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

[ericisback]

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

I'm confused.  If two people flip a coin six times an hour, and each time the winner gets 25 bitcoins - doesn't ones person's luck affect the other persons luck? In this analogy, I understand the "size of the player" doesn't matter because they have the same chance of winning (the exact same pool size), but one player's luck seems to affect the other player.

I also understand how a smaller pool's share of the total bitcoin rewards will eventually equal its percent of the total network hashrate; however, even taking this into consideration, one pool's luck should impact other pools (in the short term).

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[murraypaul]

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

I'm confused.  If two people flip a coin six times an hour, and each time the winner gets 25 bitcoins - doesn't ones person's luck affect the other persons luck? In this analogy, I understand the "size of the player" doesn't matter because they have the same change of winning (the exact same pool size), but one player's luck seems to affect the other player.

Mining is more like continually flipping coins until you get X in a row.
Both players can be unlucky and take much longer than expected.
You aren't competing directly against each other, but both racing to be the first to hit a random target. Me being slow doesn't make you any faster.
There is not a fixed rate of Bitcoin generation, on average it should be 25 every 10 minutes, but it could be 25 in 10 seconds or 25 in 2 hours.

[hurricandave]

   Umm, I noticed that the dashboard behavior has changed a little bit this morning. It seems like each time a block is found it lists it as "Orphaned" for a short time then sometimes switches to "waiting for conformation". Of course this also seems to be affected by the length of time it takes to be confirmed. I wondered if it was really the intent to always list new found blocks as "Orphaned" initially or is this still in the tweaking phase ??

[eleuthria]

  Umm, I noticed that the dashboard behavior has changed a little bit this morning. It seems like each time a block is found it lists it as "Orphaned" for a short time then sometimes switches to "waiting for conformation". Of course this also seems to be affected by the length of time it takes to be confirmed. I wondered if it was really the intent to always list new found blocks as "Orphaned" initially or is this still in the tweaking phase ??

Thanks for the report, I'll take a look.  I've never caught it showing 'Orphaned' instead of "Waiting for confirmation" so the window of time that it shows that is pretty small.  Will look into why it might be doing that.


EDIT:  Found it, looks like there's a 1 minute window where it would show Orphaned.  When it inserts the found block into the database it doesn't insert as 1 confirmation, but 0.  Then the next minute when it checks for confirmations it updates it to 1.  Fixed it so it starts at 1 as it should.

[hurricandave]

 It looks good now. You got me good this morning though, I woke up the monitor and blam "Ophaned" I was like NOOOOOOO!!!!!

[Crossbow376]

What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?

Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days.  Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.

M

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.

For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).

So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.

[BRADLEYPLOOF]

What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?

Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days.  Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.

M

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.

For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).

So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.

Define luck...

[raskul]

What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?

Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days.  Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.

M

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.

For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).

So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.

Define luck...

staggering home drunk having had 14 pints, without a piss. managing to find toilet, and not aiming wide.
Luck.

[jedimstr]

What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?

Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days.  Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.

M

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.

For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).

So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.

Define luck...

staggering home drunk having had 14 pints, without a piss. managing to find toilet, and not aiming wide.
Luck.

That's not luck.
That's a miracle.

[ionux]

What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?

Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days.  Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.

M

Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.

If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.

For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).

So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.

That's not the way probability works.  Flipping a coin and getting heads does not remove it from future flips or increase the chance of getting tails - no matter how many times it is flipped.  Period.  You are just as likely to get 10 heads in a row as you are any other result.  So just because you increase the number of flips, it does not increase or decrease the likelihood of getting one result over another (for flips < infinity).

[jojo69]

both websites throwing me bad certs this morning...anybody else?

nevermind, was momentary I guess, now they are working fine

[AussieHash]

Probably only a few days from 6-month luck under 100% 

[BrandonMcPherson]

This recent run is pretty damned epic.

[elasticband]

bad luck or what  I know i just sold 670GH of the farm, but my 24hour payout is so low.

[AussieHash]

I wonder how much of this bad luck turn is due to external influences?

Somebody is DDOS eligius, and recently succeeded in a NMC payout hack against the pool. I also have noticed BTCGuild, Ghash and Blockchain showing the cloud flare error in the past few days.

A semi-well known fact about me:  my real life job includes DDoS mitigation at the ISP level for multiple ISPs.

This particular attack against Eligius has taken almost every form possible... UDP reflection attacks (DNS, NTP, SNMP, etc... 30+ gigabit at times), TCP SYN attacks (over 20 gigabit peaks), botnets directly flooding pool ports (multiple gigabit), botnets attempting application layer (stratum and HTTP) attacks (varies up to several gigabit and > 100k connections), HTTP request floods from botnets and other amplification (wordpress being one), hanging TCP connection attacks, various attack attempts against public facing bitcoinds, flood attacks against upstream routers, social engineering attempts (someone has contacted the abuse@ addresses for some nodes claiming Eligius is DoS attacking them, lol, presumably in an attempt to stir trouble with our hosts), and probably a ton of other things that are just automatically filtered/ignored.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=441465.msg5986935#msg5986935

Luck for eligius and BTCGuild are both well under 100%
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=441465.msg6077549#msg6077549

Unknown pool is rapidly growing share, up to 33 34%
http://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=48hrs

And there maybe an unknown binary Merkle tree weakness being used (where the included transaction count are base 2). Now even if the weakness is theoretical, this is severely delaying confirmation times.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/80.241.217.46
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22cohy/8024121746_mining_18_blocks_today_containing/
http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20y0nq/why_do_all_the_blocks_hashed_by_unknown_miners/

Would a faster-to-calculate power of 2 Merkle tree make a selfish attack slightly more effective ?

[DPoS]

I am also wondering if someone has positioned themselves to give them an advantage (however slight) in the nuts and bolts of pool mining

with HFT jockeys in the wild frontrunning stock trades in the milliseconds, is there anything similar that could be done to bolster oneself and/or hinder another pool?

[-ck]

I wonder how much of this bad luck turn is due to external influences?

Somebody is DDOS eligius, and recently succeeded in a NMC payout hack against the pool. I also have noticed BTCGuild, Ghash and Blockchain showing the cloud flare error in the past few days.

A semi-well known fact about me:  my real life job includes DDoS mitigation at the ISP level for multiple ISPs.

This particular attack against Eligius has taken almost every form possible... UDP reflection attacks (DNS, NTP, SNMP, etc... 30+ gigabit at times), TCP SYN attacks (over 20 gigabit peaks), botnets directly flooding pool ports (multiple gigabit), botnets attempting application layer (stratum and HTTP) attacks (varies up to several gigabit and > 100k connections), HTTP request floods from botnets and other amplification (wordpress being one), hanging TCP connection attacks, various attack attempts against public facing bitcoinds, flood attacks against upstream routers, social engineering attempts (someone has contacted the abuse@ addresses for some nodes claiming Eligius is DoS attacking them, lol, presumably in an attempt to stir trouble with our hosts), and probably a ton of other things that are just automatically filtered/ignored.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=441465.msg5986935#msg5986935

Luck for eligius and BTCGuild are both well under 100%
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=441465.msg6077549#msg6077549

Unknown pool is rapidly growing share, up to 33 34%
http://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=48hrs

And there maybe an unknown binary Merkle tree weakness being used (where the included transaction count are base 2). Now even if the weakness is theoretical, this is severely delaying confirmation times.

https://blockchain.info/blocks/80.241.217.46
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/22cohy/8024121746_mining_18_blocks_today_containing/
http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20y0nq/why_do_all_the_blocks_hashed_by_unknown_miners/

Would a faster-to-calculate power of 2 Merkle tree make a selfish attack slightly more effective ?

Luck has nothing to do with any of the above, it's just... luck.

The only thing that miners can do is a block withhold attack and without a PPS pay scheme the miners stand to lose if they do this, though with a large enough pool they may be willing to sacrifice some income leaving the other miners to subsidise their mining. Unlikely but not impossible. Theoretically pools may have implemented block withhold detection techniques but the pool ops would never reveal if they were not because that would then be opening themselves up to this attack. Attack is a very strong term though since there's so little to gain from doing this, it's not worth dwelling on it any more.

Merkle tree size choice has no effect on luck nor can it be used in any kind of attack. It's just a crappy optimisation for inefficient code.

[stevegee58]

This happens every time a pool has a run of (statistically inevitable) "bad" luck.
Tin-foil-hatters start posting that it's because of hacking, network attacks, etc.
No one ever complains when a pool has a run of good luck.  Go figure.

[AussieHash]

This happens every time a pool has a run of (statistically inevitable) "bad" luck.
Tin-foil-hatters start posting that it's because of hacking, network attacks, etc.
No one ever complains when a pool has a run of good luck.  Go figure.

I appreciate that luck is random and over the long term it all evens out.  I do however wonder what is the point of the frequent, persistent DDOS attacks that mining pools are subjected to.  These attacks are presumably expensive and resource intensive, there has to be a way for attackers to profit from doing so.

I have been mining for 6 months and generally BTCGuild's 3-month luck has been 102% +/- 1.5% over this time frame

Over the past month luck has been terrible, enough to drive down 3-month luck to 95.878% and 6-month luck to 100.028%.
Both of these numbers are falling every day.  I wonder if Guiild's 3-month luck has ever been anywhere close to this low in the past 2 years.

Now maybe this is random chance, or <tin foil hat> maybe somebody is withholding blocks or faking proof of work, the bad luck coincided with a 4PH->6PH jump in the pool hashrate </tin foil hat>

From the posts by Con and Kano on this subject, I am glad to hear that pools are able to check for such attack vectors (even if it is a cat and mouse game)

[os2sam]

This happens every time a pool has a run of (statistically inevitable) "bad" luck.
Tin-foil-hatters start posting that it's because of hacking, network attacks, etc.
No one ever complains when a pool has a run of good luck.  Go figure.

I appreciate that luck is random and over the long term it all evens out.  I do however wonder what is the point of the frequent, persistent DDOS attacks that mining pools are subjected to.  These attacks are presumably expensive and resource intensive, there has to be a way for attackers to profit from doing so.

That's the problem, DDoS attack's are CHEAP.  Botnets do this for fun.

And the Bitcoin network is the perfect laboratory for those who wish to research new ways of accomplishing these attacks, so that they have marketable product to go after big dogs for a fee with.