[obsolete] New public p2pool node that pays merged mining income to p2pool

[mdude77]

In an effort to promote p2pool, I'm going to try something new, and afaik, something that hasn't been done before.

I managed to snatch up a VPS for a ridiculously low price.  I'm running a public p2pool node on it with 0% fee.  I'm merge mining NMC, DVC, IXC, I0C, GRP, FSC, and HUC.

All that's the same as many other nodes out there.

What I'm doing different is not keeping the merged mine proceeds for myself.  I'm not even using them to compensate for the VPS fee.  

Instead, I'll be donating the BTC equivalent back into p2pool, for all p2pool users to share.  Every single satoshi!


The VPS is located in Los Angles, CA, the opposite side of the country of me.  Not ideal for me, but it was the one that was available, so I grabbed it. I'm pointing the majority of my hashpower there - a meager 1 TH/s.  I hope to see a lot more from others soon.

The pool address is http://96.44.166.190:9332.  I intend to find a domain name for it soon, but haven't got there yet.

I also intend to put one of the newer front end web UIs on the node, but for now I'm just using the default.


***FOR THOSE WHO ARE NEW TO P2POOL***
Set your username to the BTC payout address you want to be paid to.  Password doesn't matter.  
P2pool is PPLNS.  That means it takes roughly 3 days for your payout value per block to peak.
P2pool uses an alt chain to determine how much of each block found goes to each user.  Like bitcoin, the difficulty for the alt chain varies based on the hash rate of p2pool.  Unlike bitcoin, it changes every 30 seconds.  As of now, the share difficulty is at about 1.1million.  Take that into consideration when determining how long it'll take you to find a share in the alt chain.
P2pool pays out transaction fees.  The block finder also gets a small reward.
Like every other pool, p2pool is affected by luck and variance.  That means there will be good days, and there will be bad days. It also means the more hashpower the pool has, the lower the variance, and the more regularly blocks are found.
Point your browser to http://96.44.166.190:9332 to see the current stats.


Comments/suggestions/feedback are welcome.

M

[jonnybravo0311]

mdude77, I read about this in the p2pool thread.  If I understand it correctly, for every block of NMC, IXC, DVC your p2pool node finds, you will be converting them into BTC and donating to the entire p2pool network.

What a great idea, and a bit of incentive for folks to mine on p2pool.  I really like it, and should my own local node ever be lucky enough to find another block I will follow through and do the same as I currently merge mine as well.

[mdude77]

mdude77, I read about this in the p2pool thread.  If I understand it correctly, for every block of NMC, IXC, DVC your p2pool node finds, you will be converting them into BTC and donating to the entire p2pool network.

What a great idea, and a bit of incentive for folks to mine on p2pool.  I really like it, and should my own local node ever be lucky enough to find another block I will follow through and do the same as I currently merge mine as well.

That's correct.  I was hoping I'd inspire others to do the same as well.

I don't have IXC running yet.  Not sure I have enough resources for it.

Huntercoin (HUC) is also available.  But it's a HUGE resource hog, definitely can't do that.

M

[jonnybravo0311]

I just checked out HUC.  Interesting concept - build mining into a game.  I'll look into setting up my node to merge mine it.  Will have to compile the daemon from source (no Qt version for my Mac, and I really don't feel like trying to screw with the code to make one).  I've had nothing but problems trying compile Qt clients - consistently get weird errors.  It's probably something in my environment, but I haven't had the time to figure it out.

[mdude77]

I just checked out HUC.  Interesting concept - build mining into a game.  I'll look into setting up my node to merge mine it.  Will have to compile the daemon from source (no Qt version for my Mac, and I really don't feel like trying to screw with the code to make one).  I've had nothing but problems trying compile Qt clients - consistently get weird errors.  It's probably something in my environment, but I haven't had the time to figure it out.

I had no problems compiling it.  But wow, it uses a lot of memory on a resource confined VPS.  Now if only I could run it locally ... but I'm bandwidth constrained here.

M

[mdude77]

Despite the fact that I'm still the only one on my node, I just divvied out the funds.  I had to set the threshold pretty low otherwise only about 6 addresses would get anything.  Most users (myself included) got about dust, and who knows long it'll take to confirm, but it's something.

Now if more ops would do this it would add up to something.

2a8dda6727186bce7a44d10b66cdca4287fdca5b6f47b39fb374bd54bbb7c748

M

[jonnybravo0311]

Despite the fact that I'm still the only one on my node, I just divvied out the funds.  I had to set the threshold pretty low otherwise only about 6 addresses would get anything.  Most users (myself included) got about dust, and who knows long it'll take to confirm, but it's something.

Now if more ops would do this it would add up to something.

2a8dda6727186bce7a44d10b66cdca4287fdca5b6f47b39fb374bd54bbb7c748

M

Thank you for your contribution.  It was definitely dust, and has yet to get a single confirmation.  That, however, is not the point.  The fact that you are giving back to the community is.  As I stated, should my node ever find a block again, I will also donate the proceeds gained from the merge-mined coins.

[jonnybravo0311]

Would you mind explaining/sharing the command you used to change thresholds and send the donations?  Looking at the P2Pool merge mining guide doesn't really explain things other than to say, "To make a donation to everyone use the following..."

Thanks!

[mdude77]

Would you mind explaining/sharing the command you used to change thresholds and send the donations?  Looking at the P2Pool merge mining guide doesn't really explain things other than to say, "To make a donation to everyone use the following..."

Thanks!

Actually it does explain it:

Note that the amount you donate will be allocated to recent miners in proportion to the amount of work they've done in the last 24 hours or so, but all the miner whose shares of the donated amount are less than 0.01 BTC will have their shares combined into a single amount which is awarded to one of them at random, with the chance of winning this 'lottery' weighted by the miner's recent amount of work done. You can change this 0.01 BTC threshold like this, for example, which says to pay 10 BTC, but to share it amongst more miners that the default, cutting off at 0.001 BTC instead of at 0.01 BTC.

~/src/bitcoin/src/bitcoind sendmany "" "$(GET http://127.0.0.1:9332/patron_sendmany/10/0.001)"

The 0.001 at the end is the key.  I think I ended up putting 4 zeros in there.  I didn't want to drop all the little guys out.  Try pasting the http:// part to your p2pool node to see what the output is.  I kept adding zeros until it looked like I got a lot of users.

Also, GET didn't work for me.  I had to use WGET -O- instead.

Looks like the dust finally confirmed. 

https://blockchain.info/tx/2a8dda6727186bce7a44d10b66cdca4287fdca5b6f47b39fb374bd54bbb7c748

M

[jonnybravo0311]

Yeah, it confirmed this morning.  Again, thanks for giving back to the community.

I didn't see the threshold discussion, but had tried playing around with the patron_sendmany on my node to see what would happen.  Now that I know about how to set the threshold, it makes a world of difference in the number of addresses receiving part of the donation.

[mdude77]

My node is down for a bit for some maintenance.  No one affected by that except me, but I thought I'd post it just in case someone decided to try.

M

[mdude77]

My pool is back up for the time being.  More work is coming, but it'll likely be at least a day before I start into it.

M

[Angela8488]

P2pool current hashrate is very small, and now into mining comparison worthwhile.

[mdude77]

P2pool current hashrate is very small, and now into mining comparison worthwhile.

It's actually higher than it's been.  It'll also get bigger if you join.

Nowadays with pools having problems and/or questionable continuous bad luck, in my mind, it's the only realistic option.

M

[mdude77]

My node is coming down for maintenance.  I'm not the only there anymore, thank you whoever you are!

I have a lot more memory on the node now, so I'm going to be rebuilding the node to use a 64-bit OS to make use of it.  I'll be modifying the bitcoin config to allow larger blocks and lower transaction values to make blocks more valuable.  I also intend to adding merged mining for Huntercoin, Groupcoin, and Fusioncoin.  As before, all merge mining proceeds get converted to BTC and fed into p2pool for all users to benefit.

I expect my node to be down for most of the weekend.  The longest part will be downloading all the blockchains.  Bitcoin and namecoin get priority, but they'll also take the longest.

M

[mdude77]

My node is back up.  Everything is merge mining except huntercoin.. that one is still downloading.

M

[mdude77]

It was up.  Looks like my host is having problems...

M

[norgan]

nice work mate, I got my little piece of that. I just want to get my stats up and some more drops into the merged wallets (only one hit so far) then i'll send them on to your pay back wallet.

Congrats on the additional miner and keep up the good work.

[mdude77]

nice work mate, I got my little piece of that. I just want to get my stats up and some more drops into the merged wallets (only one hit so far) then i'll send them on to your pay back wallet.

Congrats on the additional miner and keep up the good work.

thanks!

M

[norgan]

you need to pretty up your front end a bit. Happy to share some of my code if you like, just ask.