We really need to grow. What is your plan to spur pool growth?
1 block in 4 days.......SUCKS......
This pool needs to grow or it's going to die.
Doc I'm willing to donate a few namecoins if will use them for advertising or giveaways to attract new miners.
I can send 29 NMC if you will use them for to grow the pool. You could setup a wallet just for this kind of donation.
There's no need to panic, seriously.
I know these big blocks hit you in the 'confidence', but the pool does average over the month. However...
It might be worth saying that a lot more. To re-assure people. As a small pool we should be more honest about the Wild Ride we sometimes get.
The pool still has the best GUI, Client, and Customer Service I know of ( and I mine 4 pools ), so it's just the Wild Ride we need to cover. Whenever one of these big blocks comes up people start to worry.
My recommendations:
- Talk about hosted mining & bet-spreading, as well as talking about what we already do ( the top-notch GUI, client, and Customer Service ).
As I've said before it's better The Doc gets 50% or 33% of someone's hash then none of it. And until we are as big Eligius or GHash we're stuck with the Wild Ride I'm afraid. Small pools are small pools.
Some people do enjoy the cut & thrust though. That's a selling point. Some seat-of-your-pants mining with some of your hash spices up what can be quite a boring ride at times.
As someone who sells Bitcoin I like the cut-and-thrust in smaller doses, as it simply keeps me from falling asleep. Hence why I bet-spread. 1/2 TH here, 3/4 TH elsewhere in 3 other pools ( I won't tell you where, as that would be disrespectful to The Doc ). So Bitminter gets a bigger slice of my pie as I have confidence in it as a Pool. Even with the Wild Ride. I put some hash elsewhere simply to smooth that ride out a bit is all.
In the past I have suggested that The Doc run a Proxy. A couple of people liked this, and others didn't. Just to add to the idea:
If people can bet-spread via a Bitminter GUI then The Doc can still do Customer Service. If The Doc only allows you to select between Bitminter and 0% fee pools then the fees won't get too silly.
It could be a perk for those who can't handle the Wild Ride and still want all their stuff in one place. Bitminter's GUI, but with a choice of which pool you mine per Bitminter worker. A simple drop-down to select, rather than all that fiddling at home with your miners.
Something to think about.
The proxy software I found is here:
https://github.com/cdhowie/Bitcoin-mining-proxyMulti-worker, & multi-pool.
~
Tuppence deposited
Mining can be a lot of fun if you get the balance right