[ANN] The First Litecoin PPS Pool (litecoinpool.org)

[pooler]

Since nobody has done it yet, I'm launching a pure pay-per-share Litecoin pool. As you probably know, this system has several advantages:

• No penalty for orphaned blocks.
• Predictable income: you are no more subject to bad luck.
• Rewards are instantly credited to your account (you don't have to wait for a block to be solved or confirmed).
• You can be sure that the pool operator is not cheating (because you know how many shares you submit).
• Immunity to pool hopping.

This method results in the least possible variance for miners.

Other features include: (updated)

• Exclusive ultra-low-latency Stratum implementation, written in C for maximum performance
• Support for Stratum over SSL/TLS, to prevent MITM attacks
• Support for extensions to the Stratum protocol, including resume, suggest_difficulty and suggest_target
• Adaptive share difficulty (“vardiff”)
• Geographically-distributed, redundant servers
• Detailed stats updated every minute
• Detailed history of earnings and payouts
• Per-worker performance graphs
• Automatic and manual payouts
• Email notification of idle miners
• Two-factor authentication support
• Extensive JSON API and mobile interfaces
• Website and mining interface also accessible as Tor hidden services
• Lightweight interface

Since September 11, 2014, the pool supports merged mining of Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies, resulting in higher payouts than with a regular Litecoin pool.
As of January 2018 we are merged-mining Argentum, Canada eCoin, Dogecoin, Huntercoin, Myriad, Pesetacoin, Viacoin.

https://www.litecoinpool.org/

Feedback and feature requests are very welcome!

[mrx]

Hi,

On your site you said this:

(In case you are wondering, 65536 is the average number of hashes to be computed in order to find a share. This is not the same...

IMO You should change it to "65536 is the average number of shares to be computed in order to solve a block on difficulty 1". As you set the pool's small target to 16 bit, it takes 65536 shares to find a block on average. So, the way the earning are calculated should based on shares. The figures are just happened to be the same, as 65536(hashes/share) * 65536(shares/block) = 4294967296 = 2^32(hashes/block).

Just think, if you change the small target to 15 bit, the effective difficulty for miners are actually decreased, thus more shares are required to solve a block(131072), and to find a share you only need 32768 hashes. In that case the PPS should be 47.5 LTC / (131072 × Current Difficulty), not multiplied by 32768 on the denominator.

[pooler]

Hi,

On your site you said this:

(In case you are wondering, 65536 is the average number of hashes to be computed in order to find a share. This is not the same...

IMO You should change it to "65536 is the average number of shares to be computed in order to solve a block on difficulty 1". As you set the pool's small target to 16 bit, it takes 65536 shares to find a block on average. So, the way the earning are calculated should based on shares. The figures are just happened to be the same, as 65536(hashes/share) * 65536(shares/block) = 4294967296 = 2^32(hashes/block).

Just think, if you change the small target to 15 bit, the effective difficulty for miners are actually decreased, thus more shares are required to solve a block(131072), and to find a share you only need 32768 hashes. In that case the PPS should be 47.5 LTC / (131072 × Current Difficulty), not multiplied by 32768 on the denominator.

Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, I am aware that It would be more correct to write "(4294967296 / 65536) = 65536 is the average number of hashes to be computed in order to find a share". I just didn't want to make things look too complex. But you are right, it may sound misleading. I have rephrased that part.

[rTech]

Nice to support PPS i added few small miners

i5 650 with 3 threads (~6kh/s)
e2140 with 1 threads (~2.2kh/s)
atom 230 with 2 threads (~1kh/s)

[terrytibbs]

Nice to support PPS i added few small miners

i5 650 with 3 threads (~6mh/s)
e2140 with 1 threads (~2.2mh/s)
atom 230 with 1 threads (~1mh/s)

If you're getting speeds measured in megahashes you're using the wrong miners. You need a miner able to compute Scrypt hashes. Compile ArtForz' cpuminer fork (https://github.com/ArtForz/cpuminer) or download one of the precompiled miners by twobits (http://www.wuala.com/jbw9/pub/Bitcoin/Tenebrix/miner/win/).

[pooler]

Nice to support PPS i added few small miners

i5 650 with 3 threads (~6mh/s)
e2140 with 1 threads (~2.2mh/s)
atom 230 with 1 threads (~1mh/s)

If you're getting speeds measured in megahashes you're using the wrong miners. You need a miner able to compute Scrypt hashes. Compile ArtForz' cpuminer fork (https://github.com/ArtForz/cpuminer) or download one of the precompiled miners by twobits (http://www.wuala.com/jbw9/pub/Bitcoin/Tenebrix/miner/win/).

I believe that was just a transcription error, because we are receiving valid shares from those miners, and the hash rate seems to match, once you replace M with k.

[rTech]

yeah sorry i meaned cpu kh/s, i had brainfart. Too mutch gpu mining causes brains to type mh instead of kh

i also have one request

Mobile friendly login just to see hash speed, miners (if they idle), results and payments. So just login screen what acces to those and log out. I usually use mobile device to check things so it could be nice to have interface for lower resolutions.

[pooler]

i also have one request

Mobile friendly login just to see hash speed, miners (if they idle), results and payments. So just login screen what acces to those and log out. I usually use mobile device to check things so it could be nice to have interface for lower resolutions.

I will look into this. Is there anything in particular that is not displaying nicely on your mobile device?
In the meantime, you may want to check out the API (find the link on your account page). Since it is just a pretty-printed JSON file, it should be easily readable on any device.

[rTech]

i also have one request

Mobile friendly login just to see hash speed, miners (if they idle), results and payments. So just login screen what acces to those and log out. I usually use mobile device to check things so it could be nice to have interface for lower resolutions.

I will look into this. Is there anything in particular that is not displaying nicely on your mobile device?
In the meantime, you may want to check out the API (find the link on your account page). Since it is just a pretty-printed JSON file, it should be easily readable on any device.

Its nice but i prefer just white page with black text. No other hazzles than miners required info Clean inrface for fast look up
Keep up good work, i also added i5 2500k with 1 thread (3.62kh/s) to crunch just for fun. Its my main pc so i use it alot so 1 thread is just there to boost up not fully mining as my others..

[pooler]

Its nice but i prefer just white page with black text. No other hazzles than miners required info Clean inrface for fast look up

Done! We now have an HTML API, too! Find the link on your account page.
This way, you don't need to log in, you just need your personal API key. Bookmark the link on your mobile device and you're done!

[rTech]

Loving it Donated 2.3 LTC. Nice work!.

[pooler]

Loving it Donated 2.3 LTC. Nice work!.

Thank you!
I have made some improvements to the workers graphs, hash rate history will be more accurate from now on.
I have also implemented email notification of idle miners. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we are the only Litecoin pool to have this feature at the moment.

[Graet]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we are the only Litecoin pool to have this feature at the moment.

We have had it for 1% donors since day 1

on another point there is now litecoinpool.dyndns.org and litecoinpool.org - hope it doesnt get confusing for miners on the 2 pools

[pooler]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we are the only Litecoin pool to have this feature at the moment.

We have had it for 1% donors since day 1

Sorry, Graet. You should correct the first post on your thread, then, because right now the feature is striked-thorugh, and it says "coming soon".

on another point there is now litecoinpool.dyndns.org and litecoinpool.org - hope it doesnt get confusing for miners on the 2 pools

Unless they are doing pool hopping, I don't think this will be a problem. 

[pooler]

You might have noticed I have moved the payout history to a separate page, adding links to the block explorer for each transaction. I have also added the possibility to change the donation percentage because, believe it or not, one of our miners wanted to donate more. 

By the way, is anybody interested in an iPhone interface to check your live stats? Let me know!

[pooler]

The pool found some lucky blocks in the last few days, so I decided to lower the fee to 3%. (You can still set a higher donation if you wish.)

I guess many people don't want to give our pool a try because they believe we have the highest fee among Litecoin pools. If this is you, I urge you to reconsider. Why? Because a PPS fee cannot be compared to a proportional fee. Take, for example, BTCGuild, which used to be the second largest proportional Bitcoin pool. They had a 0% fee, but when they decided to go PPS they had to introduce a 5% fee. Another clear example of this is deepbit.net: they charge 3% for proportional, 10% for PPS.

The reason for the higher fee is simple: miners in a PPS pool not only get steady rewards, but they are also immune to bad luck and cheating. You cannot be cheated by the pool operator, and you cannot be cheated by pool hoppers. The pool itself, however, is still subject to bad luck and to cheating by its own members, who could withhold found blocks. Proportional pools (including PPLNS pools) don't worry too much about these problems, because they never give away more than they earn.

3% is a very low fee for PPS. Give the pool a try, you won't be disappointed!

[wknight]

you have some truth to your post pooler but you might not want to compare to BTC pools as this is litecoin.

BTCGuild went PPS to make money in the long run.. simple as that They are betting on the short blocks BTW.. MtRed did the same.

You are right.. normally there are large fee's. But abcpool is 0% fee pps

Pool hoppers are still scarce with litecoin.. again something i would not compare just yet. In fact unless someone wrote a script its the only way to pool hop a litecoin pool at this time..

Proportional pools (including PPLNS pools) don't worry too much about these problems, because they never give away more than they earn.

This is false and mainly why i wanted to reply to your post. http://lc.ozco.in pays out 60 ltc per block. and also http://pool-x.eu pays 5 LTC block bonus to the block finder. Elitist Jerks use to do 50 ltc block bonus to the block finder.. so saying that a pool will never give away more then they earn is false.

Dont get me wrong I am VERY happy to see a PPS pool for Litecoin. Litecoin needs it.. I just want to make sure that when comparing other pools you are comparing Litecoin pools and not Bitcoin.

Cheers!

[g2x3k]

You cannot be cheated by the pool operator

ofc you can, you just hide some blocks to cheat users dont lie!
i doubt youre doing hehe, but could is another thing

and yea as wknight says right now ozco, jerks, pool-x are giving out more then earning right now .... + 0% fee and free withdraws on pool-x ... usually the pool is luck so a youre fee is kinda crazy but you shuld be making good on it ... even when pool is in a bit of bad luck youre still makeing on it has to be a quite high % bad long over period


on the other hand you shuld read up on pool hopping ... pplns with proper setup, cant rly be cheated, why wouldnt care for those other problems ?

i can post an overall luck graph of pool-x if wished to prove the point +1750 blocks ... overall been in luck,, never been in 3% bad luck for any longer period but hey wish you all the best luck, aint needed to trow dirt at other to promote yourself when you dont have facts straight

[DeathAndTaxes]

ofc you can, you just hide some blocks to cheat users dont lie!
i doubt youre doing hehe, but could is another thing

How would hiding blocks cheat the miner?  Technically a PPS pool doesn't even need to keep public stats on blocks found.

If I submit 1,203,462 valid shares (at current difficulty) then I get 1 BTC minus any fees.  Pretty hard to cheat that since I can keep track of number of shares I generate locally.

One way a pool could cheat is shaving shares (reporting less shares than accepted) but that is easily detectible.
A pool could cheat by reporting some % of valid shares as stale stales but personally I consider the stales the same as fees.

Thus (100% - stales - fees - downtime) = pool efficiency.

Payout = (# of shares) * (efficiency) * (block reward)/(difficulty)

Thus in my mind a pool w/ 3% fee and 1% stale rate is worse deal than a pool w/ 3.5% fee and 0.1% stale rate.

[wknight]

One reason I always liked PPS.. i can careless if the pool found a block.. i get paid for my shares..