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

[eleuthria]

You can now set your namecoin wallet, lock your namecoin wallet, set your namecoin auto payout threshold, and request namecoin payouts.

[ancow]

You can now set your namecoin wallet, lock your namecoin wallet, set your namecoin auto payout threshold, and request namecoin payouts.

You missed the link on the left that says "Change Wallet" but only links to the bitcoin wallet change page.

[eleuthria]

You can now set your namecoin wallet, lock your namecoin wallet, set your namecoin auto payout threshold, and request namecoin payouts.

You missed the link on the left that says "Change Wallet" but only links to the bitcoin wallet change page.

Thanks, forgot about the sidebar links (I always accessed them through the My Account page buttons).  Took the opportunity to remove the Change Email/Wallet links on the sidebar if you have them locked as well.

[os2sam]

If so can that client coexist on a machine that already has a Bitcoin client installed and running?

Yes. Also, you might try this spiffy new thing called google.

Well how about that.  It's almost as nice as altavista.com.

Anyway, being that I'm not a big fan of Merged Mining, and I'm sure others are being dragged into it kicking and screaming too.  I thought it would be nice if one of the Pro MM BTC Guilders would post a quick little tutorial what we need to do to get squared away.

But I like your sarcasm .
Thanks,
Sam

[eleuthria]

If so can that client coexist on a machine that already has a Bitcoin client installed and running?

Yes. Also, you might try this spiffy new thing called google.

Well how about that.  It's almost as nice as altavista.com.

Anyway, being that I'm not a big fan of Merged Mining, and I'm sure other are being dragged into it kicking and screaming too.  I thought it would be nice if one of the Pro MM BTC Guilders would post a quick little tutorial what we need to do to get squared away.

But I like your sarcasm .
Thanks,
Sam

I'm working on a few guides today to help people out with the Namecoin side of things, plus a better How to Connect page in general.

[os2sam]

If so can that client coexist on a machine that already has a Bitcoin client installed and running?

Yes. Also, you might try this spiffy new thing called google.

Well how about that.  It's almost as nice as altavista.com.

Anyway, being that I'm not a big fan of Merged Mining, and I'm sure other are being dragged into it kicking and screaming too.  I thought it would be nice if one of the Pro MM BTC Guilders would post a quick little tutorial what we need to do to get squared away.

But I like your sarcasm .
Thanks,
Sam

I'm working on a few guides today to help people out with the Namecoin side of things, plus a better How to Connect page in general.

If think that is prudent then fine.  But I would hate to put more work on you.  You have done allot of work with this already, and it looks great.  I don't expect more from you on the MM front.

So how's the performance on the new PSJ software so far?  Shads made it sound like there was going to be a drastic improvement.
Thanks again,
Sam

[eleuthria]

If so can that client coexist on a machine that already has a Bitcoin client installed and running?

Yes. Also, you might try this spiffy new thing called google.

Well how about that.  It's almost as nice as altavista.com.

Anyway, being that I'm not a big fan of Merged Mining, and I'm sure other are being dragged into it kicking and screaming too.  I thought it would be nice if one of the Pro MM BTC Guilders would post a quick little tutorial what we need to do to get squared away.

But I like your sarcasm .
Thanks,
Sam

I'm working on a few guides today to help people out with the Namecoin side of things, plus a better How to Connect page in general.

If think that is prudent then fine.  But I would hate to put more work on you.  You have done allot of work with this already, and it looks great.  I don't expect more from you on the MM front.

So how's the performance on the new PSJ software so far?  Shads made it sound like there was going to be a drastic improvement.
Thanks again,
Sam

The new PSJ performs better than ever, even with the added overhead of merged mining.  It's an impressive update, and this is the reason I took so long to put in merged mining. I knew such a major change was coming ahead of time, so I didn't want to go through the migration to merged mining until this change was released.

New guides are starting to show up, How to Connect now has a few links and a guide on GUI Miner.  Writing guides for Diablo & CGMiner now, then I will make a guide for setting up a namecoin wallet.

[bitlane]

I am speechless.....

Merged Mining, CGMiner 2.08 and what was already an IMPRESSIVE Stale percentage is getting even smaller. I honestly don't see how things could improve any further, other than my overall speed....lol

[bitlane]

I also have an idea for Miner Notifications.....as the traditional 'Worker Notification' is pretty much useless to anyone running CGMiner.

How about this:

Email notification once your Worker drops 20%, or down to 80% of the 30min average ? (not sure if Workers speeds are 30min averaged like the total, or real time)

[eleuthria]

I also have an idea for Miner Notifications.....as the traditional 'Worker Notification' is pretty much useless to anyone running CGMiner.

How about this:

Email notification once your Worker drops 20%, or down to 80% of the 30min average ? (not sure if Workers speeds are 30min averaged like the total, or real time)

I'm currently looking for a solution to the email issues.  The problem is we have so many users and many of them go on/off unrelated to pool problems.  I moved to GMail for handling our email because it reduced the number of emails that never made it to people's inboxes, but idle miner emails were often knocking us above the 500 emails/day limit and stopping other more important emails from getting through.  We have such a high volume of emails that its very hard to avoid getting flagged as a spammer, and in some cases the emails were dropped entirely rather than just sent to spam folders.

[bitlane]

I also have an idea for Miner Notifications.....as the traditional 'Worker Notification' is pretty much useless to anyone running CGMiner.

How about this:

Email notification once your Worker drops 20%, or down to 80% of the 30min average ? (not sure if Workers speeds are 30min averaged like the total, or real time)

I'm currently looking for a solution to the email issues.  The problem is we have so many users and many of them go on/off unrelated to pool problems.  I moved to GMail for handling our email because it reduced the number of emails that never made it to people's inboxes, but idle miner emails were often knocking us above the 500 emails/day limit and stopping other more important emails from getting through.  We have such a high volume of emails that its very hard to avoid getting flagged as a spammer, and in some cases the emails were dropped entirely rather than just sent to spam folders.

Make it a PAY SERVICE (1% Fee) to keep people honest and from abusing it by leaving it on even if they don't care.

[bitlane]

Let me put it this way (and I am sure that many people will agree with me)......

I would MUCH rather pay for advanced monitoring/reporting directly to the Pool I was mining, rather than pay a 3rd party service...as I only know of 1 anyways.

If you don't want the money, I understand, but you have the pool, the coding ability and the userbase....WHY NOT OFFER SOMETHING MORE ? (and charge for it)

[eleuthria]

I refuse to implement paid services on top of the fee I already charge.  It just feels completely wrong.

However, it did give me an idea on how to roll out idle miner emails again.  I'll be adding idle miners again soon, but it will be restricted to miners that have earned a certain amount of BTC since joining the pool.  I'll slowly slide that required miner earnings down as I am able to gauge how much "junk mail" is being sent for idles to people that are simply turning off their systems.  In addition to that, the idle miner warnings will be disable themselves after an email is sent, and not turn back on until the user logs in and turns the warnings back on.

Those two requirements should allow me to keep using Google Apps for email (fewer bounced emails/never received emails), while bringing back that idle function.

[bitlane]

I refuse to implement paid services on top of the fee I already charge.  It just feels completely wrong.

HUH ? so, if you were to code an integrated setup like bitcoinmonitor.com (or whatever it is) you would feel wrong charging for it ?

A Pool OP has the greatest advantage to be able to charge for a system like that, because it can be percentage based and not like a 3rd party, constantly paying them a flat 1+ BTC per month for intermittent mining, or no mining at all at times........PERCENTAGE-PAY-PER-USE SERVICES, just like mining fees themselves. Obviously, this will be OPTIONAL ADD-ONS and not manditory.

I think it would market itself and you would benefit in the end. Some people would use it, while some would not......and that would be everyone's choice.

Those who will want to PLAY, will have to PAY.

Sorry if you missunderstood me at first, thinking I meant a flat-across-the-board fee increase to support it.

You could easilly have an A'La Carte Menu of addon Fee-based services for people.....and 99% will pay YOU rather than a 3rd party website attached to their accounts.

[pogi23]

How about SMS notifications?  There won't be any emails to store or hundreds of emails to send (and be labeled a spammer) and it would shift the work (of having to keep up with email use) from the operator to the user (by keeping up with their SMS usage).  Of course, I've only seen it implemented by doctor's offices (to tell you when your appointment is coming up) and drug stores (when your prescription is ready) but I'm not sure how it all happens in the background.  Hopefully it's an easy and simply fix.... maybe?

[Tim the Magician]

I refuse to implement paid services on top of the fee I already charge.  It just feels completely wrong.

HUH ? so, if you were to code an integrated setup like bitcoinmonitor.com (or whatever it is) you would feel wrong charging for it ?

A Pool OP has the greatest advantage to be able to charge for a system like that, because it can be percentage based and not like a 3rd party, constantly paying them a flat 1+ BTC per month for intermittent mining, or no mining at all at times........PERCENTAGE-PAY-PER-USE SERVICES, just like mining fees themselves. Obviously, this will be OPTIONAL ADD-ONS and not manditory.

I think it would market itself and you would benefit in the end. Some people would use it, while some would not......and that would be everyone's choice.

Those who will want to PLAY, will have to PAY.

Sorry if you missunderstood me at first, thinking I meant a flat-across-the-board fee increase to support it.

You could easilly have an A'La Carte Menu of addon Fee-based services for people.....and 99% will pay YOU rather than a 3rd party website attached to their accounts.

There are some problems with your scheme.

1.   Development time is expensive.  
2.   Implementing all these extra features would take a significant amount of time.
3.   Optional pay if you want it add on features are generally not widely adopted.
4.   People who are paying extra for something expect immediate support if there are problems.
5.   Users who are interested in the features but do not want to pay may become dissatisfied.

Basically, eleuthria wouldn’t make his money back and would end up pissing everyone off at the same time.

These sorts of services are better offered by third parties.  That way they can market to a larger number of users across multiple pools.  Also, because they are focused on a their service and not a whole bunch of other things like running a Bitcoin pool they can provide better / faster service to their clients.

[Pontius]

I'm using BTC Guild as my (first) backup pool (using cgminer 2.0.8 since yesterday morning) and just realized that my NMC efficiency is just about 61% (meaning that 39% of my submitted shares are rejected as "stales" or "unknown"). On my primary pool NMC efficiency is about 97% while BTC efficiency is comparable with both pools (99%).

As there are no overall BTC Guild pool stats - is just me or is the pool NMC efficiency realy that low?

[os2sam]

I'm using BTC Guild as my (first) backup pool (using cgminer 2.0.8 since yesterday morning) and just realized that my NMC efficiency is just about 61% (meaning that 39% of my submitted shares are rejected as "stales" or "unknown"). On my primary pool NMC efficiency is about 97% while BTC efficiency is comparable with both pools (99%).

As there are no overall BTC Guild pool stats - is just me or is the pool NMC efficiency realy that low?

I'm running two miners.  One is 80% and the other is about 25% Accepted rate.  Don't know that I would call that a true efficiency figure though.  BTC Guild is geared toward BTC not being adversely effected as the first priority.  Which is fine by me.  So the NMC side seems to suffer a bit.

I have yet to see a reason to be impressed with NMC.  As near as I can tell it currently takes about 150 NMC to equal 1 BTC which is under $3 USD.  So I just can't understand why anyone cares about NMC.

Of course I could be missing something.
Sam

[eleuthria]

Just for reference, I tested the merged mining using guiminer (default poclbm kernel).  guiminer is at 99.1-99.2% accepted rate on NMC side (99.7-99.8% on BTC).  I'll be adding back the ability to reset your stats on workers this afternoon, and you can reset them independently by NMC/BTC side, which can help users test out which miner gives them the best results for either side.

If you are seeing NMC reject rates in excess of 5% (over the course of 1-2k+ shares), something is absolutely wrong -on your end-.


UPDATE:  You can reset stats on workers again (separately between NMC and BTC).

[Pontius]

If you are seeing NMC reject rates in excess of 5% (over the course of 1-2k+ shares), something is absolutely wrong -on your end-.

UPDATE:  You can reset stats on workers again (separately between NMC and BTC).

Just resetet my NMC stats. Let's see what happens.
But regardless of the outcome I would be interessed in global/overall stats somewhere on the site.