Neighbourhood Pool Watch

[check_status]

@organofcorti Why do you work so hard to show how bad p2pool is? Do you have a dog in the race?

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[organofcorti]

@organofcorti Why do you work so hard to show how bad p2pool is? Do you have a dog in the race?

No. No dogs in any race. I just provide miners with information. I thought that would have been evident from the other posts on the blog and in this thread, though.

I hope by "working hard" you don't mean "working too hard to a preconceived conclusion". I didn't have any. I'd thought that once I had a good look at the data it would be within certain limits that included normal but it didn't, within a 95% confidence range.

Meni Rosenfeld points out that the conclusions could be incorrect, especially I think this statement:

This is not "bad luck" but inherent in the pool

which is a conclusion one cannot come too really given that it's based on a 95% CI.

So at the moment and before I edit the blog post, I'm looking for more p2Pool data from miners in order to try to get a better idea of what's happening.

Finally, the last points of the conclusion are:

• Given the decentralised nature of the pool, some proponents feel that this is an acceptable price.
• DDoS attacks can also lead to downtime and loss of income for miners. This will not occur at p2Pool.
• The concept of p2Pool is laudable, and I hope it continues to be developed and the round length problem solved.

which summarise my personal feelings about p2Pool nicely.

I'm not "anti" any pool I blog about, but I find it's more useful to miners in general to analyse a pool where there seems to be a number of miners who are unhappy or have concerns (be they validated or not), rather than one that has happy miners.

[Smoovious]

@organofcorti Why do you work so hard to show how bad p2pool is? Do you have a dog in the race?

He was being fair.

It is about the numbers, period.

In fact, his analysis, was helpful in validating some of the concerns some of us have posted about long-term luck.

Whether we like or dislike the results, fitting or not fitting our own conclusions, is irrelevant to the data.

-- Smoov

[Meni Rosenfeld]

@organofcorti Why do you work so hard to provide objective, actionable information to people who would rather bury their head in the sand?

Seriously though, check_status, your comment was completely out of line. OOC has empirically investigated many pools, in many cases he found inadequacies caused by negligence or malice of the operator.

There was a legitimate concern raised about p2pool functioning properly. I learned about it myself some time ago and run some calculations, hoping and expecting to find it well within the acceptable range. What I found was that it is within it, but not well within it.

OOC too was hoping to show how great p2pool is and that there is no problem despite the fear. What he found was that there is weak evidence suggesting a problem. What would you have him do? Hide the information? Lie about it? Or share it so that the relevant people can look into it and possibly fix it (whether it affects the rewards or just the displayed values)? Or even if it is in fact an insolvable problem, being open about it and giving people the chance to make their own decisions in full knowledge of the facts? In fact mechanically presenting the data despite his personal feelings about it is exemplary scientific integrity.

In my day job, whenever I find an inconsistency in our data, people are ecstatic because it means there is a bug that, when fixed, will improve our data considerably. I don't get put down for working hard to show how bad our data is. You should adopt the same mentality.

[Smoovious]

The plus side of his analysis, is, after taking into account the concerns we were already debating in the other thread, the rest of his data confirms that p2pool is being fair with its members when it comes to payouts, which is a good thing for p2pool's reputation.

I also think it is good he ran the data when he did.

Since forrestv has made some changes that should have a direct effect (fingers crossed) on reducing our orphan rate, we now have a 'before' analysis put together, which can be used to compare against p2pool's statistics, post-change, once there are enough data points to make a reasonable analysis, to see exactly how those changes have improved things (fingers still crossed).

-- Smoov

[Graet]

@organofcorti Why do you work so hard to show how bad p2pool is? Do you have a dog in the race?

organofcorti has worked long and hard to show miners the truth and break through misconceptions, not just about p2pool but also about hopping and exploitable payout systems.
I respect and appreciate the work he has done for the Bitcoin community and miners in particular.

I also see organofcorti's work constantly reviewed by Meni Rosenfeld a champion of fair mining and another member of the Bitcoin community I have great respect for.

I do have a "dog in the race" but have no problem being scrutinised. Only those with something to hide would fear it.

Best wishes
Graeme Tee
Ozcoin Pooled Mining Pty Ltd

[check_status]

Given the decentralised nature of the pool, some proponents feel that this is an acceptable price.

Let's disect this statement shall we:

a decentralized pool = an acceptable price

This connotes a sacrifice in some other area. According to the majority of organofcorti's posts, that is profitability. Your using words to paint an unprofitable picture about p2pool that doesn't exist, the blocks attest to this.

Seriously though, check_status, your comment was completely out of line. OOC has empirically investigated many pools, in many cases he found inadequacies caused by negligence or malice of the operator.

It's not out of line at all. There is a preponderance of evidence of organofcorti's p2pool posts where he flat out says or implies p2pool is the least profitable pool. You are not a fan of p2pool either, some of your remarks have been aimed at having p2pool users mine at other non-p2pool pools. A hater in support of another hater, I'm shocked.  

Do we need to get the blocks out to see how p2pool provides one of the highest PPS payouts per gigahash when compared against any pool.

Most people who mine watch what is said and make decisions on what occurs in posts. Many lack knowledge of how to determine profitability of a given pool, they rely on the thoughts and comments of others whom they deem "smart" and therefore, can be swayed by "Inteligent BS".

[organofcorti]

Given the decentralised nature of the pool, some proponents feel that this is an acceptable price.

Let's disect this statement shall we:

a decentralized pool = an acceptable price

This connotes a sacrifice in some other area. According to the majority of organofcorti's posts, that is profitability. Your using words to paint an unprofitable picture about p2pool that doesn't exist, the blocks attest to this.

According to my blog post, the sacrifice is profitability. As I already noted, this statement was stronger than warranted, and I will be changing it to a provable statement at some point soon.

Seriously though, check_status, your comment was completely out of line. OOC has empirically investigated many pools, in many cases he found inadequacies caused by negligence or malice of the operator.

It's not out of line at all. There is a preponderance of evidence of organofcorti's p2pool posts where he flat out says or implies p2pool is the least profitable pool.

Please provide a link to a post where I flat out say that p2Pool is the least profitable pool.

You are not a fan of p2pool either, some of your remarks have been aimed at having p2pool users mine at other non-p2pool pools. A hater in support of another hater, I'm shocked.  

I guess we both must be in the pay of the Big Pool conglomerates then, huh.

Do we need to get the blocks out to see how p2pool provides one of the highest PPS payouts per gigahash when compared against any pool.

Sigh. I already did. Which part of the blog post didn't you follow? I provide the table of the expected parameters ("Theoretical 1") and experimental statistics for p2Pool here to refresh your memory:



The data I based it on is here:

http://pastebin.com/g2ESh1Uf

Highest PPS payout? More than 100%? If the pool is paying out based on the recorded pool Ghps, then it has paid out 0.91 * PPS so far. If the public data is wrong and the payout based on your local hashrate is in the expected range, then in the long term your local payout will approach PPS.

Most people who mine watch what is said and make decisions on what occurs in posts. Many lack knowledge of how to determine profitability of a given pool, they rely on the thoughts and comments of others whom they deem "smart" and therefore, can be swayed by "Inteligent BS".

I'm grateful to anyone who puts time in to reading and understanding my blog. If they can show me a fault in my work, then I'm even more grateful.

Simply implying that I'm "smart" and the analysis "Inteligent BS" is not a constructive criticism. Read the blog and find a mistake that I haven't already owned up to. Otherwise you're just posting "BS". And not very intelligent BS, either.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

There is a preponderance of evidence of organofcorti's p2pool posts where he flat out says or implies p2pool is the least profitable pool.

Even if that's true, offering constructive criticism is not hating. Truly supporting something  is caring enough to try to improve it, nobody needs a yes man.

You are not a fan of p2pool either

I am a fan of p2pool, and I've spoken several times about its importance going forward.

, some of your remarks have been aimed at having p2pool users mine at other non-p2pool pools.

I don't recall ever asking/recommending p2pool miners to switch to a different pool, so this is purely your own speculation on what I might be aiming at.

A few remarks I did make about p2pool:
1. The reward system should be looked at to verify that it is truly hopping-proof, and not just "almost hopping-proof" like the naive variant of PPLNS.
2. Some of its suggested advantages are a bit exaggerated, at least at this point - the network isn't going to crumble tomorrow without p2pool.
3. The correct way to use p2pool is not by directly connecting to it, but with a PPS proxy.

You are not a fan of p2pool either, some of your remarks have been aimed at having p2pool users mine at other non-p2pool pools. A hater in support of another hater, I'm shocked. 

I guess we both must be in the pay of the Big Pool conglomerates then, huh.

[joke] Must be Deepbit. They're also clever enough to hide this connection by paying us to speak ill of the proportional method. [/joke]

[kano]

I am curious about where you got "Round shares" from

Yes I am also glad to see that shares is the basis for the calculations which of course is what you would use (yes I'm stating the obvious) - but it seems that there are those who don't understand this and thus argue about the results due to not using those same results.

My curiosity is simply that the share-chain throws away this information and thus I guess someone must have full logs of the share chain since day one to be able to provide that information.

[organofcorti]

I am curious about where you got "Round shares" from

Yes I am also glad to see that shares is the basis for the calculations which of course is what you would use (yes I'm stating the obvious) - but it seems that there are those who don't understand this and thus argue about the results due to not using those same results.

My curiosity is simply that the share-chain throws away this information and thus I guess someone must have full logs of the share chain since day one to be able to provide that information.

It'a all here: http://p2pool.info/blocks

Round shares are an estimation based on pool hashrate and time between timestamps. It's in order of block height, so sometimes if a round is short and timestamps inaccurate, you get "negative" round shares. This  happens infrequently and doesn't affect the round shares probability distribution significantly. It averages out the same - if you used total hashes and total rounds, you'd get the same mean round length.

Play with the data, see what you get.

[kano]

I am curious about where you got "Round shares" from

Yes I am also glad to see that shares is the basis for the calculations which of course is what you would use (yes I'm stating the obvious) - but it seems that there are those who don't understand this and thus argue about the results due to not using those same results.

My curiosity is simply that the share-chain throws away this information and thus I guess someone must have full logs of the share chain since day one to be able to provide that information.

It'a all here: http://p2pool.info/blocks

Round shares are an estimation based on pool hashrate ...

OK ... not the answer I expected.

hashrate is an estimate based on the number of shares.

Using someone else's calculation then reversing that back to the number of shares is a little risky IMO ...
It assumes that the hashrate was indeed calculated correctly ...

The reason for using the number of shares is that you can't really count shares incorrectly unless you are losing count.
If you aren't counting them correctly, then the hash rate will also be wrong no matter how you calculate it.
You may not have the count, but it you have the count of shares that is certainly better to use than a hashrate estimate converted back to a share count

[organofcorti]

Round shares are an estimation based on pool hashrate ...

OK ... not the answer I expected.

hashrate is an estimate based on the number of shares.

Using someone else's calculation then reversing that back to the number of shares is a little risky IMO ...
It assumes that the hashrate was indeed calculated correctly ...

Yes. Although I can show that the hashrate estimated shares are still consistent with a geometrically distributed probability function, so the if the hashrate estimated round shares are in error then it would likely be a constant error.

Somewhere above I pointed out that if the global hashrate estimate is incorrect, then that could account for the longer than expected round hares. That's why I'm encouraging p2Pool users to PM me their stats. If they're earning the expected amount based on the shares submitted, then the results stand. If they earn on average 10% more than expected then the pool hashrate calculations, and hence calculated round shares are overestimated and and pool luck underestimated for some reason.

The reason for using the number of shares is that you can't really count shares incorrectly unless you are losing count.
If you aren't counting them correctly, then the hash rate will also be wrong no matter how you calculate it.
You may not have the count, but it you have the count of shares that is certainly better to use than a hashrate estimate converted back to a share count

I wouldn't have used the hashrate to shares conversion if I had a choice.

Because p2Pool has variable difficulty shares, you have transform them back to hashes. I would have preferred having each share recorded and then tagged by difficulty and block number, but this data isn't available to me. So I have to trust that the round shares figure they provide are accurate (and the pool's had really bad luck), or show that they are not (and the pool's luck is different, maybe in the expected range).

[check_status]

PPS payout:
86,400 seconds/day * MH/sec / 4294.967296 (megahashes/share) * PPS = Payout/day

Finding expected PPS:
Take Payout/day from Alloscomp's calculator for 1000 MH/s and place into Payout/day of PPS payout to solve expected PPS.

To find your Payout per gigahash/s you will need, a pools avg. GH/s for the period your measuring, # of blocks divided by days.

Finding the expected payout:
According to Alloscomp's Bitcoin Calculator: http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php
If the difficulty factor is 1583177.84744, and the MH/s is 1000, then your Payout per GH/s per day is ⊅0.64
This will be the standard measure, the expected value, for comparing miner, pools or network payouts.

Calculating the past 7 day PPS and payout/day for P2pool:

P2pool 7 day average hashrate: 222 GH/s
Previous 7 days total blocks from 6/14-6/20: 23

23 blocks * 50 / 222 GH/s = 5.18018 / 7 = 7 day avg. Payout per GH/s or ⊅0.740026 per GH/s per day

P2pool has been performing for the past 7 days 15.6% better than expected.

[kano]

That's nice but you actually expect to get 100%, not 115%

It does show that it is possible that luck is now hitting 100% instead of the low 9x%
However, 7 days is way to short to make any conclusions.

This week you should expect to get 0.58255098 a day due to the difficulty rise to 1726566.5591935

[organofcorti]

P2pool has been performing for the past 7 days 15.6% better than expected.

And that's good news for p2Pool miners, but I couldn't base an analysis on just one week. I based it on all rounds since the start of the pool. On all the pool data available, not just the last week, the pool as a whole has solved 535 blocks with 590.83D shares. That's only 90.5% of expected, or 9.5% worse in your terms.

[Aseras]

something else to keep in mind is that work lasts longer than 1 round, sometimes work lasts 2-5 blocks later. so the work is distributed, pps comparisons are somewhat skewed because of this. the pps is going to be lower, but has momentum. so if you quit, you still get paid for a while even though your hashrate is zero.

[rjk]

lol at poll:

Has anything you've read here or on the Neighbourhood Pool Watch blog changed your mining habits for the better?
You may only select up to 15 options.
Yes
No
I don't mine

[organofcorti]

something else to keep in mind is that work lasts longer than 1 round, sometimes work lasts 2-5 blocks later. so the work is distributed, pps comparisons are somewhat skewed because of this. the pps is going to be lower, but has momentum. so if you quit, you still get paid for a while even though your hashrate is zero.

Can you explain this in more detail? What work do you mean is lasting more than one round?

[organofcorti]

lol at poll:

Has anything you've read here or on the Neighbourhood Pool Watch blog changed your mining habits for the better?
You may only select up to 15 options.
Yes
No
I don't mine

Ah, yes, um, well you can select any number of options up to 15, as long as that number is also less than four. Yeah, that's it.

Mods, can we get a poll edit here?