[500 GH/s]HHTT -Selected Diff/Stratum/PPLNS/Paid Stales/High Availability/Tor

[JWU42]

Hey FD - how about a bonus  

i have found 5 blocks for the pool (4 in the last 5 days) and have been paid 89 BTC  

I guess this means I just have to stay on the pool for a long time as this "luck" will revert and I will probably not find a block for 3 weeks but keep earning


EDIT - seems we found another block today - now almost 62 BTC positive!

http://blockchain.info/tx-index/29497887/4b5959577d3e385e8a700ebacba761880317be5b5a33cc3b7cebde55d10db475

I won't be making a habit of it (unless I am very stupid (which has never been disproven))

That is very kind of you - I appreciate the Pi!

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/wab/pie/

[fireduck]

I'm in the process of upgrading one of the supporting bitcoind instances to 0.7.  It has decided it needs to inspect the world for a while so share processing is down until it completes.

Mining, block creation and share recording are going fine (they use a different bitcoind).  Payments and share recording btc amounts for shares will be back whenever it is done.

[bitcoindaddy]

Are there any plans to support the Stratum protocol?

[fireduck]

Are there any plans to support the Stratum protocol?

I have only just now heard of it so I have no plans.  Does it provide any significant advantages to miners?

[bitcoindaddy]

It's supposed to be more of a benefit for the pool operator, keeping the network traffic to a minimum.

[Shadow383]

It's supposed to be more of a benefit for the pool operator, keeping the network traffic to a minimum.

I have to wonder whether traffic's really an issue when you're working on high-difficulty shares...

[JWU42]

We need to find a block!!

[ShadesOfMarble]

That's your job, isn't it? ;p

[Shadow383]

I can't remember how to do risk of ruin calculations on BTC pools, but I tried inputting the pool's current balance into a sim I made.

200 runs, 88 of them resulted in pool bankruptcy within 100 blocks. 61 of them (30.5%) resulted in pool bankruptcy within 10 blocks. The real case is likely to be worse than this as not all miners are mining at the 2% fee I assumed.

This is why you need a big buffer to pay PPS. The pool should look at alternative financing methods.

[JWU42]

I am back on full time for now - keeping fingers crossed...

[fireduck]

So the pool has been pretty low and I put some more in yesterday or the day before.  I begin to lose track, I've been traveling.

[JWU42]

Thanks fireduck - I moved off the pool as we were getting low as I feared payouts would be curtailed until a block was found.  Hopefully we get lucky again and find a few shares in the coming day(s)!

[Shadow383]

Well, since you're committed to keeping this pool open, I'll point some of my personal hashrate your way too - just a few gigahash but hopefully it'll bump things up a bit 

[JWU42]

I found another one - still way in the hole though...

[JWU42]

And another found this morning...

I swear - never have this luck when solo-mining 

[JWU42]

And another yesterday...

8 blocks found thus far  - only 200 BTC to show for it 

Hoping the pool luck gets better at FD can stay closer to even...

[ShadesOfMarble]

After lowering the requested difficulty from 128 to 64 my stale rate went up from ~0.5% to ~1%. Does this make any sense?
The stales are always "prevhash-stale". Are those stales payed? I'm wondering because paying stales would almost eat up my fee (1.5%).

[Lem]

After lowering the requested difficulty from 128 to 64 my stale rate went up from ~0.5% to ~1%. Does this make any sense?

Halving the requested difficulty you find and submit twice the shares in the same time. So if you submitted X shares in the "stale time", now you're submitting 2X shares in the "stale time" (of course X and 2X aren't exact values: we're speaking of averages). But now every share is worth (about) a half too.

The stales are always "prevhash-stale". Are those stales payed?

Sure. You can see it in your account page (please click on your bitcoin address in the main page), looking at the btc column: even if a share is prevhash-stale, nonetheless it is payed.
Obviously other types of rejected shares (for example duplicated shares) aren't paid - and you'd see 0.000000 in the btc column.

I'm wondering because paying stales would almost eat up my fee (1.5%).

Don't worry. The lower is your requested difficulty, the higher is the fee. So: if you lower the difficulty, the pool gains more, no matter what.

[ShadesOfMarble]

Yes, but (1.5 nominal fee - 1.1 stales)% = 0.4% fee doesn't sound like it's sustainable for the pool.

[Lem]

Sorry, I see now that I didn't clearly answer your main question.

If you have just switched the difficulty, you can see a higher stale rate for a while: now you're submitting twice the shares (and so twice the stales) with regard to your history. Stales is a little number that can go up quickly, while total is a big number. So you can see your stale rate jump for a little while, but after a little time you should get back to your standard value (0.5%).

Example: my stale rate is 0.5%, give by stales/total: 50/10000. Now I go from 128 to 64 difficulty, and five blocks are found very quickly.
My stale rate is now (50+10+10+10+10+10)/(10000+500+300+400+300+500)=100/12000. But it won't last long.