Why don't (small) pools join p2pool? [idea towards decentralization]

[trout]

subj

If pools themselves were getting their work from p2pool and then distributing
it to miners, they would
- still collect user fees just as they do
- offer users strictly smaller variance of payouts

users of small pools  would
- not notice any difference except smaller variance
- not need to know anything about p2pool at all

p2pool users would be a part of a bigger pool so get smaller variance as well.

It would also lower the entry barrier for new pools. Instead of starting off with offering users 0% of the network
hashrate, they would essentially start with that of p2pool.

As a result, smaller pools would increase in number, contributing somewhat towards decentralization.

Basically the only rational reason I see that would make a miner join a large pool rather than
a small one is reduced variance. This is important if the difficulty is rising fast and the miner
needs to recover his investment in the first couple of months (or never). The idea above solves this problem(I think).

[BTCreward]

I think if a pool were to direct it's resources towards another pool (p2pool, or otherwise) then it would take slightly longer to propagate found blocks throughout the network, causing more orphaned blocks.

This would also be obvious to miners (if they know what to look for) and there would be no reason for them to pay a pool fee if they are just sending the work to p2pool.

[gmaxwell]

I think if a pool were to direct it's resources towards another pool (p2pool, or otherwise) then it would take slightly longer to propagate found blocks throughout the network, causing more orphaned blocks.

P2Pool is completely decenteralized and the miners (or subpools) themselves announce blocks, there is no delay to send a block "to" p2pool because there is no p2pool to send it to. P2Pool also uses a very advanced wire protocol that allows it to announce new blocks to p2pool peers using a small fraction of the bandwidth that Bitcoind does... so in terms of orphaning there is no disadvantage.  P2pool, however, is sensitive to latency on returned shares in order to encourage miners to optimize their latency, so to the extent that a subpool increases latency considerably it will get paid somewhat less— though this doesn't impact block orphaning  (other pools allow miners to submit shares rather late, meaning if you you're low latency on them you're effectively subsidizing your slower co-poolers).

There have been some pools that frontended p2pool in the past, some haven't advertised it loudly (you can notice them by observing that their hashrate is the same as p2pool's).

[trout]

This would also be obvious to miners (if they know what to look for) and there would be no reason for them to pay a pool fee if they are just sending the work to p2pool.

I think there's no shame in it. If a  user doesn't want to join p2pool himself it's probably because he doesn't know how to set it up, or doesn't have resources to maintain a full copy of the blockchain. In any case, whatever reason he has  to prefer any particular pool, this reason still remains valid.

There have been some pools that frontended p2pool in the past, some haven't advertised it loudly (you can notice them by observing that their hashrate is the same as p2pool's).

cool. (Except it screws the hashrate statistics.) I wonder why isn't it more common then. May be it'd be good to convince one of the bigger pools doing it (like ~10% hashrate), may be then smaller ones would flock in and multiply.