[350 GH/s] "Eligius" (experimental) pool: almost feeless PPS, hoppers welcome

[Luke-Jr]

I would appreciate it if anyone who can switch to Europe without significant loss did so... at the current rate USA will run out of disk space within 48 hours, and it's highly unlikely I'll get the new version done by then.

Edit: To force Europe, use eu.mining.eligius.st for hostname

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[Artefact2]

As the donations have been much less than even covering the costs of running the pool, let alone my expenses of time spent writing code, I cannot guarantee any ETA. I'm doing this basically free of charge, so for the most part it has to live in my "free time". If you want to change that, feel free to help the donation address grow to a reasonable size to cover my expenses, and then I can justify spending more "time I'm doing paid work" on it. My guess as to completion, is maybe 30 hours of work. If this is done in my spare time, it might be 1-2 weeks. In reality, USA will probably run out of disk space within a few days, so I need to hurry regardless.

I like donation system at BTC Guild - you can choose percentage by yourself ... I will be happy to donate on a percentage basis... It should be be easy to implement, I suppose. For example, adding #1 after one's wallet number without spaces would mean 1% donation. What do you think about that?

It's actually not easy at all to implement for us, because we don't use accounts. And we have no way, at the moment, to prove that someone owns a particular address.

[Yeti]

+1

You could use the password for "settings", which is currently unused. If I "log on" with password "share0.01" then I'm stating 1% of my payout should be donated to the pool. "share1.00" would be stupid, thus ignored / set to the highest possible donation (10%?).

I would really like to donate to you on a regular basis and more so automatically. Like scraping off the "change" from the full bitcoin. (I never get more than 1.2 on any payday because of my low hashrate)

[smooth]

It's actually not easy at all to implement for us, because we don't use accounts. And we have no way, at the moment, to prove that someone owns a particular address.

You could use bitcoin transfers.  Address A sends 1.00X bitcoins to a pool address.  The pool sets the donation rate for address A to X% and sends 1.00X bitcoins back.

[Carnth]

You could use the password for "settings", which is currently unused.
I would really like to donate to you on a regular basis and more so automatically.

I agree. Using the password to offer a percentage to be kept for donations is a great idea.
It will help out Luke-Jr and still give miners a choice to donate or not.

Something like:
Password = any three digit number = $donation
$donation = Percent kept by pool.


So, if I send a password as 030, then 3% of my earnings would be donated. 021 = 2.1% donation.
Min 000 (0%) Max 999 (99.9%  wow)
Any thing else in the password should be ignored as normal.

[Artefact2]

It's actually not easy at all to implement for us, because we don't use accounts. And we have no way, at the moment, to prove that someone owns a particular address.

You could use bitcoin transfers.  Address A sends 1.00X bitcoins to a pool address.  The pool sets the donation rate for address A to X% and sends 1.00X bitcoins back.

No, it doesn't work like that. You can force sending coins that come from a particular address. If you could, it would have worked, yes.

You could use the password for "settings", which is currently unused.
I would really like to donate to you on a regular basis and more so automatically.

I agree. Using the password to offer a percentage to be kept for donations is a great idea.
It will help out Luke-Jr and still give miners a choice to donate or not.

Something like:
Password = any three digit number = $donation
$donation = Percent kept by pool.


So, if I send a password as 030, then 3% of my earnings would be donated. 021 = 2.1% donation.
Min 000 (0%) Max 999 (99.9%  wow)
Any thing else in the password should be ignored as normal.

We said it probably 100 times on this topic, but anything that touches the password or the username is out of the question. It's just asking for abuse and problems.

[fnord123]

The US server hashrate stats all went to zero an hour ago or so despite the fact that I was still mining - I assume this is known?

Also, according to the stats page, I have 1.54BTC unpaid reward currently from the US server - when can I expect to receive that?

[Luke-Jr]

The US server hashrate stats all went to zero an hour ago or so despite the fact that I was still mining - I assume this is known?

*** The channel topic is "http://eligius.st/ | Status: USA down for maintenance. Somehow it still found a block, though... | If a pool goes down for more than a minute or two, call Luke-Jr (whois eligi.us for number) | Plz donate: 1RNUbHZwo2PmrEQiuX5ascLEXmtcFpooL | TradeHill referral code: TH-R12147".

Also, according to the stats page, I have 1.54BTC unpaid reward currently from the US server - when can I expect to receive that?

Shortly after the USA server is back online.

[genewitch]

Starting a pool is a PITA, because everyone wants to see BTC, especially new users, and if the pool is brand new, you won't get paid until a block hits, and that could be weeks. How do you get around this? I've thought about bringing up every CPU i have access too to mine on other pools to get BTC together to fund payouts of miners who think they should get paid for existing.

:-/

[HanSolo]

I tried Eligius for my first pool mining experiments because of the simple setup/scheme and low fees, and somehow got the mistaken idea from the wiki that its approach had already been fortified against hopping.

These murky improvised changes are worrisome.. it clouds the simple story of the pool and makes mining during the transition period while the buffer is built a losing proposition.

Here's an idea for transparent payout formula that should be hop-proof. (It may be an old idea.. I'm new here.)

Base payouts on exactly the last N shares submitted, where N < the expected number of shares that will yield one block.

Yes, that means on a long round that takes for example 3N shares to reach, there's no credit at all for the first 2N shares submitted. Tough cookies. They had as much a chance as any other to be rewarded, there was no way to know in advance they wouldn't, and there's no incentive to leave after contributing them because the future is unknown and has as much positive expectation as ever. Ignore Sunk Costs.

What if a round takes less than N shares, say N/2 shares? Reach back to the previous N/2 shares – those that already paid out once – and pay them again. This situation too was just as unpredictable as the chance the next N shares will yield no blocks, so people can't gain any advantage by timing their entry or departure.

Only making the expected return per next-share-contributed be totally independent of the pool history/round-lengths can strategic entry/exit be made profitless. One way to do this is to pay a fixed amount per share no matter what the relation to successful blocks.. but that requires the pool to have a reserve and insure the long dry spells.

This should work too.

[nyargh]

Underpayments on the long blocks will be made up retroactively regardless of whether a miner has continued on the pool or not.

Then how does this punish pool hoppers?  It just delays their payout, but does not diminish it?

[Yeti]

I can't say I'm disappointed or worried about the new system. I "hopped" on to the US pool yesterday after finding out about the new system (and because EU took 33 hrs to find a block ... ugh). Here's my graph:



So you can see that with the US pool and the new system the "Current block estimate" climbs continuously until you have established a sort of "reputation" of being consistent. After 4 blocks it shows the same behavior as the old model (see EU pool), estimating a high number right from the start and then adapting it along the way.

I am not unhappy with that method and if it really thwarts pool hoppers then I'm really satisfied, because that should mean more BTC for me.

[Katapult]

Hi Luke-Jr, first of all thank you for doing all the work you do for this pool.  As a new member who joined less than 2 days ago, I have a few questions / suggestions.

Being located in North America, I started using your US pool to do my mining.  Having a relatively slow vid card at the moment (processing around 80Mhash/sec), it took me 2 days to amass about 0.2455 BTC in the US pool before you closed it down.  Now I'm forced to mine in the EU pool and made about 0.1265 BTC so far.  I'm sure I'm not the only one in this position, but many of us would like to donate a portion of our winnings so you can continue to improve on the pool.  I'm also sure a lot of us newbies have just recently started mining with relatively slow rigs, and as such have not received any payments yet.  These current server issues is delaying our first payments even more, and until I make my first BTC, I have 0 BTC to send away or to donate.  I was hoping to get my first payment by the week-end, but with switching over to the EU server, I don't think that's going to be possible.

1. Would it be possible to combine the earnings of both pools so those of us mining on slower rigs can reach the 1 BTC cash-out amount quicker?  Or create a button on the

In the US pool, there is mention of two different metrics: value and earnings.  When I check the http://eligius.st/~artefact2/us/ website, I can only see my unpaid reward, which is basically the total of the lowest of both value and earnings.

2. Would it be possible to display both the earnings and the value in the report so I have an idea how much more BTC I can expect to gain on future long blocks?

I think one complaint people have is the lack of transparency we have in the process.  Your US pool's HDD was running out of space, so you shut it out.  You mentioned it would be good for another 48 hours, then a few moments later you shut it down anyways.  Those 48 hours would've made the difference for me and I'm sure many others of getting near the the minimum payment quota.  You gave us no ETA on when the US pool will be re-opened, which is a first step for us to begin mining so we can generate enough shares to get our first payment.

3. Would it be possible to give us an ETA of when the US pool will re-open?  Will the upgrade you are doing solve the HDD issues, or are you also waiting for a new / additional HDD before you can reopen it?  Is the EU pool at risk of closing down due to lack of HDD space also?

I understand running a pool comes at a big time and equipment expense from your part, which I'm sure is appreciated by everyone, but if you want the pool to be successful and the donations to come in, you have to help your miners be successful, the large miners and the small miners.

[fnord123]

I liked the original simplicity of Eligius, so the new system concerns me a bit.

I don't like that Eligius has no automatic means of self-funding.  Volunteer efforts nearly always fail, and I don't want Eligius to fail.  As such, I'd prefer that Eligius take some fixed cut (1%, 2%, whatever) of all blocks to pay for itself/make it worth Luke's time to work on.  

[Katapult]

It would be interesting to do a poll to see how much people would be willing to allow an automatic fixed cut to be.  I wouldn't mind a few % if it gave Luke the resources needed to run this full-time.

[Yeti]

+1

I would pay up to 5% to keep the pool running as I'm in it for the lulz and not to optimize my profit.

[fnord123]

I would pay up to 5% to keep the pool running as I'm in it for the lulz and not to optimize my profit.

I think even the pure profit folks would likely prefer a reliable/stable pool with a well funded maintainer than one that is purely volunteer/spare time maintenance only.

I really like Eligius' way of (not) registering clients.  This makes it really easy to add/remove/change my mining HW configuration.  I also like its transparency (except for the recent change).  I really want Eligius to succeed - and having some guaranteed BTC flow into Luke's pocket would help I think.

[Artefact2]

To all of you who want a fee : there's nothing stopping you from donating a small percentage of your payouts back to the pool, really

In fact, if a fee is ever going to appear, I think it should be bounded : for example min(1% per block, 2 BTC a day). In this example, this is the same as taking a fee on only the first 4 blocks of a day. This would avoid the "DeepBit effect" where you can get insanely rich if the pool gets really big.

[fnord123]

To all of you who want a fee : there's nothing stopping you from donating a small percentage of your payouts back to the pool, really

The number of people who would donate would be a very small percentage of the pool.  A small percentage of people donating a small percentage of coins means a small donation overall, and wouldn't solve the problem.

That being said, I'll put my money where my mouth is and send 1% of my total Eligius earnings once I actually get paid the btc I'm owned by it.

[Artefact2]

If we ever see per-address-signing, I may add some "premium" statistics for people who choose to donate a % of their rewards to the pool. But we're definitely not there yet.