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

[Billbags]

@ckolivas

I see you always staying on top of things. Asking the right questions, demanding manufacturers for their drivers so you can keeps things up to date. But not many other devs seem to be doing the same.

The new generation here are the plug and play type that doesn't seem to be bringing much to the table and I don't have the education/knowledge or status position to help.

@eleuthria

You have always been here for every miner answering questions and providing an honest pool and sharing your experience with the community. That's why I posted these questions here. I just needed to hear this from someone with the knowledge to give a trueful answer.

[1714108225]

1714108225

[1714108225]

1714108225

[eleuthria]

@eleuthria

You have always been here for every miner answering questions and providing an honest pool. That's why I posted these questions here. I just needed to hear this from someone with the knowledge to give a truefull answer.

I've never pulled my punches when it comes to mining viability or the grim outlook for the "home miner" as we continue to move forward into the industrialization of Bitcoin mining.  I just hope we end up with enough players in the game to prevent full consolidation of mining power.  As far as I can tell, the future of Bitcoin mining will likely end up in a Cold War/Mutually Assured Destruction type arms race between a handful of ASIC manufacturers.

I'm still not sure how I feel about that.  I've always anticipated it, ever since I got into BTC in early 2011 and read up on how it works.  I just didn't expect it to take place for decades, mostly because I never anticipated exponential growth in Bitcoin's value, starting just months after I entered the game.  My only fear is that the rapid growth is taking us into that "end game" mining industrialization before enough companies have tried to establish themselves in that space.  The only major ones I can name are Spondoolies, KNC, Bitfury, Bitmain, and ASICMINER.  There's other companies out there making hardware, but I believe those are the only ones actually producing the chips, the rest just buy raw chips from those companies and assemble their own boards for them.  I didn't include BFL because they are perpetually a year behind the others, and a running joke at this point.

[Billbags]

^ That's how I'm seeing it also. This batch of miners will problably be my last unless something extreamly more efficient comes along. I'll always run some miners, but problably not the amount I have now. Thank you both for the replies.

[navigator]

To me, it seems like mining always trends towards being barely profitable. I assume that eventually progress will slow down in making asic's more efficient. At that point the only way to make more profit is to buy more of the same hardware. When gpu mining was nearing it's end, there was a time when it was barely profitable. Then new tech started to come into use and changed all that. I don't think that will happen again and we will reach a saturation point. If mining becomes barely profitable, don't you think companies will stop building hardware for profit? When they have to invest millions just to make a few thousand. Seems like only the companies that want to see bitcoin succeed and be secure will stay around.
~drinking

[jammers]

well I'm mining for fun, and making some bitcoin for testing. but just got a s1 and put it on tonight, a good time given we found five  blocks in the last ~90 mins

[Taugeran]

It's ALIVE!!!!!!! I've finally done it; I've surpassed the 1Th/s mark

[MoreBloodWine]

It's ALIVE!!!!!!! I've finally done it; I've surpassed the 1Th/s mark

Congrats, so what finally put you over ?

[Taugeran]

It's ALIVE!!!!!!! I've finally done it; I've surpassed the 1Th/s mark

Congrats, so what finally put you over ?

Well I was at ~950, then I BRICKED an S1 by poking around the file system (waiting on USB to uart dongle to revive it)

Dropped to 750

Picked up a habañero from forum user Nanook7. Dude I blinked and it was on my doorstep.
She's aircooled at the moment(hyper 212 EVO) and hashing away at 370-385Ghash. Waiting for payday to grab an h80i and a corsair hx1050i

[MoreBloodWine]

It's ALIVE!!!!!!! I've finally done it; I've surpassed the 1Th/s mark

Congrats, so what finally put you over ?

Well I was at ~950, then I BRICKED an S1 by poking around the file system (waiting on USB to uart dongle to revive it)

Dropped to 750

Picked up a habañero from forum user Nanook7. Dude I blinked and it was on my doorstep.
She's aircooled at the moment(hyper 212 EVO) and hashing away at 370-385Ghash

Sweet and congrats, and you oughta know better than poking around file systems heh.

[Taugeran]

It's ALIVE!!!!!!! I've finally done it; I've surpassed the 1Th/s mark

Congrats, so what finally put you over ?

Well I was at ~950, then I BRICKED an S1 by poking around the file system (waiting on USB to uart dongle to revive it)

Dropped to 750

Picked up a habañero from forum user Nanook7. Dude I blinked and it was on my doorstep.
She's aircooled at the moment(hyper 212 EVO) and hashing away at 370-385Ghash

Sweet and congrats, and you oughta know better than poking around file systems heh.

But. But. I... Fine. But I gleaned the info I needed to start making an S1 USB controller clone for a pi or any Linux host with a USB cable

[guytechie]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

[eleuthria]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

[MoreBloodWine]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

If you had to guess, how many closings would you say there have been in the past 6 months with no blocks found ?

[ManeBjorn]

Luck has been great overall this last several weeks.
BTCG is the best as it always ends above average over 30 day period it seems.
 

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

[eleuthria]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

If you had to guess, how many closings would you say there have been in the past 6 months with no blocks found ?

3, all within the last month.  2 of them were back to back (which is somewhat expected, it was a single bad block after all).  It was only recently that the network difficulty vs shares per shift was at a point where you can expect the occasional 0-block shift.

[MoreBloodWine]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

If you had to guess, how many closings would you say there have been in the past 6 months with no blocks found ?

3, all within the last month.  2 of them were back to back (which is somewhat expected, it was a single bad block after all).  It was only recently that the network difficulty vs shares per shift was at a point where you can expect the occasional 0-block shift.

Doesnt sound too bad... better than some other pools I'm guessing.

[eleuthria]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

If you had to guess, how many closings would you say there have been in the past 6 months with no blocks found ?

3, all within the last month.  2 of them were back to back (which is somewhat expected, it was a single bad block after all).  It was only recently that the network difficulty vs shares per shift was at a point where you can expect the occasional 0-block shift.

Doesnt sound too bad... better than some other pools I'm guessing.

GHash had it happen a lot (not sure if it's changed) because they used a pitifully small 'N' value.  I know BitMinter has it happen during their more painful blocks as well.  It's the unfortunate part of PPLNS.  You have a tradeoff of a smaller N value for faster share maturation, or a larger N for slower maturation.  Statistically, it makes no difference in the long run.  However, if you sampled large N shifts vs small N shifts, you'd find that large N shifts were more likely to end up close to expected value on a per-shift basis, while small N shifts had a much larger range.  The average would be the same though.

Depending on how the network grows over the next few months, I may be doubling our shift times to target 2-hours per shift roughly instead of 1-hour.  This would be done by doubling the current 'N' value, which would put us back to the point we used to run at, where 'N' was approximately 10 times the network difficulty.  At that value, the odds of a 0-block shift are incredibly small.  You'd basically need a record breaking block (shares submitted > 10x network difficulty).  I think only one pool (Deepbit) has ever had a round break the 10x mark.

[MoreBloodWine]

Are we about to close without any blocks found?

Hopefully not, we still have about an hour until a shift closes @ 0.  But considering the luck run this last week (20% above expectation), I'm not too worried.  We're still on track to probably get the 3-month luck back over expectation as well soon, unless we have a full week of pretty bad luck.

If you had to guess, how many closings would you say there have been in the past 6 months with no blocks found ?

3, all within the last month.  2 of them were back to back (which is somewhat expected, it was a single bad block after all).  It was only recently that the network difficulty vs shares per shift was at a point where you can expect the occasional 0-block shift.

Doesnt sound too bad... better than some other pools I'm guessing.

GHash had it happen a lot (not sure if it's changed) because they used a pitifully small 'N' value.  I know BitMinter has it happen during their more painful blocks as well.  It's the unfortunate part of PPLNS.  You have a tradeoff of a smaller N value for faster share maturation, or a larger N for slower maturation.  Statistically, it makes no difference in the long run.  However, if you sampled large N shifts vs small N shifts, you'd find that large N shifts were more likely to end up close to expected value on a per-shift basis, while small N shifts had a much larger range.  The average would be the same though.

Depending on how the network grows over the next few months, I may be doubling our shift times to target 2-hours per shift roughly instead of 1-hour.  This would be done by doubling the current 'N' value, which would put us back to the point we used to run at, where 'N' was approximately 10 times the network difficulty.  At that value, the odds of a 0-block shift are incredibly small.  You'd basically need a record breaking block (shares submitted > 10x network difficulty).  I think only one pool (Deepbit) has ever had a round break the 10x mark.

This is actually what scares me right now, not knowing where diff will be come Jan 1st.

[eleuthria]

This is actually what scares me right now, not knowing where diff will be come Jan 1st.

I'm not referring to raw network growth in this case, but specifically *where* it shows up.  I'm still expecting BTC Guild to shrink as a percentage of the network (same with Eligius, slush, BitMinter, etc.).  As posted earlier, "home mining" has become a very specific niche within the overall mining ecosystem.  By Jan 1st, I doubt most original pools combined will even be 15% of the network.  As it stands today, BTC Guild + Eligius + Slush + p2pool + BitMinter + Ozcoin + Eclipse combined are only ~16.5% of the entire network [based off the last 2016 blocks].

[MoreBloodWine]

This is actually what scares me right now, not knowing where diff will be come Jan 1st.

I'm not referring to raw network growth in this case, but specifically *where* it shows up.  I'm still expecting BTC Guild to shrink as a percentage of the network (same with Eligius, slush, BitMinter, etc.).  As posted earlier, "home mining" has become a very specific niche within the overall mining ecosystem.  By Jan 1st, I doubt most original pools combined will even be 15% of the network.  As it stands today, BTC Guild + Eligius + Slush + p2pool + BitMinter + Ozcoin + Eclipse combined are only ~16.5% of the entire network [based off the last 2016 blocks].

Good lord thats insane.