I'm done with "centralized pool", I've made my "big leap" for p2pool.
I'm a small time miners, now with only 600ish KH/s, but i've 2 more 280x waiting to be setup.
I dedicated my time into mining only since a month ago.
I've been experimenting with quite some pools, about 5 or 6 famous one (you know which), pool hash rate ranging from few ten's to few hundreds of Mhash/s to 10's of GHash/s, each tested for about 3-4days average, mostly 'centralized pools'.
What I found out is that, no matter which pools i went, I always get less than what those online mining profit calculator say I will get with such and such hash rate. Its never over 60% mark, worst is less than half. This is bad, so i think something must be wrong. So I read a lot of guides and articles from a lot of places, and google, reddit, forum, blogs, etc... people always teaches how to tweak and tune cgminer setting and this and that. I've since learn a lot, thou I'm still noob compare to most. Even though I now close to perfect the tuning and tweaking, even Reject is only 1-2%, zero HW, WU around 92% Hashrate and so and so... I still get the same result. The ACTUAL MINING INCOME WILL ALWAYS BE LESS THAN 60% OF WHAT ONLINE CALCULATOR TELLS YOU if you insist on mining at the 'centralized pools'.
So, is the online calculators LYING TO US?? The answer is NO. Some people will say, its LUCK. Yeah...maybe...but I think my experiments tell me it is not. How can you consistently get such lower mining income if it is luck? and over a course of few days consistent 50% or less lower than normal? (ok you'll say, i need at least so much and so much data to proof my point whatever)
Then, I read from somewhere that, these centralized pools are skimming off us miners without us knowing it. Think about it, how can this be luck. I know some will counter me by saying, its impossible for all the pools to cheat, Especially the big pools. Well, I say anything is possible. The big bank are crooks, the big governments and big corporations are lying and spying at us. What is impossible? Nothing.
So, I've decided not to waste another month. eVEN THOUGH i HEARD A LOT OF BAD THING ABOUT P2POOLS. I now know that they are just people's misconception and misunderstood about how p2pools work. They say p2pools has very high reject/stale (10-20%), you don't get payout for days, payout has high variance, you just wasting your energy blah blah. I know, cause I've been there. I once tried p2pool, and i don't get paid right away so i quit, and return to centralized pools, again.
Once again I'm back into p2pool, I decided to stick to it this time. I now mine on p2pool. Guess what, on the very first day, I GET EXACTLY (well not exact) what the mining calculator says what I should earn +-10% (yeah +10%, even more sometime, NOW THATS IS WHAT YOU CALL LUCK!!) I've been mining on p2pool for some time now, about a week, I experienced highs and lows, overall you average out equal to what you supposed to get for your mining power.
So, I highly encourage you to try out p2pool. Its tough in the beginning, but the payout is worth it. My 1 week experience told me so. with all the pros that p2pools offer, instant payment, ddos proof, no worry of con and cheat, no account lock problems also
etc etc. I think i'll never look back to centralized pools. Decentralize the mining and share your hashing power across the network, thats the way it should be, isn't crypto currency all about decentralization.
That's it for now i guess. sorry for my poor English and poor analysis. happy mining.
ps: pool operators, please don't blame me if i have awaken the mass. many will still be sleeping.
pps: my p2pool performance may not be your p2pool performance. various factors needs to be taken into consideration. cheers.