[~1000 GH/sec] BTC Guild - 0% Fee Pool, LP, SSL, Full Precision, and More

[DareC]

This doesn't look like planned downtime, so nobody can really say how long it'll last.

Just switch to another pool while you wait.

[Soros Shorts]

Still down?

Were they using Comcast business class for their internet connection? That service is not meant for hosting sites with with a lot of traffic. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that Comcast pulled the plug on them because all the getwork() requests were saturating the node.

Anyway hope the new server comes up soon as I like this pool.

[andrepcg]

it's back up again 

[anatolikostis]

it's back up again 

at last!

[anisoptera]

Please, please switch to score-based. I want to see how good your interface is for myself before I decide whether to go here, but I won't even consider moving to a pool that isn't score-based.

The key thing to remember about why share-based is bad is that "shares" are actually worthless. Think about solo mining. If you mine for 10 minutes solo and then stop, you get nothing. You probably came across some "shares" while solo mining, but they aren't worth anything. The only thing that's really worth anything is a winning block. Shares only exist to tell a pool server that you're still mining in a way that can't be forged.

You want the shares of people no longer hashing for your pool to decay quickly. Because they aren't helping you find a hash anymore.

[Sukrim]

The key thing to remember about why share-based is bad is that "shares" are actually worthless.

As far as I understood, 1 "solved" share is a nonce that creates a hash that starts with Zeroes.
Sometimes there are more leading Zeroes than required by chance, and every once in a while there is a share that has enough leadeing zeroes to be also able to qualify for the current difficulty.

Why should a share that was submitted early in a round be worth less than a share that was submitted later on? Both shares have the exactly same chance of being the winning share.

As far as I understand the pool hopping paper, Raulo did not take the increased hashrate by pool hopers into account - so you would earn BTC faster while hopping, but also less because the pool has a higher hash rate in the beginning of rounds. This might even the "cheating" out.

Edit: It would also mean that I, as a constant miner would see slightly less income from short rounds. This is not the case.

[anisoptera]

The key thing to remember about why share-based is bad is that "shares" are actually worthless.

As far as I understood, 1 "solved" share is a nonce that creates a hash that starts with Zeroes.
Sometimes there are more leading Zeroes than required by chance, and every once in a while there is a share that has enough leadeing zeroes to be also able to qualify for the current difficulty.

Why should a share that was submitted early in a round be worth less than a share that was submitted later on? Both shares have the exactly same chance of being the winning share.

No, they don't. One of them actually IS the winning hash. The other ones are just hashes with a bunch of leading zero bits and are worthless to you except to prove that they really are still working on the block. DUCY?

You want to reward the people that are contributing right now to your pool. The people who aren't hashing for you right now aren't helping you finish blocks, and none of their work has any value to you anymore. If I have 10K non-winning shares, the 10001th share isn't any more likely to be the winning hash.

As far as I understand the pool hopping paper, Raulo did not take the increased hashrate by pool hopers into account - so you would earn BTC faster while hopping, but also less because the pool has a higher hash rate in the beginning of rounds. This might even the "cheating" out.

It does not. The thing to keep in mind is that if you DO finish a block faster in the beginning, the hopper never jumps. They take their legitimate share from that block. The higher hashrate lets you finish blocks faster, but they just have to take that into account.

Say they have 10Ghash. Then your pool hashrate is 10G higher while they are on your pool. They work out that your pool, with their hashrate contribution, is likely to get a block on average every, say, 3 hours. They hash on your pool until the current round has gone for 1 hour 20 min, then jump to another pool. Now you don't have that additional hashrate anymore, but you're going to give them a large share of the block when it is found anyway, even though they didn't really help you at all on this block - they've helped you on previous blocks that were found faster, but on this one, they contributed some worthless shares and left.

The thing to keep in mind is that if they are jumping from your pool, their previous contribution is worthless. They aren't helping you solve the current block and none of the work they did actually helped you solve this block.



As a thought experiment, consider the pathological case, where they deliberately don't send shares that do match the current difficulty. That is, they will never, ever submit a winning share, even if they find one. Are this person's shares worth as much as an honest miner's shares?

If you agree that in THAT case, they aren't worth anything, then why are the shares of someone who intended to jump off the pool if you hadn't solved it in a little less than half the average amount of time you solve a block worth anything?

This is a little like the Monty Hall paradox in that the miner's future intent matters.

[Sukrim]

As a thought experiment, consider the pathological case, where they deliberately don't send shares that do match the current difficulty. That is, they will never, ever submit a winning share, even if they find one. Are this person's shares worth as much as an honest miner's shares?

If you agree that in THAT case, they aren't worth anything, then why are the shares of someone who intended to jump off the pool if you hadn't solved it in a little less than half the average amount of time you solve a block worth anything?

Well, in the other extreme case (= "solo mining") you only get BTC if you have this single "share" that solves the block.
Every method in between takes money from the winner and distributes it to someone who didn't submit a winning share (however the distribution is calculated).

Since share based pools are vulnerable to "early leaving", I wonder if it's also possible to "join late" pool-hop on score based pools (join the pool after ~60% of the expected average time has been mined and hop away to another late pool once the block has been solved for example). Since it is as unpredictable that a round will be short or long, it shouldn't make a difference, right? I didn't do all the calculations yet though and have to take a look at Holy-Fire's algorithm again...

[kjj]

Feature request:  A way to change a worker's password.

[Nythain]

worker password is useless now... you could put in whatever you want, the pool ignores the password field

[anisoptera]

I wonder if it's also possible to "join late" pool-hop on score based pools (join the pool after ~60% of the expected average time has been mined and hop away to another late pool once the block has been solved for example). Since it is as unpredictable that a round will be short or long, it shouldn't make a difference, right? I didn't do all the calculations yet though and have to take a look at Holy-Fire's algorithm again...

It isn't. After a reasonable period of time, the best you are going to do is your own EV (expected value for mhash/s). You can't get more than that by late-hopping; you can get more than your EV if you pool-hop from share-based pools.

[Sukrim]

It isn't. After a reasonable period of time, the best you are going to do is your own EV (expected value for mhash/s).

So in the end I get screwed when joining a score based pool by the pool (as I would get probably less than someone mining longer than me with the exact same hash rate(!)) and I get potentially screwed by pool hoppers on short rounds if I stick to a share based pool...

As I currently get even a bit more payout than on average on short rounds here, I guess at least the attacks are not very widespread...

[Creepster]

Please, please switch to score-based. I want to see how good your interface is for myself before I decide whether to go here, but I won't even consider moving to a pool that isn't score-based.

The key thing to remember about why share-based is bad is that "shares" are actually worthless. Think about solo mining. If you mine for 10 minutes solo and then stop, you get nothing. You probably came across some "shares" while solo mining, but they aren't worth anything. The only thing that's really worth anything is a winning block. Shares only exist to tell a pool server that you're still mining in a way that can't be forged.

You want the shares of people no longer hashing for your pool to decay quickly. Because they aren't helping you find a hash anymore.

Well, join a score based pool 

[eleuthria]

New server is being setup for the pool RIGHT NOW.  It will be coming online in the next few hours, and registration will be back open.

[anisoptera]

It isn't. After a reasonable period of time, the best you are going to do is your own EV (expected value for mhash/s).

So in the end I get screwed when joining a score based pool by the pool (as I would get probably less than someone mining longer than me with the exact same hash rate(!))

No, actually if you join a score based pool, as long as the pool doesn't complete the block they're on very quickly after you join, you'll get about the same amount as the person mining longer with the same hash rate. The point of score based is to accomplish this. The variance can take a little while to even out, but it works itself out in about a week.

Well, join a score based pool 

I am considering joining this one because it has features I like. Score based benefits everyone.

[eleuthria]

BTC Guild is back online and running strong so far.  New server is MUCH faster than the old one based on reports from all our users in the IRC channel.  We're now more connected to other bitcoin nodes meaning our blocks will spread across the network faster, and new blocks will be notified faster via long poll updates.

Registrations are back up, and we encourage our users that switched to other pools to come back now that we aren't running on an overloaded server.

[bce]

BTC Guild has been excellent not only in how reliable it was during the initial test, but in the website's design.  Thanks, eleuthria for getting things running again, this time on a new dedicated server!!!  Hopefully this pool will not only help people realize a reliable way to generate coins, but can split up network power a bit more safely (nobody going over that 50% mark of network hashing power).



 

[TehZomB]

Thanks for getting it back up and running

[IlbiStarz]

BTC Guild has been excellent not only in how reliable it was during the initial test, but in the website's design.  Thanks, eleuthria for getting things running again, this time on a new dedicated server!!!  Hopefully this pool will not only help people realize a reliable way to generate coins, but can split up network power a bit more safely (nobody going over that 50% mark of network hashing power).

Actually....deepbit is like at 49% right now...idk how this happened again. o.o

[andrepcg]

I just love this pool! Thanks Eleuthria for your great work. Now we need more people to populate the server!

C'mon guys, we need your gpu power! We're running @ 211gHash/s, let's crank it up to 300!!