[ANN] CoinLab Protected Pool

[nedbert9]

Slightly offtopic: Kept trying to figure out why I never got any notifications from this forum thread and finally found just this thread being binned as spam by google mail. Something about the topic makes it unhappy, probably the word earnings. Carry on.

Bad Google omen?

[1714962561]

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[-ck]

Slightly offtopic: Kept trying to figure out why I never got any notifications from this forum thread and finally found just this thread being binned as spam by google mail. Something about the topic makes it unhappy, probably the word earnings. Carry on.

Bad Google omen?

I hope not since I am contracted by Coinlab.

[nedbert9]

Slightly offtopic: Kept trying to figure out why I never got any notifications from this forum thread and finally found just this thread being binned as spam by google mail. Something about the topic makes it unhappy, probably the word earnings. Carry on.

Bad Google omen?

I hope not since I am contracted by Coinlab.

I have faith even if Google AI doesn't.

[joyyen]

there is not "paid history" stats option on the home page ?

then how do i know the remaining btc balance on my account ?

[GenTarkin]

there is not "paid history" stats option on the home page ?

then how do i know the remaining btc balance on my account ?

Yes a paid history somewhere would be really nice =)

[CoinLab]

there is not "paid history" stats option on the home page ?

then how do i know the remaining btc balance on my account ?

Yes a paid history somewhere would be really nice =)

We have one developer working full time on our automated payment system right now.  Remaining balance will be included in this.  

You can see your weekly balance in the web interface.  Its ugly, but you can sum all of the weekly balances and subtract funds sent by CoinLab to your payout address to get your current balance. Note: bonuses (from getting over 10GH/s or last weeks sorry-for-the-lag bonus) are not included on this page. 

We're hopeful the automated system will be online in two weeks, and will include payout history and current balance.

Also, we are just finalizing the design for the payout system, so if you have any feature suggestions, now is a great time to tell us! (We've already gotten some good ones).

[dentldir]

Another concern we've had about security:
If you can easily change payout addresses, any hacker who gets your password can take all unpaid funds sitting in your account.  Where do you think CoinLab should draw the line with this? 
- Should "locking in" a payout address be optional?  (security is an individual responsibility)
- Should we take the "protectionist" approach of defaulting to a higher level of security? (because the least secure people wont think to check the optional 'lock in payout address' box)

What does everyone think? We'd love to hear the community's thoughts on this!

Consider an authorization pin for making changes to deposit addresses.  The pin would be set once and could only be changed after some kind of challenge/response.  A security question is probably easiest to code but you could go crazy and add full two factor authentication for changing payment addresses.  Google Authenticator is popular and something like Authy is dead simple to implement.

For your business model, I think locking in the address is good default behavior especially if there is a PIN to protect changes.  That is about as certain as you are going to get that the person changing address is the same person you have the contract with.  Especially if the security questions are similar to bank security questions.  At that point, you are using best practices and have a similar risk model to an ATM. 

[jjshabadoo]

I agree with the authentication suggestions above. I also like a payout lock so it your BTC address cannot be changed without steps as above.

I would also love an ongoing total of all BTC paid out, this can help with bookkeeping.

I would like my account page to display all of my workers as separate units, but on one page instead of now where I have to log-in for each of 6 workers. This helps to determine which machines are not performing and also helps track their hashes individually.

Once again I will point to EclipseMC as a great example of good statistical features, good security features and good tracking of pool activity.

I have mined with about 6 different pools and Eclipse was the best.

It would also be necessary for you guys to show totals of our "banked" GPU units and to show us when we are getting your non BTC work and provide us with data on how much we are making on those jobs.

Your statistical interface for current work, banked work and alternative work will be key for us to figure out if this is profitable to us based on our fixed costs.

I would also suggest starting a message board, email thread to help us determine what type of hardware/software we will need to build efficient Nvidia rigs. It is not going to be similiar to bitcoin for CPU and mem clock requirements.

My limited folding experience suggests higher end cpus, higher memclocks and possibly having to use SLI/Crossfire will be necessary.

[ShadesOfMarble]

Is it possible to sign up now, build up Loyalty Points with FPGA bitcoin-mining and redeem the points later with a GPU rig?

[philips]

Is it possible to sign up now, build up Loyalty Points with FPGA bitcoin-mining and redeem the points later with a GPU rig?

Good question 

[jjshabadoo]

How do I get a cool coinlab thing under my name ?

[-ck]

Is it possible to sign up now, build up Loyalty Points with FPGA bitcoin-mining and redeem the points later with a GPU rig?

Good question 

Nothing would stop you at the moment because you can mine with any client for now. In the future when you will only be able to use the coinlab client, you will be limited to GPU only.

[philips]

How do I get a cool coinlab thing under my name ?

You can take mine, I plan to make another one..

But they plan to create a CoinLab avatar with hashrate displayed anyway.

[ShadesOfMarble]

Thanks con.

Another question: I guess most of the HPC work will require Nvidia GPUs (except for cryptographic stuff). The first post says "We may perform other types of computation with your GPU besides Bitcoin mining.  We will calculate your earnings based on the equivalent number of credits your card would have produced for the same amount of work.". Problem is, Nvidia GPUs are very bad when it comes to bitcoin mining. So using a 580 GTX, which barely reaches 150 MH/s, will put me in bad position (compare it to a 7970 that reaches 550 MH/s with stock clocks). When doing HPC tasks I would say a 580 GTX should earn no less than a 7970, otherwise there would be no reason to deploy Nvidia GPUs in my rigs.

Edit: In other words: Currently payouts are based on the performance in bitcoin mining. I think the performance of GPUs should be "normalized" in some way - because AMD is great for some applications (cryptography) where NVidia is bad and the other way round.

Or am I missing something?

[jjshabadoo]

Yes shades, there needs to be a "sliding" payout scale for different types of work and different GPU's. I have spoken with Chris at Coinlab and they are working on this.

It is also going to be pretty tough to bitcoin mine at all in the next 6 months if BFL delivers, so hopefully Coinlab is going to be able to sell enough jobs so we don't bitcoin mine at all.

The mining credits are cool, but I don't think they will last very long to pay for machines running idle for days.

I am focusing more on the GPU compute work as this is the only future for GPU's at this point, so coming up with a system so we can build Nvidia rigs with confidence would be great.

[ShadesOfMarble]

Indeed. Just a small calculation... I think a setup of two 580 GTX uses ~700W under full load. That would be more than 3 Euro per day for me just for electricity. If I get paid 2,5$/GH/s/day at 0,3 GH/s that would not even close cover electricity.

[-ck]

Indeed. Just a small calculation... I think a setup of two 580 GTX uses ~700W under full load. That would be more than 3 Euro per day for me just for electricity. If I get paid 2,5$/GH/s/day at 0,3 GH/s that would not even close cover electricity.

No one said to start bitcoin mining with nvidia hardware. The nvidia hardware is pretty much useless till specific workloads that suits it comes around (and I finish the code to make the most of it). At no stage will nvidia hardware suddenly become profitable to bitcoin mine with. On the other hand, there may come a time when the ATI cards are no longer profitable to use (should ASICs really hit at the their target performance and timeframe), and that's what this current guarantee is - to extend that useful lifetime beyond.

[ShadesOfMarble]

No one said to start bitcoin mining with nvidia hardware. The nvidia hardware is pretty much useless till specific workloads that suits it comes around (and I finish the code to make the most of it). At no stage will nvidia hardware suddenly become profitable to bitcoin mine with.

Correct. That's why I'm saying it would be unfair to pay prices based on bitcoin mining performance for doing other HPC tasks. But as jjshabadoo said, CoinLab is already working on a solution.

[imsaguy]

If I missed it, please forgive me.  Once a user runs out of Loyalty credits, where do things fall?  Especially when factoring in the other work that doesn't happen to be bitcoin?

[jjiimm_64]

If I missed it, please forgive me.  Once a user runs out of Loyalty credits, where do things fall?  Especially when factoring in the other work that doesn't happen to be bitcoin?

I guess my question would also be about the 'new work'.

Will there be a market for it. bids and offers?.  or will coinlab just set a btc/'share'  price?   

a share of course being something similar to the current getwork/solution.