Question about Pool Mining

[CliveK]

I have a question about pool mining I am hoping someone can give me a hand with.

I have read that with pool mining, miners pretty much run "dummy hash functions" for the majority of the time (I assume for now while there are still few transactions compared to say VISA).  This "dummy hash rate" is run to figure out shares/contribution for the pool in the event one of the miners in the pool manages to "win the round."

So far the closest I have come to a reasonable explanation is that the pool miner solves easier problems assigned by the pool, and one of those easier problems could be the solution to the block.

Can anyone comment on this, or point me in the right direction to see if this is the case.

Thank you

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[eleuthria]

When you're mining, you're actually attempting to brute force a hash to be less than a certain value.  On modern hardware, this is generally billions/trillions (GH/TH) times per second.  Bitcoin only cares about an actual solution which is less than the value required by the current difficulty.

"Difficulty 1" shares are hashes which would have met that requirement if the network difficulty was still 1.  Approximately 1 in 2^32 (~4.2 billion) hashes will produce a result that is at least good enough for difficulty 1.  From that point on, the easiest way to look at is is exponentially:

50% (1 in 2) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 2.
25% (1 in 4) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 4
12.5% for Difficulty 8
6.25% for Difficulty 16
....
1 in 23,844,670,039 chance of matching today's network difficulty.


Pool mining uses this as the basis for allocating block rewards.  If you were solo mining, Bitcoin would simply ignore any results that are not the network difficulty (or better).  With pool mining, the pool has you submit any results that match a certain difficulty (it used to be diff=1, these days it's normally variable based on your speed).  Most pools target very frequent share submissions (10-30 per minute).  This lets them get a fairly accurate estimate of your local hashing speed, and also allows them to give you a fair share of the reward by comparing how much effective work you have submitted with the rest of the pool's miners.



The "problem" you're being given by the pool never changes, just the quality of the answers you give back.

[devonne]

When you're mining, you're actually attempting to brute force a hash to be less than a certain value.  On modern hardware, this is generally billions/trillions (GH/TH) times per second.  Bitcoin only cares about an actual solution which is less than the value required by the current difficulty.

"Difficulty 1" shares are hashes which would have met that requirement if the network difficulty was still 1.  Approximately 1 in 2^32 (~4.2 billion) hashes will produce a result that is at least good enough for difficulty 1.  From that point on, the easiest way to look at is is exponentially:

50% (1 in 2) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 2.
25% (1 in 4) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 4
12.5% for Difficulty 8
6.25% for Difficulty 16
....
1 in 23,844,670,039 chance of matching today's network difficulty.


Pool mining uses this as the basis for allocating block rewards.  If you were solo mining, Bitcoin would simply ignore any results that are not the network difficulty (or better).  With pool mining, the pool has you submit any results that match a certain difficulty (it used to be diff=1, these days it's normally variable based on your speed).  Most pools target very frequent share submissions (10-30 per minute).  This lets them get a fairly accurate estimate of your local hashing speed, and also allows them to give you a fair share of the reward by comparing how much effective work you have submitted with the rest of the pool's miners.



The "problem" you're being given by the pool never changes, just the quality of the answers you give back.

Okay, your opinions are noted.Thanks.

[jonnybravo0311]

When you're mining, you're actually attempting to brute force a hash to be less than a certain value.  On modern hardware, this is generally billions/trillions (GH/TH) times per second.  Bitcoin only cares about an actual solution which is less than the value required by the current difficulty.

"Difficulty 1" shares are hashes which would have met that requirement if the network difficulty was still 1.  Approximately 1 in 2^32 (~4.2 billion) hashes will produce a result that is at least good enough for difficulty 1.  From that point on, the easiest way to look at is is exponentially:

50% (1 in 2) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 2.
25% (1 in 4) Difficulty 1 results can also match Difficulty 4
12.5% for Difficulty 8
6.25% for Difficulty 16
....
1 in 23,844,670,039 chance of matching today's network difficulty.


Pool mining uses this as the basis for allocating block rewards.  If you were solo mining, Bitcoin would simply ignore any results that are not the network difficulty (or better).  With pool mining, the pool has you submit any results that match a certain difficulty (it used to be diff=1, these days it's normally variable based on your speed).  Most pools target very frequent share submissions (10-30 per minute).  This lets them get a fairly accurate estimate of your local hashing speed, and also allows them to give you a fair share of the reward by comparing how much effective work you have submitted with the rest of the pool's miners.



The "problem" you're being given by the pool never changes, just the quality of the answers you give back.

Okay, your opinions are noted.Thanks.

They aren't his opinions, they are facts.  Since he runs a pretty decently sized pool (BTCGuild), I'm quite sure he knows how pools work

[mbaeichapareiko]

Hi,  Thanks for the info. 

So if I just joined btcguild with approximately   1.5   -  3.3 th/s  hashing ,    which mining team do you suggest would be the best team to join for best chance of getting some btc returned or is it all luck?

Thanks

[kgb2mining]

Hi,  Thanks for the info.  

So if I just joined btcguild with approximately   1.5   -  3.3 th/s  hashing ,    which mining team do you suggest would be the best team to join for best chance of getting some btc returned or is it all luck?

Thanks

Teams just matter for the statistics, it has no effect on your payouts.  You configure your miners, workers and info to your account, and payouts go to you.  You can form or join a team if you want to compile stats and get bragging rights for having or being part of the team that has the highest hashrate or gets the most blocks, but it does nothing for your earnings.