Decided to check out the pool. Pretty cool. My only complaint is of course the 3% fee is rather steep.
Well welcome to the pool and thanks for giving it a try.
For a little perspective on why our fee's are at 3%
First here is an example on other PPS pools:
Litecoinpool.org = 4% fee's (started at 5%)
Ltcmine.ru = 3.3% fee (started at 2%) recent change
These two pools have been around for at least a year. Litecoinpool being the longest.
They both adjusted their fee's due to risk, orphans, etc. Basically they adjusted their pool fee's to match cost.
PPS is Pay Per Share. The pool takes all the risk. Long rounds, orphans, etc. You get paid for each share you submit no matter what. The value of each share is the same across the difficulty length.
Now quickly compare to a PPLNS pool that is 2% fee. This fee goes straight to the pool owner. Your share value will change throughout the difficulty period. Long rounds will make your share value a lot less then what your making on a PPS pool. Course short rounds will be increased in value. But this is what we call variance. PPS takes all the variance risk and you get paid one given price.
If you look at Bitcoin PPS pools which is the most favored btw. The lowest PPS pool is 3%. BTCGuild just raised theirs to 7% was at 5%. Ozcoin got rid of it. mtred at 0% closed its doors because variance drained their buffer. EclipseMC is 5%. This is why fee's for PPS makes sense and why we are at 3%
Hope this makes a little bit more sense. I have done a couple weeks at 0% fee's. Basically given back to the miners some of the good luck the pool has had.
If you have a chance take a look at this post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0 It gives you risk/reward and why people use it. Bitcoin Pool fee's. Etc.
Here is about how each payout works
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.msg1146110#msg1146110
