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

[eleuthria]

PPLNS will begin limited testing on Friday.  I'm taking an extra day to add in block fee sharing to the PPLNS system, since it will be easier to implement at the start rather than later down the road.  If the testing doesn't encounter any bugs, you will likely see the option available on Sunday for your miners.

The ability to set a minimum difficulty will be added about one week after PPLNS goes live.  I will be taking extra time to do some extra pool code optimization to be rolled out at the same time as difficulty settings, to minimize the number of restarts needed on the Stratum interface.

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[eleuthria]

I'll be inviting users to test the PPLNS payout system tonight.  If you'd like to be able to turn it on, please send me a PM.  It will be running at 3% fee (instead of 5%), but also includes block transaction fes in the payout distribution.

For the start of testing, you will see your PPLNS rewards, but they won't be part of your withdrawal balance for the first 24 hours or so [just in case something goes wrong on the calculations].

[eleuthria]

Thank you to those few who volunteered to help.  I can say right now that Murphy's Law is in full effect.  I open up a payment method that is subject to variance (but not as bad as proportional, and not hoppable), and it's immediately followed by a 5+ hour block.  Sorry .

It _IS_ still working however, so please bear with the bad luck and you may end up getting a huge surge of blocks overnight to make up for it.  You can look at the PPLNS Shift History to get an idea of how the rewards will flow up/down based on pool variance.  It does stay pretty close to even due to the settings used, but it certainly does have its share of peaks and valleys.

[BitMinerN8]

Thank you to those few who volunteered to help.  I can say right now that Murphy's Law is in full effect.  I open up a payment method that is subject to variance (but not as bad as proportional, and not hoppable), and it's immediately followed by a 5+ hour block.  Sorry .

It _IS_ still working however, so please bear with the bad luck and you may end up getting a huge surge of blocks overnight to make up for it.  You can look at the PPLNS Shift History to get an idea of how the rewards will flow up/down based on pool variance.  It does stay pretty close to even due to the settings used, but it certainly does have its share of peaks and valleys.

Dam you Murphy!

[fcmatt]

i will keep using pplns unless you turn it off. so count me in for long term testing.

i really hope diff starts to fall over the next few weeks as that is the only hope left
for gpu mining over the next 3 months before the mythical asics arrive. the income
for running all this hardware is quickly becoming pointless.

[eleuthria]

Fixed a display bug on the PPLNS stats:  It was not properly showing the Open Shift earnings (unless you somehow earned more than 1 whole BTC from open shifts).

PPLNS will continue testing for the weekend, and be turned on publicly Monday.  I need to dig into a few more of the statistics page so people can see all the pretty numbers behind the scenes.

[fcmatt]

Why do shifts 186 and 187 have 0 blocks?

the pool had bad luck during the shifts.... no guarantee that a shift will actually find a block.

[eleuthria]

Why do shifts 186 and 187 have 0 blocks?

Those shifts are still Open.  Since you posted, 2 blocks have been found, and now 186 and 187 have 2 blocks currently paid to them.  Here's a simplified version of how PPLNS works (there are a few other pools already using this, just slightly different accounting methods):


10:00:47:   Shift #185 is finished.  Shift #186 is now starting.  You started submitting shares in #186 (for this example).

11:00:47:   Shift #186 is finished.  Any blocks found after 14:00:47 will have part of their payment sent to this shift (until 10 new shifts are done).  Shift #187 begins.

12:01:41:   Shift #187 is finished.  No blocks have been found yet, so #186 still has had 0 payments.  All blocks found after 15:01:41 will have part of their payment sent to this shift (until 10 new shifts are done).  Shift #177 is now expired since blocks are only paid to the 10 most recent shifts (30m shares).  Shift #188 begins.

12:18:44:   Block #7674 is found.  The block is split proportionally to the currently open shifts (#178-187).

13:03:39:   Shift #188 is finished.  Shift #189 begins.

13:43:12:   Block #7675 is found.  The block is split proportionally to the currently open shifts (#179-188).


Looking at shifts currently 'Open' gives you an idea of luck, but until the shift is closed, you cannot determine how the shift will end up on variance.  If you look right now, Shift #178 just closed (since 10 new shifts have completed since that one).  Only 8 blocks were found in that time, so it made slightly less than PPS (0.00000652 PPLNS vs 0.00000690 PPS).  However, luck did turn around.  Shift #179 is still open, and has had 9 blocks found since it was finished, meaning that shift was paid HIGHER than PPS (0.00000733 PPLNS vs 0.00000690 PPS).


This is just classic pool variance like you'd see with any non-PPS system.   In the long run, you should expect to make roughly 3% more on PPLNS.  This is because the fee is 2% lower than PPS, and transaction fees so far have been close to 1% of the total block reward, giving you an extra 1% in payout as well.

Why do shifts 186 and 187 have 0 blocks?

the pool had bad luck during the shifts.... no guarantee that a shift will actually find a block.

While there is no guarantee the pool will find a single block, it is EXTREMELY rare for a shift to have 0 payments.  The current setup uses ~9x difficulty as the value for 'N'.  That means the pool would need to take roughly 27 million shares without finding a single block.  That almost happened last night, where the pool took nearly 10 hours to find one block.  These are VERY rare circumstances though, and I purposely chose a high value for 'N' to avoid having times where a shift receives 0 payments.  It's a careful balancing act.  The higher the value of "N", the lower the variance, but the longer it takes for your shares to receive their full value.  Luckily, BTC Guild is still a very large pool, which means I can use very high 'N' value while still being able to have the shares mature in a reasonable time frame.

[fcmatt]

thanks for the clarification. appears my answer was wrong.

[eleuthria]

thanks for the clarification. appears my answer was wrong.

It was a good answer, except those shifts were still receiving payment, so it was far too early to say they had bad luck.  However, you were right in that it's possible for a shift to receive no payments.  It's just the odds of it happening are *extremely* low, due to the values I've picked for the implementation of PPLNS.

[beekeeper]

thanks for the clarification. appears my answer was wrong.

It was a good answer, except those shifts were still receiving payment, so it was far too early to say they had bad luck.  However, you were right in that it's possible for a shift to receive no payments.  It's just the odds of it happening are *extremely* low, due to the values I've picked for the implementation of PPLNS.

I do remember why I shifted to PPS for good. It was a weekend when BTC kept gaining and gaining and gaining, and I was doing DGM, I did a block for like more than half a day.. When it turned lucky, BTC was already inflating.
PS: I dont want to be in any big pool doing PPS owner shoes..  

[eleuthria]

thanks for the clarification. appears my answer was wrong.

It was a good answer, except those shifts were still receiving payment, so it was far too early to say they had bad luck.  However, you were right in that it's possible for a shift to receive no payments.  It's just the odds of it happening are *extremely* low, due to the values I've picked for the implementation of PPLNS.

I do remember why I shifted to PPS for good. It was a weekend when BTC kept gaining and gaining and gaining, and I was doing DGM, I did a block for like more than half a day.. When it turned lucky, BTC was already inflating.
PS: I dont want to be in any big pool doing PPS owner shoes..  

As usual, once somebody has a complaint that is luck related, the pool shifts the luck back positive.  A lot of shifts just got paid quite a bit above PPS.

[organofcorti]

As usual, once somebody has a complaint that is luck related, the pool shifts the luck back positive.  A lot of shifts just got paid quite a bit above PPS.

I always wondered why pool threads were full of complaints about luck. I guess they're like prayers to the god of the blocks for good pool luck.

[eleuthria]

How are things looking for making PPLNS rewards part of the withdrawal balance?

PPLNS rewards will be part of the main account balance sometime tomorrow.  Later tonight will be a big update to show more detailed stats on each shift, and the ability to click on blocks in the Block History to see which shifts they paid as well.

[eleuthria]

Detailed PPLNS statistics can now be viewed through the links on the PPLNS Shift History page.  This should look very familiar to users that used to mine at BTC Guild in the days of proportional payments.

For PPLNS testers, thank you very much for giving the new system a try.  I didn't run full statistics, but based on a brief glance it looks like you should have made a bit more than PPS due to some nice runs of luck in the last two days [after the one bad spell].  Your PPLNS earnings are now a part of your Current Balance/My Account statistics, can be paid out, and are included in automatic payouts.

I'm expecting to push PPLNS live on Monday for all users.  I just have a few more tweaks to make to the interface to make it more user friendly, while still having options for lots of detail for users who feel like auditing their payments on shifts.

[allinvain]

Eleuthria, I'm not sure if this was talked about earlier in the thread, but I'm wondering if you plan to share TX fees with miners, much like Slush is doing.

[eleuthria]

Eleuthria, I'm not sure if this was talked about earlier in the thread, but I'm wondering if you plan to share TX fees with miners, much like Slush is doing.

PPLNS shift payments will include transaction fees, and a reduced fee compared to PPS.  PPS may see a fee reduction to makeup for TX fees at some point, but nothing is concrete at this time.

[allinvain]

Thanks for the prompt reply Michael. I look forward to seeing the new reward structure in place. You said you will turn it on Monday, no?

[eleuthria]

Thanks for the prompt reply Michael. I look forward to seeing the new reward structure in place. You said you will turn it on Monday, no?

It may launch tomorrow depending on progress.  The biggest drawback to the new system is that it will require a bit more explanation.  PPS is just so darn simple (which is why I picked it when leaving proportional).  PPLNS is a great system, but the concepts behind it are harder to explain than "I will pay you X per share" .

[eleuthria]

PPLNS will be going live in about an hour, but it will not be highly advertised until I have a more user friendly introduction to it.  If you're interested in using PPLNS, the option will be made visible under the 'Manage Workers' screen.  You can toggle workers between PPLNS/PPS live, and it will take effect within about half a second.  You may see a few new shares show up for the older method when you switch.  This is because when you switch methods, it only affects new share submissions, but the pool posts shares in batches every 10 seconds, so you may have a few shares from the old method that weren't yet logged.

Tomorrow there will be a restart of the Stratum pool around noon (PST).  This restart is changing the variable difficulty settings to a higher shares-per-minute target.  After significant testing with Stratum, I've determined that while ~15 shares per minute is low variance in 24 hours, it does mean your "My Account" hash rate estimate can vary quite a bit since at most it only averages one hour.  The new target will be ~30 shares per minute.