[ANN] CoinLab Protected Pool

[regular]

any eta on a custom client?  It seems to defeat the point of loyalty points if people are getting them via FPGAs.

[jamesg]

any eta on a custom client?  It seems to defeat the point of loyalty points if people are getting them via FPGAs.

I resemble that remark. 

[imsaguy]

any eta on a custom client?  It seems to defeat the point of loyalty points if people are getting them via FPGAs.

Not really.  They're earning CoinLab coins now which CoinLab will use to pay out later.

[CoinLab]

any eta on a custom client?  It seems to defeat the point of loyalty points if people are getting them via FPGAs.

Not really.  They're earning CoinLab coins now which CoinLab will use to pay out later.

FPGA miners don't help us towards our longer-term goal of performing non-Bitcoin GPU compute work, but they are doing a great for our near-term goal: making our pool as stable and robust as possible.   The more hashing power we have flowing through our pool, the better we're able to find inefficiencies in our server code and make our pool stronger.  Our biggest miners have been very helpful with this   

Our planned Ship Date for the first version of the client is 11/1.

[Zillions]

No offense I realize that your busy and all but could you work on the Mining portal a bit more? Seems a "bit" lacking compared to other pools.

[jjshabadoo]

I'm really looking forward to the multiple workers under one account/log-in.

I know I'm unsophisticated in how I manage my miners, but the multiple worker thing is great for me combined with log-me-in to help restart,etc.

[BlackPrapor]

I'd love to test out your pool, but payment once a week is not what I'm after. If you could payout at least twice a week, that'd break the ice  

[BlackPrapor]

If you send me an email, I can process a special payout for you within 1 business day.  We're going to build an automated payout system within the next month.  What kind of flexibility would you like?  We'd love to hear your input so we can design the best payout system to serve you.

Awesome feedback!  Thanks, sharing your thoughts with the team.

#1 may not be possible - Our lawyer advised us to make our terms state that all payouts have to go directly to you, for fear of us becoming classified as a money transfer business.  I'll check with him and see if there is anything we can do to make this more flexible.  I have an idea about how we may be able to get around this with client side transaction signing.  I'll have to get back to you on this one. #2 and #3 both look doable.

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!

Make a second level sequrity like yubikey, or software generated key. EMC pool has that, and also lockable for 24h account in case the payout address changes. This is much better option, since you get your account secure, AND an ability to change your payout address.

[CoinLab]

I'm really looking forward to the multiple workers under one account/log-in.

I know I'm unsophisticated in how I manage my miners, but the multiple worker thing is great for me combined with log-me-in to help restart,etc.

It's looking like workers will be going live this week.  I'm optimistic we'll start testing internally by end-of-day today.

[BlackPrapor]

Actually, forgot to ask - do you pay for stales and/or orphan blocks, tx fees that are included in the block?

[TheHarbinger]

I'm really looking forward to the multiple workers under one account/log-in.

I know I'm unsophisticated in how I manage my miners, but the multiple worker thing is great for me combined with log-me-in to help restart,etc.

It's looking like workers will be going live this week.  I'm optimistic we'll start testing internally by end-of-day today.

Very nice.  One feature down, about 2 million to go. 

[CoinLab]

No offense I realize that your busy and all but could you work on the Mining portal a bit more? Seems a "bit" lacking compared to other pools.

Thanks for the feedback.

The new worker features will come with some small improvements to the mining portal, but I agree that we have a ways to go.

I think our next improvement to the interface will be adding a graph of performance (# of shares earned, by hour) over time. What features would you like to see?

I expect features related to payouts (how much you've been paid so far, managing payout address changes, auto-payout settings) to be done by the end of the October.  We had it half-written, and are now migrating our code to version 0.7 of bitcoind, which broke some of the old code, and has pushed back our timeline a bit.  

[TheHarbinger]

To me personally, auto-payouts is the most important.  Both time based and quantity threshold based would be great.  Giving you guys 5% of my earnings makes my skin crawl bad enough, letting you guys hold my BTC for a week at a time damn near drives me insane.   

[CoinLab]

Actually, forgot to ask - do you pay for stales and/or orphan blocks, tx fees that are included in the block?

We're pure PPS. We credit your account for 95% of the calculated PPS rate (0.95*blockreward/difficulty) as soon as we accept the share from you.  

You also don't get any transaction fees, but we take the risk of orphaned blocks.  Our stale policy is very lenient: many miners have found that we have the lowest stale rate of any pool (except for during a few periods of server downtime).

[CoinLab]

I'd love to test out your pool, but payment once a week is not what I'm after. If you could payout at least twice a week, that'd break the ice  

OK!  Just got the green light on this. 

I can now offer bi-weekly payments. 

Miners on our pool can opt in to getting a second payout on Thursdays. Payouts are a time consuming process, so Thursday payouts will only be processed for users who have specifically asked for them.  Like Monday payouts, Thursday automatic payouts will only be sent to accounts with a balance of at least 1 BTC. 97% bonuses will still be calculated and credited on Mondays, and earnings withdrawn on Thursdays will still apply towards the 1.125M share threshold. 

PM or email me if you want to be added to my Thursday Payout list.   

[GenTarkin]

Can you tell us how the rest of the platform is coming along? (custom mining client, and redeeming mined shares), because ASICs are almost here and btc might hit the 2.50$ / 1gh .. soon...

[Shermo]

Any plans to offer mining via port 80? My workstation at work is crunching for me but our firewall blocks pretty much everything except port 80 and 443... this is why I currently use bitminter.

[yochdog]

Is anyone else getting a REALLY low estimated hash-rate? 

I am pointing at least 40 GH/s at Coinlab, but the website estimates my average at 30 GH/s.  I can understand some variance, but this seems excessive......

[jamesg]

Is anyone else getting a REALLY low estimated hash-rate?  

I am pointing at least 40 GH/s at Coinlab, but the website estimates my average at 30 GH/s.  I can understand some variance, but this seems excessive......

I have 51.2Gh/s pointed at CoinLab and the dashboard says i'm at 28.2Gh/s.

[yochdog]

Is anyone else getting a REALLY low estimated hash-rate? 

I am pointing at least 40 GH/s at Coinlab, but the website estimates my average at 30 GH/s.  I can understand some variance, but this seems excessive......

I have 51.2Gh/s pointed at CoinLab and the dashboard says i'm pointed 28.2Gh/s.

I suppose this confirms my suspicion.  Thanks Giga.