BITMAIN announces Antpool

[Solemn]

I HAVEN'T BEEN PAID!

And now the settings pages doesn't even show the BTC address that I set up.

That would be why, how can they pay you if there isn't an address on your account. Did you verify the address via the link sent by email?

Ah ha...I may be a "noob" but I'm not an idiot...

I DID indeed enter an address on my account when I first set it up, and thinking that there might be a simple explanation I went to the settings page to confirm the correct address...only to find that there is no address and even more disturbing - no option or opportunity to enter one.  The "Bitcoin Setting" field is completely blank as is the address field.  Additionally, I did not get an email asking me to verify the address (just checked through junk/spam/deleted folders again).  

So...it would appear that I need someone from inside antpool to restore the ability for my username to insert an address so I can create a new one, or resend the verification email to use the previous address (if it's still in the antpool system somewhere).

Easy enough...right....

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[windpath]

How do you cover your costs having in mind it is 0% fee pool?

Transaction fees will cover some costs, but read the OP as to 'why' generally.

Sorry, they will not. TX fees in p2pool are paid to miners, not the node operator.

[windpath]

Don't forget that even if they end up being just one node in any p2pool network - be it the existing one or a new one, they will be far more than 51% of that network meaning it's as good as a centralised pool.

Like I said, they're paying homage to the idea of decentralisation because clients are demanding it so it makes for good marketing on their part. While them contributing to p2pool is most welcome, I see no sign of any of the alleged decentralisation.

Hi ckolivas,

Yes p2p.antpool.com is only a node of p2pool network, but it brings more hashrate to the p2pool network. As mentioned in the announcement, we think we need to add hashrate to p2pool network first, to make the output more stable, then lots of p2pool nodes will show up. Finally, there will be a denctralized p2pool network.

If you have not fixed the variance problem for smaller miners all you will achieve by dumping a bunch of hashrate on p2pool is to drive out the smaller miners, many of which are using your equipment.

[xlc1985]

Well, I pointed a bit of hash power at AntPool a little over two days ago just to try it out, (Bitminter is my home) because I'm a "learn by doing" type of guy and really like the AntMiners I've got thus far.  Unfortunately, it's looking to be a very short run experiment.  So far, besides the incredibly inaccurate worker speed graph my biggest problem is that:

I HAVEN'T BEEN PAID!

I've been through two "automatic" payment cycles with balances above 0.01 with no joy. And now the settings pages doesn't even show the BTC address that I set up.  I have sent an email to info@bitmaintech as well as a support ticket (which appeared to disappear as soon as I selected "create, and is not listed on the left hand menu under "my tickets").  

I don't post much on here for a variety of reasons but this debacle has prompted me to reachout in a last ditch effort to get a bit of assistance from....well anyone related to bitmaintech...

Did I mention that there is no manual method for me to get my earnings, which I admit, wouldn't be an issue if the "automatic" payment system was working for me!  But it isn't...

-Edit:  14/11/14 - Just got an email from Bitmaintech asking when I started mining and repeating when the automatic payouts are supposed to happen. I've been mining since the 12th. and had enough to meet the min on the first day.  I can forgive the payout not happening on the first day...but it should have happened on the 14th!

Hi, we will solve the problem as soon as possible, we now is the day UTC 00:00 - 01:00 pay, manual to mention the function being developed and tested, will soon provide use immediately

[jonnybravo0311]

Don't forget that even if they end up being just one node in any p2pool network - be it the existing one or a new one, they will be far more than 51% of that network meaning it's as good as a centralised pool.

Like I said, they're paying homage to the idea of decentralisation because clients are demanding it so it makes for good marketing on their part. While them contributing to p2pool is most welcome, I see no sign of any of the alleged decentralisation.

Hi ckolivas,

Yes p2p.antpool.com is only a node of p2pool network, but it brings more hashrate to the p2pool network. As mentioned in the announcement, we think we need to add hashrate to p2pool network first, to make the output more stable, then lots of p2pool nodes will show up. Finally, there will be a denctralized p2pool network.

If you have not fixed the variance problem for smaller miners all you will achieve by dumping a bunch of hashrate on p2pool is to drive out the smaller miners, many of which are using your equipment.

Exactly this.  While I commend your vision of promoting decentralization, the biggest single flaw in p2pool as it currently exists is that of variance.  Please understand that in your typical pool, the more hash rate you dump on the pool, the less variance is experienced by miners.  Exactly the opposite happens in p2pool because of the nature of the underlying share chain.

If you suddenly double, triple, quadruple the overall pool hash rate, you make it that much more difficult for individual miners to find shares.  Let me share some maths with you to help explain things.  First, let's take a look at the current p2pool situation (as of right now):

Code:

Share Difficulty (D) = 15348570.54
Miner hashrate (h) = 1000000000000 (1 TH/s)
D * 2^32 / hashrate = expected number of seconds to find a share
15348570.54 * 2^32 / 1000000000000 = 65921.61

So, right now a miner with 1TH/s of hashing power should expect to find a share every 18.3 hours or so.

Let's see what happens when the overall pool's hash rate jumps to 10 PH/s.  First, we need to calculate the difficulty of finding a share:

Code:

D * 2^32 / 10000000000000000 = 30
D = 69849193.09616088867188

The share difficulty has now jumped up to near 70 million.  Plug that back into the equation for our miner with 1 TH/s:

Code:

69849193.1 * 2^32 / 1000000000000 = 300000

Now that miner would expect to find a share just about every 3.5 days.

Therein lies the problem.  That poor miner with 1 TH/s went from expecting to find a share every 18 hours to near 3.5 days.  Sure, overall you'd expect the pool itself to be finding more blocks, but that individual miner is going to be missing out on quite a few of them.

As you increase the hash rate of the pool, the share difficulty increases to compensate.  The more the share difficulty increases, the harder it becomes for a miner to find a share.  Why?  Because finding a share is effectively solo mining a coin.  Let's play a game and assume for a second that the ENTIRE bitcoin network switched over and started mining on p2pool.  How does our poor miner with 1 TH/s fare then?  Let's find out:

Code:

Share Difficulty = 39603666252 / 20 = 1980183312.6
1980183312.6 * 2^32 / 1000000000000 = 8504822.58

It would take on average 98.4 days for the 1 TH/s miner to find a share.

The entire point of this exercise was to say that simply increasing the hash rate of the p2pool network is NOT the solution to p2pool's problems.  In fact, just blindly adding hash rate will probably have the exact opposite effect you're hoping to achieve.  If you want people to mine p2pool and promote the decentralization, you need to make p2pool an attractive option to them.  High variance is not a very good selling point.

[loshia]

Thank you for your time jonnybravo0311!!!!!
As i said whole thing is a complete bulshit a few pages ago.
Bitmain propaganda roughly sounds like this:
1. My Miners SW sucks and it is closed code
2. I do not want/will fix them in near feature
3. But i will make a miracle with 0% fee "Decentralized" pool and loose a ton of $$$ (server rent staff salary, support) just because i want you to maximize your "profits" and mining speed

He can maximize your mining speed manipulating pool stats but I can not say same about your profit folks
At the end what matters is not your pool stats but your payouts

Meanwhile there are a couple of tricks which pool op can do to pay for pool expenses even with 0% fee - which will decrease your payouts even more

THINK!

[OVRGRO]

Seems to work for me, or do you mean a different page?

https://www.bitmaintech.com/about.htm

no, i mean https://www.antpool.com/support.htm  from there on the very bottom right side says ticket. click on it, from there you can fill out whatever you want under antpool and hit submit, nothing happens. i'll give it a few more hours before i go the regular info@bm route. somebody should be out there for the pool issues specifically. it's ridiculous a block payment doesn't show up for a 5 minute block when the time payment does. got both payments for the preceding and following blocks just fine. it is as unlikely my 2 s3s were hashing at 0 for 5 minutes as it was they were averaging 1.8T for 10 minutes



i had only been running 21-22 hours, which is why my 24 hr hadn't reached 490-500ish.

[IYFTech]

How do you cover your costs having in mind it is 0% fee pool?

Transaction fees will cover some costs......

Wrong again, & again, & again........

You don't have a clue what you are talking about dogie. Stop posting on this thread - go away.

[BITMAIN]

Seems to work for me, or do you mean a different page?

https://www.bitmaintech.com/about.htm

no, i mean https://www.antpool.com/support.htm  from there on the very bottom right side says ticket. click on it, from there you can fill out whatever you want under antpool and hit submit, nothing happens. i'll give it a few more hours before i go the regular info@bm route. somebody should be out there for the pool issues specifically. it's ridiculous a block payment doesn't show up for a 5 minute block when the time payment does. got both payments for the preceding and following blocks just fine. it is as unlikely my 2 s3s were hashing at 0 for 5 minutes as it was they were averaging 1.8T for 10 minutes



i had only been running 21-22 hours, which is why my 24 hr hadn't reached 490-500ish.

Hi

Hi OVRGRO,

May you PM us your account to check your payout exactly?
Our apologies for the inconvenience of ticket, will check the problem you described ASAP.

[dogie]

The entire point of this exercise was to say that simply increasing the hash rate of the p2pool network is NOT the solution to p2pool's problems.  In fact, just blindly adding hash rate will probably have the exact opposite effect you're hoping to achieve.  If you want people to mine p2pool and promote the decentralization, you need to make p2pool an attractive option to them.  High variance is not a very good selling point.

You're missing the point of this. Antpool (p2pmode) gets rid of the variance problem for anyone using Antpool in p2pool mode. Yes it makes it more difficult for everyone else temporarily but its a necessary step in order to fix the problem. With the open sourced code, anyone else is free to open their own p2pool pool. With a few of these set up, every p2pool miner can move to a p2pool based pool.

P2pool overall hashrate goes up so it gets more market share and individual miners get the benefits associated with pooled hash rate. No more variance.

[dogie]

Seems to work for me, or do you mean a different page?

https://www.bitmaintech.com/about.htm

no, i mean https://www.antpool.com/support.htm  from there on the very bottom right side says ticket. click on it, from there you can fill out whatever you want under antpool and hit submit, nothing happens. i'll give it a few more hours before i go the regular info@bm route. somebody should be out there for the pool issues specifically. it's ridiculous a block payment doesn't show up for a 5 minute block when the time payment does. got both payments for the preceding and following blocks just fine. it is as unlikely my 2 s3s were hashing at 0 for 5 minutes as it was they were averaging 1.8T for 10 minutes

i had only been running 21-22 hours, which is why my 24 hr hadn't reached 490-500ish.

The ticket link you're referring to is visible from every page. It takes you direct to the bitmain ticket system here: https://support.bitmain.com/questions/pending (if logged in, else prompts to login).

The 'Support' page is more of an FAQ page like everyone else has: https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=support

Bug reported for Antpool support tickets not going anywhere, I think its to do with there being no categories selectable.

[jonnybravo0311]

The entire point of this exercise was to say that simply increasing the hash rate of the p2pool network is NOT the solution to p2pool's problems.  In fact, just blindly adding hash rate will probably have the exact opposite effect you're hoping to achieve.  If you want people to mine p2pool and promote the decentralization, you need to make p2pool an attractive option to them.  High variance is not a very good selling point.

You're missing the point of this. Antpool (p2pmode) gets rid of the variance problem for anyone using Antpool in p2pool mode. Yes it makes it more difficult for everyone else temporarily but its a necessary step in order to fix the problem. With the open sourced code, anyone else is free to open their own p2pool pool. With a few of these set up, every p2pool miner can move to a p2pool based pool.

P2pool overall hashrate goes up so it gets more market share and individual miners get the benefits associated with pooled hash rate. No more variance.

I don't believe I'm missing the point at all.  I speculated earlier in this thread on how to achieve a solution for the variance problem - by throwing a typical PPLNS pool on top of the p2pool backbone.  Yes, this certainly helps the small miner; however, it does absolutely nothing for the decentralization issue.  In fact, it does exactly the opposite.  Not only that, but it makes it that much harder for the user of the standard p2pool framework because the network takes on the additional load of the miners using Bitmain's p2pool setup.

One of the beauties of p2pool as it stands now is the ability for a user to move from node to node and continue to mine.  For example, I have my own local node that I run on my laptop and a VPS node that I use when I'm traveling for work.  I turn off my laptop and my miners seamlessly move onto the new node.  I can have any number of backup nodes configured and move between them at will.

The underlying problem is expounded precisely because of the ability for me to move from node to node.  My shares are broadcast to every other node.  Everybody knows everything about everyone.  That's decentralization at its finest.  Take down one node, and move the miners to another without interruption or concern.  The p2pool network continues on, as do your miners.  To accomplish this feat of decentralization p2pool relies upon the share chain.  However, as I pointed out, the price you pay for this is variance.  Because the share chain is nothing more than a simple incarnation of a SHA-256 coin, the more hash rate you have, the higher the difficulty of the share becomes.

How does Bitmain solve this problem?  I suppose time will tell and the code will show, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the folks at Bitmain have done.  Believe me, I'm one of the believers in p2pool.  I've spent many hours going through the code, posting in the forums and of course mining on it.  My post above was made to show that simply throwing hash at p2pool does not address the problems inherent in the system, but rather makes them more visibly prominent.

[dogie]

I don't believe I'm missing the point at all.  I speculated earlier in this thread on how to achieve a solution for the variance problem - by throwing a typical PPLNS pool on top of the p2pool backbone.  Yes, this certainly helps the small miner; however, it does absolutely nothing for the decentralization issue.  In fact, it does exactly the opposite.  Not only that, but it makes it that much harder for the user of the standard p2pool framework because the network takes on the additional load of the miners using Bitmain's p2pool setup.

One of the beauties of p2pool as it stands now is the ability for a user to move from node to node and continue to mine.  For example, I have my own local node that I run on my laptop and a VPS node that I use when I'm traveling for work.  I turn off my laptop and my miners seamlessly move onto the new node.  I can have any number of backup nodes configured and move between them at will.

The underlying problem is expounded precisely because of the ability for me to move from node to node.  My shares are broadcast to every other node.  Everybody knows everything about everyone.  That's decentralization at its finest.  Take down one node, and move the miners to another without interruption or concern.  The p2pool network continues on, as do your miners.  To accomplish this feat of decentralization p2pool relies upon the share chain.  However, as I pointed out, the price you pay for this is variance.  Because the share chain is nothing more than a simple incarnation of a SHA-256 coin, the more hash rate you have, the higher the difficulty of the share becomes.

How does Bitmain solve this problem?  I suppose time will tell and the code will show, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the folks at Bitmain have done.  Believe me, I'm one of the believers in p2pool.  I've spent many hours going through the code, posting in the forums and of course mining on it.  My post above was made to show that simply throwing hash at p2pool does not address the problems inherent in the system, but rather makes them more visibly prominent.

I agree with most things you've said, with the cavet that we have to be happy and try *something* (which I think you still agreed with). Having no solution to this problem just leads to p2pool being discarded and everyone going back to as many pools as possible. We have to try something to fix it, which I believe Bitmain is as it throws significant money and engineers at the problem.

[PatMan]

JonnnyB, no point in trying to argue the p2pool case with dogie, the fact that he thinks TX fees go to the node shows clearly that he is pretty clueless about the workings of p2pool - and he'll only neg-rep you anyway.....   I wish Bitmain would tell him to stop posting on subjects he knows nothing about.

Let's see what they put on git......

@ Bitmain: Has there been any communication between your engineers & forrestv at all?

[dogie]

JonnnyB, no point in trying to argue the p2pool case with dogie, the fact that he thinks TX fees go to the node shows clearly that he is pretty clueless about the workings of p2pool - and he'll only neg-rep you anyway.....    I wish Bitmain would tell him to stop posting on subjects he knows nothing about.

Let's see what they put on git......

@ Bitmain: Has there been any communication between your engineers & forrestv at all?

0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

[windpath]

0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

This is not possible on the existing p2pool share chain. Every p2pool node would have to upgrade(?) to bitmains version.

[IYFTech]

0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

This is not possible on the existing p2pool share chain. Every p2pool node would have to upgrade(?) to bitmains version.

Even if it was possible - it's not a 0% fee if they take the Tx fees......

But like you say, it's just not possible. They seem to want to be going into direct competition with p2pool instead of promoting it. How will their version be able to work with p2pool like they say if it's using a different share chain? It can't.

[dogie]

0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

This is not possible on the existing p2pool share chain. Every p2pool node would have to upgrade(?) to bitmains version.

PPLNS block transaction fees help pay for the pool, INCLUDING the p2pool side. It doesn't mean p2pool side is providing transaction fees.

[OVRGRO]

The ticket link you're referring to is visible from every page. It takes you direct to the bitmain ticket system here: https://support.bitmain.com/questions/pending (if logged in, else prompts to login).

The 'Support' page is more of an FAQ page like everyone else has: https://www.btcguild.com/index.php?page=support

Bug reported for Antpool support tickets not going anywhere, I think its to do with there being no categories selectable.

yep we are on the same page now, thanks for taking a few minutes to see what i was referring to. i pm'ed bitmain here and sent them an email post business time china yesterday. i'm sure we'll get it figured out, they've been very helpful every time i've contacted them. your guide got me up and running from scratch first day my package arrived from china, so thank you for that too.

as to  my thought on the 0% fee... i'd guestimate at least half the hash rate on antpool is bitmain. even if they charged 1% that's only getting 0.5% across the board for all hashing. just my non technical thoughts that carry no value other than wild speculation  regardless it's paying well so far. even with my missing block payment from yesterday and an hour to 2 down for whatever i'm still beating my predicted earnings for 48 hours so far, so that makes  me moderately contented for now.

[kano]

0% fees and PPLNS earnings. (The tx fee is not paid out to miners for maintaining cost and the bonus for our engineers.)

This is not possible on the existing p2pool share chain. Every p2pool node would have to upgrade(?) to bitmains version.

PPLNS block transaction fees help pay for the pool, INCLUDING the p2pool side. It doesn't mean p2pool side is providing transaction fees.

Sigh - you really need to learn about something before posting.
They've explained it above already, but I'll try it in detail.

Everyone else running p2pool will not allow Bitmain to siphon off the tx fees to an address - since it will break the rules required of the generation transaction in their version, no matter how Bitmain try to do it.

Thus what would happen if Bitmain started mining on the real p2pool, is that their > 51% would be a true > 51% attack and fork the share chain and then be a separate share chain unrelated to the standard p2pool share chain.

I'm not sure of the full ramifications of that, but I suspect it would mean 2 separate p2pools, one running the true p2pool code by forrestv and another running the forked code.

There is of course something worse than that if Bitmain didn't fork the chain and used a valid generation transaction:
p2pool would sudenly overnight be about 10 times bigger so everyone mining would find 1/10 of the shares they are currently finding ... thus it would be pretty much common for most p2pool miners (using the official forrestv code) to rarely if ever get any payouts.