Should we (the investors, I mean) help incentivize p2pool?

[oda.krell]

It sounds like money needs to be spent to making mining for P2Pool the easiest, slickest, smoothest way to go.

As a long time supporter of P2Pool I will say that this is the most important step.

Imagine if it was integrated into the reference client. Imagine if you could start mining directly to an address you control simply by plugging in your ASIC device and clicking a "start mining" button.

Let's say it is (integrated into the reference client -- which wouldn't be that easy to achieve actually, probably a bit of a hot topic to do that). Would that actually help? It was my understanding many miners aren't even using the reference client, so what would the impact be? Correct me please, if I'm wrong.

[Hyena]

It sounds like money needs to be spent to making mining for P2Pool the easiest, slickest, smoothest way to go.

As a long time supporter of P2Pool I will say that this is the most important step.

Imagine if it was integrated into the reference client. Imagine if you could start mining directly to an address you control simply by plugging in your ASIC device and clicking a "start mining" button.

Reference client integration is a nice idea. A GUI wrapper for the miner software would be a cool too. The GUI would automatically connect to a P2Pool for example. It can definitely be done and it would be even more convenient than mining for whatever other pool (mainly because P2Pool does not require any form of user account registration, ever).

[xDan]

Those already using P2Pool are not necessarily those best suited to suggesting enhancements. The most useful opinions might be from those, like zimmah, who currently use GHash and don't want to switch. They are the target, right?

I'm especially interested in the opinion of larger stakeholders on this matter, i.e. those who hold large positions in BTC. The speculation forum seemed like a good place to get a reaction from them, only, so far nobody picked up that invitation.

Define "large position"

I think the really big holders are too busy sitting in their castles to comment or fund something important like this... pffft, most people are just mindless speculators with little care or understanding of the underlying technology. Tragedy of the commons and all that.
/pessimism

[norgan]

The lead developer showed renewed interest very recently and has become more active on github and the forum. There are some technical issues to sort in regards to scalability and hardware compatibility.
I've done some work on the front end, again in my sig.
You can run a p2pool node on Windows by simply running the executable and pointing your miner at it or just finding a node close by.
It's pretty easy and knowing some decent donations are coming in and understanding variance would make it easier for miners to make the change.
Now for some real work figures:

In the last 2 weeks p2pool hash rate has dropped significantly, from 700th/s to now around 300gh/s, this happened just as the main dev became more active. Since in that same two weeks p2pool only got a block every the days or more I can only assume miners got impatient with the variance and switched pools, big mistake!
In the last 36 hours five blocks were found.
At around 230gh/s I've got around $15/block on those last blocks. Over $60us in payments on only 230gh/s is pretty nice and throughout those two weeks we got a dozen or so donations, each quite small but its a nice little fill in to keep you interested while blocks are not coming in.

If the donations were a little larger, they could certainly help reduce variance and make miners feel better about staying with p2pool during times between blocks.

There is a bounty address setup for the main dev for when he delivers some new code and nodes can donate (turned on by default but often disabled, the last block for example had a 1% donation turned on) so if miners understood the 1% fee and the developer is inspired to spend more time improving code then the system self reciprocates to the dev.
The 1% is turned off to help encourage miners to use p2pool nodes, my node has no fees for example.

[Hunterbunter]

That's kind of what I'm afraid of... individual donations coming in, but no sustained awareness yet that this should be a thing for everyone who holds a relevant stake in Bitcoin and ever wondered if 51% hashpower in the hands of one conventional pool is maybe not such a great idea.

(EDIT) One other remark: once p2pool gets big enough, variance should be less of an issue than it is now, so donations would be needed only to *sustain* miners staying in p2pool, while currently we need to give extra incentives to them in order for them to *join* the pool (because for reasons of high variance when mining with a low total hashrate, they would possibly better served to join a larger pool). Correct?

Yes, education on blockchain 'insurance' is key for asset holders. There have been several discussions on reddit about this, and one comment which stood out was that P2Pool was not yet scalable. If a ton of people joined p2pool (like 50% of the network), the sharechain difficulty goes through the roof, and finding a share will become very difficult...so it'll be like solo mining blocks all over again, except slightly easier with lesser reward since it's still split (so still less variance than pure solo mining).

Regarding hashrates, yes you are correct. There is still the problem of p2pool share difficulty getting too high for 'low speed' miners, but the dev (Forrestv) is considering solutions to that, like multiple sharechains, etc.

I'm also thinking about ways to create a hybrid node. A centralized node, if you will, running on the P2Pool network. This will allow me to create services similar to the other centralized pools (whatever people especially like about GHash), while still making them indirectly mine on p2pool. There's still the risk of the hybrid pool growing too large (eg >51% of the sharechain), but that's a serious problem already...Petamine were going to trial p2pool, but it looks like they didn't, because they would immediately have had >50% of p2pool's mining power. Things like hybrid nodes would be more useful when there are large mining groups on p2pool, so smaller miners could still turn a coin.

[norgan]

Here is my transaction list for my measly 230gh/s over the last two and a bit days. Hope this inspires some miners to join:

 
 Today 01:35:48  

0.02183437 BTC

 
 2014-06-27 15:06:28 - donation

0.00011201 BTC

 
 2014-06-27 01:18:02

0.02453485 BTC

 
 2014-06-26 19:59:57

0.02434502 BTC


 2014-06-26 15:01:00 - donation

0.00010977
 
 2014-06-26 07:07:09

0.02488561 BTC

 
 2014-06-25 18:42:54

0.01801932 BTC

 
 2014-06-25 15:01:48 - Donation

0.00009016 BTC

[oda.krell]

Those already using P2Pool are not necessarily those best suited to suggesting enhancements. The most useful opinions might be from those, like zimmah, who currently use GHash and don't want to switch. They are the target, right?

I'm especially interested in the opinion of larger stakeholders on this matter, i.e. those who hold large positions in BTC. The speculation forum seemed like a good place to get a reaction from them, only, so far nobody picked up that invitation.

Define "large position"

I think the really big holders are too busy sitting in their castles to comment or fund something important like this... pffft, most people are just mindless speculators with little care or understanding of the underlying technology. Tragedy of the commons and all that.
/pessimism

Don't really want to force anyone here to reveal his net worth, it's a tricky subject. So I understand it's better done in a don't ask, don't tell manner, but like I wrote above, I know from the discussions in here that there's a decent number of 100+ BTC holders on this forum, which is what I'd call a large(ish) BTC position, agreed?

But in the end, it doesn't really matter how many coins you have, the idea would be that if you have a stake in it, you should be motivated out of rational self interest to keep the network decentralized (as much as possible at least). Donating, say, around 0.1% of your BTC worth to a cause like this seems reasonable to me.

So, say if you're sitting on around 100 coins, that means donating 0.1 coins. At a total of around 1000, 1 coin. I'd expect we could get a pretty decent amount of donations together like that, if people are convinced it's a worthy cause.

[byronbb]

I was thinking that eventually bitcoin holders may have to actually mine at a small loss in order to protect their coins. This would then mean bitcoin would be a depreciating asset? Once we see a leveling of the hash rate my hope is mining will return to the beginnings when individuals could run machines at home and collectively "donate" hashes for the collective. As long as enough people did this it would be effective.

[oda.krell]

Yes, education on blockchain 'insurance' is key for asset holders. There have been several discussions on reddit about this, and one comment which stood out was that P2Pool was not yet scalable. If a ton of people joined p2pool (like 50% of the network), the sharechain difficulty goes through the roof, and finding a share will become very difficult...so it'll be like solo mining blocks all over again, except slightly easier with lesser reward since it's still split (so still less variance than pure solo mining).

Regarding hashrates, yes you are correct. There is still the problem of p2pool share difficulty getting too high for 'low speed' miners, but the dev (Forrestv) is considering solutions to that, like multiple sharechains, etc.

I'm also thinking about ways to create a hybrid node. A centralized node, if you will, running on the P2Pool network. This will allow me to create services similar to the other centralized pools (whatever people especially like about GHash), while still making them indirectly mine on p2pool. There's still the risk of the hybrid pool growing too large (eg >51% of the sharechain), but that's a serious problem already...Petamine were going to trial p2pool, but it looks like they didn't, because they would immediately have had >50% of p2pool's mining power. Things like hybrid nodes would be more useful when there are large mining groups on p2pool, so smaller miners could still turn a coin.

Thanks for another really interesting post.

Alright, so that's something I didn't know: that p2pool doesn't scale that well yet assuming a big increase in hash rate. Is this solvable, in the near/mid future?

[norgan]

Yes, education on blockchain 'insurance' is key for asset holders. There have been several discussions on reddit about this, and one comment which stood out was that P2Pool was not yet scalable. If a ton of people joined p2pool (like 50% of the network), the sharechain difficulty goes through the roof, and finding a share will become very difficult...so it'll be like solo mining blocks all over again, except slightly easier with lesser reward since it's still split (so still less variance than pure solo mining).

Regarding hashrates, yes you are correct. There is still the problem of p2pool share difficulty getting too high for 'low speed' miners, but the dev (Forrestv) is considering solutions to that, like multiple sharechains, etc.

I'm also thinking about ways to create a hybrid node. A centralized node, if you will, running on the P2Pool network. This will allow me to create services similar to the other centralized pools (whatever people especially like about GHash), while still making them indirectly mine on p2pool. There's still the risk of the hybrid pool growing too large (eg >51% of the sharechain), but that's a serious problem already...Petamine were going to trial p2pool, but it looks like they didn't, because they would immediately have had >50% of p2pool's mining power. Things like hybrid nodes would be more useful when there are large mining groups on p2pool, so smaller miners could still turn a coin.

Thanks for another really interesting post.

Alright, so that's something I didn't know: that p2pool doesn't scale that well yet assuming a big increase in hash rate. Is this solvable, in the near/mid future?

Forrest has been updating the p2pool code and I feel a solution to this may be imminent.

[spooderman]

excellent thread. I will gladly donate 100mbtc/0.1btc to the effort. I currently mine on eligius but I have 6gh. I do next to nothing, and from what I understand, I'm too small a fish to use p2pool.

[xDan]

But in the end, it doesn't really matter how many coins you have, the idea would be that if you have a stake in it, you should be motivated out of rational self interest to keep the network decentralized (as much as possible at least). Donating, say, around 0.1% of your BTC worth to a cause like this seems reasonable to me.

So, say if you're sitting on around 100 coins, that means donating 0.1 coins. At a total of around 1000, 1 coin. I'd expect we could get a pretty decent amount of donations together like that, if people are convinced it's a worthy cause.

That all sounds great. I would donate maybe 0.5% - 1% of my stake to some concrete p2pool improvement proposals, that had been suggested (and voted on) by miners and GHash users. I would not donate any directly to miners though as I don't see that being a long term solution.

It probably bears waiting to see about this scalability issue before actually soliciting donations though.

[sickpig]

Actually P2Pool mining is really simple because you don't need to register any account anywhere. You can find existing P2pool nodes here:
http://p2pool.hostv.pl/

I use http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/static/ for example.

So you're not using your own  full node?

[oda.krell]

But in the end, it doesn't really matter how many coins you have, the idea would be that if you have a stake in it, you should be motivated out of rational self interest to keep the network decentralized (as much as possible at least). Donating, say, around 0.1% of your BTC worth to a cause like this seems reasonable to me.

So, say if you're sitting on around 100 coins, that means donating 0.1 coins. At a total of around 1000, 1 coin. I'd expect we could get a pretty decent amount of donations together like that, if people are convinced it's a worthy cause.

That all sounds great. I would donate maybe 0.5% - 1% of my stake to some concrete p2pool improvement proposals, that had been suggested (and voted on) by miners and GHash users. I would not donate any directly to miners though as I don't see that being a long term solution.

It probably bears waiting to see about this scalability issue before actually soliciting donations though.

Valid point. On the other hand, as I argued above, there is currently a "bootstrapping" that any smaller pool faces: while the pool is still small, variance is high for participating miners, so they are inclined to join a bigger pool, which in turn is less affected by variance, thus attracting more miners, etc.

That's why I said above, in the *early* phase of supporting p2pool, it might be necessary to counter that variance disincentive by additional donations, so that more miners join p2pool, which in turn will mitigate the problem and will (long term) make donations less important.


EDIT: Latching onto what calian and holliday discussed... is p2pool integration into the reference client, in one slick package, an option? Something the devs are considering? That might gain some support from donators.

[Hyena]

Actually P2Pool mining is really simple because you don't need to register any account anywhere. You can find existing P2pool nodes here:
http://p2pool.hostv.pl/

I use http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/static/ for example.

So you're not using your own  full node?

Nope, but from the documents I can see that a node is also really simple to set up. I pay 0.5% fee to the node operator which I don't consider too much. Are you aware of any other advantages that running my own node would give me? I wouldn't be able to accept other miners working under my P2Pool node anyway because I have a dynamic IP address.

[sickpig]

Actually P2Pool mining is really simple because you don't need to register any account anywhere. You can find existing P2pool nodes here:
http://p2pool.hostv.pl/

I use http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/static/ for example.

So you're not using your own  full node?

Nope, but from the documents I can see that a node is also really simple to set up. I pay 0.5% fee to the node operator which I don't consider too much. Are you aware of any other advantages that running my own node would give me? I wouldn't be able to accept other miners working under my P2Pool node anyway because I have a dynamic IP address.

I'd say that the main advantage to run your own node is you don't need to trust your node operator. Other than that I see no other pros, modulo fee, since you can't give access to others.
Now that I think about it running a node is a good thing for the btc network in general (the higher the number of nodes the better).

[oda.krell]

Guys?

Did your future hashrate just increase by factor 4?

This:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29btmp/peta_will_switch_to_p2pool_after_96_voted_yes/

plus:

http://www.peta-mine.co/stats/

and:

http://p2pool.info/

seems to say that much.


I guess this is a concern:

[...]Petamine were going to trial p2pool, but it looks like they didn't, because they would immediately have had >50% of p2pool's mining power. Things like hybrid nodes would be more useful when there are large mining groups on p2pool, so smaller miners could still turn a coin.

But maybe something that can be fixed after they join?


EDIT: "factor 4" because they would be going from currently 380 TH/s to 1190+380 TH/s.

[zimmah]

Actually P2Pool mining is really simple because you don't need to register any account anywhere. You can find existing P2pool nodes here:
http://p2pool.hostv.pl/

I use http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332/static/ for example.

All one needs to do is to start the miner like that:
./bfgminer -o http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332 -u 1DmMArx84zA6fpAsvDzrR1hsjnFgC5h6EK -p whatever
where username is your receiving address and password can be anything.

Also, people who wish to donate to P2P miners can go here:
https://blockchain.info/blocks/P2Pool

and they will see the latest blocks found by P2Pool. Clicking on any of the blocks gives you a list of addresses that participated in finding the block so a donations could be sent to the same addresses.

If anyone is interested in monitoring your P2Pool mining effort, I created this Linux shell script that I can gladly share with you:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

#When hashrate falls below `minimal_hashrate` the alarm goes off.
minimal_hashrate=30

#Only if current time is more than `first_active_hour` the script can raise alarm. This is to be quiet during the night.
first_active_hour=10

#To change the number of idle seconds after checking metrics modify the following variable:
script_frequency=300

#P2Pool:
pool_addr="http://pool.fabulouspanda.co.uk:9332"
btc_addr="1DmMArx84zA6fpAsvDzrR1hsjnFgC5h6EK"

#Helper variables:
last_hash=""
pool_fee=""
first_run="yes"

echo -en "\033]0;ASIC Stats\a"

while :
do
hashrate=`curl -s $pool_addr'/local_stats' | grep -Po '"'$btc_addr'":(.+?),' | tail -1 | cut -d' ' -f 2 | cut -d'.' -f 1`
newest_hash=`curl -s $pool_addr'/recent_blocks' | grep -Po '"hash":(.+?),' | head -1 | cut -d' ' -f 2 | cut -d'"' -f 2`
now=`date`
hour=`date +%H`
orig="$hashrate"
if echo "$hashrate" | egrep -q '^[0-9]+$'; then
    hashrate=$(($hashrate/1000000000))
    printf "%s: Hashrate: %-16s%8s " "$now" "\"$orig\"" "$hashrate GHs"
else
    hashrate=0
    printf "%s:           %24s " "$now" "NO CONNECTION"
fi

if test "$minimal_hashrate" -gt "$hashrate"
then
    printf "(\033[1;31m%s\033[0m)\n" 'FAIL'    
    test "$hour" -gt "$first_active_hour" && (beep -l 350 -f 392 -D 100)
else
    printf "(\033[1;32m%s\033[0m)\n" 'OK'
fi

if [ "$last_hash" != "$newest_hash" ]
then   
    if [ "$first_run" != "yes" ]
    then   
        payout=`curl -s $pool_addr'/current_payouts' | grep -Po '"'$btc_addr'":(.+?),' | cut -d' ' -f 2 | cut -d',' -f 1`    
        pool_fee=`curl -s $pool_addr'/fee'`    
        printf "\033[1;35m%s\033[0m\n" "$newest_hash"
        printf "Payout:       \033[1;33m%46s\033[0m BTC\n" "+$payout"
        printf "Pool fee:     \033[1;31m%46s\033[0m %%\n" "$pool_fee"    
        test "$hour" -gt "$first_active_hour" && (beep -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 112 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 112 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 133 -n -l 600 -f 150 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 133 -n -l 600 -f 150 -n -l 150 -f 150 -n -l 150 -f 168 -n -l 150 -f 150 -n -l 150 -f 133 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 150 -f 150 -n -l 150 -f 168 -n -l 150 -f 150 -n -l 150 -f 133 -n -l 300 -f 126 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 75 -n -l 600 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 100 -n -l 300 -f 75 -n -l 600 -f 100)
    else
        printf "\033[1;35m%s\033[0m\n" "$newest_hash"
    fi
    last_hash=$newest_hash    
fi
first_run=""
sleep "$script_frequency"
done

The above script will play a PC speaker melody if the pool finds a block and it will make a single bleep if your miner is not producing enough GHashes per second. the beep command requires the PC speaker to be enabled however, which is another story.

Well, that is a start, but my miners are in a room no one really ever enters, and i would prefer not having to actually enter the room and look every time if my miner is still running or not. I would prefer being able to see it from a browser plugin (on another computer), or on my phone. Or both.

Many of you here discus profitability, while miners obviously care about profit, ease of use is also a very important issue. I can't be the only one who does not want or is even unable to physically check up on their miner on a regular basis. And like I also said before, options like splitting the coins between multiple wallets without having to think about it would also be very handy to have.

Most of the popular mining pools offer many tools and utilities that, as far as i know of, P2P lacks.

I would join P2P pool even if they would not give donations, just to ensure security of the network, but so far only the most popular pools offer the kind of utility i want to have. The popular pools are popular for a reason guys, and that reason is not just less variance and lower fees.

I am perfectly aware of the risk of Ghash being too big, but like i already stated and has been quoted several times, i just want to set up my miner once and forget about it, and as long as i can't do that with P2P, P2P just is not an option no matter what rewards they promise. I have other things to do than worry about my miner.

Of course i'm just one miner out of many but i can't be the only one who thinks like this.

Btw i know how cgminer and such work, (some miners may not know, but you can probably assume most miners know).

I was thinking that eventually bitcoin holders may have to actually mine at a small loss in order to protect their coins. This would then mean bitcoin would be a depreciating asset? Once we see a leveling of the hash rate my hope is mining will return to the beginnings when individuals could run machines at home and collectively "donate" hashes for the collective. As long as enough people did this it would be effective.

that worked when all of the home miners were technologically capable.

Imagine what would happen if literally every home computer would mine.

It would only take 1 zombie botnet to attack the blockchain.

It's not as good an idea as it sounds, you can't expect to educate billions of people.

[Hyena]

Well, that is a start, but my miners are in a room no one really ever enters, and i would prefer not having to actually enter the room and look every time if my miner is still running or not. I would prefer being able to see it from a browser plugin (on another computer), or on my phone. Or both.

YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG!

My miner is 20 km from me. I barely never check the host laptop and the miner itself is in a separate room of its own.

The script can run in any computer that has Internet connection and it will produce sound alerts and it displays the hash rate in every 5 minutes. Everything you said is just wrong but I guess it was my fault not to express myself clearly enough.

[OgNasty]

Just thought I'd mention that NastyFans is working on ways to improve p2pool live earnings statistics, improve the payout system, and implement additional incentives to make it not only a more responsible way to mine, but more profitable as well.

I don't think it needs to be easier to use.  P2Pool is already the easiest pool to use.  You don't even have to sign up.  All you have to do is point your miner to nastyfans.org:9332 and use your Bitcoin address for your username.  Pretty simple.