Guys,
Let's be reasonable and have a good look at the mining of the coin.
I don't think it is a scam or there is a bit problem with the pool.
Ofcourse there maybe some tricks and tweaks to get a better performing pool, but that's not our issue now as far as I see it.
If we go back a few weeks:
there where less miner on the pool (half) less mining power also.
Network hash was also low.
Then a mandatory update came, resulting in the pool hitting lots more blocks with almost the same hash power.
Network hash was low since not everybody updated.
From what I understand Rob received lots of complains from China about the mandatory update.
They are running botnet to mine bbp and needed to update their botnet (right?)
If we look at how much interest there is for the project (low), volume trading is low (even when exchange is up)
Pool did gain some more interest, although I think the increase of miners is because the existing users added more nodes and some new people entered but not a lot.
There could be a second pool, but I dare to believe that since it's such a small coin and running a 'hidden' pool for it is not really ideal, or you need to have a lot of money to get enough machines. (and they will run into the same issue as we have, low return)
The idea of the coin is that people can use there old/decent pc to mine the coin and help charity (and well themselves for a bit)
This is a great idea and a very good part of the coin, however it also is the biggest downside now.
Making the entry and mine ability that easy means that it can be a very easy target for criminals/greedy people/people with other interest so to speak
And I think that is going on now.
I cannot imagine that there are some much solo miners on purpose for such a small coin, joining the pool would help them get more so why would you mine solo?
Unless you have something to hide...
Someone made a botnet that is (unwanted) using the computers of affected people to mine BiblePay.
The income does not go to the owner of the machine but to the owner(s) of the botnet. And that is I think a very bad idea.
It means that someone is earning money over the back of harmless people. People that get a higher electric bill (pc is always at full power) and maybe even a faster broken pc/frusterated about there slow pc.
some facts for now:
The pool hs is about 2,5gh, network is 70gh. (54 according to my miner)
That is a Hugh! difference, and that also means that the likelihood that we hid a block is very low of course.
And could mean that we don't hit one for a couple of hours/days even.
And with the increased hashes/miners on the pool everybody gets less share of it.
Although if it was not increased I think we would hit even less...
conclusion:
Rob, can you have a look at the pool and see if there are tweaks/fixes that can help distribute the blocks like you did earlier. Maybe you spot something.
Or anybody else that can
I will also see if I can find something (c++ is not really my thing... but should be able)
And with the latest mandatory update, did you get a lot of complains from solo miners ('legit' solo miners) ?
second:
I think we need to find a way to 'block' the botnet.
I am not against solo mining. I am against solo mining with the profit going to wrong people. I think that's not the idea of the coin.
It feels pretty wrong and bad.
But, I also know it is quite hard/maybe even impossible. Are there coins that prevent solo mining??
Some suggestions:
New mandatory update, that would cripple there botnet for a while.
And we can find out if the theory is correct.
Make some 'registration' for solo miners.
If you are solo mining you need to provide a identification token that can be validated. The identification token must be requested 'by hand' via the pool/block chain.
ie: preventing automatic setup, users need todo some steps in order to be able to mine the coin. This way legit users can solo mine but botnet are likely to stop since it's lots of manual labour.
Could be something like a hash that need to be requested via a webpage with a captcha on it so that it can't be automated. Or anything.
Or block all solo mining (if possible). But that would be the least favourite option.
(although I think that if you have a low power cpu there is no reason not to join the pool, and we can prevent users from running there pc without any reason. Since the users with low cpu are probably less experienced miners)
What do you guys think?
p.s.
I can help with some work, I work as a javascript (nodejs/polymer) and java developer. C++ is a while ago, but at least I can help testing and think about solution maybe.
all our powerhashes disappeared from pool ...