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

[eleuthria]

I'm on a pool with 750-930GH/s (it varies alot) and on bitminter 230TH
for the past 36 hours, both pools are ***really*** down on block finding.  In fact the whole network apart from btcguild seems down on its luck !

BTC Guild's luck is negative if you use a 36 hour window.  It's only started to pick up in the last 8 hours or so.

[AussieHash]

I'm on a pool with 750-930GH/s (it varies alot) and on bitminter 230TH
for the past 36 hours, both pools are ***really*** down on block finding.  In fact the whole network apart from btcguild seems down on its luck !

BTC Guild's luck is negative if you use a 36 hour window.  It's only started to pick up in the last 8 hours or so.

thank you - I was wondering if the large swing in network luck was due to something other than variance.

I think the pool luck 'worm' is a terrific measure, and I wish every pool offered it !

[Mattster28]

I got a question. In the active worker summary where it shows.....stale/dupe/other, what is dupe? Since I hooked up my second BFL 60gh single im getting those now. Never got them when I was just running one single. I have them both pointed to the same worker. Could that be the reason? Hope not cause im not sure how to point each single to thier own worker name.

[eleuthria]

I got a question. In the active worker summary where it shows.....stale/dupe/other, what is dupe? Since I hooked up my second BFL 60gh single im getting those now. Never got them when I was just running one single. I have them both pointed to the same worker. Could that be the reason? Hope not cause im not sure how to point each single to thier own worker name.

Dupe means you submitted the same share twice.  It's normally a firmware issue.  As far as I know, you're not actually wasting time doing the same hash twice, it's something not getting cleared out of memory and being resent.

[BrandonMcPherson]

Holler if there's a better place to ask this, but as this is "my" pool, I thought I'd ask here.

Last night, the total hashing power of the network was 3.2PH, a bit lower than the roughly 3.7PH the network has been averaging during the last difficulty round according to my eyeballing the numbers.

The projected difficulty trended down to 510,000,000ish, it rolled over at 510,929,738, and suddenly the network is at 4.4PH. All the while, BTC Guild and Slush (the only two pools I pay attention to) have been largely steady with small incremental increases in hashing power throughout the difficulty round.

I've only been mining for 6 weeks and haven't seen cycle after cycle of these increases, so I don't know what the patterns are. It would seem that a quarter of the network dropped out of hashing in order to minimize the difficulty increase so as to maximize returns during the early part of the next difficulty round.

Surely, however, the loss from not hashing for roughly a day more than offsets such attempts to game the system. If that's the case, the timing of the decrease and increase is coincidental. Perhaps those more gifted in the art of math can set me straight on this.

All that said, I have seen frequent jumps and falls of a PH in the network. I first saw 4.5PH about 10 days ago, for instance, though most of the last round was spent below 3.8PH. Where in the heck does that processing power go when it's not hashing BTC?

Is it the NSA jumping in with spare capacity when taking a break from rifling through global communications? I say that mostly in jest, but for the life of me I can't imagine where such wild fluctuations in hashing power could come from or go to.

I'd very much appreciate some insight on these trends from folks that know more and have been around longer than little ol' me.

[jojo69]

Perhaps if big mining operations had to have some downtime, say to upgrade power delivery or reconfigure the physical layout, it might make sense to "game" in this fashion.  I agree that it seems inefficient,  but if you have to turn the stuff off anyway??

[mdude77]

I'd very much appreciate some insight on these trends from folks that know more and have been around longer than little ol' me.

Global hashrate always cycles around in a sine wave nature.  I'm not sure why, but it has as long as I've watched it.

M

[eleuthria]

I'd very much appreciate some insight on these trends from folks that know more and have been around longer than little ol' me.

Global hashrate always cycles around in a sine wave nature.  I'm not sure why, but it has as long as I've watched it.

M

The "network hash rate" charts are estimates based on recent block solving activity.  Just like each miner/pool has fluctuating luck (variance), the entire network does as well.  There are times where no blocks are found on the network for over an hour.  There are also times where there are 6 blocks found in 10 minutes.  The overall network variance can swing quite significantly.

For example, if BTC Guild is having a bad day (like it did yesterday), that's ~300-500 GH/s (0.5 PH/s) that is "missing" from the overall network speed estimates.  It's still there, it's still hashing away, it's just having bad luck.  If multiple pools have bad luck simultaneously, it can cause a huge shift.  Alternatively, if BTC Guild has an amazing day (like it did about a week ago), it can appear to be an extra 300-500 GH/s of network speed even though it hasn't changed.

It doesn't help that most sites that display "network speed" are using a 24-hour statistic.  The shorter the window, the more it can swing up/down.

[BrandonMcPherson]

Thanks for the insights.

[os2sam]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

[BRADLEYPLOOF]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

I wondered that too, what with 8 out of 10 blocks solved in a row earlier today...

[dwdoc]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

There is no defense. That's the problem. All you can do is join.

[dwdoc]

Our short term luck took a nosedive, dwdoc. It's on the rebound, but was subpar by almost a full day. It just happened to be the last day of this difficulty.

The five week average is still over 104%, so hooray for medium-term variance.

Where is btc guild luck per unit time listed?

[neutralist]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

Yes it has the most lobster in the pool

[eleuthria]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

Any pool attempting to do what that article claimed would be dead instantly.  Moreso in the case of BTC Guild, since we pay for orphans.  Their strategy forces you to enter into multiple orphan races, with the assumption that you'll eventually hit a big payoff.  The difference here is, if BTC Guild has an orphan, I -lose- ~24.25 BTC.  It's not just losing the income from the block itself, I have to pay it as though it was found in the first place.

The article really overblows the effectiveness, they make many assumptions (like you could just push out your competing blockchain if the network catches up and you'd still have a decent chance at having your block succeed).

Our short term luck took a nosedive, dwdoc. It's on the rebound, but was subpar by almost a full day. It just happened to be the last day of this difficulty.

The five week average is still over 104%, so hooray for medium-term variance.

Where is btc guild luck per unit time listed?

Right now you can't get a specific unit of time.  But the PPLNS stats does show you the luck per shift (as a date/time).  It currently goes back about 5-6 weeks.  The "average" luck line is from the beginning of that time.  You can zoom in on a few days and eyeball it to get an idea of luck was good or bad (the average line doesn't update based on your zoom).

[dwdoc]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

Any pool attempting to do what that article claimed would be dead instantly.  Moreso in the case of BTC Guild, since we pay for orphans.  Their strategy forces you to enter into multiple orphan races, with the assumption that you'll eventually hit a big payoff.  The difference here is, if BTC Guild has an orphan, I -lose- ~24.25 BTC.  It's not just losing the income from the block itself, I have to pay it as though it was found in the first place.

The article really overblows the effectiveness, they make many assumptions (like you could just push out your competing blockchain if the network catches up and you'd still have a decent chance at having your block succeed).

Our short term luck took a nosedive, dwdoc. It's on the rebound, but was subpar by almost a full day. It just happened to be the last day of this difficulty.

The five week average is still over 104%, so hooray for medium-term variance.

Where is btc guild luck per unit time listed?

Right now you can't get a specific unit of time.  But the PPLNS stats does show you the luck per shift (as a date/time).  It currently goes back about 5-6 weeks.  The "average" luck line is from the beginning of that time.  You can zoom in on a few days and eyeball it to get an idea of luck was good or bad (the average line doesn't update based on your zoom).

Thanks. I saw the shift history but never noticed the pool luck chart below.

[ukjay]

I am mining using GUIMiner.  After about 4 or 5 shares i get the error message "LookupError: unknown encoding: idna". I used to mine a while back on this pool with same setup with no problems.  Help appreciated

[HellDiverUK]

Is this the shelfish pool I need to defend myself against?  Just wondering.

Yes it has the most lobster in the pool

I lol'ed. 

[HellDiverUK]

I am mining using GUIMiner. 

Help appreciated

Leave 2011 and use a proper mining program. 

[demonmaestro]

I am mining using GUIMiner. 

Help appreciated

Leave 2011 and use a proper mining program. 

Dont be hating on the fresh fish. Look into bfgminer or cgminer. Unless you are CPU mining.