What % of the total hashpower your pool has?

[CryptoPanda]

I'm currently mining on bitminter which has less than 1% of the total hash power. That's because I like them and want to support them, but seems like the variance is now too much and kinda kills the idea of pooled mining.
So, what's the minimum % of total hash power that you would like your pool to have to mine there?

And isn't that a problem, since more people will realize that like me and switch to bigger pools, which will make the mining in smaller ones even less attractive and fuel that process further faster, and eventually we will have like just a few huge pools where everyone will be.


I'm about to look into p2p mining though. But how many other people will?

[Kluge]

If you don't want the variance, there are a fair few pools which pay a flat amount of BTC per share submitted, regardless of pool luck. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

[CryptoPanda]

If you don't want the variance, there are a fair few pools which pay a flat amount of BTC per share submitted, regardless of pool luck. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

Nah I don't mind it when it's reasonable. But is 0.75% reasonable? That's the % that my current pool has of the total hash power.
I

[jonnybravo0311]

If you don't want the variance, there are a fair few pools which pay a flat amount of BTC per share submitted, regardless of pool luck. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

Nah I don't mind it when it's reasonable. But is 0.75% reasonable? That's the % that my current pool has of the total hash power.
I

It's inevitable that some pools aren't going to make it because they aren't getting the kind of support they need.  You spelled out precisely how things would play... miners leave a pool because it's got too much variance for their liking, which causes the pool to have more variance, which causes more miners to leave, which causes the pool to have more variance, etc.

P2Pool actually has the opposite problem than most other pools.  In your "typical" mining pool, the more hash rate the pool has, the smaller the effect of variance on the individual miner.  In p2pool, the more hash rate the pool has, the larger the effect of variance on the individual miner.  This is because of the nature of the share chain inherent in p2pool mining.  For example, as of right now, p2pool has about 3PH/s on it.  If you've got an Antminer S3, you can expect it to take over a day to find a single share to get you on the chain for payout.

[Ayers]

If you don't want the variance, there are a fair few pools which pay a flat amount of BTC per share submitted, regardless of pool luck. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

33% should be enough to beat the variance i'm right? i mean to not let the variance hit to much your income

[finlof]

i would really love to be in a pool that has at least 10% but since there are only 2 it doesnt seem smart.  so basically 5% is my "low" point now.

[DrG]

Instead of looking for large pools that have over 30% of the network, why don't you guys use the tools that are currently available.  Both CGMiner (and I believe BFGMiner) can do load balancing and have your hash spread out over multiple pools.  You can mine on 4 pools you find reliable and each one is just 5% you effectively have a 20% pool.

[CryptoPanda]

P2Pool actually has the opposite problem than most other pools.  In your "typical" mining pool, the more hash rate the pool has, the smaller the effect of variance on the individual miner.  In p2pool, the more hash rate the pool has, the larger the effect of variance on the individual miner.  This is because of the nature of the share chain inherent in p2pool mining.  For example, as of right now, p2pool has about 3PH/s on it.  If you've got an Antminer S3, you can expect it to take over a day to find a single share to get you on the chain for payout.

I suspect that P2Pool will not be looked at as a "pool" for very much longer.  As its hashrate grows, we are already starting to see "pools" built on top of P2Pool.  Eventually, P2Pool will gain a significant share of the hashrate, but since miners win shares so infrequently, it will not be feasible for people to solo-mine against P2Pool anymore.

This will spur the creation of a "new P2Pool," which is a second distributed P2Pool built on top of the original P2Pool that uses the same exact technology but has more frequent block times.  This is one way that faster confirmations can eventually be achieved without any fork at all, because it will be possible to see which transactions are being included in the "new P2Pool" and the original P2Pool's blocks.  As a transaction gets included in a P2Pool up the chain, you can be more confident it will be included in the top-level blockchain.

That actually sounds pretty cool?