Hi,
Owner of EggPool Here.
I'm not used to talk or watch over here, but you'll find me at bismuth's slack and discord.
Since I see some questions about the pool fees, let me give some perspective on the why.
When I launched the pool and the gpu miner, Bismuth was being raped by a few private solo gpu miners.
I spent a month coding a pool and miner from scratch. really from scratch, all of it.
It's not some clone like other coins, where you drop some files on a vps and use an existing miner.
All is custom, from scratch.
Why such fees?
- because I'm dedicated 24/7 to this project, Bismuth and Eggpool
- because the fees cover the pool, but also the miner. It could be 5% pool + 5% miner fees.
- I do a spent a huge amount of time supporting users. Join slack or discord, you'll have answers. You won't have to run after me for days.
- superior infrastructure: it's not some cheap vps. I do run several Bismuth nodes, supporting the net with stable nodes, and I have designed a distributed pool architecture, with a central dashboard. I operate from several dedicated servers, in different parts of the world. A pool can crash or be under maintenance, you continue to mine. Check for historical pool downtime, you won't find. I did plan for long term reliable operations, not some quick cash.
- R&D. Lots of R&D goes into the miner. It's far superior to the open source solo miner. Lately, I sold some bis, I have to admit, so I could buy a 1080Ti for tuning purposes. Before that I bought an AMD Gpu so I could do specific optis for AMDs.
- Look, last update of the miner alone gave the miners +15 to +20% more hashrate. So, even with the 10% fees deducted, miners still get 5% more!!!!
I could have lowered to 5% fees, let the miner as it was, and everyone would have lost.
I'm really trying my best, both for bismuth - not all pools or solo miners are dev team friendly - and you miners: support and updating miner, reliable distributed pool, so everyone can win more. I don't do this as a side project, I'm heavily involved.
Don't look at what fees I "take", it's of no use: you do have the choice to pick another pool or mine solo, or dev your own pool and miner. I did it, you can too!
(See, I even help wanna be bismuth pools for the technical side)
If you mine on Egg, it's because you get more (even with the fees deducted) than you would the other way.
In the end, YOU get more. Isn't that what counts?
And moreover, you're supporting a dev friendly pool, that helps and stabilize the bismuth network long term.
If I dropped my fees today, that would only mean less support, less dev, a higher netdiff maybe, and a few more coins dumped by the miners. Would that really help?
Thank you for a detailed, balanced response. I can say that yes latest miner code improved hash by 10-15% on AMD.
And I also know you have been very active and actively contributing.
Thats true that it all matters is how much miners earn.
Also I agree that kind of facility you give attached with a cost and valuable time.
I think I am ok with level of effort you are putting in provide a good service and also contributing in development of project.
Since your number of coins will not change much, so I expect when BIS cross $20-$30, you would consider lowering fee.