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

[Danijel Habek]

I hate those script-kiddy-loosers so f******* much! What they really hope to gain by doing this? Idiots, ignorant SOBs.

Please stop bitching at those fools, they thrive on your anger.
Get ready for next time zombies attack. Setup failover, and continue mining elsewhere until the attack is over.
You'll feel a bit better, and sure won't loose heating in mid-winter.
Read the rules of Zombieland, and prepare accordingly.

Good luck!

[1714155644]

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[phorensic]

BTC Guild is a hot bed for DDOS.  I hope this comes back soon because I'm freezing...  My heaters are off.  LOL

I was wondering why it was so cold in my room this morning!  My heaters are off too!  brrrrrrrr

[eleuthria]

Starting to come back online.  If the attack retargets the pool it may end up getting turned off again while we wait them out.

[Turbor]

Reject rate is higher than GPUs (Hard to compete with < 0.1%), but even so the speed I'm measuring is valid shares only.

Why some shares are rejected?

Invalid shares should not occur since all submitted shares are double checked, by the FPGA and by the software.

Duplicate shares are possible since BTCMiner re-sends shares if pool server does not reply within timeout time.

Stales are possible too. (A stale reduction algorithm is planned for future).

BTW, BTCMiner counts only successfully submitted shares with a valid response as "submitted shares".

I can't tell you why !? It just came to my eyes when i was watching the statistics.

[eleuthria]

Reject rate is higher than GPUs (Hard to compete with < 0.1%), but even so the speed I'm measuring is valid shares only.

Why some shares are rejected?

Invalid shares should not occur since all submitted shares are double checked, by the FPGA and by the software.

Duplicate shares are possible since BTCMiner re-sends shares if pool server does not reply within timeout time.

Stales are possible too. (A stale reduction algorithm is planned for future).

BTW, BTCMiner counts only successfully submitted shares with a valid response as "submitted shares".

The rejects are mostly duplicate shares, and slightly higher (not much) than average stales.  Overall they're still measuring above your advertised speed, although some improvements to stale share recognition could bring them up to par with GPU miners like cgminer.

[Mousepotato]

Will there be a merged-mining option for I0Coin when it hits block 160K?

[DutchBrat]

Will there be a merged-mining option for I0Coin when it hits block 160K?

That would put the entire chain in the hands of BTCGuild.... wouldn't trust it with anyone else !!! 

[eleuthria]

I do not have any plans to support I0C merged mining.  The fact that anybody has the slightest interest in I0C at this point is baffling.  It's got nothing to offer.  The only reason I implemented NMC merged mining was that NMC serves a purpose outside of being traded for BTC (even if most people don't utilize that purpose).  Nothing like that can be said of any other altcoin.  Piggybacking chains onto BTC when they are technically a competing chain is just stupid.

[Jason]

I just noticed something strange.

I was watching my mining client submitting shares to BTC Guild, and comparing the number of shares submitted to the number that was displayed in my worker summary.

Usually when I do this, I see an exact correspondence between the shares that are submitted by my mining client and the statistics displayed in my worker summary.

However, for at least a couple of hours this morning (perhaps longer, but until about 1700GMT), my mining client was submitting hundreds of shares and they were not showing up in my BTC Worker Summary.  Now I know what you're thinking -- something went wrong with my mining client.  But I verified that it was working by switching over to Deepbit and was able to verify that my share count was rising as expected over there.  Moreover, back on BTC Guild, I noticed that my "shares accepted" for this worker was rising normally for namecoins, but did not rise at all for bitcoins.

I wanted to bring this to the Eleutrhia's attention as well as to alert other BTC Guild users to spot-check their submitted stats against what is reported from time to time to make sure you're being properly credited.

Edit:  Although the "shares accepted" for bitcoins is not rising, I see that the value of the reported bitcoin rewards is rising, so this is not as serious as I at first feared assuming I am being credited the proper amount per share (it seems right, but I have not yet properly verified it).  So it just seems like it's a minor issue of the number of shares not being correctly reported.

[eleuthria]

I just noticed something strange.

I was watching my mining client submitting shares to BTC Guild, and comparing the number of shares submitted to the number that was displayed in my worker summary.

Usually when I do this, I see an exact correspondence between the shares that are submitted by my mining client and the statistics displayed in my worker summary.

However, for at least a couple of hours this morning (perhaps longer, but until about 1700GMT), my mining client was submitting hundreds of shares and they were not showing up in my BTC Worker Summary.  Now I know what you're thinking -- something went wrong with my mining client.  But I verified that it was working by switching over to Deepbit and was able to verify that my share count was rising as expected over there.  Moreover, back on BTC Guild, I noticed that my "shares accepted" for this worker was rising normally for namecoins, but did not rise at all for bitcoins.

I wanted to bring this to the Eleutrhia's attention as well as to alert other BTC Guild users to spot-check their submitted stats against what is reported from time to time to make sure you're being properly credited.

Edit:  Although the "shares accepted" for bitcoins is not rising, I see that the value of the reported bitcoin rewards is rising, so this is not as serious as I at first feared assuming I am being credited the proper amount per share (it seems right, but I have not yet properly verified it).  So it just seems like it's a minor issue of the number of shares not being correctly reported.

Please give more information with actual numbers, and your miner/settings.  Your description is impossible.  Your earnings are calculated live based on share counts per difficulty.  There is literally no way for earnings to increase without a corresponding increase to share count.  Your earnings will not rise while your share counts remain stable.

The best I can come up with is you're mining on a worker thats hidden, or submitting shares to a backup pool.  Your share counts wouldn't visibly rise if mining on a hidden worker (since the worker stats are hidden), but the earnings would rise since they're shown regardless of hidden workers.

The only mismatch in share counts vs miner counts should be limited to the 10 second window between shares being submitted vs being logged [10 seconds being the maximum window, assuming your share was submitted instantly after a batch was logged].  This is of course assuming your miner isn't broken and counting multiple share submissions if there was a communication error.

[Jason]

Please give more information with actual numbers, and your miner/settings.  Your description is impossible.  Your earnings are calculated live based on share counts per difficulty.  There is literally no way for earnings to increase without a corresponding increase to share count.  Your earnings will not rise while your share counts remain stable.

I can't give you actual numbers right now because I did not take screen shots earlier, and I have not seen the issue since 1700GMT today (Saturday).  However, I am certain that after I reset the shares accepted for both BTC and NMC to zero and started my miner, the shares accepted remained zero for BTC, but it climbed for NMC.  I am also certain that while the shares accepted for BTC remained at zero, the unpaid rewards climbed as well.

My miner settings are as follows:

phoenix -u http://worker_1:xyz@btcguild.com:8332 -k phatk2 DEVICE=0 BFI_INT AGGRESSION=7 WORKSIZE=256

The best I can come up with is you're mining on a worker thats hidden, or submitting shares to a backup pool.  Your share counts wouldn't visibly rise if mining on a hidden worker (since the worker stats are hidden), but the earnings would rise since they're shown regardless of hidden workers.

If I were submitting shares to a backup pool, then the share count would not have been rising for NMC, nor would my unpaid rewards rise.

I will be watching for this over the next couple of weeks, and if I see it I'll be sure to grab a couple of screen shots for you.

Right now I'm not too worried since the unpaid rewards amount doesn't seem to be affected.

[bitlane]

In the BTCGuild Hall of Fame, does each User's 'Found Blocks' count include NMC & BTC ? or BTC only ?

[eleuthria]

Hall of Fame is BTC only.

[DutchBrat]

Hall of Fame is BTC only.

Eleuthria, i don't want to question your wisdom (since you programmed the Hall of Fame), but are you sure it only displays BTC Blocks found ?

It seems the pool has been running way luckier than it should if that is the case....

For example, I (UserID 42927) submitted 1,861,100 shares and found 8 blocks (should be almost 2)
The User that submitted the most shares: 119,361,416 found 258 blocks (should be just over 100)

and that goes for all the users, we are all much luckier than we should be 

[bitlane]

Hall of Fame is BTC only.

I was really hoping it wasn't...lol...as that either makes me the luckiest or dumbest miner out there, having found 5 blocks for the pool since the switchover, while taking out less than 2 blocks worth in payouts...LOL

I would have felt much better if that included NMC blocks...hehe

[eleuthria]

Hall of Fame is BTC only.

I was really hoping it wasn't...lol...as that either makes me the luckiest or dumbest miner out there, having found 5 blocks for the pool since the switchover, while taking out less than 2 blocks worth in payouts...LOL

I would have felt much better if that included NMC blocks...hehe

There is actually a small bug in the hall of fame blocks found stat.  Hoping to fix it when I update the HoF to give some short term Top Miner stats (since some miners could quit and still maintain a top 25 spot for a LONG time).

It's pretty obvious that blocks are occasionally being counted twice.  When you look at the top 3 miners and notice all 3 of them have found ~2-2.5x as many blocks as that many shares should have found.

[bitlane]

Now it seems that since the Hall of Fame was brought up a few posts ago, it has simply stopped counting stats all together.....

You had also mentioned when first switching over to PPS, that you would evaluate the Fee and possibly drop it back to No-Fee if things worked out.

Does that offer for re-evaluation still stand ? The pool seems to be doing well, although only you know for sure, as the stats seem frozen in time.

[eleuthria]

Now it seems that since the Hall of Fame was brought up a few posts ago, it has simply stopped counting stats all together.....

You had also mentioned when first switching over to PPS, that you would evaluate the Fee and possibly drop it back to No-Fee if things worked out.

Does that offer for re-evaluation still stand ? The pool seems to be doing well, although only you know for sure, as the stats seem frozen in time.

Hall of Fame is currently frozen, expecting to put up a new version in the next day or two.

I don't recall ever saying I'd consider dropping it to No Fee again.  I've said it in the IRC room many times:  You can't run a sufficiently large and reliable pool based on donations.  People are not charitable enough to keep you afloat, especially in PPS where I absorb ALL the risk.  Over time, donations shrink and shrink, and you end up operating at loss when BTC is worth so little compared to what we saw over the summer.

A few weeks ago, I was considering a drop to 4%.  Not a big drop at first glance.   Then for the last three weeks (excluding Monday/Tuesday this week), luck was signifcantly negative, to the point that over 1,500 BTC of my buffer evaporated.  A good chunk was restored Monday/Tuesday, but its back negative the last two days.  I'm not willing to run the risk of PPS only with even lower fees when miners are owed ~950 BTC/day, regardless of how many blocks are generated.

[bitlane]

Fair enough, I must have misunderstood. Thanks for clearing that up.
The pool still rocks, as always, and performs better than any other pool I have ever mined at.
Thanks for making it available for us.

[omo]

can I use port 80 to mine in this pool?