Weekly pool and network statistics

[organofcorti]

Sorry folks - there was an error in my stats for BTCGuild. The updated results are now correct.

thanks again ooc
will be watching closely over the next few weeks

Always glad to see that someone is watching! It will be interesting to see if there is any significant drop in hashrate after the new Ozcoin fee. My guess is that it won't be a significant drop in hashrate, if any at all.

[Graet]

Sorry folks - there was an error in my stats for BTCGuild. The updated results are now correct.

thanks again ooc
will be watching closely over the next few weeks

Always glad to see that someone is watching! It will be interesting to see if there is any significant drop in hashrate after the new Ozcoin fee. My guess is that it won't be a significant drop in hashrate, if any at all.

I actually look forward to the weekly update - saves me a little time clicking around the pools to see what they say + well presented comparisons 

um yer the "f" word - it will be interesting to see how the "proxy/pool" miners will react I think that will have biggest influence on hashrate

I'll drop a little something in your wallet when you aren't looking again
cheers man

[organofcorti]

Sorry folks - there was an error in my stats for BTCGuild. The updated results are now correct.

thanks again ooc
will be watching closely over the next few weeks

Always glad to see that someone is watching! It will be interesting to see if there is any significant drop in hashrate after the new Ozcoin fee. My guess is that it won't be a significant drop in hashrate, if any at all.

I actually look forward to the weekly update - saves me a little time clicking around the pools to see what they say + well presented comparisons 

um yer the "f" word - it will be interesting to see how the "proxy/pool" miners will react I think that will have biggest influence on hashrate

Well, the proxy pools can try the smaller fee-free pools, but how will most react to a massive influx of hashrate? That will require more maintenance, and show up problems of which they might not yet be aware.

Besides, as another miner mentioned elsewhere, if proxies aren't contributing then your donating miners are subsidising them. In a way it's something like pool hopping, in that some miners are getting better value for shares than others. Call it "fee hopping". A fee levels the playing field, and it's something pool ops of fee-free pools  should consider carefully.

I'll drop a little something in your wallet when you aren't looking again
cheers man

Thanks Graet. I'm up against my maximum at my free imgur account, so every bit helps

[Graet]

point one is why I'm interested too see what happens
point two - yep

I said when you weren't watching
lol

[organofcorti]

I said when you weren't watching
lol

Argh! You're psychic.

[DrHaribo]

Always glad to see that someone is watching! It will be interesting to see if there is any significant drop in hashrate after the new Ozcoin fee. My guess is that it won't be a significant drop in hashrate, if any at all.

I'm sure many will be watching this closely, especially pool operators. Graet and the rest at Ozcoin, I must commend you on a brave move. Maybe the bitcoin community is ready to get past the "everything must be free" mentality, which I found quite puzzling as I got started with bitcoins, after all it is a community about (improving) money. With most other pools (except the biggest ones) being zero fee there was no other option for my pool.

These stats are a great service. Is there a donation address?

Well, the proxy pools can try the smaller fee-free pools, but how will most react to a massive influx of hashrate? That will require more maintenance, and show up problems of which they might not yet be aware.

BitMinter is the largest true zero fee pool, with transaction fees paid out (plus namecoins). In fact there's only a couple left, plus the pretenders who don't pay out the (currently 0.3% and going up) transaction fees. Maybe things are changing.

The weekly stats show an average hashrate of 569 GH/s, but the last day we have been doing over 700 GH/s. We are growing quite quickly. The pool has been to 912 GH/s with fairly light load. I expect the current single server setup can take us to between 5 and 6 TH/s before it will be at capacity. More when I have dynamic difficulty ready for the server software. Perhaps then we can accommodate all of today's bitcoin miners on a single server? But yeah, it took quite some work removing bottlenecks and tweaking Linux kernel parameters and database parameters before it got this fast. Pools that have not been through this have some work ahead of them.

I'm sure we already got some "zero fee refugees" and there are more to come. But at the same time it will be interesting to see how many are willing to pay for a service they like. It would give me more confidence that it is worthwhile putting an effort into new non-free add-on services for my pool. Either way, very interesting weeks ahead.

[organofcorti]

These stats are a great service. Is there a donation address?

Well, thank you sir! Use the NPW donations address in my sig. For those of you who have sigs turned off, that would be: 12QxPHEuxDrs7mCyGSx1iVSozTwtquDB3r

I was thinking of making it a fee, but ....

BitMinter is the largest true zero fee pool, with transaction fees paid out (plus namecoins). In fact there's only a couple left, plus the pretenders who don't pay out the (currently 0.3% and going up) transaction fees. Maybe things are changing.

The weekly stats show an average hashrate of 569 GH/s, but the last day we have been doing over 700 GH/s. We are growing quite quickly.

I can confirm this. The average for the last 20 blocks is about 650Gphs. Nice going there, DrH

The pool has been to 912 GH/s with fairly light load. I expect the current single server setup can take us to between 5 and 6 TH/s before it will be at capacity. More when I have dynamic difficulty ready for the server software. Perhaps then we can accommodate all of today's bitcoin miners on a single server?

This gave me some pause for thought - as ASICS and more FPGAs come online, DDOS will be a thing of the past as pool difficulties rise. No more DDOS! How can ASICs be bad? Wrong, wrong wrong.

I'm sure we already got some "zero fee refugees" and there are more to come. But at the same time it will be interesting to see how many are willing to pay for a service they like. It would give me more confidence that it is worthwhile putting an effort into new non-free add-on services for my pool. Either way, very interesting weeks ahead.

I think a lot of miners just never thought about it before, and Ozcoin is the first big pool to make such a switch. I think miners will be more accepting of fair fees once they realise that they are important for smooth running of a pool.

I do like your "perks", and not just because I can pretend I'm playing Fallout. It's community building, and I hope it's working well for you.

[DrHaribo]

I was thinking of making it a fee, but ....

Haha  Donation sent

I can confirm this. The average for the last 20 blocks is about 650Gphs. Nice going there, DrH

Thank you

This gave me some pause for thought - as ASICS and more FPGAs come online, DDOS will be a thing of the past as pool difficulties rise. No more DDOS! How can ASICs be bad?

I hope it will reduce the frequency of DDoS attacks, as there won't be huge CPU mining botnets anymore. But the last big DDoS attack on multiple pools was about extortion. They demanded money before they would stop the attack. This is more of a general internet problem.

I think a lot of miners just never thought about it before, and Ozcoin is the first big pool to make such a switch. I think miners will be more accepting of fair fees once they realise that they are important for smooth running of a pool.

I do like your "perks", and not just because I can pretend I'm playing Fallout. It's community building, and I hope it's working well for you.

It works well, except 1% donation to get paid for orphans is probably priced a bit too cheaply. Currently 1 orphan will wreck the income of 70 good blocks for the pool (70% of the hashpower use this perk and average BTC donations is 1%). Raising prices is never popular though. I'm thinking about more perks and other non-free services, so I'm very interested to see how this works out for Ozcoin.

[[Tycho]]

This gave me some pause for thought - as ASICS and more FPGAs come online, DDOS will be a thing of the past as pool difficulties rise. No more DDOS! How can ASICs be bad?

ASICs and DDoS are unrelated.
Legitimate load and DDoS is not the same.

[eleuthria]

This gave me some pause for thought - as ASICS and more FPGAs come online, DDOS will be a thing of the past as pool difficulties rise. No more DDOS! How can ASICs be bad?

ASICs and DDoS are unrelated.
Legitimate load and DDoS is not the same.

Exactly what Tycho said.  I don't know why there was even mention of the two in the same sentence.  The only thing relating the two is that the first few rounds of ASICs might be able to solo mine with reasonable control over variance, but if ASICs are really it's only a matter of time until everybody is pointing ASICs at pools to beat variance just like they do with GPUs today.

[organofcorti]

This gave me some pause for thought - as ASICS and more FPGAs come online, DDOS will be a thing of the past as pool difficulties rise. No more DDOS! How can ASICs be bad?

ASICs and DDoS are unrelated.
Legitimate load and DDoS is not the same.

Exactly what Tycho said.  I don't know why there was even mention of the two in the same sentence.  The only thing relating the two is that the first few rounds of ASICs might be able to solo mine with reasonable control over variance, but if ASICs are really it's only a matter of time until everybody is pointing ASICs at pools to beat variance just like they do with GPUs today.

As I mentioned to Tycho in a PM, that would be because I misunderstood how pools work. I'd thought DDoSing was something like what happens when a CPU botnet starts submitting to a pool. Increase pool diff and CPU botnets won't be able to submit much at all. I didn't realise that a DDoS would be just as effective if you just threw crap at a mining server.

Consider me schooled, gentlemen!

[DrHaribo]

There's been cases where botnet operators have been mining in pools and gotten banned. Then they get angry and attack the pool with a DDoS attack. I thought that's what we were talking about. If botnet operators stop mining we'll see less of this.

[organofcorti]

Any other useful stats or charts anyone would like to see?

[organofcorti]

Something to look forward to on Sunday - weekly hashrate averages per block (per day for BTCGuild). I've attempted to sanitise the data as much as possible, for example short rounds where Timestamps could be in error and for errors in the data (one pool has 0 shares listed for several rounds - you know who you are ) but errors may still creep in. Let me know if anything looks totally wonky to you.

[[Tycho]]

Nice new graphs, cool :)

[organofcorti]

Nice new graphs, cool

You like that, eh? Well, I got tired of telling people that DeepBit was being hopped less since I published an NPW blog post on it, so check this out:

[Inaba]

You are talking about me!  I know it!  While they are not technically 0 share rounds, for the purposes of share calculation they are.  Keeps the ultra fast miners from getting all the reward at the expense of the slower miners, making it fair for everyone.

[organofcorti]

You are talking about me!  I know it!  While they are not technically 0 share rounds, for the purposes of share calculation they are.  Keeps the ultra fast miners from getting all the reward at the expense of the slower miners, making it fair for everyone.

This is a DGM optimisation?

[Inaba]

I don't know that I would classify it as directly related to DGM, it just counts the block as zero shares, thus bypassing DGM all together and paying out the current score (which is basically the same as the previous block score).

[DrHaribo]

Nice graphs. Look at BitMinter go! How do you like them apples?

Why the wonky graph for Slush? I thought his pool wasn't hoppable anymore.