While I have always and still believe MM pool is one of the best around for mining you must understand the mathematics of things:
Lately as I have looked MM pool has averaged about 200 terrahash
(note this is when I have looked at various times in the past few weeks) Now the current network target for bitcoin is almost 49.7 billion and the network has run about even since the last adjustment about 8 days ago meaning blocks are roughly coming off at a ten minute average.
The estimated hashrate of bitcoin is riht now 343 petahash
So if mm pool is average 200 terrahash (and if I am wrong please correct me ) this is about .20 petahash meaning the entire pool is about .000583% of the network. If you were 1% of the network you would expect to solve 1 % of 1008 blocks on average per week
(assuming the network and numbers stay the same which they never do but let's take a snapshot)
Since this is less than the block award of 25 (1% of 1008 is 10.08 btc)
I hope this gives you some realistic expectations.
If you are .000583% of the network in two weeks out of 2016 blocks you should yield about 1.1753 btc
Put another way at 200 terrahash you have about a 50% chance of hitting a block about every 13 days.....at current network difficulty !!
This does not mean you can expect the pool to hit one every 13 days that is a 50% chance and the lower your hash power the more variation luck and in time increasing difficulty can play (although based on block production this cycle in about 5 days difficulty should remain nearly the same )
Since mm pool uses the dgm reward method (read about it in the wiki or on mm pools home page)
you MUST BE PATIENT Yes when you are mining in a pool that is small relative to the entire network you can wait a long time in between rounds.
It is luck when blocks will be solved and recently several were solved in a row.
Now this only discusses btc..... the child coins namecoin, etal.... are much more likely to accumulate in your wallet in mmpool because very few bitcoin pools even merge mine namecoin or the others..... The guild was about the longest runner and it closes in week for good.
If you know your tech you can merge mine btc with as many child coins as you can set up on p2pool but unless you really know what you are doing MMPOOL has the perfect set up AND you will in the end earn just as much bitcoin as you would in Slushes pool , or any of the others or even solo mining (although I would not recommend taking the network on solo at this point....)
Patience is the key and trust in the integrity of the pool operator plus the benefit in knowing you earn the auxuliary coins !!
I hope the operator of mm pool does not object to this, since I don't want to discourage anyone but yes there can be some long rounds.....
You will get paid. And when you do it won't be .0000118 btc like in some pools that you can't even withdraw !!!
Hopefully this math clairifies things..... Also read the details of the pools payout method.....
Good luck
I'm new to this pool, but it seems like this round is taking a VERY long time. Currently at 625:52:38 Am I wrong? I know it's not uncommon for pools to get "stuck" on really long rounds sometimes - is that's what's happening here?
