Should I switch pools? (on DeepBit)

[thdvmgbgjn]

I'm casual miner and it's nearing 1 year since mining.

I've been doing about 1 GH/s, nothing impressive, but I've been on Deepbit the whole time simply because it's big. I went to Bitcoinwatch the other day and it seems like BTCGuild is catching up in hash rate. I did a little research and Deepbit is 10% fee versus 5% fee at BTC Guild. Isn't this a no brainer to switch? And of course I've heard of smaller pools like MtRed which are also PPS and 0% fee? Why do so many people stick to DeepBit if this is the case?

At the same time if I don't get much out of switching, I'm too lazy to since it would require digging up a monitor and keyboard to hook to my dummy miners.

Finally, what about merged mining? I see this on BTC Guild, and does it offer any benefits? To me I just see it as killing 2 birds with 1 stone, but can someone explain more detailed?

[1714820569]

1714820569

[1714820569]

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[mdude77]

I'm casual miner and it's nearing 1 year since mining.

I've been doing about 1 GH/s, nothing impressive, but I've been on Deepbit the whole time simply because it's big. I went to Bitcoinwatch the other day and it seems like BTCGuild is catching up in hash rate. I did a little research and Deepbit is 10% fee versus 5% fee at BTC Guild. Isn't this a no brainer to switch? And of course I've heard of smaller pools like MtRed which are also PPS and 0% fee? Why do so many people stick to DeepBit if this is the question?

Why?  Because it's easy and it's appealing?  Seriously, if you look around, people left and right are saying get off of DeepBit.

I was on BTC Guild before they started changing a fee.  Just today I switched off to p2pool for a number of reasons:
1 - no 5% fee
2 - the transaction fees aren't absorbed by the pool owner (miners get them now)
3 - it's peer to peer, so no DOS like btcguild tends to get
4 - it's exciting to watch

At the same time if I don't get much out of switching, I'm too lazy to since it would require digging up a monitor and keyboard to hook to my dummy miners.

My 1.8gh rig is headless.  I use tightvnc to remote to it.

Finally, what about merged mining? I see this on BTC Guild, and does it offer any benefits? To me I just see it as killing 2 birds with 1 stone, but can someone explain more detailed?

With merged mining you can get namecoins with no decrease in hash rate on bitcoins.  What's a namecoin?  From my experience, an almost worthless item.  Unless you have 100+ gh, I'd estimate, the returns on namecoins are dismall.

[CA Coins]

Try taking their pps rate to see how much more you would earn each month if you go from deepbit to BTCGuild.  You should be able to see how many shares you submitted on deepbit.  They are both big, with good networks and low stales, and with PPS you don't have to worry about invalid blocks.  I have mined on both with no major issues (10GH+).  I think deepbit's servers are in Europe and BTC Guild's are in Chicago.

Here, I even pull down their current rates for you from their website:
Deepbit:  0.00002982918472360
BTC Guild: 0.00003148637567952570

[mufa23]

Check out the Eclipse Mining Consortium. There is no fee, and they have the option between DGM and PPS. PPS pays out at 0.00031 right now...

[lunchb0x]

Try taking their pps rate to see how much more you would earn each month if you go from deepbit to BTCGuild.  You should be able to see how many shares you submitted on deepbit.  They are both big, with good networks and low stales, and with PPS you don't have to worry about invalid blocks.  I have mined on both with no major issues (10GH+).  I think deepbit's servers are in Europe and BTC Guild's are in Chicago.

Here, I even pull down their current rates for you from their website:
Deepbit:  0.00002982918472360
BTC Guild: 0.00003148637567952570

MtRed: 0.0000331435385818

[thdvmgbgjn]

With merged mining you can get namecoins with no decrease in hash rate on bitcoins.  What's a namecoin?  From my experience, an almost worthless item.  Unless you have 100+ gh, I'd estimate, the returns on namecoins are dismall.

Well yeah it's worthless, but it's like a bonus 2-3% on your mining right? So especially in a pool with a fee (say BTC Guild), your 5% fee is realistically like 3% now with merged mining. Certainly better if you pick a PPS pool with no fee right?

I'm just trying to understand this because it's like saying buying a Megamillions ticket, but my ticket is also good for Powerball. Sounds too good to be true, but I guess a 2% bonus isn't really much anyway, so heh...

[mdude77]

With merged mining you can get namecoins with no decrease in hash rate on bitcoins.  What's a namecoin?  From my experience, an almost worthless item.  Unless you have 100+ gh, I'd estimate, the returns on namecoins are dismall.

Well yeah it's worthless, but it's like a bonus 2-3% on your mining right? So especially in a pool with a fee (say BTC Guild), your 5% fee is realistically like 3% now with merged mining. Certainly better if you pick a PPS pool with no fee right?

I'm just trying to understand this because it's like saying buying a Megamillions ticket, but my ticket is also good for Powerball. Sounds too good to be true, but I guess a 2% bonus isn't really much anyway, so heh...

I'm not sure about 2-3%.  Here are some stats from my account on BTCGuild:

Bitcoins mined: 89.79664017
Namecoins mined: 208.32637317

That's about 2.31 namecoins for every bitcoin.

From https://exchange.bitparking.com/main, namecoins are currently worth 0.00968888 bitcoins.

That means for the 89.80 bitcoins I mined, I got a bonus 0.87 bitcoins.  Not including fees to sell the namecoins (which I haven't yet).

Work it out to see how long it'll take you get 1 free bitcoin.  That's about 1% bonus, rounded up.

Not worth the 5% fee IMHO.

(I read elsewhere you can run the pool software on your PC if you really want namecoins.)