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

Quote from: Carnth on June 27, 2011, 03:23:26 PM

Quote from: pennytrader on June 26, 2011, 08:20:50 PM

Out of curiosity, why does it take 120 confirmations, vs. slush only takes 100 confirmations?

If you Solo mine, and actually find a block... the 50 Bitcoin reward appears as a "Generated" transaction... as opposed to a "Sent" or "Received" transaction.
The Bitcoin protocol requires 120 confirmations before "Generated" coins can be spent. Since the pool Generates the coins, eleuthria is just making you wait the same amount of time that he has to wait before you can get your reward. I have no idea why any other pool would not use that same 120 confirmations.

The 120 confirmations are required to make absolutely sure that the block that was found is valid.

Now, let me take this time to remind everyone that you can skip all the waiting if you adjust your donation to 2.5% or more.
Not only do you help eleuthria pay for the servers needed to run the pool, but when a block is found, your estimated rewards goes instantly to your confirmed rewards. Even if a block is invalid, you still get paid.

The Bitcoin protocol actually only requires 100 confirmations before "Generated" coins are credited to your address and are spendable. It's just that the local client doesn't actually let you spend them for another 20 confirmations for some reason. Slush (and maybe others) modified their local bitcoin clients to allow them to go ahead and spend them immediately after they have been credited (100 confirmations) instead of waiting 20 more.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys, simplejson, urllib
API_KEY = 'insert your api key here'
API_ARG = 'api_key'
URL_BASE = 'http://www.btcguild.com/api.php'

class BtcGuildError(Exception):
   pass

def stats(query):
   url = URL_BASE + '?' + API_ARG + '=' + API_KEY
   result = simplejson.load(urllib.urlopen(url))
   if 'Error' in result:
   # An error occurred; raise an exception
   raise BtcGuildError, result['Error']
   if query == 'all':
   return result
   else:
   return result[query]

def main():
   if len(sys.argv) == 2 and (sys.argv[1] == 'all' or sys.argv[1] == 'workers' or sys.argv[1] == 'user' or sys.argv[1] == 'pool'):
   print simplejson.dumps(stats(sys.argv[1]), indent=4)
   else:
   sys.exit("Usage: btcgstats.py <all|workers|user|pool>")

if __name__ == "__main__":
   main()