Weekly pool and network statistics

[organofcorti]

Would be nice to see the luck (graphical) of the pools like on ozco website:
https://ozco.in/content/luck-bitcoin
(for me it seems that deepbit was very lucky last time and it would be interesting if this is right or wrong..)

Short answer is yes, I can. Although it needs to be in terms of percentage of difficulty since difficulty can change mid week. When I can do it is a different question - I have to rewrite scripts for all the pools to capture the data, and then fine tuning the chart will take time. But it is a good suggestion and I'll get on to it when I can. Paying jobs come first though, so maybe a few weeks? Remind me again if I haven't done it by mid May.

[organofcorti]

21st April 2013 weekly pool and network statistics
Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Bitminter and Ozcoin added to figure 8 (proportion of hashrate per user per pool).

Pools missing from results:

Ozcoin - couldn't connect to site today, understandable due to recent events.


"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining

Pool hopping:
None. Really. not even a little bit. You'd think ASIC owners would want to maximise their profits but that doesn't seem to be the case.

The big news this week was the hack of Ozcoin. Pool op Graet had just arranged for a large backlog of shares to be paid out, and the entire payout was stolen by an unknown individual. If you're interested in following the coin trail and trying to find the cuprit, the trail starts with address 16cDeEFn6sraUEJrDCt2Yg3r7j2oazSYEd.

 My best wishes go out to Graet, who has been an important part of the mining community for years, and who has spent time and effort providing a low cost pool, helping miners mine better, and supporting the community generally. If you'd like to help support Ozcoin you can send hashes to yourbtc.net or bitcoin donations to 1Gzcbs8dDYzf16qFWKHc5kWKuH8nji3pVt

Since Ozcoin is not in this week's stats, the unknown proportion of the network hashrate is higher.

BTCGuild crossed the line of 40% of the average network hashrate this week. However, due to ongoing bad luck there, BTCGuild only has 37.6% of network blocks, an increase of 0.9% since last week. There was no significant change in the average network hashrate this week, so BTCGuild has gained a few hashes - despite the penalties eleuthria will be putting in place if the pool grows much larger.

As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/04/21st-april-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[organofcorti]

28th April 2013 weekly pool and network statistics
Welcome, miners.


Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Nil.

Pools missing from results:

Nil.


"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining

Pool hopping:
None. I am I going to be the only one to test out my Avalon this way? When it arrives, I mean.
Another hack this week - Slush's pool. Luckily Slush managed to prevent to from becoming a catastrophe, but with recent recent uptick in DDOS attacks it seems pools are becoming a significant target. I wonder if the attackers realise how little most pool ops get to keep from their (mostly) tiny fees?

Thanks to all who donated to Ozcoin. Some of the coins were returned, its miners have been paid and the pool is back on its feet.

 BTCGuild has dropped to about 35% of network blocks ad anout 40% of the network hashrate. Hopefully some miners are taking eleuthria seriously and have moved to other, smaller pools - such as Bitparking (now a top 5 pool after almost doubling its hashrate this week), Eligius, EclipseMC and Itzod. 50BTC also picked up a lot of extra hashes this week.

 As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/04/28th-april-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[18RATTT]

thank you for the effort of creating this, im really interested in the stats and data shown here.
However, i dont really know what they mean other than BTCGuild has the most ppl mining on them.
but the other avg hashrate etc, i dont really know what do they mean in term for practical uses.

can someone care enough how to translate those data and stats into "english" ??

* like is that mean for ppl with < 5Gh/s is better to join bigger pool ?? med / low pool?
* what are the advantage and disadvantages to join big/med/small pool??
* if we like PPNS more which pool should we join better? what abt if its PPS ?

thank you for your time explaining it to me.cheers.

[organofcorti]

thank you for the effort of creating this, im really interested in the stats and data shown here.
However, i dont really know what they mean other than BTCGuild has the most ppl mining on them.
but the other avg hashrate etc, i dont really know what do they mean in term for practical uses.

can someone care enough how to translate those data and stats into "english" ??

* like is that mean for ppl with < 5Gh/s is better to join bigger pool ?? med / low pool?
* what are the advantage and disadvantages to join big/med/small pool??
* if we like PPNS more which pool should we join better? what abt if its PPS ?

thank you for your time explaining it to me.cheers.

Before I start, did you read the full blog post?

[eleuthria]

Thanks for another great week of information organofcorti.  Glad to see that BTC Guild is slightly dropping on network hash %, I've been dreading having to start my 51% mitigation steps.

Also loving the violin plots in the full post!

[os2sam]

thank you for the effort of creating this, im really interested in the stats and data shown here.
However, i dont really know what they mean other than BTCGuild has the most ppl mining on them.
but the other avg hashrate etc, i dont really know what do they mean in term for practical uses.

can someone care enough how to translate those data and stats into "english" ??

* like is that mean for ppl with < 5Gh/s is better to join bigger pool ?? med / low pool?
* what are the advantage and disadvantages to join big/med/small pool??
* if we like PPNS more which pool should we join better? what abt if its PPS ?

thank you for your time explaining it to me.cheers.

Aren't the terms defined in the top post?

Many of the things you ask are a bit of personal preference.

Here's another list that can help you decide how you want to mine.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=104664.msg1146108#msg1146108

[organofcorti]

Thanks for another great week of information organofcorti.  Glad to see that BTC Guild is slightly dropping on network hash %, I've been dreading having to start my 51% mitigation steps.

You made intentions known a long time ago - good move since miners need a loooong time to make changes. For a high tech cutting edge crowd we seem preety conservative in some ways.

Also loving the violin plots in the full post!

I'm planning to include an eCDF and a fit to a (probably) pareto distribution. It'll be interesting to track the changes to the variables over time.

[organofcorti]

5th May 2013 weekly pool and network statistics

Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Nil.

Pools missing from results:
Eligius - pool stats were in process of being modes to a new server.

Errors:

Coinotron did not solve a block during the week, although due to an error with the script I wrote, they are listed as solving two. This has been fixed and wont happen again.



"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining

Pool hopping:
Probably none. DeepBit's results on chart 7 are a bit suggestive, but nothing significant.

Ozcoin closed for a few days this week so that pool op Graet could be absolutely certain that the pool was working as it should. If any readers out there want to run a pool, then this is the example you should be following. If my Avalon had been delivered I'd be including Ozcoin in my group of pools.

Another hack attempt - BTCGuild pool op eleuthria reported to his miners that persons had attempted and failed to gain access to a BTCGuild server using social engineering techniques. He warned his miners about his as soon as it happened. He also put the pool's PPS fee up to 7.5% to attempt to mitigate the large share of the network the pool has - however this hasn't stopped BTCGuild's growth completely, with 41.0% of the network's blocks solved by BTCGuild this week.

Finally, there's a concern that BitMinter was having unusually poor luck for the past few weeks. I've performed an audit for pool op DrHaribo, and have found nothing unusual at all - so if you were worried about mining at BitMinter, you need worry no more. I'll post the results as soon as I'm able.

As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/05/5th-may-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[DrG]

Train running a little late today?   

[organofcorti]

Train running a little late today?   

Argh! Can't be a second late! Well, 24 hours late, anyway

Mother's Day dinner yesterday, and then for some reason my script is doing weird things with Ozcoin's data, so I had to wait til I got home after work today.

Anyway, just finished the post: http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/05/12th-may-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

I'll update this thread and the "Mining Pools list" sticky shortly.

[organofcorti]

12th May 2013 weekly pool and network statistics


Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Nil.

Pools missing from results:
Ozcoin - data was in error - not sure why. I'll be auditing the script before net week.

Errors:

Nil.


"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining

Pool hopping:
None.

I apologise for the post being late - what with Mothers Day dinner and trying to fix the Ozcoin data, I wasn't able to complete the post until today.

I hope post 13.1 BitMinter and "luck" has put to bed concerns about problems at that pool - everything looks normal.

I'm not going to comment any further about this week's stats - I still have to post the weekly network forecast and forum member Kano made an interesting suggestion that I need to follow up.

As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/05/12th-may-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[organofcorti]

19th May 2013 weekly pool and network statistics

Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Nil.

Pools missing from results:
Ozcoin - I think there's a problem with Ozcoin's round data. I'll look further into it.
Coinotron - site's down.

Errors:
Nil.

"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining
Pool hopping:
None.


BTCGuild solved about 39.1% of the network's blocks this week. It seems that eleuthria's choice to increase PPS fees at BTCGuild and no more increase in hashrate from ASICMiner has resulted in a stable percentage of the network for BTCGuild. There was a large drop in the pool's hashrate this week (see figure 4) which I think is from ASICMiner pulling 4Thps from the pool.

Not that it means anything, but Itzod was by far the luckiest pool this week (CDF 0.05), and Slushes pool the unluckiest (CDF 0.99).

As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/05/19th-may-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[organofcorti]

26th May 2013 weekly pool and network statistics

Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
The solomining portion of the ASICMiner hashrate has been added. The weekly blocks and hashrates are calculated using blocks with the "Mined by ASICMiner" signature in the coinbase. I've done the same for 50BTC.com and HHTT.

Pools missing from results:
Ozcoin - Ozcoin's data still looks a bit odd, and the results for this week are probably wrong.
Coinotron - site's down, again.

Errors:
Nil.

"ASIC ready" pools:

BTCGuild
50BTC.com
Slush's pool
Ozcoin
HHTT
Bitminter
EclipseMC
Eligius
Bitparking
Itzod
Triplemining
Pool hopping:
None.
Thanks:
Pool ops kinlo (Triplemining) and DrHaribo (Bitminter) for helping me figure out how to get the coinbase of each block without having to hammer blockexplorer.com too much. kinlo actually wrote me a bitcoind patch which I'm sure would have been very helpful if I had been able to compile bitcoind from source on my old macbook pro linux linux machine, which for some reason I can't.

Many pools had bad luck this week. This may have been due to a problem with getblocktemplate, which seems to have slowed many pools down until a patch was made available earlier in the week.

BTCGuild solved a comfortable 32.2% of blocks this week, so there are already calls for the PPS rate to be reduced. I doubt that will happen any time soon - BTCGuild could easily pop the 40% barrier if all the PPS miners returned.

ASICMiner's solomining has been added as a pool from this week on. Don't forget they have some hashaes at BitMinter and BTCGuild - only the solomined blocks show up on the tables and charts.

 As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/05/26th-may-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[organofcorti]

2nd June 2013 weekly pool and network statistics


Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Entities responsible for signing in the coinbase "Made in China", "七彩神仙鱼" ("Discus fish" in English),  and "st mining corp" have been added. Hashrates are calculated from the number of blocks solved in one week.
From next week, Ozcoin's data will also be calculated from the number of blocks solved in one week, using their coinbase signature.
"ASIC ready" list removed (since all pools should now be "ASIC ready") and has been replaced by the "Coinbase signatures" list.
New hashrate distribution chart (Figure

Pools missing from results:
Coinotron - site's up, but having trouble scraping them.
p2Pool - p2Pool.info is having some problems at the moment.

Errors:
Ozcoin's data for this week is using the site data, and is incorrect as far as I can tell.

Pools with coinbase signature:

ASICMiner: "Mined By ASICMiner"
50BTC.com: "Hi from 50BTC.com
Bitparking: "bitparking"
BitMinter:  "BitMinter"
BTCGuild :  "Mined by BTC Guild", "BTC Guild DE", "BTC Guild 2"
Discus Fish: "七彩神仙鱼"
EclipseMC: "EMC"
Eligius: "Eligius"
HHTT: "HHTT"
Made In China: "Made in China"
Ozcoin: "ozcoin"
Triplemining: "Triplemining.com"
Slush's pool: "slush"
ST Mining Corp: "st mining corp"

Pool hopping:
None.

I'm certain the Ozcoin data is wrong, but I can't figure out how. It seems to be incorrect at the website, but I could be wrong. Until I can figure out the source of the inaccuracy, from next week I will change to calculating their hashrate from the number of blocks solved in the week.

 As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/06/2nd-june-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com

[doublec]

"七彩神仙鱼" and "Made in China" mines to the same bitcoin address.

They're also merge mining namecoin, ixcoin and devcoin for the curious.

[organofcorti]

"七彩神仙鱼" and "Made in China" mines to the same bitcoin address.

Well spotted!

I'll combine their data before next weekend.

They're also merge mining namecoin, ixcoin and devcoin for the curious.

I read somewhere that you can tell which blocks were merge mined, but never got around to looking closely. How do you tell?

[doublec]

I read somewhere that you can tell which blocks were merge mined, but never got around to looking closely. How do you tell?

The coinbase is usually a giveaway. If it contains a bunch of junk or the string 'mm' is inserted by some software:

Code:

03b5a60320e4b8ade59c8be8a3bde980a0204d61646520696e204368696e6151ab5de607aafabe6d6d239f0b171cbe933fe8f9bd39217a5d998ca5dbca9df846f0850f773eb4d1626a040000000000000038b6fe1a000000000000089c
(decoded) �� 中國製造 Made in ChinaQ�]���mm#���?��9!z]����ʝ�F��w>��bj8���

The coinbase in devcoin for a lot of the blocks are:

Code:

5b323031332d30362d30325431333a33313a33362e3436323531375a5d20e4b8ade59c8be8a3bde980a0204d61646520696e204368696e61
[2013-06-02T13:31:36.462517Z] ???????????? Made in China

They have the majority hash rate on ixcoin and devcoin.

Sometimes it's hard to tell. For example, Eligius still has the MM coinbase but they say they announced they no longer offer merge mining of namecoins to miners so presumably they haven't updated their coinbase for the removal.

Software to analyse bitcoin blocks and the associated blocks on the altchains would be useful.

[organofcorti]

I read somewhere that you can tell which blocks were merge mined, but never got around to looking closely. How do you tell?

The coinbase is usually a giveaway. If it contains a bunch of junk or the string 'mm' is inserted by some software:

Code:

03b5a60320e4b8ade59c8be8a3bde980a0204d61646520696e204368696e6151ab5de607aafabe6d6d239f0b171cbe933fe8f9bd39217a5d998ca5dbca9df846f0850f773eb4d1626a040000000000000038b6fe1a000000000000089c
(decoded) �� 中國製造 Made in ChinaQ�]���mm#���?��9!z]����ʝ�F��w>��bj8���

The coinbase in devcoin for a lot of the blocks are:

Code:

5b323031332d30362d30325431333a33313a33362e3436323531375a5d20e4b8ade59c8be8a3bde980a0204d61646520696e204368696e61
[2013-06-02T13:31:36.462517Z] ???????????? Made in China

They have the majority hash rate on ixcoin and devcoin.

Sometimes it's hard to tell. For example, Eligius still has the MM coinbase but they say they announced they no longer offer merge mining of namecoins to miners so presumably they haven't updated their coinbase for the removal.

Thanks for the explanation doublec.

Software to analyse bitcoin blocks and the associated blocks on the altchains would be useful.

Good idea - if you have the data (raw hex coinbase), I can write a script. I'm not keen to run four different bitcoind equivalents on my laptop!

[organofcorti]

9th June 2013 weekly pool and network statistics

Welcome, miners.

Changelog:
Blocks solved with coinbase signatures of "Made in China" and  "七彩神仙鱼" both pay to the same bitcoin address, so they've been combined into one pool, "Discus fish".
Ozcoin's data is now calculated from the number of blocks solved in one week, using their coinbase signature.

Pools missing from results:
Coinotron - site down

Errors:
Nil

Pools with coinbase signature:

ASICMiner: "Mined By ASICMiner"
50BTC.com: "Hi from 50BTC.com
Bitparking: "bitparking"
BitMinter:  "BitMinter"
BTCGuild :  "Mined by BTC Guild", "BTC Guild DE", "BTC Guild 2", "BTC Guild 2"
Discus Fish: "七彩神仙鱼" and "Made in China"
EclipseMC: "EMC"
Eligius: "Eligius"
HHTT: "HHTT"
Ozcoin: "ozcoin"
Triplemining: "Triplemining.com"
Slush's pool: "slush"
ST Mining Corp: "st mining corp"

Pool hopping:
None.

A huge 25 Thps increase in the average weekly network hashrate this week - that's about a 25% increase in one week, of the weekly average. This hasn't happened since the first batch of Avalons were released combined with the start of the last btc price bubble.

Since it will be mostly miners reading this, I'd like to invite you to complete a survey I introduced in this post on the cost of mining. It will be a huge benefit when it comes to fighting FUD form news outlets looking for a suitably scary news story to demonise bitcoin.

As usual, please post comments if there's anything you don't understand, with which you disagree, or just think is wrong.

You can view this weeks charts at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2013/06/9th-june-2013-weekly-pool-and-network.html

You can view all previous charts and other posts and fun things at http://organofcorti.blogspot.com