Smaller PPLNS pools getting hammered by halving, rebound after?

[wndsnb]

I have some gear coming online in the next couple of months, so I have been thinking about what pool to point them at.

I'm not interested in pps pools, so I'm only really looking at PPLNS. The issue is ramp up/ramp down.

For a 20PH pool, ramp up is now 161 days. Looks like diff is going to jump up to 13.6T in a few hours, so it will go to 169. With a bunch of new gear coming online, diff will could be >16T by the end of the year, and ramp up will go to >198 days.

For a 6500PH pool, ramp up at 13.6T diff is only half a day.

With just over 200 days to the halving and difficulty increasing, pointing new gear to a 20PH PPLNS pool means you might barely be fully ramped up before the halving. That means that any new gear pointed to a 20PH pool now will only get about half the reward between now and the halving compared to the 6500PH pool. During the eventual ramp down on the small pool post halving, I'd get only 50% what I put in on the ramp up, so I'd loose 25% of the reward for that 6 month ramp up. As much as I'd like to support the small pool, I can't donate 25% of my rewards for over 6 months, and I'm going to have to go with the 6500PH pool.

Right after the halving though, this is no longer an issue, so I'll start moving my rigs to the smaller pool. I'm assuming many other miners are in the same boat, I'd expect hashrate at smaller pools to take off after the halving.

If a miner fully ramped up on a 20PH pool changed pools now to a 6500PH pool, they might be fully ramped down on the small pool by the halving. But while they ramp down, they'd be fully ramped up on the big pool so they'd earn 1.5X normal on average between now and the halving. That's a lot of pressure for miners to jump ship, but I suspect many would come back after the halving. If a lot of people bail, then the ramp down would get extended further into post-halving, and they'd get less, but still more than sticking it out at the small pool.

Any holes or miscalculations in my reasoning?

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[philipma1957]

To be honest you are mentioning a 20 ph 5n pool.

Translation is Kano.is

For the last year Kano and I have been feuding.
Frankly I don’t want to tell you to not put your gear to Kano pool .

I will say this if you are ramped up to 2.1ph on Kano pool stay there don’t leave his pool the math is in your favor to stay.

You can even add more new gear to your 2.1ph of hash at his pool.

I encourage people to add enough gear to get ramped past 2.1 ph on his pool.

As no pool is as good as his if you have 2.1ph or more of ramped up hash.


Now if you have under 2.0 ph of ramped up hash I won’t comment and tell you what to do.

At Kano would you consider this to be a fair statement about your pool?

[Philopolymath]

PPLNS is SUICIDE.......One bad block (300% or more) can kill MONTHS of your earnings... and you get ZERO ramp down..and it happens OFTEN.
It happened EVERYTIME I got SUCKED IN to their CULT...and I have HUGE regrets for swallowing their MISLEADING INFO.
I had 27 S9's for just over 360Th (24 1/3 survive but are mining at a loss now)

Oh you also can get sweet fuck all during your ramp up

And then some whale comes in with 200P to get a block but pushes out all your shares value..Again diminished returns
And the Whale also gets a BONUS!!!

I was a fan of small pools and tried to support both Kano & C.K. but took HUGE losses due to PPLNS system
(I even bought 2 Sia Asic's and 2 Decred Asic's from C.K. for 14K CDN and made ZERO from them before they were obsolete)
I STILL have a payout outstanding from CK's pool but have not submitted shares since LAST NOVEMBER.
His pool has not found a block in many months MEANWHILE the diff has readjusted 8-9  times. AND went up an insane amount.
So while the pool advertises it is at 167% it is  really MANY times worse...My expected payout is actually now about 35% of what it should have been if a block had been found at 100% MANY MONTHS ago.
PPLNS IS A PONZI scheme for the early hard core with a good amount of rate/gear..but suicide for late comers and infrequent hashers/suckers.

Kano's recent hot streak will never come close to making up for the MASSIVE losses sustained during the cold spell that occurred AT A MUCH LOWER DIFF!!! DIFF = TIME= LOSS
They don't/won't tell that a 5% variance on a LOW diff is QUICK and MUCH less of a loss compared to 5% variance AFTER A 50% DIFF INCREASE
Likewise an EARLY 10% block still yields a pitiful payout when the shares are assigned to a block after a few diff increases.

PPLNS is a SYSTEM that BY DESIGN makes your shares EARN FAR LESS by DELAYING them. You are effectively taking yourself OUT of the competition.

[wndsnb]

I will say this if you are ramped up to 2.1ph on Kano pool stay there don’t leave his pool the math is in your favor to stay.

I don't think Kano's block-finding bonus is high enough to make it even with moving to a large pool between now and the halving.

I'll take a wild guess and say the diff will average 16T between now and the halving. That means a 2PH miner should make about 6.3BTC between now and the halving if fully ramped up.

Average time for 2PH to find a block is 397 days.  I think you're chances to find a block in the 200 days before the halving is around 40%. So, if you're a gambler, your expected reward from the bonus is about 0.2BTC*.4 = 0.08BTC.

If you take the 2PH and move it to another PPLNS pool with high enough hashrate to ramp up in less than a few days, you earn the nearly same 6.3BTC, plus 3.14BTC during the ramp down. That is assuming exactly 100% luck and hashrate doesn't fall so low you miss getting blocks at all or the ramp down extends past the halving. If the hashrate at Kano is the same after the halving and diff is 19T, then it would take 236 days to ramp back up, but since the block reward is 1/2, the expected reward is 3.14BTC when fully ramped up, or 1.57BTC if ramping up. So gained 3.14BTC pre-halving, and lost 1.57BTC post-halving, net gain of 1.57BTC.

PPLNS is SUICIDE.......One bad block (300% or more) can kill MONTHS of your earnings... and you get ZERO ramp down..and it happens OFTEN.

Well, setting aside that your whole post is off-topic, your issue is about high variance with a small PPLNS pool, not with PPLNS. A 5000PH pool will find around 220 blocks a month at current diff, so variance is way less and your chance of going a month without a block is pretty much 0. Once a PPLNS pool gets small enough that you don't find a block between diff adjustments, then you'll end up losing significant earnings if diff is increasing. Kano has posted about that many times.


My point is that I expect that any small PPLNS pool under 100PH or so would lose miners leading up to the halving because of the potential profit from switching. Current miners at smaller pools adding gear would also profit more from pointing their new gear to a larger pool. After the halving, I think people will come back so hashrate could be significantly higher post-halving than now.

[philipma1957]

IF you are fully ramped and on kano.is  you are one of 2 miners over 2 ph last I looked.  If both follow your advice  the pool drops from 18.5 to 13.9 ph.  about 202 days to go https://bitcoinblockhalf.com/

how many blocks  would 13.9 ph hit in 202 days at current diff maybe 4    more likely 3 with diff going up.

So the bonus has a bit more value then it appears since leaving the pool affects ramp down payment odds.

The major problem  with

bitminter
ckpool
mmpool
kano.is

is they do not make say a block every 2 days with normal luck. 350 ph does  a block every 2 days with normal luck.

[wndsnb]

Yeah, the time to bail would have been several months ago to have a real chance at getting fully ramped down before the halving.

I'm definitely not trying to give advice here, I'm just speculating that hashrate has fallen and may continue to fall because of this. And that it may rebound after the halving. Hopefully, it will bounce back to levels high enough so miners don't get screwed by the increasing diff.

[alh]

This thread makes me wonder if perhaps "mining pools" will end up undergoing something like what the hardware universe is seeing. The actual hardware mining is clearly moving towards an "industrial scale" in terms of the size of a miner, which has largely crushed the small "home" miner. Will there be a similar move towards "industrial" sized pools to survive?

[philipma1957]

you need about 1 block every other day  to ride out variance.

Some  would say even a block a week or 2 per diff jump..

We are near 100eh  so 500ph is 0.5%  that is a block every 200 blocks.  that will do for a 5n pool.

ramp time is around 1 week.

Last I looked we don't have very many pools in the 400 ph to 1eh range.

we have tiny pools well under 100ph  and big pools over 5eh.

that 100ph to 1eh spot is gone.

[DaveF]

A lot really depends on the price of BTC as we get closer and closer.

If it stays in the $8k to $12k range (and I know that is a big range) then I think a month or 2 after the halving we are going to see a lot of the smaller pools go just about dead as the smaller miners who were just scraping by shut down & sell their gear. I am at that point depending on where it's hosted.

Those that stay will probably wind up at PPS pools because although it is a worse deal you know when and how you get paid, instead of waiting for a block. And lets not sugar coat it, it's been 8 months since a block on CK that is a lot of time to have lost w/o getting paid. Kano is a block or 2 a month. If you are mining and holding for now that is one thing, if you are mining and trading that is another story.

The other issue is the "something else going wrong" problem. Data centers have power issues, storms take out something for a week, etc. it really can be an issue.
Sorry, I do my work and I get paid.

And I know I have said it before and I'll say it again. PPS is better because you can leave when a better deal comes along with no penalty. I have all my rigs pointed at MRR with a stupid high price. If nobody wants to pay it I mine at my regular pool. If they do I am at about 15% above what a miner should make at a 100% PPS pool. I still get regular rentals as people speculate. They could be mining alts, they could be gambling on getting a BTC block, I don't care I am here to make some BTC.

-Dave

[wndsnb]

I don't care I am here to make some BTC.

I'm sure that's the sentiment of the vast majority of miners, not that many diehards out there that will give up profit to support a smaller pool.

PPS is better because you can leave when a better deal comes along with no penalty.

If a PPLNS pool is large enough, there isn't really any penalty, and you'll pay about 1/2 the fee. You may get good or bad luck during short ramp ups or ramp downs, but they will even out over time. For a 5000PH PPLNS pool variance may cause you to make less some months than PPS, but not by that much. And over the course of 6 months or a year I think the chances of performing worse than PPS is very small when paying say 2% vs 4% in fees.

It'll definitely be interesting to see what happens after the halving. Depending on where the price and diff land at the halving, a lot of gear could get turned off all at once. If diff goes flat or declines some right after the halving it erases the penalty for mining at a PPLNS pool that doesn't find multiple blocks per diff adjustment. Could be a bit of a life-line for those smaller pools.

[Sundance_]

Total noob question, sorry to chime in here, but did anyone ever come across a good explanation of the different pool payout structures? Some of them are so oddly worded the only way I feel like you would understand it is through using them but I'm not currently in a position to do that..

Thnx

[Biffa]

Total noob question, sorry to chime in here, but did anyone ever come across a good explanation of the different pool payout structures? Some of them are so oddly worded the only way I feel like you would understand it is through using them but I'm not currently in a position to do that..

Thnx

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