Topic: Anti solo mining myths debunked - page 4. (Read 12294 times)

That's a bit rhetorical. Just as gmaxwell wrote: there is no sure return "NOW" in a pool vs. an uncertain return in a distant future for solo mining. There is just a trade-off between probability and payout. There indeed is a risk to never see a block before difficulty hits the space age. But there is also a chance to find multiple blocks during the current difficulty and get a large payout. A pool doesn't pay you better in the latter case, solo mining does.

Having instant benefits now instead of later might be a huge benefit during accelerated growth of a whole economy. But Bitcoin is a currency and does not earn you interest. Getting 50 BTC now or later is of no difference if it is BTC's value itself that is growing. If mining would return another currency, say Batcoin, and your goal was to participate in Bitcoin's growth, instant payout of Batcoins would be important, so that you can convert them to Bitcoins before the price (Batcoin/Bitcoin) increases. But the payout is denoted in Bitcoin already, you participate in the growth of its value, even if you aren't cashed out immediately, because the return is always a nominal 50 BTC.

It would be different if the price of Bitcoin was falling and you always sell your coins immediately to earn interest in another currency. Then an instant payout would be a benefit.

This thread seems to be full of people using negatives when they mean positives.

@Joel if you say reduced variance is the only benefit that makes it sound like a trivial thing, try turning it around, what are the benefits of solo mining? No fee pools, pools that have been around for a long period of time (why would they scam YOU?), etc. Stale shares isn't even a real thing, as every share that does not complete a block is worthless in solo mining, so there is no comparison. Basically every "benefit" of solo mining is either addressed or purely hypothetical.

@Everyone telling me you can not mine blocks, hey thanks for telling me exactly what i said already. Now on the other hand, statistical probability makes it entirely improbable for you to NEVER mine a block with certain amounts of hashing power (i have had > 5GHash for some time now). if you want to quibble with probability you probably don't want to learn that that is what makes our universe run more or less. But you can run a ridiculous bad streak while difficulty mounts making it less and less likely for you to outgain what you would have gotten in pooled mining.

And that's just it, the real benefit of pools. There is a real tangible benefit to returns NOW rather than possible returns later. The two are not equal in an accelerating growth model.

It's also quite possible for a pool to never mine a block (or to mine far under the expectation), it's just less like just as it is less likely for the pool to do superbly well.  Worse, because of downtime, fees, cheating, etc. the pool is expected to average less overall. The the reduced variance is a real and useful result, but don't exaggerate the contrast.

Why do you say "no" and then agree with me?

No.  Its quite possible for someone to never mine a block solo mining.  Unless I am mistaken, its purely chance and there is nothing that guarantees that if you mine for a certain period of time you are GOING to get a block.  A person with 655Mhash/s like myself could mine a block within the first 10 minutes of solo mining (luck), or it could more likely take a year(or never).  Its much better to just use a pool, get 20 bitcoins in 2 weeks and be done with it.  

Within a few weeks the difficulty is going to be absolutely massive (3million at least by mid july) and I seriously don't think that is going to help anyone in my situation with mining solo.

That makes no sense. Think of it this way: "Myths against solo mining debunked". There is no triple negative.

bcpokey: In other words, reduced variance is the only advantage of pooled mining.

This is possibly the most confusing topic title i've read to date:

Anti- meaning against, myth meaning fictional story, and debunked to disprove. A triple negative if you will. So if solo mining is the subject, a triple negative would indicate a negative, or be a post against solo mining.


Anywho, that's just a bit of an aside. On the main topic, variance is a cruel cruel cruel mistress. in roughly the last 2 months (2 month anniversary in a week! Better buy some roses!) of mining i have solved... 0 blocks. Clearly i'm a ridiculously unlucky person, but it still stands that i'm probably not alone, and that as difficulty increases the lottery you play becomes that much chancier. The fact is that probability isn't as nice and neat as some people like to make it out to be. Sure if you looked over the course of 10 years of mining my variance might average out to the statistical norm, but in an acceleratingly competitive climate, can one really afford to wait that long?

The fact is that difficulty changes, and with it your chances for hitting a block, you have a "low probability to get a large payout", but it also keeps gettng lower. You can keep missing and missing and missing and so on. Really unless you can put out some serious hash power or have great faith in your luck, anti-solo isnt much of a myth.

IMHO none of the anti solo mining myths are correct except one: pooled mining generates a steadier flow of income (at a price).

Myth 1: Mining in a modern pool produces less stale shares due to long polling, which the regular Bitcoin client doesn't provide for solo miners.

Fact: You don't need long polling for solo mining at all. Just set the askrate to something as 1 second. For solo setups the added overhead is below noise. You loose 0.5 seconds worth of work on average per freshly found block, but even the best pools with LP support cannot beat that in practice, since you seldomly get less than 0.5-1% stale shares (often more). This nonsense is even part of the wiki! There is no 1-2% benefit due to LP, in fact local fast polling is more reliable. Can anyone remove it?

Myth 2: Because difficulty constantly increases, joining a pool improves your chance to get any payback before the next difficulty increase, thus pooled mining has a higher profitability.

Fact: The premise is true, but not the conclusion. Solo mining has a low probability to get a large payout before the next difficulty increase. Pooled mining has a large probability to get a low payout before the next difficulty increase. It sums up to zero. Pooled mining does not increase your chances in a scenario of steeply increasing difficulty.

I think all other myths are self-explanatory nonsense.

There is not one benefit of pooled mining except less variance. You pay for this comfort with pool fees, missed transaction fees, stale shares, generally higher network downtime exposure, the risk of getting ripped off by a pool operator, implicit costs of sophisticated pool hopping (if you aren't the hopper). These costs are real, the costs of solo mining are purely psychological (not for the faint of heart).