Of course they are back, the gravy train is in town. I welcome them but question their motives and logic.
I hope the gravy train continues. I finally got enough hashing power on June 19 to start mining on p2pool and generate at least 1 share a day, and I'm at 319% of a normal free pool because a day or two before our recent string of luck started, my miner's got super lucky on solving shares.
On the development of P2Pool note, I'm really hoping the problem with the S2s, and potentially the S3s get worked out. I'm debating dropping money on getting an S3 or and RK-box and I'm currently leaning S3, but all that can changed depending on price. I really would like to keep that kinda hashing power decentralized and contribute it to P2Pool, but if the pool won't support, I'll have to look elsewhere. If we can't get this working with the existing bounty by its deadline, I'm definitely willing to contribute to an open bounty to Fork P2Pool get it working. As far as the pool scaling better with increased hashing power, wouldn't a possible temporary solution, bandage if you will, be to lower the share time. Say set the share to time 15 or 10 seconds, or would that just create too much dust???