P2POOL vs. Pooled Mining - something stinks here

[runeks]

What happens if someone threw a lot of hashing power at p2pool but withheld the winning shares?  Example, a rogue mining pool op who wants to disrupt p2pool, who would value the disruption more than the winning blocks. He would still make most of the income from everyone else who didn't discard blocks.  People would notice underperformance and couldn't do anything about it not could they prove it was even occurring.

This is a valid attack and I think users should be aware that this is possible.
For all we know it could be happening right now.

It's also worth noting though, that this can't go on forever. At some point the pool behind this would run out of money. It's all about return on investment. Can a pool really make more than $170 per week by lowering p2pool's payout by $170 per week?

[1714043367]

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[1714043367]

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[runeks]

^ Right. I'm not sure why I keep forgetting that. That's a good point.

[ThiagoCMC]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool.  

Smells fresh money!!  ^_^

[Frizz23]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool.  

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

[chunglam]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool. 

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

You may still got payout as long as you have shares in p2pool's last 24 hours(or 3 times expected hours to find a block, whichever is smaller) sharechain when block found. 

[eviltt]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool.  

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

thats some crappy luck man.. sorry to hear that

[marcus_of_augustus]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool.  

Smells fresh money!!  ^_^

p2pool coins are guaranteed fresh from the mint .... no need to trust the poolop.

(does anyone else think poolop sounds too much like polyp?)

[thirdlight]

yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

That really is a shame, Frizz23, but I'm glad you're keeping your new found sense of humour!

[DeathAndTaxes]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool. 

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

Maybe it is karma for slandering one of the most important technologies to hit Bitcoin since the blockchain.

Your Karma might improve if you change the thread title to something a little more accurate.

[ThiagoCMC]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool. 

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

Maybe it is karma for slandering one of the most important technologies to hit Bitcoin since the blockchain.

Your Karma might improve if you change the thread title to something a little more accurate.

LOL

Anyway, he is with us now!! Right Frizz23?! Never mind... It is the past...  ^^

[kano]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool. 

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

Maybe it is karma for slandering one of the most important technologies to hit Bitcoin since the blockchain.

Your Karma might improve if you change the thread title to something a little more accurate.

... and if your luck in the past was bad it will be better in the future ...

[m3ta]

9 in 24 hours. How's that smell? Not bad for a 230 GH/s pool.  

It's called variance

Possibly there is a god. Because yesterday my mainboard blew up - and I got 0 of those 9 blocks

Sorry to hear that.
Make sure to come back asap, and without so many doubts and entropy this time - cherish your new mainboard with positive thoughts.

[mintymark]

I am sorry but I also feel that p2pool is not producing the returns of other pools. I agree with the original poster, and my subjective impression  (I have not done an analysis), is that its about half what it should be. Thats a lot.

Now perhaps my miner is set up wrong. Seems unlikely, but possible. Perhaps there is some dimension to this as yet unseen.

I dont buy all these discussions of good and bad luck - its possible to say exactly what the chance of getting a particular payment is given the actual variance of the pool at that time, which can be integrated over the period of test. Knowing this and the shape of the probablity distribution involved, you can calculate all this stuff. Well someone more able than I could!! And if it was half what it ought to be due to fraud or poor performance, then you can be sure this would show very clearly after only a small number of days. P2pool should be more amenable than any pool to analysis.

Could someone do this analysis please?

Its got to the stage where I am going to switch back to another pool because its just not as profitable, or so I perceive.


Edit: I am sorry, I was mistaken about what machines I had pointing to what pools and when.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Its got to the stage where I am going to switch back to another pool because its just not as profitable, or so I perceive.

Nobody can fix your flawed perceptions.  You admit you didn't do any analysis yet "know" payout was half over some also unknown period of time.

[mintymark]

Flawed perceptions aside, I do realise I made a simple mistake in how much power I had directed to which pools and when.

My perceptions would have been correct if I had not made this basic mistake!!

I'd like to withdraw what I said.

[TheHarbinger]

I'd like to withdraw what I said.

When I make a mistake I edit the post with strike tags and explain that I was wrong. Otherwise, someone will read the post and accept it as fact. Just sayin' 

People that accept facts based on what they read on the interwebs...   

[Frizz23]

This is what I see in the logs right now:

Code:

2012-02-17 19:10:42.420000  Pool: 100GH/s Stale rate: 6.4% Expected time to block: 16.4 hours

And I didn't get any credit for the last found blocks: 167198 and 167161

The last blocks I got credit for were 166985 and 166984 (2 days ago).

Did we have a pool split again ... or what's going on here?

[williamj2543]

I am mining with 4 x 6970 at 1680 MH/s.

That should give me about 1.1 BTC/day. Theoretically.

When using pooled mining with Deepbit or Slush that is also what I get. Practically.

Since I use p2pool I only get about 0.7 BTC/day. So only about half of what I should get (edit: 63.6363636363% for all those smartasses).


I installed p2pool properly. See for yourself:

Code:

2012-02-08 14:36:41.012000 Pool stales: 8% Own: ~7% (4-12%) Own efficiency: ~100% (95-103%)
...
Recent: 0.56% >1718MH/s Shares: 780 (63 orphan, 0 dead) Peers: 11 (1 incoming)

According to p2pools prediction we should find about 3 blocks a day:

Code:

2012-02-08 14:36:41.011000 Average time between blocks: 0.37 days

But actually we only find about 1 block per day (at least that is what the output of p2pool tells us).
See for yourself: https://blockexplorer.com/address/1Kz5QaUPDtKrj5SqW5tFkn7WZh8LmQaQi4

2012-02-10 : 0 blocks
2012-02-09 : 5 blocks
2012-02-08 : 6 blocks
2012-02-07 : 1 block
2012-02-06 : 1 block
2012-02-05 : 2 blocks
2012-02-04 : 1 block
2012-02-03 : 0 blocks
2012-02-02 : 2 blocks
2012-02-01 : 2 blocks
2012-01-31 : 2 blocks
2012-01-30 : 2 blocks
2012-01-29 : 2 blocks
2012-01-28 : 2 blocks
2012-01-27 : 1 block
2012-01-26 : 0 blocks
2012-01-25 : 2 blocks
2012-01-24 : 0 blocks


I could accept "we had a bad day" as an explanation/excuse. Or "we had a bad week". But almost 3 bad weeks in a row? Whom are you kidding?

As much as I love the idea of p2p mining - something seriously stinks here!

P.S.
It seems also other users notice this discrepancies: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.msg737409#msg737409

Sorry for reviving this threat, but I find this absolutely fascinating. YOu stated that you make an average of 1.1 BTC a day likes its nothing big. To get that much a day right now it would take roughly 2.5 TH/s. You my friend are probably rich right now.