Bringing decentralization back to the Bitcoin network.

[paraipan]

I do agree that p2pool is eventually going to become more important - however in its current form it cannot scale well to support a huge network of miners. The more ideal situation will be to have p2pool being partially centralized and partially decentralized - this would spread the load and allow for the easier configuration that is currently possible with a regular pool.

Why can't p2pool scale?

cause share difficulty works exactly as bitcoin blocks difficulty, increases with the number of miners, so you would have to spend a few days getting a share in a very large p2pool. In the future we will see a few distinct medium-sized p2pools that keep an acceptable share difficulty for their miners, i'm sure about that.

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[jago25_98]

 I can understand why this is a better solution than solo mining psychologically but is there a technical advantage?

 How many people solo mine? Those people can achieve some good anonymity sending coins to an offline address and then selling the private key.

[jojo69]

Sorry to repeat myself, but I really want an answer and its getting lost in a growing thread...


Is it true that other small pools, those in the "other known" slice, can integrate into P2Pool as a "node"?

[Red Emerald]

Is it true that other small pools, those in the "other known" slice, can integrate into P2Pool as a "node"?

Any pool should be able to integrate into p2pool as a node.  They can even set fees.

However, most pools probably won't want to do this because of the increased share difficulty.

[gnar1ta$]

Is it true that other small pools, those in the "other known" slice, can integrate into P2Pool as a "node"?

Any pool should be able to integrate into p2pool as a node.  They can even set fees.

However, most pools probably won't want to do this because of the increased share difficulty.

Isn't the p2pool share difficulty the difficulty of the miner finding the p2pool share not the difficulty of the pool finding a block?

[Red Emerald]

Is it true that other small pools, those in the "other known" slice, can integrate into P2Pool as a "node"?

Any pool should be able to integrate into p2pool as a node.  They can even set fees.

However, most pools probably won't want to do this because of the increased share difficulty.

Isn't the p2pool share difficulty the difficulty of the miner finding the p2pool share not the difficulty of the pool finding a block?

Yes, but this difficulty will get larger as p2pool gets larger.  People running miners with < 1 GH/s are going to take hours to find a p2pool share. With a traditional pool, the share difficulty is almost always 1.

Can you explain this to me? Try to do it in a way an 8 year old would understand. Thank you.

Assuming you already have bitcoind setup with "server=1", you probably already have the knowledge to get this done.  Rather than having your miners connect to whatever pool server you are currently using, you have them connect to p2pool.

I run p2pool with a command similar to this.

Code:

./run_p2pool.py -a <my bitcoin payout address> --p2pool-port 8335 -w 8336 --merged-url http://127.0.0.1:9332/ --merged-userpass <namecoind rpcuser>:<namecoind rpcpass> -f <fee percent you want for being the pool op> <bitcoind rpcuser> <bitcoind rpcpass>

This gives merged mining with namecoin.  I use non-default ports since they conflict with namecoind.    I'm not sure how you could figure out payout of the alt-chain for your miners. I'm sure theres a way though.

Users would then point their workers to port 8336 (or whatever else you decide) and set their username to the address where they want payout and done.

At least, I'm pretty sure thats how it works. I'm running it as a backup for when your pool goes down.

The readme at https://github.com/forrestv/p2pool is pretty much all you need as far as install instructions.  It's not too hard.

Your miners might freak out because their shares/minute will go down, but thats because of the variable difficulty shares and isn't actually anything to worry about.

[Transisto]

People keep mining at deepbit for ONE reason :
DeepBit hides to them by how much they're being ripped off.

DO YOU SEE THIS ? :  

(deepbit homepage)

Pay Per Share: You get a fixed amount for every share submitted. This method has zero variance but slightly higher fee (because pool takes the risk). Recommended if you like steady payouts.

We pay a competitive price:
    Pay per share: 0.00003441081600403 BTC per every submitted share.

PPS Value = 0.00003823425 BTC/shares

0.00003823425 / 0.0000344108160 = ~11.11% FEES

 (Sorry for size/caps, I am really pissed.)

The word "Slightly" is meaningless and is being abused hard in this case.

Claim of "Competitive price" is totally false. (not a single pool have higher fees)


Look at bittenbob post :

The problem is there aren't very many good pools to choose from. I started with DeepBit because there was some sense of security of being with the biggest pool. I switched to ABCPool because of their no fee at the time which they have since raised to a whopping 4%. Since the 4% fee their reliability has taken a dump and I have lost a lot of mining productivity due to this. If it was a 0% pool then it wouldn't be a problem but at 4% this is just unacceptable. As a result I am very seriously considering a move back to DeepBit. I don't like all the mining power concentrated in one pool but I do see the benefit of that pool. I do understand that pools take money to operate and the smaller the pool the more difficult it becomes but they do have to compete with the bigger pools and they have to remember that.

If a user with 600+ posts can be so clueless then we can't expect any better from the average Deepbit miner.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Well, If there is a need to run more p2p pools I will be happy to support one (money/time) if the community helps me. I lack programing skills or anything like that.

The best way to handle it would simply update p2pool protocol to query nodes and those advise new nodes on which subpools exist.  New nodes join the smallest subpool.  If a subpool gets too large it splits after the next block into two smaller subpools.  If subpools die out (or get too small) they join other subpools.

Obviously handling all this is a distributed decentralized manner is complex but it would allow an arbitrary number of p2pools to co-exist.

[Transisto]

(Sorry for size/caps, I am really pissed.)

I appreciate the information, and I think more people need to wake up and realize they are giving up more than they are gaining when mining at a traditional pool.

That said, I would prefer this thread didn't become a forum for bashing any particular pool. I tried to keep it very generic in the OP.

Perhaps starting a new thread discussing what you've posted here would be not only be appropriate, it would develop into more productive conversation.

Don't get me wrong, the big pools need to go or give up some power. I want this thread to be about how we can speed up the process. I don't want it to turn into a bash fest.   

Thanks Holliday, I really apreciate the time you've put into this.  But the fastest/easiest method for now is a DeepBit awareness campaign.  I think good competition itself can bring equilibrium.

Given the blatant lies by DeepBit to it's customers, We do not have to convince anyone to move elsewhere arguing network security.

I'd also like to point out that setting up p2pool is way,way to complicated as it is.

[finway]

I like p2pool.

[gnar1ta$]

I'd also like to point out that setting up p2pool is way,way to complicated as it is.

I think the instructions are way to complicated, the setup isn't that difficult.  Many miners already run a miner and the bitcoin client, just add in p2pool node software (which is the easiest) and reconfigure and it's done. I don't use Windows though, maybe it's just easier on Linux - but I suck at Linux and hate command line and I just needed a couple questions answered and it was done.  The subsidies more than made up for the down time.

[PrintCoins]

The best way to bring decentralization to the network is just to mine for yourself. I don't know what I think about so much control of the network going to so few.

[gnar1ta$]

The best way to bring decentralization to the network is just to mine for yourself. I don't know what I think about so much control of the network going to so few.

That's the idea behind p2pool, solo mining with pooled reward.  Unless you have a 100Ghash farm hiding in your garage to reduce the variance???

[Rassah]

I'd also like to point out that setting up p2pool is way,way to complicated as it is.

I disagree. The instructions only make it seem way more complicated than it actually is. Since I already had my bitcoin configured for remote access (server=1 with login and password), all I had to do was download p2pool and cgminer, and then run p2pool and cgminer with option parameters copy/pasted from instructions (suggest they include those options in .bat files for Windows users). Downloading and running two files isn't all that complicated.

I'm also very glad switching has forced me to try cgminer. I used to use GUI Miner, since I'm not too tech savvy, but that involved manually testing the overclocking limits of my GPUs, then running Sapphire TRIXX to manually overclock my cards every time I wanted to mine, and deal with coming home to a locked up computer if my cards accidentally overheated. With cgminer, my overclocking is done automatically, and it monitors my temperatures and controls fan speeds and such for me. I just run a .bat file to start it, and forget about it. Despite my average hashing speed being about 20 to 40Mhash higher than before, I haven't had a mining related system lockup in a week, where as they were fairly common with GUI miner.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

+1 to OP.

The centralization of pools is currently probably the weakest point of Bitcoin currently. We should remember that CIA/FBI/Governments/Banks/Whatever can have extremely large amounts of money & fire/manpower to bribe/intimidate pool operators.

This should be fixed as soon as possible.

[Red Emerald]

I'd also like to point out that setting up p2pool is way,way to complicated as it is.

I disagree...

I also disagree. I didn't think p2pool was that hard to setup.  I am pretty experienced with command line linux, but all you have to do is install a couple packages (that are listed in the readme so thats no trouble) and start up python.

What part is too complicated? Where are people getting stuck?

[Transisto]

I'd also like to point out that setting up p2pool is way,way to complicated as it is.

I disagree...

I also disagree. I didn't think p2pool was that hard to setup.  I am pretty experienced with command line linux, but all you have to do is install a couple packages (that are listed in the readme so thats no trouble) and start up python.

What part is too complicated? Where are people getting stuck?

I found it to be easier to start a new pool than to run p2pool,  If people were starting many more pool and would not be all mining at the "worst" pool there would be far less centralization.

For one, it require running a bitcoind with an up to date blockchain.  And this has to be done on every rig or you have to point your miners to your server pc.

The one thing we must ask ourself is ; How complicated is it installing p2pool Vs. understanding Deepbit is stealing you at the rate of 10% ?

[chrisrico]

I sent a donation of 9.74853958 BTC to the address in the OP, but I will also be sending out a 10 BTC donation to the miners using the following command sometime in the next week.

Code:

bitcoind sendmany "" "$(GET http://forre.st:9332/patron_sendmany?total=10.0)"

[chrisrico]

As promised.

[gnar1ta$]

Thank you!