I really do not understand this idea that hopping somehow hurts other miners on the pool or damages the pool somehow.
The chance of solving a single share is constant. So it suits a miner to mine that share wherever it can get the highest price. On a proportional pool, that pays out blockvalue divided by totalshares, the hopper will want to mine wherever the total number of shares are lowest. Say there are two pools, one with 10 total shares so far and one with a million. It would be better for the hopper to mine at the pool with 10 total shares as it would get 1/11 of the block value if it finds the block. It would only get 1/1,000,001 if it found it in the second pool. So the hopper moves around mining at whatever pool has the lowest number of shares, which will be one that has found a block most recently. So the hopper is getting more money this way than if they weren't hopping. This means the miners that aren't hopping are getting less money due to the actions of the hopper.
The pool loses out too because it gets a huge influx of hashrate at the beginning of the round and then, as it goes longer, it drops off leaving it with a low hashrate and even less chance of finding a block. Other miners get disillusioned and leave.
I think these are the main arguments made for those that think hopping is bad.
I'm following the logic up to the point where the hopper leaves the pool. (if the pool finds a block before he leaves everyone wins). Now assuming he's left... hash rate decreases... hopper has generated a large amount of shares...
I'm still not seeing how it decreases the chance of finding a block for the pool... lets do some mental math here...
Assume pool hash rate is 100gh/s for non-hoppers. (average time to generate a block is ~4.5 days)
Assume that a hopper (or lots of them) bring another 10 th/s to the pool at the start of a round. (average time to find a block for hoppers if they just had a pool ~1 day)
How long are the poolhoppers likely to stay? less than 10mins on average before some pool finds a block somewhere and they all switch.
Assume 10 mins on average of hoppers mining at the pool.
Assume every hash generated was a valid share.
~
Case of average round:
Total shares for hoppers at pool over 10 mins : 6,000,000,000 shares
Total shares for legit miners over the 4.5 days : 38,880,000,000 shares
So an average round, you have 15% of the total shares going to the hopper, and 85% of them going to the normal miners.
3.75 btc to hoppers.
21.25 btc to miners.
~
Case of extremely lucky round:
2 blocks back to back (and we'll even say 10 mins before that second block is found).
Total shares for hoppers : 6,000,000,000 shares
Total shares for legit miners : 60,000,000 shares
so on this round the 1% of the shares are going to non-hoppers with 99% going to hoppers - who then probably stay at the pool until some other pool finds a block.
25.75 to hoppers.
0.25 btc to miners.
~
Case of extremely bad luck:
Takes 9 days to find the block.
Total shares for hoppers at pool over 10 mins : 6,000,000,000 shares
Total shares for legit miners over the 4.5 days : 77,760,000,000 shares
7% of shares to hoppers, 93% to miners.
23.25 btc to miner
1.75 btc to hoppers
~
In the scenario of back to back blocks with a relatively long round length miners get an extremely small payment due to lack of shares. But this of a block they likely wouldn't have been able to generate so quickly without the pool hoppers hashing power.
In the average case miners lose 15% of the reward for the block to the hoppers.
In the case of bad luck the miners lose 7% of the reward to hoppers. As the round time extends the 'loss to hoppers becomes less and less.
~
Now I don't know if you noticed but these numbers are run as if the hoppers had 10 th/s. Is this realistic or is this greatly inflated? Imo it's greatly inflated since network hash rate is only ~80th/s...
My only point with all this is that it doesn't really hurt the legitimate miners in any real way, given the differences between their actually hashing and the inflated estimation of hoppers (2 orders of magnitude). Yes they lose in average round 15% of income - which they could just as well lose if the pool grows to 115gh/s --- while the pool loses the added income from more short rounds.
and if the pool hoppers are actually closer to 1% of network than 10% of network (which is what I suspect) then there's even less of an income loss for miners (1.5% and 0.7%).
So all you're really doing is limiting the potential benefits to the proportional pool of the occasional botnet or high hash rate hoppers hitting it.
Of course we can't know the actual percentage of hoppers... but it's an interesting thing to think about.