel).  Based on the current poll results I don't expect too many people in the thread to need this update, but this is something that didn't get quite as much buzz around it as the cgminer support a month ago.

[ice_chill]

Is there a possibility that the merged mining server will be disproportionately overloaded now ?

[eleuthria]

Is there a possibility that the merged mining server will be disproportionately overloaded now ?

Highly unlikely.  The interest in namecoin has been very limited since the start.  Right now the notice has been on the website for a little over 24 hours, and only 23 workers are on the new server right now.

[ancow]

I'm trying to get my namecoin balance above the payout threshold, however, while the bitcoin balance keeps rising, my namecoin balance is unaffected (the "24 Hour Earnings" field is rising, though). In case that matters, I've switched to mergedmining.btcguild.com for the time being.

Do you think you could look into this?

[eleuthria]

I'm trying to get my namecoin balance above the payout threshold, however, while the bitcoin balance keeps rising, my namecoin balance is unaffected (the "24 Hour Earnings" field is rising, though). In case that matters, I've switched to mergedmining.btcguild.com for the time being.

Do you think you could look into this?

I've found the problem with mergedmining.btcguild.com.  It still has the X-Stratum header which means any client with Stratum support ends up redirecting itself to the Stratum servers (which already removed NMC merged mining).  I'll be updating it in a few hours to remove the redirect from the mergedmining.btcguild.com server.

[eleuthria]

The merged mining server has been updated to remove the Stratum redirect.  I've also fixed the 24 hour NMC earnings statistic.

[eleuthria]

For those wanting a look at PPLNS, you might want to look at http://www.btcguild.com/pplns_shifts.php throughout the day as I build the stats.

Currently the PPLNS page is designed to assume the reward is already down to 25 BTC/block.  This page shows fairly clearly how the graph of payments would resemble a wave, oscillating between above normal payout and below normal payout.

For reference, these stats are currently as of difficulty=3368767, using 25 BTC reward, 3% fee, and an 'N' value of 30 million.  This means the expected average payout of a closed shift is:

30,000,000 / 3,000,000 = Each shift gets 10% of the block reward when one is found (30 million shares split into 10 shifts of 3 milion shares each)
30,000,000 / 3,368,767 = Average of 8.905 blocks found before a shift expires (neutral luck).
25 BTC - (25 BTC * 3%) = 24.25 BTC paid per block.

24.25 BTC * 8.905 * 10% = 21.595 BTC paid per shift assuming neutral luck.

The final version will:
1) Your Reward [how much you were paid for the shift]
2) Shift Payout Luck
3) Detail view - See the breakdown of share submissions by UserID
4) Detail view - See which blocks were paid during the shift

[Joshwaa]

When this goes live will we have the ability to switch back and forth at will between the PPS and PPLNS?

[eleuthria]

When this goes live will we have the ability to switch back and forth at will between the PPS and PPLNS?

Yes.  The only requirement will be that you're on Stratum.  If you set a worker to PPLNS but connect to a getwork pool, you will end up being reward PPS regardless of your settings.  Other than that, you will be able to switch live between the two methods.