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

[eleuthria]

Public Service Announcement - Don't Lose Out on Price Swings!

This is a friendly reminder.  BTC Guild, like any respectable and secure pool, does not keep all funds available in an online accessible wallet.  This prevents the pool from being hacked/robbed for a significant portion of user balances.  When the prices surge like they have in recent weeks, sometimes withdrawal activity is increased dramatically, and this means there is the possibility that the online accessible funds used to make payouts can run out.

While I make sure to keep the wallet topped off during these periods, there are some users that accumulate significant balances and do not withdrawal regularly.  If some of these users withdrew simultaneously while I am at work or asleep, the wallet could run out of funds temporarily, and this means you may not be able to catch the trading spikes.


BTC Guild has offered automatic payouts at no fee for over a year.  Setting an automatic payout can keep your wallet clean [since your payments are always even numbers], and keep your account balance low.  It also assists in keeping the pool "hot wallet" funds steady, resulting in a lower chance of a delay in receiving your on-demand withdrawals.

I am honored that some users have the amount of trust in my pool and my security measures that they do.  However, keeping such hefty balances and expecting immediate access to funds when you click 'Request Payout' is a risk, and can cause you to lose out on significant earnings if you miss the spikes in BTC value due to a few hours of delay caused by an empty hot wallet.

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[1714021832]

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[eleuthria]

There was a brief [~1 minute] interruption on the US-based Stratum server preparing for minimum difficulty settings.  If your client did not automatically reconnect, you should check to make sure you're running the latest mining software/proxy version.

[Roland68]

Please, don't stop get-work access...

It's working nicely with my configuration, each time i'm trying stratum, my pc's stops mining randomly ... i'm tired playing around with fixes and releases, when everything is fine with getwork ...

thanks

[maunderingcabal]

Just went through 2 stale blocks today at Bitminter, coming back to BTC guild. PPS or how is PPLNS treating people?

[uuidman]

I switched back to BTC Guild today and it is no longer allowing me to use stratum.  It will only use LP.  The only thing I have changed on my end is update to CGMIner 2.10.4.

What address are you connecting to?  Stratum is running fine over here.

50.31.149.57

Have you tried using DNS to connect?

Yes, I always use http://btcguild.com:8332.  CGMiner displays that IP address.

That's interesting...50.31.149.57 is stratum only.  It's not possible to use LP on it.  I'm wondering if it's a display issue on cgminer 2.10.4?  You could check if you're on Stratum or not by turning on PPLNS for a minute to see if your PPLNS stats increase.  If so, you're actually on Stratum.

I switched to PPLNS on that worker some time ago.  I get the nag screen saying stratum is more efficient and when I look in the worker page it says PPLNS is stratum only.

Stratum used to work.  BTC Guild is the first place I used stratum.
Sam

Edit: OK, Stratum isn't using 8332 on .57 it's using 3333.  So I changed my old firewall rule which was allow Port 10332 on IP .59 to .57 and TCP 3333 and now it Stratuming again.  Didn't you stop using TCP 10332 when you shutdown the beta server?

Guess I should have fired up Wireshark earlier.
Sam

Ah, didn't even think about local firewall issues.

There are 3 public stratum servers.  50.31.149.57 is split into two [one on port 3333, one on 10332].  The other is de.btcguild.com [176.9.42.247], also port 3333.  There is a 4th server that isn't advertised, the original stratum beta test server [stratum.btcguild.com:9332].  I never closed that beta server off, and it's been updated with the latest versions of the code over time.

I've been working towards moving to 3333 by default since that is the sort of 'standard' port that seems to have been picked.  I've been leaving legacy ports online due to people who point to direct IP/port.

Oops I have used stratum.btcguild.com:9332 all along..., I switched yesterday to 50.31.149.57:3333 (after reading this) , had a lot of dupes and others lately (24h). 

[eleuthria]

Please, don't stop get-work access...

It's working nicely with my configuration, each time i'm trying stratum, my pc's stops mining randomly ... i'm tired playing around with fixes and releases, when everything is fine with getwork ...

thanks

Getwork is staying for a while.  It will just continue to receive reduced support/fewer servers as time goes on.

[jgarzik]

BTW, it is confirmed that BTC Guild is ASIC-ready

Currently mining with the Avalon ASIC unit on BTC Guild, over stratum.

[os2sam]

BTW, it is confirmed that BTC Guild is ASIC-ready

Currently mining with the Avalon ASIC unit on BTC Guild, over stratum.

I apologize for being off topic, but did you post an Avalon review yet?
Thanks,
Sam

[jgarzik]

I apologize for being off topic, but did you post an Avalon review yet?

Yes: http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-asic-miner-review.html

[os2sam]

I apologize for being off topic, but did you post an Avalon review yet?

Yes: http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/avalon-asic-miner-review.html

Thank you,
Sam

[eleuthria]

Users who were still pointed at the old stratum.btcguild.com:9332 may have experienced brief interruptions over their connection this morning.  This old DNS entry was always setup and advertised as the testing server for Stratum, and is finally getting some needed changes.

The following changes should be deployed to all Stratum servers by tomorrow:
1) Drastically improved the time it takes to prepare/forward work for a new block.  This was much more noticeable on the test server than the live server, but will still help reduce stales.
2) Minimum difficulty settings.  You will be able to set a desired minimum difficulty for use with the Stratum servers.  Difficulty can still rise above this setting if you exceed certain share-per-minute thresholds.
3) Automatic load sharing across multiple backend servers to further improve performance.
4) Dedicated stratum DNS entry, so you can connect directly to the server without relying on the redirect notice from the getwork servers.


#4 is not a major performance change, other than it will allow you to establish a new stratum connection without relying on a getwork server to respond with the X-Stratum header.  The Stratum implementation does not require you to keep in contact with the getwork server after the initial redirect, so it will likely not affect any users unless the getwork server stopped responding entirely.

[beekeeper]

Btcguild.com is dead but workers still get jobs. Any info?

[Frequency]

Btcguild.com is dead but workers still get jobs. Any info?

Yep info please..

[eleuthria]

The server running the website and one getwork pool is locking up with a hard drive failure.  Rebooting the host node now and looking at options for moving them.


UPDATE:  Website is back online.  One getwork pool is still offline, working on redirecting traffic to a different server temporarily.  The website will be a bit sluggish while the RAID resyncs.

UPDATE2:  I've double checked the scripts, and the only thing that should have been interrupted during the website outage were idle emails and automatic payouts, not counting the getwork server that was unusable.  Users who set another BTC Guild server as backup, used a different server, or used Stratum, should not have experienced any reduced performance/earnings.

UPDATE3:  Stratum updates mentioned yesterday will likely be going live in about 6 hours.  Just working on making minimum difficulty work properly without leaving it open to withholding shares for greater rewards when a new worker is authorized at a higher difficulty.

[eleuthria]

Fresh update for the stratum changes.

Minimum difficulty code is going to be deployed on the beta Stratum server in the next hour.  Settings will not be available at first due to needing time to test it on a server with other users to make sure nothing funny happens with how new Stratum jobs are being created.

A few notes about the updated Stratum code:
1) Difficulty changes now take effect as soon as you pass a share-per-minute threshold.  These thresholds use different averaging windows to make sure you aren't adjusted to a higher difficulty as a result of lucky share submissions.  This is a change over the old code, where a difficulty change could only occur when a new job was prepared [so up to 30 seconds after you crossed an SPM threshold].

2) Minimum difficulty will be modified on the fly through the website interface.  Since Stratum difficulty is a per-connection basis [this is part of the official Stratum spec], be aware that if you connect many workers through one connection [single cgminer/proxy instance], your connection will be adjusted to the highest minimum difficulty of your authorized workers on that connection.


The settings to adjust your worker minimum difficulty may not be available for another day.  I am working on a smart load balancer to link with the Stratum servers.  I've been embedding new API calls in my Stratum codebase so a load balancer can talk to the servers.  Using the X-Stratum header redirects, I'm hoping to create a load balancing DNS entry that will always point you to the lowest load server when you establish a new stratum connection.

[eleuthria]

Notice to All Stratum Users

Going forward, miners with native Stratum clients are encouraged to connect via the following address:

stratum.btcguild.com:3333


Currently this entry points to a single Stratum instance.  All getwork X-Stratum redirects now point to this same DNS entry.  Going forward, this will be first updated to a Round Robin DNS entry, to help share the load over multiple servers.  Because of how Stratum works [persistent TCP connections], this will be seamless to an end-user.  By connecting with stratum.btcguild.com:3333, you avoid interacting with a getwork server to obtain the Stratum IP/port.

This is not a mandatory change.  Getwork servers will continue to function and provide X-Stratum redirects, this will simply reduce one extra connection needed to begin mining, and avoid one extra failure point when starting up.

[eleuthria]

The Stratum servers on 50.31.149.57 (ports 3333 and 10332) which were the default X-Stratum redirect will be down briefly at 3 PM [PST].  This downtime is expected to last roughly 5 minutes, and is to deploy the updated Stratum/bitcoind code to the server.  After the server is back online, it will be added to the stratum.btcguild.com DNS entry, which is the default X-Stratum redirect for US-based getwork servers at this time.


EDIT/UPDATE:  Got stuck at my day job longer than expected.  Restart of 50.31.149.57 stratum server has been postpone to 4:00 PM [PST]

[eleuthria]

Stratum servers on 50.31.149.57 were restarted at ~4:05 PM.  Back online as of ~4:08 PM.  The server has been added to the stratum.btcguild.com DNS entry as well, so using that DNS entry will now place you on one of the two stratum servers.


UPDATE:  Both US-based stratum servers were briefly restarted [downtime was about 3 seconds each] to fix a critical bug in the coinbase building.

[eleuthria]

Minimum difficulty interface is almost completed.  Very sorry this did not get released last weekend like I had hoped.  Unfortunately, it's hard to come up with an easy to use interface for settings like this, especially when some users have a large number of workers, leading to very unwieldy form entry.

There will likely be one restart on each Stratum server to complete the change, currently planned for 12:00 PM (noon) PST on Sunday.  The minimum difficulty interface may go live before this time, and will work on the US based server.  The stratum server on Germany will not support minimum difficulty until the restarts.

[eleuthria]

Minimum difficulty settings are now enabled for the US-based Stratum servers.  The EU/Germany Stratum server will be updated later this evening to include the API calls needed to update difficulty.

The link can be found under 'Manage Workers', labeled "Difficulty Settings".


EDIT:  I know the interface is a little clunky for users with a large number of workers.  I will be making subtle changes to the interface over time to make it easier to mass edit and keep track of which workers you're changing.


UPDATE: EU/Germany stratum server has been updated to the latest version, and now supports minimum difficulty modifications.