The high unexchanged is fairly common. People ask about it every week.
I've been on Middlecoin continuous since last summer, and beta tested them with another address earlier in 2013. Others pools have popped up on occasion and I've tried most of them. Only Hashcows came close to matching Middlecoin's rate of payout averaged over a long span of time, but they haven't been the same since their holiday hack.
None of the other pools have Middlecoin's primary strength: H20dyssey's ability to sell coins when no one else can at a price no one can match. He manually trades like a hedgefund manager instead of just relying on Autotrade. High unexchanged is an artifact of this.
Biggest example was during the Doge craze during the winter holidays. He jumped on Doge 4 days before any other pool did, then waited to sell until Cryptsy locked up with Doge exchange issues. Hashcows and direct Doge miners couldn't sell on their favored exchange. People were clamoring to buy but couldn't. H20 sold and we made a killing. That's what your 3.88% or so fee goes to. Well worth it.
So don't worry about these high unexchanged values. I love it when they get high, because at the end of the day, we get a bigger payout than if we just autosold everything like all the other multi pools out there during a market downtrend.
BTW- this isn't even close to the highest unexchanged values we've seen.
I have been on MC for over a month, and while some days are good in terms of pay, others are not, and are FAR bellow what other pools take in.
I find it scary how many of you are sitting here and defending MC like its a religious institution. If you think the last 4 days have been good payouts then you need to look again. And last time I checked these forums are here to specifically state your problems and question the pool operators. People started bitching at me for voicing my concerns and that I mentioned other pools, when I was simply comparing stats based on same days. Bottom line is something is wrong with MC. Its either mining a bad fork in a coin which it didnt mine much in the part, or a server side issue. My 10.3 mhash ran for 24 hours and I got a pitiful 0.026 payout, while my other 11.0 machine took in 0.1139 on Waffle. You are going to tell me that's normal? Sure there are a ton of un-exchanged, but those un-exchanged coins are from 5 days ago, FIVE DAYS! They could have already lost their value. That is the whole point of a profit based pool, to exchange coins as they are being mined. If I wanted to hold on to coins for that long I would mine a specific coin and just hold on to it.
I also question MiddleCoins hash rate being displayed at the bottom. I cant be the only one that switched pools in these last few days because of pitiful payouts, yet hash is almost unchanged.
You're barking up the wrong tree with criticizing my posts... I'm not one of the religious fanatics here. I jump and split my farm to where the profit is.
The only difference is that I'm relating over 7+ months experience to your one month. The last month and a half have been the worst I've seen at Middlecoin. But the "Worst" is relative. The "Worst" at Middlecoin is just below my other test miners in the competing pools. 5 out of those 7+ months, Middlecoin has been about 1 1/2 times more profitable than the next pool on my test list on average. The reason is that it gets big spikes of payout when H20 makes the big trades that I alluded to and that skews the average up. He hasn't made a big big trade like that this past month though.
So if I see a long term viable pool that has more profit over time then I'll definitely jump to that... and I have. I was a big cheerleader for Hashcows before the hack-n-grab. I'm still rooting for them. But Atriz and NearMiss have to do something different to get themselves out of their death spiral and they haven't even gotten all the old features back yet by their own admission.
The other pools people have mentioned here are pretty promising on the face of it, but haven't proven themselves over a long timeframe. Wafflepool for instance only JUST became somewhat more profitable in the last week and half, but that could be tied to market forces. I'd like to see their numbers after 2 months. Over a week and a half ago and they were woefully underperforming.
So please don't count me as one of the Fanbois... I'm just relating my experience and I jump where the long term profit is... so YMMV.