Welcome Bible Pay Users,
As you know we have had an exponential increase in interest and network hashing against Bible Pay since the launch, and now it is very hard to solo mine. As a result, our Dev Team is writing a customized Bible Pay pool.
(The custom pool is necessary since we have a proprietary hash function that is resistant to ASIC and GPU mining. In addition in the future the algorithm will be extended to raise the bar even higher, by requiring the full nodes to hash transaction lookups based on deterministic hash outputs, requiring the miners to be full nodes).
The purpose of this thread is to invite users to help test the pool from Test Net, to ensure it is ready for primetime.
We need to test things like: Hash Rate measurements, fair block payouts in the block distribution table, an accurate payment distribution at the time the block is solved, mining from many miners under one miner name to one pool, mining from multiple miners to one pool, the isolation of testnet from main net, the ability to withdraw BBP from the pool, the reliability of the pool, the reliability of the client miner, the fallback to solo mining if the pool is down, etc. I will add more specific test cases and welcome any test cases.
Here is the location to download the latest wallet:
www.biblepay.orgNote, in order to pool mine, you will need at least v1.0.1.8 of the wallet (both daemon and qt should work fine).
How to set up the configuration for pool mining:
On windows, navigate to %appdata%\biblepaycore. On linux, navigate to ~/.biblepaycore.
Edit the biblepay.conf file, and place the following lines in the config:
poolport=80
pool=http://pool.biblepay.org <- Note this URL is not live until approx Monday Aug 7th (Dev is deploying the pool tonight)
workerid=the_worker_id (explained below)
gen=1
genproclimit=10
After upgrading biblepay and modifying the config, biblepay wallet will automatically revert to solo mining if it cannot connect to the pool, even if the pool goes down for maintenance while you are on vacation.
Next, you will need to configure the Web site side of the pool.
In your web browser navigate to the Pool URL (see pool= above), and click Register, and create a web account.
After that, go the Main menu, then Account, and add a Miner.
(The Notes textbox may be filled in with something personal, like Rooftop linux i686 etc.)
Save the miner record.
Take the name of the miner (IE the worker ID), and edit your config file, setting it where we have "workerid=" in the above example and restart biblepay.
Next, check your mining stats as you normally would (IE check getmininginfo), you may do this by clicking Tools | Information | Console, and then type "getmininginfo".
The pool exposes a few lines of text for debugging purposes, the PoolInfoLine1 is just populated with the current Pool URL if your node is pool mining, and the Pool Miner Guid is populated in Line2. Note this is just technical info and you do not need to know this. This is useful if the pool goes down and you want to know if you are pool mining or not. We have a field called "pool mining: true/false" that sums up what the miner is doing. If any thread is successfully pool mining, the value is true, otherwise its false.
Please hold off on mining against the main chain In pool mining mode until we fully test the client. Mining on the main chain in the pool could result in lost BBP, as the pool will sign the block and have no idea who to pay currently (until we verify the distribution system works). NOTE: To disable the pool settings once you are done testing on that node for the day (IE if you want to mine on the main chain outside of the pool) just put an x in front of the pool= entry in your config file and restart in prod mode. (IE xpool=pool.biblepay.org).
To start your client in testnet mode do the following:
cd c:\program files (x86)\biblepaycore
biblepay-qt -testnet
The background should be green if in testnet. Please do all of the testing in testnet.
Note on the above biblepay.conf configuration settings:
You will need to copy the biblepay.conf settings from the biblepay.conf file down to the \testnet3\biblepay.conf file (IE just let the coin start, it will create the file, close the wallet, open the config, copy the setting rows, paste them into the target file, restart the coin).
(I realize this is convoluted, but Biblepay/Bitcoin have the settings coalesced like this for a certain reason so its easier for us to go through the double settings now rather than change the coalesce rules.)
Note that this version of the miner updates the hashmeter more slowly to squeeze out as much performance as possible, so be patient when re-running getmininginfo, as it is delayed approximately 30 seconds before a change occurs.
Alright, good luck everyone, lets make this a great pool.
As of Aug 6th at 20:00 CST US time, the pool has not yet been deployed. I will edit this message as soon as the website is ready for you all to create accounts.