This is what I have never really understood about the "multiple pool" strategy with Westhash as the primary. Virtually all the other "normal" pools (e.g. Slush, Kano, etc), all cost me something if I am not there essentially 24x7. Yes I understand that outages happen, and I try and minimize my downtime, because then it appears to the pool as if I am "pool hopping", which in one way or another is discouraged. As I understand Kano's pool, until I have been mining pretty steadily for 2+ days, I am not really getting the "full rate" for my efforts. Once I have been there "steadily enough", then all is good. That feels like discoraging "pool hopping".
No, in the case of my pool, that's simply misunderstanding the 5N (500%) payout.
Consider this: if you mine at a PPS pool and the pool finds a block 5 minutes after you start mining - what will your payout be?
Of course it will only be the number of shares you found, not your hash rate as a fraction of the whole pool, of the block
(and of course that isn't supposed to be affected by when the pool finds a block)
As the day progresses, your reward increases ... and it does this each time you submit a share.
Do you get paid into your wallet each time you find a share? No, you get paid on the basis of the rules of the pool, at certain points over time.
On my PPLNS pool you get paid each time a block is found.
What you get paid, is the % of shares you have in the total shares accounted to the block.
That is always the same no matter how long you have been mining.
Since the payout is for 500% of shares before the block was found, each share is paid ~1/5 PPS.
But each share is expected to be paid, on average, 5 times. So it takes time for each share to be fully paid.
You don't expect to lose BTC on average no matter how you mine, the pool's block finding luck is the only thing that affects how many times a share is paid.
This isn't a specific complaint about Kano, or Slush for that matter. I just don't understand how it works to have Westhash as your primary, which switches on/off depending on the rate, and any other pool.
Why do people do this? It seems like you need to rig this with a pretty high bar for Westhash, so that it will only "hop away" from your "real primary" (e.g. Kano, Slush, etc), to offset the cost of the switch. That suggests that my p= would need to be way more than .0102. In other works only use Westhash if the returns are really "outsized" (e.g. the Paycoin frenzy), and not just a little bit better.
No, on my pool your expected average reward is the % of time you spend mining.
Jumping on or off doesn't change the expected average.
The only caveat is if a block ever lasts for more than 500%, then shares at the start of the block will not get paid as the block gets longer than 500%
That is rare, and we have only had one block so far over 500%.
The CDF of 500% is 0.0067 so that would only expect to affect on average less than 2 in every 250 blocks, and the affect vs full time mining would be very small each time.
I gave slushes example above because his payout scheme specifically disadvantages anyone who doesn't mine 24/7
In my case the disadvantage isn't to stop people hopping on and off at all, it is simply that with the share age limit at 500% the average expected effect of hopping is exceedingly small, but making it more than 500% means getting your full share payout takes longer.
The only ways to avoid shares ageing are:
1) Make the life of the share longer ... but that doesn't avoid it, just makes it longer and less likely before it happens and increases the time to reach maximum payout
2) Prop - but then all the long term miners get paid less for their shares than the smart hoppers, so no one in their right mind would mine at a Prop pool.
3) PPS - but the PPS pool should charge you a higher fee or expect to go broke or have problems paying ... case in point ... BAN
With PPS, you need to see what PPS you are getting (i.e. what fee you are paying) vs the expected 100% since that fee may well far outweigh the rare/tiny expected loss due to hopping on the 'better' pools
So, I guess the answer to your question is that some pools are bad for hopping and others the effect is so small it is clearly better than PPS mining in the long term.
