I pay what I want to forrestv.
P2Pool has a negligible amount of orphans (didn't even find one in the last 200 known p2pool blocks).
I get merged mining with NMC, IXC, DVC (and could add any other merge-able coin I deem worth it).
Variance is only a problem if you don't earn much on p2pool (maybe then it doesn't really matter where you mine). You can actually verify this with merged mined coins: they work OK but as it's solo mining variance is really high and NMC blocks are a rare but nice bonus.
Stales % doesn't matter on p2pool only efficiency and I'm at 100+%.
p2pool pays transaction fees.
And I run it on a DSL line...
YMMV. My DSL line can't take the bandwidth. I seem you recall you saying earlier (I think it was you) that p2pool doesn't run well on the average home DSL line.
Remember the 100+% efficiency is compared to other p2pool users, not compared to conventional pools. I'm sure with a little tweaking I could get below the current p2pool average of 19%. It's still magnitudes more than I get on a conventional pool.
I only use centralized pools as backups and really don't see how I would benefit from switching to any of them. Even if I had a whole week of downtime right now on p2pool I still would have earned more than on any theoretical 100% up centralized pool (which actually have downtime when they are DoSed).
BTC Guild had a huge DDOS not that long ago. It stayed up.
By the way, look at the current IXC and DVC difficulty (43% and 64% of BTC difficulty). This means that at least 40% of the miners are merge-mining IXC and 60% are merge-mining DVC (I'm pretty sure nobody is mining these coins expecting a profit unless they are using merge-mining).
Do you think these miners are aware they do mine IXC and/or DVC and get the relevant income?
No : they are mined by centralized pools and most keep the income for themselves and AFAIK don't even tell their miners about it. When you use p2pool you can at least fully control what your hash power is used for.
That's an interesting point.
It doesn't mean I can successfully merge mine them though. Did you see what I posted for IXC, DVC, and NMC difficulty? It's like playing the lottery trying to solo mine them, which is what you're doing if you merge mine them with p2pool. I'm better off not merge mining them and save some bandwidth.
You seem to distrust pool operators. I happen to trust mine, and I am certain I do better on BTC Guild than I would on p2pool. If I had the bandwidth and more hashpower, I'd use p2pool. But I don't... I've been effectively squeezed out. And I'm not alone.
M
EDIT: I guess my point is p2pool isn't for everyone. True supporters of the p2pool concept acknowledge that. The rest treat p2pool as a religion, as from their perspective, anyone who has a problem must not have their settings right or not understand the system.
