BTCGuild Luck

[Bonio]

I switched back to BTCGuild to give it a try and I have to say that the payouts dont seem too good right now. The pool seems to be having a spell of bad luck which makes me ask the question with he pool luck down to 92% how does that affect me? Do I only earn 92% of what I would earn normally it the luck was at 100%?

Are all pools using this method now?

[os2sam]

Are all pools using this method now?

What "method" would that be?

[Bonio]

PPLNS
I just havent seen luck mentioned anywhere else as such, although I realise its all down to luck I guess.

[os2sam]

PPLNS
I just havent seen luck mentioned anywhere else as such, although I realise its all down to luck I guess.

No not all pools use the PPLNS payout method.  Here is a list that shows what pools use what payout method.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.0

Luck has nothing to do with the payout method.  Luck, or Random Chance, is the nature of Bitcoin.  It is a measure of how many blocks are actually found per a given amount of hash rate.  Good luck means more block are found and bad luck means fewer blocks are found per a given hash rate.

[Bonio]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

[os2sam]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

[dropt]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

That's true, but you can look at luck over time and see how they're fairing.  In this case BTCGuild is getting screwed hard by luck, and has been for quite some time.  Eleuthria has already caught one bad actor, I'm guessing there are more there.  Doesn't matter to me though, I finally bit the bullet and moved my farm elsewhere.

[chunkyjunkie]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

That's true, but you can look at luck over time and see how they're fairing.  In this case BTCGuild is getting screwed hard by luck, and has been for quite some time.  Eleuthria has already caught one bad actor, I'm guessing there are more there.  Doesn't matter to me though, I finally bit the bullet and moved my farm elsewhere.

No way around it, whatever is happening it isn't just bad luck for so long.  Btc-guild will be dead soon if they don't find the thief.

<90% luck for a day? Sure easily...
<90% luck for a few days?  Yep, 90%,50%, 150% ( although btc-guild rarely has over 100% these days )
<90% luck a week?  Probably will happen from time to time but should be often..
<90% luck for a month?  Should be very rare but I guess possible... from time to time
<90% luck over 3 months?  Come on... and to boot if you go to their irc and post your concern you are run out of town with pitchforks.

That is fine, btc-guild will be dead soon people only can be fed the bad luck line for so long.

Sadly, btc-guild is paying the 2 scammer accounts daily like there is np.  Kick backs?

Well, legit or not if something doesn't change even noobie miners will figure it out sooner or later and btc-guild will be done.

[eleuthria]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

That's true, but you can look at luck over time and see how they're fairing.  In this case BTCGuild is getting screwed hard by luck, and has been for quite some time.  Eleuthria has already caught one bad actor, I'm guessing there are more there.  Doesn't matter to me though, I finally bit the bullet and moved my farm elsewhere.

No way around it, whatever is happening it isn't just bad luck for so long.  Btc-guild will be dead soon if they don't find the thief.

<90% luck for a day? Sure easily...
<90% luck for a few days?  Yep, 90%,50%, 150% ( although btc-guild rarely has over 100% these days )
<90% luck a week?  Probably will happen from time to time but should be often..
<90% luck for a month?  Should be very rare but I guess possible... from time to time
<90% luck over 3 months?  Come on... and to boot if you go to their irc and post your concern you are run out of town with pitchforks.

That is fine, btc-guild will be dead soon people only can be fed the bad luck line for so long.

Sadly, btc-guild is paying the 2 scammer accounts daily like there is np.  Kick backs?

Well, legit or not if something doesn't change even noobie miners will figure it out sooner or later and btc-guild will be done.

Our 3-month luck is 100% the fault of the block withholding.  That effect will keep our 3-month luck down until that activity (most of May and early June) is no longer a part of the 3-month average.

The group that did the withholding is the ONLY EVER PROVEN block withholding to take place.  And what happened?  Their accounts were frozen with what few coins were not yet paid.  They were notified, and after days of communication the problem was found.  Their explanation and looking at their share history clearly pointed it was a software glitch related to a 32-bit integer overflow.  It was discarding shares with a difficulty greater than 2^32 due to the overflow.  48 hours later they resumed mining on BTC Guild and after finding multiple blocks they had their accounts unfrozen.


We are at 91.6% out of ~99% expected (orphans make 100% unlikely) for the month.  That 1-month average has varied from 91% to 97% over the last 2 weeks.  All it takes are a few long blocks to drastically change the averages.  All it takes are a few really fast blocks to drastically change them right back.

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  This excludes GHash because their private farm alone is larger than every pool except Discus Fish.  It excludes Discus Fish for similar reasons (every chinese manufacturer uses them for hardware "testing"/pre-mining). The smaller pools are, the more variance they will have over the same time frames.  BTC Guild's luck prior to the withholding in May/June rarely moved more than 1 or 2% for the 3 month period.  But prior to May/June, BTC Guild alone was larger than all public pools combined are today (in terms of network share).

[Buziss]

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  This excludes GHash because their private farm alone is larger than every pool except Discus Fish.  It excludes Discus Fish for similar reasons (every chinese manufacturer uses them for hardware "testing"/pre-mining). The smaller pools are, the more variance they will have over the same time frames.  BTC Guild's luck prior to the withholding in May/June rarely moved more than 1 or 2% for the 3 month period.  But prior to May/June, BTC Guild alone was larger than all public pools combined are today (in terms of network share).

Looks like the centralization of hashrate is inevitable, and the 3 largest public pools (excluding Discus Fish) have just got 7%, 5% and 4% of network hashrate now. 
https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days

[xstr8guy]

I have an idea to extend the life of existing independent pools. How about a pool of pools?

Just one big pool that includes, BTCGuild, Eligius, Slush, Bitminter and other smaller pools. They could charge an extra 1% in addition to the individual pool fees. Hash would be divided by each pools current share of their total hashrates.

Occassionally, I already do something similar to this on my own when I get tired of the brutal bad luck streaks at BTCGuild.

[chunkyjunkie]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

That's true, but you can look at luck over time and see how they're fairing.  In this case BTCGuild is getting screwed hard by luck, and has been for quite some time.  Eleuthria has already caught one bad actor, I'm guessing there are more there.  Doesn't matter to me though, I finally bit the bullet and moved my farm elsewhere.

No way around it, whatever is happening it isn't just bad luck for so long.  Btc-guild will be dead soon if they don't find the thief.

<90% luck for a day? Sure easily...
<90% luck for a few days?  Yep, 90%,50%, 150% ( although btc-guild rarely has over 100% these days )
<90% luck a week?  Probably will happen from time to time but should be often..
<90% luck for a month?  Should be very rare but I guess possible... from time to time
<90% luck over 3 months?  Come on... and to boot if you go to their irc and post your concern you are run out of town with pitchforks.

That is fine, btc-guild will be dead soon people only can be fed the bad luck line for so long.

Sadly, btc-guild is paying the 2 scammer accounts daily like there is np.  Kick backs?

Well, legit or not if something doesn't change even noobie miners will figure it out sooner or later and btc-guild will be done.

Our 3-month luck is 100% the fault of the block withholding.  That effect will keep our 3-month luck down until that activity (most of May and early June) is no longer a part of the 3-month average.

The group that did the withholding is the ONLY EVER PROVEN block withholding to take place.  And what happened?  Their accounts were frozen with what few coins were not yet paid.  They were notified, and after days of communication the problem was found.  Their explanation and looking at their share history clearly pointed it was a software glitch related to a 32-bit integer overflow.  It was discarding shares with a difficulty greater than 2^32 due to the overflow.  48 hours later they resumed mining on BTC Guild and after finding multiple blocks they had their accounts unfrozen.


We are at 91.6% out of ~99% expected (orphans make 100% unlikely) for the month.  That 1-month average has varied from 91% to 97% over the last 2 weeks.  All it takes are a few long blocks to drastically change the averages.  All it takes are a few really fast blocks to drastically change them right back.

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  This excludes GHash because their private farm alone is larger than every pool except Discus Fish.  It excludes Discus Fish for similar reasons (every chinese manufacturer uses them for hardware "testing"/pre-mining). The smaller pools are, the more variance they will have over the same time frames.  BTC Guild's luck prior to the withholding in May/June rarely moved more than 1 or 2% for the 3 month period.  But prior to May/June, BTC Guild alone was larger than all public pools combined are today (in terms of network share).

That hopefully will mean something to those who are still using the pool.  If things turn around I will be one of the first back as the problem is real like you said about the public pools dieing out, or rather becoming a small % of the network.   I appreciate the lengthy explanation from btc-guild's view and am sure others will also.

[dropt]

Our 3-month luck is 100% the fault of the block withholding.  That effect will keep our 3-month luck down until that activity (most of May and early June) is no longer a part of the 3-month average.

With all due respect, that's ridiculous.  Guild's 3-month luck will never reach 100% (99% + orphan) or above if the daily, weekly, and monthly values are sub 99% consistently, which they have been for months now.

The group that did the withholding is the ONLY EVER PROVEN block withholding to take place.  And what happened?  Their accounts were frozen with what few coins were not yet paid.  They were notified, and after days of communication the problem was found.  Their explanation and looking at their share history clearly pointed it was a software glitch related to a 32-bit integer overflow.  It was discarding shares with a difficulty greater than 2^32 due to the overflow.  48 hours later they resumed mining on BTC Guild and after finding multiple blocks they had their accounts unfrozen.

And you put your thumbs in your ears yelling at everyone saying "everything is fine".  Low and behold there was a withholding attack underway even though it was innocent.  I don't believe that there aren't similar issues, either intentional or otherwise, currently taking place on Guild.  However, I'm well aware that detecting those actors and isolating them is near impossible.  Don't take it personally, but shit is happening on your pool whether you'd like to admit it or not.

We are at 91.6% out of ~99% expected (orphans make 100% unlikely) for the month.  That 1-month average has varied from 91% to 97% over the last 2 weeks.  All it takes are a few long blocks to drastically change the averages.  All it takes are a few really fast blocks to drastically change them right back.

This is true, but I'm watching the long term luck continue to drop.  Previous to early 2014 Guild was always a good percent or two above 100.  I know there's been suggestion from users/talk of removing that stat all together.  I'm glad you haven't because that would reek of sweeping the facts under the carpet.

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  

Short term variance is expected, especially in smaller pools.  However, we all know the common arguement to the contrary is that the variance over time evens out.  In this case, "over time" is showing that there are problems and the organic balancing of variance isn't occuring.



Before you lose your shit as usual, I'd like to sympathize with you.  I love Guild, and I greatly appreciate you as an operator, full stop.  I've been mining with you since Jan of 2012 and hate to leave, but it is what it is.  

[chunkyjunkie]

Our 3-month luck is 100% the fault of the block withholding.  That effect will keep our 3-month luck down until that activity (most of May and early June) is no longer a part of the 3-month average.

With all due respect, that's ridiculous.  Guild's 3-month luck will never reach 100% (99% + orphan) or above if the daily, weekly, and monthly values are sub 99% consistently, which they have been for months now.

The group that did the withholding is the ONLY EVER PROVEN block withholding to take place.  And what happened?  Their accounts were frozen with what few coins were not yet paid.  They were notified, and after days of communication the problem was found.  Their explanation and looking at their share history clearly pointed it was a software glitch related to a 32-bit integer overflow.  It was discarding shares with a difficulty greater than 2^32 due to the overflow.  48 hours later they resumed mining on BTC Guild and after finding multiple blocks they had their accounts unfrozen.

And you put your thumbs in your ears yelling at everyone saying "everything is fine".  Low and behold there was a withholding attack underway even though it was innocent.  I don't believe that there aren't similar issues, either intentional or otherwise, currently taking place on Guild.  However, I'm well aware that detecting those actors and isolating them is near impossible.  Don't take it personally, but shit is happening on your pool whether you'd like to admit it or not.

We are at 91.6% out of ~99% expected (orphans make 100% unlikely) for the month.  That 1-month average has varied from 91% to 97% over the last 2 weeks.  All it takes are a few long blocks to drastically change the averages.  All it takes are a few really fast blocks to drastically change them right back.

This is true, but I'm watching the long term luck continue to drop.  Previous to early 2014 Guild was always a good percent or two above 100.  I know there's been suggestion from users/talk of removing that stat all together.  I'm glad you haven't because that would reek of sweeping the facts under the carpet.

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  

Short term variance is expected, especially in smaller pools.  However, we all know the common arguement to the contrary is that the variance over time evens out.  In this case, "over time" is showing that there are problems and the organic balancing of variance isn't occuring.



Before you lose your shit as usual, I'd like to sympathize with you.  I love Guild, and I greatly appreciate you as an operator, full stop.  I've been mining with you since Jan of 2012 and hate to leave, but it is what it is.  

You pretty much said exactly what I am thinking/feeling perfectly.  Word for word thought for thought.

[GunXpatriot]

I didn't really go through the whole thread, but I had the same issue. After a week, I went to the dark side. ghash.io.

With my Antminer, no overclock, I should be getting about .005 BTC/day. I was getting about .30 on average.

After heading to ghash.io, I was getting just about .005/day, and I'm more than pleased with that. If they were to get near 51%, I'd certainly jump off of it, but for the time being, I need all the earnings I can get, I feel.

[TheJuice]

Thanks for explaining that for me. I think I have it.

So if the luck is down such as now is it worth moving to another pool or ...?

If the pool is having better luck, sure.  But there is no way to tell when a pools is going to have good or bad luck as it is complete random chance.  And it is possible for the entire network to have bad luck as well.

That's true, but you can look at luck over time and see how they're fairing.  In this case BTCGuild is getting screwed hard by luck, and has been for quite some time.  Eleuthria has already caught one bad actor, I'm guessing there are more there.  Doesn't matter to me though, I finally bit the bullet and moved my farm elsewhere.

No way around it, whatever is happening it isn't just bad luck for so long.  Btc-guild will be dead soon if they don't find the thief.

<90% luck for a day? Sure easily...
<90% luck for a few days?  Yep, 90%,50%, 150% ( although btc-guild rarely has over 100% these days )
<90% luck a week?  Probably will happen from time to time but should be often..
<90% luck for a month?  Should be very rare but I guess possible... from time to time
<90% luck over 3 months?  Come on... and to boot if you go to their irc and post your concern you are run out of town with pitchforks.

That is fine, btc-guild will be dead soon people only can be fed the bad luck line for so long.

Sadly, btc-guild is paying the 2 scammer accounts daily like there is np.  Kick backs?

Well, legit or not if something doesn't change even noobie miners will figure it out sooner or later and btc-guild will be done.

Our 3-month luck is 100% the fault of the block withholding.  That effect will keep our 3-month luck down until that activity (most of May and early June) is no longer a part of the 3-month average.

The group that did the withholding is the ONLY EVER PROVEN block withholding to take place.  And what happened?  Their accounts were frozen with what few coins were not yet paid.  They were notified, and after days of communication the problem was found.  Their explanation and looking at their share history clearly pointed it was a software glitch related to a 32-bit integer overflow.  It was discarding shares with a difficulty greater than 2^32 due to the overflow.  48 hours later they resumed mining on BTC Guild and after finding multiple blocks they had their accounts unfrozen.


We are at 91.6% out of ~99% expected (orphans make 100% unlikely) for the month.  That 1-month average has varied from 91% to 97% over the last 2 weeks.  All it takes are a few long blocks to drastically change the averages.  All it takes are a few really fast blocks to drastically change them right back.

They are going to swing more drastically and more wildly as time goes on, because public pools will be gone within a year unless something changes drastically in the mining ecosystem.  All the major public pools are now under 20% of the network combined.  This excludes GHash because their private farm alone is larger than every pool except Discus Fish.  It excludes Discus Fish for similar reasons (every chinese manufacturer uses them for hardware "testing"/pre-mining). The smaller pools are, the more variance they will have over the same time frames.  BTC Guild's luck prior to the withholding in May/June rarely moved more than 1 or 2% for the 3 month period.  But prior to May/June, BTC Guild alone was larger than all public pools combined are today (in terms of network share).

Thanks for the explanation. Only time will tell tho, the past 2 weeks is < 80% and that is without withholding.

[dropt]

I didn't really go through the whole thread, but I had the same issue. After a week, I went to the dark side. ghash.io.

With my Antminer, no overclock, I should be getting about .005 BTC/day. I was getting about .30 on average.

After heading to ghash.io, I was getting just about .005/day, and I'm more than pleased with that. If they were to get near 51%, I'd certainly jump off of it, but for the time being, I need all the earnings I can get, I feel.

Jesus.  You know what?  I need every coin I can get too as I am trying to pay off my latest hardware but I refuse to use a pool fhat doesnt give a shit about 51% and has been proven to attempt to push double spends onto the network before.  There are a number of other pools you can use, but you jump right to GHASH.   *sigh*

I'm slowly but surely losing faith in this whole thing.

[GunXpatriot]

Alright, dropt. Look, I understand your frustration. I didn't like going there either. What pool have you been using? BTCguild, as of last week, was giving me earnings corresponding to my hashrate, but after that, the number was significantly lower. Tbh, the last couple days I've been mining for a different coin to try and get an early stake in it, so I was at ghash for about 3 days.

What pool have you used that gives you "proper" projected earnings, or at least close to it? If you can give me one, I will withdraw my funds from ghash and switch right to it.

I'm not trying to support any nefarious activities that may be going on at ghash.io, and I will gladly support and donate to another pool, like I was doing at BTC Guild. So in all seriousness, I would like to know where you're doing your mining. I know the dangers of a 51% attack, and I will gladly support another pool if it is on-par or near ghash.io. I have seen you going around the forum and complaining about them, which is not a bad thing at all, I know. In fact, it's a positive thing.

If you can prove them and me wrong, I will jump on board.

P.S., I remember on Hashfaster's Litecoin pool, how they... Was it hashfaster? Anyway... There is some sort of coalition where the administration for the pool basically makes some sort of promise that they will stop a 51% attack within their own pool, either by throttling, or something. Does any such thing exist for BTC?

Edit: It was a promise that the pool won't go above 28% of network hashrate. Good luck getting ghash.io to pledge such a thing. *sigh*

Secondly, who the hell is Discus Fish?

And thirdly, did BTC Guild just like, half in the last few days? I could swear they had a much higher distribution just a few days ago. Weird...

[RoadStress]

I'm slowly but surely losing faith in this whole thing.

Hold (on)!

[Bonio]

Alright, dropt. Look, I understand your frustration. I didn't like going there either. What pool have you been using? BTCguild, as of last week, was giving me earnings corresponding to my hashrate, but after that, the number was significantly lower. Tbh, the last couple days I've been mining for a different coin to try and get an early stake in it, so I was at ghash for about 3 days.

What pool have you used that gives you "proper" projected earnings, or at least close to it? If you can give me one, I will withdraw my funds from ghash and switch right to it.

I'm not trying to support any nefarious activities that may be going on at ghash.io, and I will gladly support and donate to another pool, like I was doing at BTC Guild. So in all seriousness, I would like to know where you're doing your mining. I know the dangers of a 51% attack, and I will gladly support another pool if it is on-par or near ghash.io. I have seen you going around the forum and complaining about them, which is not a bad thing at all, I know. In fact, it's a positive thing.

If you can prove them and me wrong, I will jump on board.

P.S., I remember on Hashfaster's Litecoin pool, how they... Was it hashfaster? Anyway... There is some sort of coalition where the administration for the pool basically makes some sort of promise that they will stop a 51% attack within their own pool, either by throttling, or something. Does any such thing exist for BTC?

Edit: It was a promise that the pool won't go above 28% of network hashrate. Good luck getting ghash.io to pledge such a thing. *sigh*

Secondly, who the hell is Discus Fish?

And thirdly, did BTC Guild just like, half in the last few days? I could swear they had a much higher distribution just a few days ago. Weird...

... Yes what he said, where do we go to get a descent return and not help a 51%?