I need some clarification on how the P2pool Difficulty operates with Litecoin. I have a P2pool node setup, with my miners connected to it. I've been mining the node for 1 month now, yet the difficulty/shares/payout still is a bit fuzzy. I've appended my username with the /+ flags, and tried several difficulty levels. I've seen examples of usrname/2000+16 or usrname/2+2. I've made the assumption that the /2000 would be for bitcoin mining and the /2 would be for litecoin. Can someone explain the difference between the /2000 & /2 and how it relates to Litecoin mining.
I understand the the /2000 is for the pool/share difficulty, and the +2 is for the miner difficulty.
Example Stats:
P2pool version: 11.3
Cgminer version: 3.1.0
P2pool share difficulty: 1.15 (according to the web/static detail)
P2pool share difficulty: 0.232827 (according to P2pool program feed)
P2pool requested difficulty: Difficulty 3.000 (my username/3+3)
P2pool Shares: 8 total (1 orphaned, 0 dead) Efficiency: 113.7%
Cgminer difficulty: 15.3K (according to cgminer)
Cgminer difficulty: 31.6M (according to cgminer)
I've received "accepted" shares in cgminer of 250k/15,300 with a difficulty of username/2+2; however, p2pool does not recognize or "accept" a high share like that. I've also let the miners run for upwards of 48-72 hours and have odd payouts. What's the voodoo magic behind p2pool & the difficulty settings?
The difference between /2000 and /2 = bitcoin's algorithm is ~1000x "faster" at finding hashes than LTC's algorithm. Thus the difficulty must be ~1000 lower for the same amount of work.
Also, the /2+2 you are using means your p2pool server and stats are going to have a sparse sampling rate. I'd suggest something like /2+.002 (or .0002) otherwise your p2pool node will show extremely high variance statistics (unless you don't mind it and know your setup is ok).
Something else is suspicious with your setup, since you have so many different difficulties:
Could you post the line from the p2pool program feed that looks like:
New work for worker! Difficulty: 0.000200 Share difficulty: 0.994552 Total block value: 50.210500 LTC including 10 transactions
It should pretty much match the web interface:
Pool rate: 504MH/s (18% DOA+orphan) Share difficulty: 0.993
Notice both share difficulties are the same (+/- the delay it took me to hit refresh)
what version of p2pool are you using? recently they changed the way LTC share difficulty is reported to match what other pools are doing. What are the odd payouts you are getting? Your efficiency is > 100%, so it looks like something is working.