Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01

[DrHaribo]

A big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts on page contents! If you have any more, keep them coming.

I wasn't sure if there would be much response, so this was totally awesome to see. It's a big motivation to keep improving the pool.

That's a lot of useful feedback. I'll be re-reading it and thinking about it for a bit.

The critical issue I need to fix first is the shifts page. A question mark lead some miners to believe the pool was broken. "Being paid now" had a lot of people believing payouts were taken place at that moment. And I still have to explain to two people (on average) per day that coins come in when we find blocks, and the latest 10 shifts are special because that's where those coins land.

I'm considering replacing the text on the 10 latest shifts with one of these:

• searching for blocks
• still eligible for pay
• (your idea here)

I think maybe "searching for blocks" could convey both that blocks are where coins come from and that this shift could still earn more coins.

Any thoughts?

[onsightit]

A big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts on page contents! If you have any more, keep them coming.

I wasn't sure if there would be much response, so this was totally awesome to see. It's a big motivation to keep improving the pool.

That's a lot of useful feedback. I'll be re-reading it and thinking about it for a bit.

The critical issue I need to fix first is the shifts page. A question mark lead some miners to believe the pool was broken. "Being paid now" had a lot of people believing payouts were taken place at that moment. And I still have to explain to two people (on average) per day that coins come in when we find blocks, and the latest 10 shifts are special because that's where those coins land.

I'm considering replacing the text on the 10 latest shifts with one of these:

• searching for blocks
• still eligible for pay
• (your idea here)

I think maybe "searching for blocks" could convey both that blocks are where coins come from and that this shift could still earn more coins.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for the explanation above.  Not trying to be a whiner, just frustrated by how un-intuitive things seem to me now, especially the shifts page.

If you are looking for votes on the replacement text, I like "still eligible for pay" (which might keep people from running off).  "Your idea here" is also just as good for me, because I still have no idea what the 10 mystery shifts are telling me.

[DrHaribo]

Thanks for the explanation above.  Not trying to be a whiner, just frustrated by how un-intuitive things seem to me now, especially the shifts page.

I'm a programmer, not an interaction designer. But I'm trying. The feedback is a great help.

We'll get there.

[eleuthria]

Thanks for the explanation above.  Not trying to be a whiner, just frustrated by how un-intuitive things seem to me now, especially the shifts page.

I'm a programmer, not an interaction designer. But I'm trying. The feedback is a great help.

We'll get there.

PPLNS in general (shifts actually simplify it for reporting) is hard to explain in a table.  If I were a graphics designer it would take me no time at all.  I think the key to explaining PPLNS relies in either a real-time conversation, a LOT of images, or the best way: an animation.

A simple GIF could probably clear up PPLNS misunderstandings in under 15 seconds :/.

[DrHaribo]

PPLNS in general (shifts actually simplify it for reporting) is hard to explain in a table.  If I were a graphics designer it would take me no time at all.  I think the key to explaining PPLNS relies in either a real-time conversation, a LOT of images, or the best way: an animation.

A simple GIF could probably clear up PPLNS misunderstandings in under 15 seconds :/.

Yeah, I was just thinking it would be cool to have an animation of coins flying from the new block and landing on the 10 shifts.

[DevonMiner]

Doc (and eleuthria) ...

Real time figures would surely give people reassurance that 'payment things' are happening in the background, to give them reassurance.

Newbies and some others need to understand/learn the way shifts work. The suggestion is people need to see the shifts column populated with some kind of dynamic data to help them out/understand.

I'm not a programmer, but I know I like straight facts. Is it possible to show 'shifts' in progress' as they slowly crystallize into fact?

Yeah, I was just thinking it would be cool to have an animation of coins flying from the new block and landing on the 10 shifts.

Really? LOL

And yes, today has been a good day to have your miners pointed at BitMinter. A 50 minute block was  ... well ... so welcome!

[eleuthria]

Doc (and eleuthria) ...

Real time figures would surely give people reassurance that 'payment things' are happening in the background, to give them reassurance.

Newbies and some others need to understand/learn the way shifts work. The suggestion is people need to see the shifts column populated with some kind of dynamic data to help them out/understand.

I'm not a programmer, but I know I like straight facts. Is it possible to show 'shifts' in progress' as they slowly crystallize into fact?

The problem is users seem to think there is "real time status".  Shifts update when blocks are found, or a new shift completes.  Those are the ONLY times anything changes for a shift.  There is absolutely no way to know what the outcome of a shift will be until it is no longer receiving payments (meaning 10 newer shifts have completed).

In BTC Guild's case, you can see the current rewards paid to open shifts.  I have a warning that says the number aren't final.  That doesn't stop a significant number of people from complaining to me about shifts not getting paid, and that "something must be broken, there's 7 0s in a row!".  DrHaribo got the same comments, and changed it to simply not show the 10 open shifts.

I think not showing the current rewards of the 10 open shifts by default is a good change, and I may end up implementing a similar change on my pool.  Though I think an option to enable the stats on open shifts should be provided for those who actively want it.

[nssminer]

A big thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts on page contents! If you have any more, keep them coming.

I wasn't sure if there would be much response, so this was totally awesome to see. It's a big motivation to keep improving the pool.

That's a lot of useful feedback. I'll be re-reading it and thinking about it for a bit.

The critical issue I need to fix first is the shifts page. A question mark lead some miners to believe the pool was broken. "Being paid now" had a lot of people believing payouts were taken place at that moment. And I still have to explain to two people (on average) per day that coins come in when we find blocks, and the latest 10 shifts are special because that's where those coins land.

I'm considering replacing the text on the 10 latest shifts with one of these:

• searching for blocks
• still eligible for pay
• (your idea here)

I think maybe "searching for blocks" could convey both that blocks are where coins come from and that this shift could still earn more coins.

Any thoughts?

I'm considering replacing the text on the 10 latest shifts with one of these:

    searching for blocks
    still eligible for pay
    (your idea here)       "Still Open"
    (For the paid shifts)  "Closed: 0.00118732"

[Fahlcor]

Doc I might be the only one here but can we have FUTURE say TOTAL instead as that is what it is.  It is the confirmed and the unconfirmed added together.  I just think people would easily look at that and think that is what they are going to be paid in the future when it is a total of what they have mined and will be paid.

If i'm wrong then leave it.

Also if we can still see how much we earn/block somewhere that would be good.  Seeings we hit 2 blocks in such a short time I can't see what I earned for each.  I also rented a bunch of miners to help me and I use these payouts to justify what I put back in.

again this might be just me...

Fahlcor

[nssminer]

Very nice day mining on Bitminter!

[bcm2013]

Doc I might be the only one here but can we have FUTURE say TOTAL instead as that is what it is.  It is the confirmed and the unconfirmed added together.  I just think people would easily look at that and think that is what they are going to be paid in the future when it is a total of what they have mined and will be paid.

If i'm wrong then leave it.

Also if we can still see how much we earn/block somewhere that would be good.  Seeings we hit 2 blocks in such a short time I can't see what I earned for each.  I also rented a bunch of miners to help me and I use these payouts to justify what I put back in.

again this might be just me...

Fahlcor

I think that is the currently removed "estimated pay per block" that several of us would like to have returned to a stats page may be what you are referring to. This number estimated what your pay would be for the next found block, based on your score across the last 10 shifts, regardless of whether that block was found in 3 minutes or 3 days.

[Fahlcor]

Doc I might be the only one here but can we have FUTURE say TOTAL instead as that is what it is.  It is the confirmed and the unconfirmed added together.  I just think people would easily look at that and think that is what they are going to be paid in the future when it is a total of what they have mined and will be paid.

If i'm wrong then leave it.

Also if we can still see how much we earn/block somewhere that would be good.  Seeings we hit 2 blocks in such a short time I can't see what I earned for each.  I also rented a bunch of miners to help me and I use these payouts to justify what I put back in.

again this might be just me...

Fahlcor

I think that is the currently removed "estimated pay per block" that several of us would like to have returned to a stats page may be what you are referring to. This number estimated what your pay would be for the next found block, based on your score across the last 10 shifts, regardless of whether that block was found in 3 minutes or 3 days.

I would be fine with a guestimate to what I might earn IF we found a block based on the past shifts sure,  What I really want is to know how much BTC i earn for each block found.  This should be a simple accounting type of idea.  I'm not sure why this is a difficult one to understand. It could be on the accounts page or blocks page or special Fahlcor page if it is that crazy to think that this info should be available to the users.

Other things that don't make sense to me.  CDF this number to me means nothing especially once it goes red.  This number if anything should be the amount of work we have done towards solving a block.  So if we hit the current difficulty that would be 100%.  If we do double the amount of work it should have been to find a single block that would be 200% etc...etc....  Showing a CDF number that can never hit 100% means nothing to me luck or not.

Also another neat number might be to calc how many blocks bitminter should be finding based on our current hashrate.  Otherwise I flip over to coinwarz to calc it out for fun.  btw at 1.5phash @ current difficulty we should be finding 1 block every 1.16 days. :-)

Fahlcor

[DrHaribo]

What I really want is to know how much BTC i earn for each block found.  This should be a simple accounting type of idea.

That's already in there. Look under "my account" -> "transaction history" in the website menu. All the details are there and you can download it as a .csv file to import into a spreadsheet and play around with if you want.

Other things that don't make sense to me.  CDF this number to me means nothing especially once it goes red.  This number if anything should be the amount of work we have done towards solving a block.  So if we hit the current difficulty that would be 100%.  If we do double the amount of work it should have been to find a single block that would be 200% etc...etc....  Showing a CDF number that can never hit 100% means nothing to me luck or not.

Yeah, a lot of people have problems understanding what CDF is.

30% CDF means "with the current difficulty and amount of work done we would have found one or more blocks in 30% of cases".

When you see it that way, it's not that complicated. Maybe it would help if the website had better info on what CDF is. Or perhaps I should just switch to the "luck" numbers that some pools use. "Luck" isn't exactly defined anywhere, but I guess 110% luck means we found 110% of the blocks we'd be expected to find with the current difficulty and amount of work done.

[AaronS]

What I really want is to know how much BTC i earn for each block found.  This should be a simple accounting type of idea.

That's already in there. Look under "my account" -> "transaction history" in the website menu. All the details are there and you can download it as a .csv file to import into a spreadsheet and play around with if you want.

I could be wrong, but I think Fahlcor wants to see the earnings for a block as soon as it has been found.  It doesn't show up on the transaction page until it has be confirmed and irrevocably paid.  I understand why it would be useful but I also understand that until a block has its 120 (did that change to 100?) confirmations it really isn't money in the bank (without a perk).  Perhaps "Unconfirmed" payments could be broken up to show the amount from each of the blocks awaiting confirmation.

[Fahlcor]

What I really want is to know how much BTC i earn for each block found.  This should be a simple accounting type of idea.

That's already in there. Look under "my account" -> "transaction history" in the website menu. All the details are there and you can download it as a .csv file to import into a spreadsheet and play around with if you want.

I could be wrong, but I think Fahlcor wants to see the earnings for a block as soon as it has been found.  It doesn't show up on the transaction page until it has be confirmed and irrevocably paid.  I understand why it would be useful but I also understand that until a block has its 120 (did that change to 100?) confirmations it really isn't money in the bank (without a perk).  Perhaps "Unconfirmed" payments could be broken up to show the amount from each of the blocks awaiting confirmation.

Exactly. 

no difference to me if it is a or whatever.  Or even in the transaction list pending confirm but listed the second it is found.  Looking to see what a block earned 2 days later after it confirms is annoying.

Thx

[theweiss]

When you see it that way, it's not that complicated. Maybe it would help if the website had better info on what CDF is. Or perhaps I should just switch to the "luck" numbers that some pools use. "Luck" isn't exactly defined anywhere, but I guess 110% luck means we found 110% of the blocks we'd be expected to find with the current difficulty and amount of work done.

I'm scared to use the "L" with a lot of people not really understanding what random really means but I really like the idea. Currently I use the amount of green versus red in the Latest Blocks section of the Live stats page as my happiness indicator.

I too think CDF is an opaque number to new users but, I think most experienced miners can grasp the concept.  I do think that Fahlcor's idea of a stat where 100% being the expected work and 200% being twice the expected work, etc... might be a nice newbie-friendly stat.  I also really like the idea of an “Expected Block Frequency” stat that is based on the current hash rate.


Ultimately, from reading all of the suggestions that the Doc is getting, I think there are two camps.  The experienced folks who want good hard details.  e.g. the kind that are difficult for hobbyists to grasp.  And then there are hobbyists that can't or don't care to understand the conceptual details that make up a lot of the current and proposed stats.  This leads me to believe that an "Advanced View" and a "Basic View" might be the only way to give everyone what they want and to minimize confusion.  I think this forum thread could be broken out into two threads (one for each) where people could ask questions relevant to them and get answers delivered in their terms and at their level of comprehension.  This is kind of the case now but if the 2 views are implemented I would suggest making the purpose for each a little more defined.

[ichtus27]

Is that not what the pre pay perk is for, that you can see when the block is found that you get payed instead of waiting till the comformations. Than do that perk what i have on and you have it and know it.

Yes you pay for it, but you see it then instead of that waiting period.

[nssminer]

On the Account Details Page, you could make "Unconfirmed" a link to an "Unconfirmed Stats/Ledger Page" that contained:

[Block Number] [Date & Time] [Your GH/TH/s] [Your Shares] [Your Score] [Your Payout] [Confirmed On] [Next Block Payout]


Have it like the other ledgers so that you can view "BTC", "NMC" and "Both".

The instant payout feature, for this info, no, it is for instant "pay" not instant "knowledge". I can wait for the coin and am glad to. But when calculating future hardware purchases/rentals on a shift/spot basis I need to know what my last drop made me and now. All the above stats are already on the systems, shouldn't be to big a stretch to make a page that displays them.

I'm with Fahlcor on this too, I miss the "expected payout", again this data is on the system, and in real time, or how the heck would the system know what to pay us per block concerning the last 10 shifts.

                                            [Next Block Payout]
{This is what you done the last 10 shifts, so this is what to expect} and it updates every shift.

[strongenough24]

 Since shift time has changed my earnings have dropped. This appears to be because the shorter shifts have encouraged big time renters to do what must be the equivalent of pool hopping. I would be okay with that if they stayed long enough to find blocks, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Granted my 24/7 408 Ghps is not finding blocks either, but my share is hardly noticeable compared to some of these renters. Is it time for the small miners to give up? Or can someone recommend a different pool?

[AaronS]

While your theory is correct the fact is since shift time has changed my earnings have dropped. This appears to be because the shorter shifts have encouraged big time renters to do what must be the equivalent of pool hopping. I would be okay with that if they stayed long enough to find blocks, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Granted my 24/7 408 Ghps is not finding blocks either, but my share is hardly noticeable compared to some of these renters. Is it time for the small miners to give up? Or can someone recommend a different pool?

Big hashers jumping in and out does not affect your pay: it decreases your pay per block but increases the number of blocks found, resulting in the same net pay on average.  Since the pool has been lucky as of late your pay should have been better than normal.  Ever increasing difficulty definitely decreases your pay if your hash rate remains constant.  I think this is where the blame lies for your decreasing pay.

The question about when to "give up" has more to do with your cost per hash than your total hash rate.  If you already own the hardware it's simply a matter of comparing the cost of electricity to run it versus the income it produces.  If you're really lucky and run you equipment somewhere you don't pay for the electricity then there is no reason to stop no matter how low the hash rate is.

Aaron