Until a few weeks ago I had rather consistent mining rates of various types of coins in various pools.
No more.
I was just reviewing the last part of this thread and thought I would mention this.
I don't know what's up with this either. I have tried and tried to determine if it's just the luck of the draw
and apparently it's not. Some pools (many) with some coins are way under expected mining rates!
But it could be a long list of other things.
I did verify that at least some pools I get my expected rate of mined coins, or better (ran lucky), but
at some other pools suddenly that's not so. Instead far under expectations.
But this doesn't have anything to do with FST. Instead other coins. I have no idea about FST coin pools
lately themselves.
So if anyone figures out why more than a couple of coins (several) over the last few weeks are now
unpredictable in terms of expected mining rates that would be great. Of course I know the usual reasons
and all but this is not that, at all.
Seems this coin too is being effected. Yet I haven't mined it for quite some time. Just hold it and continue
to check up on it's threads here.
At any rate I kinda doubt it's the pools faults per say since my very favorite pool that is quite obviously
extremely popular and seemingly 100% honest/transparent results in the same lower than expected outputs.
I wanted to whine to them again but instead I tested elsewhere and the results were variable!!!
Then again maybe many are suddenly ripping off miners, but that makes little sense that so many would
suddenly do so. Then again maybe not. But I seriously doubt it with my favorite pool, which is a multi-type
pool but I wont mention it's name because I am 99.9% certain their NOT up to no good there. Their awesome.
And unless they suddenly changed well I just can't imagine they would given all I know about them. But...
So anyway still it's a mystery, but one mentioned here that it may be related to all the multi-type pools that
suddenly and severely effect coins difficulties as they shift into mining them with massive hash power. Makes
sense I guess. About the only thing that does so far. That and the fact that just maybe what displays as our
expected rates of coin production are greatly flawed at the few places I/we refer to, as well as on some pools too
that display such data on their very own screens for us. And that's yet another reason why it doesn't make
sense that those pools are ripping us off since they would also adjust those expectation rates there to match any
possible skimming off the top of production. Or at least one would think they would do that very thing too if
that was the case.
Anyway, it's still a mystery to me after mining several types of coin in the last few weeks. Only one coin and
pool so far is immune to it too, at least in my case. So I suppose the smartest thing to do is just mine it in
my own case. Maybe the same for others too. Mine the ones that are reliable, if your like myself and hold
many various types of coin. Otherwise all I can think of is what that other person mentioned and that is it
is maybe the sudden and swift hits from these massive sized multi-type pools. I wont support the ones that
also automatically dump those coins on exchanges since that's just adding far too much stress to those coins
values and swings. Well at least it did until rather recently, lol. Now maybe it will just be less so. And well just
doing so is not anything but being extremely greedy and short sited since alt.coins are soaring at much higher
percentages than bitcoin is. Kinda funny really because all those letting their favorite multi-type pool auto dump
their coins for way too much commission and turning around and sending them btc are getting the short side
of the stick in so many ways it's laughable.
Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware!
The problem can be nawrrowed down to fast block generation times, bad internet connections and large pools. This causes many orphans and many rejected blocks for solo miners and small pools. We know all of these. Luck does play into it as the entire concept is based on probability in the first place. If your average luck is lower than 100% however, then there is something other than luck causing the problem. Based on this, it is possible to deduce whether a pool is the problem leaving no doubt in anyone's mind who cares to do a little digging. These pool operators are trying to make money - they aren't all large enough to cover the costs of good internet service and in that respect it is buyer beware. Checking pool size compared to network size is a good indication or if you're going solo, you need a good number of network connections.
Thanks Slingshot & xhomerx10 for your post.
The majority of the mining issues can be attributed to the disruption caused by the automated mining pool bots that aggressively switch mining from one coin to the next based on there profitability at any given moment. This dramatic switch from one coin to the other impacts the built in difficulty adjustments and effects the behavior of the coin. We have witnessed our network difficulty multiply by a factor of 3 or 4 when these switches take place.
Having said that, it is our best guess that core network infrastructure speeds and the switches they relay data on are also effected as distributed distribution of the algorithm fights to find the path of least resistance. Basically users with substandard internet connections can expect to be impacted with the reduced ability to mine coin's effectively. It is important to note that it is the "core" internet speed or the main trunks of the internet that have more to do with the transfer of block creation data. The fringes of the network are also important but the pools that have the least disruptive and most robust internet backbones tend to perform the best.
You might want to try several different pools, however "luck" also plays a role as you may find success with one pool one day, and few day's later it might be better to move on to another. This was the same with Bitcoin, where the difficulty is constantly changing with no guaranteed payout.
/C