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

[eleuthria]

Maintenance completed early!  So far everything looks to be running extremely quickly behind the scenes, and in my spam clicking of different links, it is just as fast for the end user.  I have not been able to observe any significant slowdowns while scripts are running to send idle emails, auto payouts, etc.

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[theowalpott]

Not sure if it's related, or just bad luck, but the PPLNS stats show no blocks found in the last 2-3 hours.

edit: In fact, no blocks found in the last 2-3 hours at all - something down?

edit 2: Ah, a new one showed up - guess it's just really bad luck! nevermind

[Fiyasko]

Time to set a minimum difficulty? ... 2, or 4?

Unfortunately I can't do that until I can completely phase out getwork, which is not an option just yet.

Oh? Vardiff works with getwork also.
Or is it an issue with some other miner programs don't support it?

My getwork code is extremely old and unsupported (PoolServerJ).  I'm not risking changing difficulty in that only to find out it will let diff-1 shares pass through under certain circumstances.  Getwork will be killed off soon enough as it is.

Is this a threat to GPU miners? What will basically happen when Getwork is killed off? Will we simply just all aim to Stratum directly?

[eleuthria]

Time to set a minimum difficulty? ... 2, or 4?

Unfortunately I can't do that until I can completely phase out getwork, which is not an option just yet.

Oh? Vardiff works with getwork also.
Or is it an issue with some other miner programs don't support it?

My getwork code is extremely old and unsupported (PoolServerJ).  I'm not risking changing difficulty in that only to find out it will let diff-1 shares pass through under certain circumstances.  Getwork will be killed off soon enough as it is.

Is this a threat to GPU miners? What will basically happen when Getwork is killed off? Will we simply just all aim to Stratum directly?

I shouldn't have made it sound like it's happening any day now.  Getwork will be killed off once Stratum represents an overwhelming majority of the pool.  With the ever increasing amount of ASICs on the pool, that probably will be in the next few months.  It won't happen overnight.

When it does happen, the getwork pool will be replaced by an X-Stratum redirect that does not serve any actual work, so it won't break anybody's miners if they still point at 8332 to get redirected to Stratum.

[eleuthria]

0.8.1 has been deployed on one of the servers that was no longer active in DNS, smooth transition.  I'm preparing to copy the source, compile, and sync the 0.8 client blockchain on all servers over the next few hours, which will be followed by rolling restarts as each Stratum server being quickly restarted in order to move to the newer bitcoind.

[eleuthria]

Rolling restarts have finished.  Stratum servers are now running 0.8.1 bitcoind.  Getwork will be updated later this evening.


Please note that the network is nearing a planned transition to Version 2 blocks.  Last July the plan was put forward, and once 95% of the last 1,000 blocks are V2, the network will no longer accept V1 blocks.  At this time, BTC Guild's getwork servers cannot generate V2 blocks.  I will be taking time this week to see if there's any way I can push the change into PoolServerJ to keep getwork alive for the transition.  If I cannot, eventually the getwork servers will be forced to be taken offline because they will not be able to generate valid blocks.

[keystroke]

Rolling restarts have finished.  Stratum servers are now running 0.8.1 bitcoind.  Getwork will be updated later this evening.


Please note that the network is nearing a planned transition to Version 2 blocks.  Last July the plan was put forward, and once 95% of the last 1,000 blocks are V2, the network will no longer accept V1 blocks.  At this time, BTC Guild's getwork servers cannot generate V2 blocks.  I will be taking time this week to see if there's any way I can push the change into PoolServerJ to keep getwork alive for the transition.  If I cannot, eventually the getwork servers will be forced to be taken offline because they will not be able to generate valid blocks.

What % of the last 1000 blocks are V2? When is it estimated V2 will go into full effect?

Edit: Answer, http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/top.php

It looks like if you push that code it will be enough to possibly push the network over to having a supermajority on V2. (I am assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that the V1 / V2 blocks generated by the pool are getwork/Stratum.)

[eleuthria]

Wow, what a crazy 24 hours.  Price breaks $50, and BTC Guild goes up another 2 TH/s almost.  I'm going to wait 24 hours to see if this speed settles in (current 24h estimate is 1.6 TH/s lower than current speed), at which point I'm going to work out a plan to break some speed away from BTC Guild.  Nobody wants a pool to get too close to 51% again.

[jojo69]

eleuthria

sorry to be dense, how do we small timers go about implementing stratum on GUIMiner?

[BitMinerN8]

eleuthria

sorry to be dense, how do we small timers go about implementing stratum on GUIMiner?

I noticed that in the changelog for GUI Miner he mentions support.
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=3878.0

Changelog:
20121203
- Update poclbm with bugfix for issue #54

20121118
- Update poclbm to latest miner including Stratum support.

So I would just make sure you are using poclbm as your kernel and you should be good to go.

[eleuthria]

As BitMinerN8 said, GUIMiner does support stratum with the poclbm kernel (which is the default).

BTC Guild's support page actually has a download to a modified GUIMiner distribution which is designed for BTC Guild use [it cleans out the massive server list and puts in CORRECT servers/descriptions for BTC Guild].  The download on the support page is Stratum enabled.

[jojo69]

poclbm

so new OpenCL miner right?  I think mine are phoenix now

[eleuthria]

poclbm

so new OpenCL miner right?  I think mine are phoenix now

Correct, New OpenCL Miner should be what you're looking for.

[jgarzik]

Wow, what a crazy 24 hours.  Price breaks $50, and BTC Guild goes up another 2 TH/s almost.  I'm going to wait 24 hours to see if this speed settles in (current 24h estimate is 1.6 TH/s lower than current speed), at which point I'm going to work out a plan to break some speed away from BTC Guild.  Nobody wants a pool to get too close to 51% again.

Just turn off getwork.

Ok, I'm kidding.  Ok, half kidding. 

[eleuthria]

Wow, what a crazy 24 hours.  Price breaks $50, and BTC Guild goes up another 2 TH/s almost.  I'm going to wait 24 hours to see if this speed settles in (current 24h estimate is 1.6 TH/s lower than current speed), at which point I'm going to work out a plan to break some speed away from BTC Guild.  Nobody wants a pool to get too close to 51% again.

Just turn off getwork.

Ok, I'm kidding.  Ok, half kidding.  

That option is actually one I'm considering, since getwork is going to break when v2 hits supermajority anyways.  Updating the getwork pool server coinbasing to generate v2 blocks provded to be a much bigger task than expected, and I'm not sure if it's going to happen at this point.

I'm avoiding being too hasty, because I have a feeling this is a temporary situation.  It appears that right now, BTC Guild has become the "go to" pool for users in China.  Not quite sure how that happened.  As a result, BTC Guild is getting a significant percentage of the currently shipped Avalon users.  As those units hit overseas customers more, it's quite likely that this burst in speed will be leveled out by other pools receiving "their share" of the first generation of ASIC miners.

[BitMinerN8]

Wow, what a crazy 24 hours.  Price breaks $50, and BTC Guild goes up another 2 TH/s almost.  I'm going to wait 24 hours to see if this speed settles in (current 24h estimate is 1.6 TH/s lower than current speed), at which point I'm going to work out a plan to break some speed away from BTC Guild.  Nobody wants a pool to get too close to 51% again.

Just turn off getwork.

Ok, I'm kidding.  Ok, half kidding. 

That option is actually one I'm considering, since getwork is going to break when v2 hits supermajority anyways.  Updating the getwork pool server coinbasing to generate v2 blocks provded to be a much bigger task than expected, and I'm not sure if it's going to happen at this point.

Well, killing the getwork pool server(s) would help with your possible 51% issue too right? I guess until those that finally, because they would be forced to, embrace Stratum. 

[jojo69]

OK, think I got i, a message flashes by on the bottom line "redirecting to stratum" something something

[jojo69]

odd, double post

[eleuthria]

Notice of Intent to Remove Getwork

At this time, I am unable to get PoolServerJ to support v2 blocks.  My knowledge of Java is limited, and the amount of references to the coinbase and circular nature of Java Logic are making me very uneasy.  Paired with the likely need to get some of the hash power to leave BTC Guild before I become a 51% threat in the eyes of the community, it is likely that getwork support will be abandoned in the coming weeks, especially if version2 block support gets too close to 95%.

Since v2 blocks do not actually serve any useful purpose at this time, I'm not worried about a /P2SH/ (BIP 16) situation where one pool held back progress by refusing to update until the last minute (Deepbit).  However, I will also not risk falling asleep and having the 95% threshold passed with servers still stuck on v1.

Users are encouraged to take the plunge and update to Stratum compatible software, and/or run a Stratum Proxy if they wish to continue mining with BTC Guild.  I do not see this change happening for a few more weeks, but as the number of miners on Stratum (all pools) grows, v1 blocks are quickly becoming extinct.

[BitMinerN8]

Just a reminder Slush's Stratum Proxy can be found here:
https://github.com/slush0/stratum-mining-proxy

And for those Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, I am running several BAMT rigs through the Pi as my proxy without any issues.  For BAMT with Phoenix I would suggest using the "--old-target" command line option.