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

[eleuthria]

I've started seeing a lot of discards on stratum tonight. Dropping to get work is fine.

If you're referring to 'Discarded Work' stat on cgminer, that is a completely useless statistic over the Stratum interface, and has no influence on performance.

[eleuthria]

In about 10 hours the PPLNS shifts will be increased from 3 million shares to 6 million to reduce per-shift variance, and also reduce the number of shifts being completed each day, in response to the huge surges in growth the pool has seen in recent weeks.  The 3 million shares worked out to roughly 1 hour per shift back at 4 TH/s.  We're now bumping up against 12 TH/s, and Avalons are definitely showing up all over which will take us even higher soon.

I will be actively monitoring the pool during the change so I can intervene if something goes wrong on the calculations.  I've been reviewing all of the reward display/calculation functions to make sure nothing is hard coded, and that the rewards should split properly when some shifts are larger than others.

[eleuthria]

Merged Mining server is temporarily offline, sorry for the unannounced downtime.  It should be back up within 15 minutes hopefully.

[eleuthria]

Payouts are currently frozen.  Something very big has broken and I need to find out what.  Some users were able to withdraw significantly more than they should have.

[eleuthria]

PAYOUT ERRORS - A SUMMARY

Earlier this evening, the merged mining server was being moved to bitcoin 0.8.  One major problem in this was that by default, bitcoind 0.8 will redownload the blockchain in the new database format.  This started happening while the server was still online.  As a result, the pool server was passing out work for blocks from the early days of Bitcoin, where difficulty was in the single digits.

This only lasted about 2 minutes, but in that time, a huge number of users were credited for shares at low difficulties that they should not have been credited for.  These users then withdrew the funds, or an automatic payout happened.  The hot wallet was completely emptied, and the blame is entirely on me for not thinking this could have happened in the few seconds that bitcoind was redownloading the blockchain before I cancelled it and copied the complete chain from another server.



MY ACCOUNT BALANCE IS NOW NEGATIVE?

If your account balance is negative because you withdrew coins, PLEASE contact me to return them.  I can't force you to, Bitcoin has no chargebacks, but this is a significant blow to the pool in a period where luck has been terrible enough for the last week.

[beekeeper]

So this happened only on getwork connections? Or it happened on stratum too? I didn't notice any increase in gain and I was on stratum.

[zerokwel]

Ouch eleuthria.

Hopefully people will do the right thing and give you it back. If not personally I would name and shame them.

[eleuthria]

So this happened only on getwork connections? Or it happened on stratum too? I didn't notice any increase in gain and I was on stratum.

It was only the merged mining server.  Unfortunately, because shares were being paid 25 BTC each (even if it was only for about 1 minute, and even though reject rates were 99.9%), these erroneous payouts completely emptied the hot wallet, which was recently increased in size due to how much the pool had grown (unfortunately, with PPS, hot wallets can't be nearly as small as other methods).

[eleuthria]

Ouch eleuthria.

Hopefully people will do the right thing and give you it back. If not personally I would name and shame them.

I have the user IDs of the people who were actually overpaid (were able to make a successful withdrawal).  Working on contacting them now.

[eleuthria]

Posting again on a fresh page so it isn't buried:

PAYOUT ERRORS - A SUMMARY

Earlier this evening, the merged mining server was being moved to bitcoin 0.8.  One major problem in this was that by default, bitcoind 0.8 will redownload the blockchain in the new database format.  This started happening while the server was still online.  As a result, the pool server was passing out work for blocks from the early days of Bitcoin, where difficulty was in the single digits.

This only lasted about 2 minutes, but in that time, a huge number of users were credited for shares at low difficulties that they should not have been credited for.  These users then withdrew the funds, or an automatic payout happened.  The hot wallet was completely emptied, and the blame is entirely on me for not thinking this could have happened in the few seconds that bitcoind was redownloading the blockchain before I cancelled it and copied the complete chain from another server.



MY ACCOUNT BALANCE IS NOW NEGATIVE?

If your account balance is negative because you withdrew coins, PLEASE contact me to return them.  I can't force you to, Bitcoin has no chargebacks, but this is a significant blow to the pool in a period where luck has been terrible enough for the last week.

[beekeeper]

So this happened only on getwork connections? Or it happened on stratum too? I didn't notice any increase in gain and I was on stratum.

It was only the merged mining server.  Unfortunately, because shares were being paid 25 BTC each (even if it was only for about 1 minute, and even though reject rates were 99.9%), these erroneous payouts completely emptied the hot wallet, which was recently increased in size due to how much the pool had grown (unfortunately, with PPS, hot wallets can't be nearly as small as other methods).

we're foked.. :/

[eleuthria]

Payouts have now been unfrozen.  Attempting to contact the 16 people which were overpaid.  Total cost of this is 1250 BTC, and I really hope that number is at the very least cut in half.

[Frequency]

Ouch eleuthria.

Hopefully people will do the right thing and give you it back. If not personally I would name and shame them.

+1

Come on people use common sense with this...!!! Payback,,

[skeeterskeeter]

Payouts have now been unfrozen.  Attempting to contact the 16 people which were overpaid.  Total cost of this is 1250 BTC, and I really hope that number is at the very least cut in half.

Wholly BTC. Aboot $60k USD. That's never good.

Whats these peoples names... I got a cyber bat and directions to a cyber alley, lets cyber beat their knees in. (or make fun of them on \b until they, well.....)

[beekeeper]

Payouts have now been unfrozen.  Attempting to contact the 16 people which were overpaid.  Total cost of this is 1250 BTC, and I really hope that number is at the very least cut in half.

God... Yeah, I suppose best way is to work with community in case they wont return those money.

[eleuthria]

I won't name & shame until they've had a chance to respond.  While my pessimist side says these users knew what they were doing when they requested the payouts, I have to hang on to some hope in humanity...especially considering how much money is on the line.  The total amount lost at today's rates is about half of what my house is worth.

[eleuthria]

Goodbye faith in humanity: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6W3NvW8T

[organofcorti]

Goodbye faith in humanity: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6W3NvW8T

I wouldn't mind if you posted that arsehole's username and email address.

This is a pool - miners pool their resources to beat variance.

The pool op isn't your boss, he's a guy who takes on all the risk for a tiny fee. This is your pool, miners - sociopaths like the guy in the pastebin notwithstanding.

[beekeeper]

Goodbye faith in humanity: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6W3NvW8T

With 11Th/s, isnt there any way you can force a double spend? To be honest I never really checked bitcoin protocol to the point where I can imagine every tricks you can do with 1/3 of total hash power..
I don't think all those who got money are plain retards like this one, but dont forget to make a list with their e-mails, maybe IPs too, cross check to see what user names they have on this forum and open a scam tread.

[Frequency]

Goodbye faith in humanity: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6W3NvW8T

OMFG  what a sick retard..!!!