2. Mined coins and rewards are paid instantly, so they are not held by a pool operator - so you can't be goxed.
They're rewarded instantly but you have to wait for them to be confirmed to be 'paid'.
They are actually paid instantly and included in that block, but coinbase transactions (mining) have to mature for 120 blocks until they can be spent. (Semantics that aren't super relevant for most people. ;-) )
agree, re: 2nd part. no clue why people use all these mpos pools run by shady figure x
5. p2pool is DDoS resistant.
sort of. the network as a whole is 99.99% DDoS resistant, an individual node is not.
Which is what I said - p2pool is DDoS resistant - I'd even say 100% resistant because "resistant" is so amorphous, and I didn't say any particular node.
6. p2pool fees are generally significantly less than other pools
sort of. for some reason lots of people like to mine on p2pool.org and it charges 2%. but, then, it seems like people congregate towards the pools that charge the highest fees anyway. guess that's why eclipsemc and bitminter have never become especially popular
The point is that on average a p2pool node has lower fees than the larger pools - some even with more than 6%. Some were even higher at one point a few years ago trying to get people to leave due to the large share they had. What is interesting is the ebb and flow of which pools are popular and which are not over the course of the last 3.5 years.
8. p2pool generally has fewer orphan bitcoin (and *coin) blocks due to its decentralized nature
this isn't correct, it's not the decentralized nature that would lead to fewer orphans, that'd actually cause more orphans, since most (if not all) major pools have relay nodes with significant bandwidth. user X with 256kbps upstream, would cause plenty of orphans. I haven't looked at the actual stats, but I'm pretty sure the less orphan part is true, but that's because the block is relayed to all other p2pool users, which requires significantly less bandwidth (then in theory one of those p2pool users will have good connectivity, when I ran my p2pool node the person that showed on blockchain.info 90% of the time was either a node in russia, france, or my node in germany).
The decentralized nature ensures that blocks found are distributed to many nodes quickly, even if the node that finds the block has a slow upstream connection which helps to have fewer orphans. This means it is seen more quickly by more nodes. I saw the stats on it a few months ago somewhere and p2pool had very few orphans. This seems to be what you said near the end of the paragraph - often the large network effect is more beneficial than a single large pipe is. Obviously it is not 100%.
Notes:
• Don't forget to set a backup pool
yeah, probably should have two backups. oh, feel free to use
nogleg.net:9555 for DOGE, oho
Or even more than 2! Better too many than too few!
• It is normal to have higher rejection rates on p2pool since it generates work faster than other pools and does not impact earnings.
the first part is correct, since the share time (should) be less than the block time for various coins. the second part doesnt necessarily hold true though. an easy example is p2pool.org, where you get lots of DOA shares, which arent caused by your own latency.
True, for some nodes as you point out, in general though it should not impact earnings materially. I am not sure why p2pool.org displays those characteristics.
• p2pool payouts ramp up over time, 3-7 days is normal depending on the coin.
i'd say more like 12-24hrs
For some coins, but for others with longer windows, the ramp-up can be longer than 24 hours. I think it is better to expect a slower ramp-up given the vagaries of luck than have people disappointed if the ramp-up is a bit longer. For example, if you are quite unluckily in your first few hours of mining, you will ramp up slower than if you have average luck or extremely good luck.
:-)
