Topic: [BitAffNet] How we're the #1 Bitcoin Mining Pool In The World (or so we thought) - page 46. (Read 99163 times)

What Jan 16th firmware? 

Seeing not everyone seems to get the emails from BAN here it the one I got last night with some interesting information:

Miners,
Greetings! I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce myself and talk to you guys about a few cool things going on here at the Bitcoin Affiliate Network. My name is Paul. Those of you in the community may know me as 9600. I've been a network securities and private cloud engineer for the better portion of my life and was recently hired by Gil to help ensure security in light of BAN's recent breaches. My background lies in the advertising, financial and medical industries and I have overseen the design and deployment of many HIPPA and PCI compliant data spaces and transport networks. I've also been an avid mining addict since the fall of 2013. My experience has given me a unique perspective on the many challenges our industry faces to traditional network security.

Security:
As some of you know, in the past few months we have entered a multi-year lease to take over what used to be a Tier II datacenter for a Fortune 500 company. The facility has 5MW (not to mention 29 fully renovated offices and 3 data-centers!) and I will be responsible for making sure our data and hash stay safe and secure.
In light of the recent Bitcoin price movements and high profile breaches (BAN & Bitstamp to name a few) I thought it would be prudent to give you a high level overview of what we're doing to not only ensure our own data integrity and security, but help the network and community as a whole.
With our own Tier II facility and no other clients to satisfy, we will be utilizing our ability to take control of our transport securities starting at the network edge. While cloud providers can provide a certain level of high availability for some less sensitive nodes, BAN will reign in all core assets while deploying enterprise grade packet analysis and intrusion-detection hardware. The core network at BAN is being designed with the most stringent of compliance spaces in mind.
We want to make sure we're employing the same security topology used by the most secure network environments in the world.

Technology:
With that said, now may be a good time to let you know that BAN is also in talks with the world's largest security firm to provide you with a hardware and application solution that will simplify the process of creating and managing multi-signature wallets. BAN will NEVER be a Bitcoin bank, rather we are taking the time to develop technologies in partnership with industry leaders to help bolster existing network technologies and put more control back in the hands of the users.

Cloud Mining:
With the recent announcement of CEX's choice to halt all cloud hashing operations and Cointerra's default on their datacenter colocation, the state of the cloud mining industry seems to be in turmoil. Many "reliable" services have recently come offline due to security breaches or an inability to operate at a loss during changing market conditions.
Many of you have heard that we have a cloud-mining operation in the works. The hardware for that service is in-place, mining, and growing every day. The service will be linked directly to the BAN pool and you will have the option of paying yourself out in regular BAN payment intervals or the choice to instantly reinvest a set percentage of your earnings back into your cloud hashing operation. You can watch your miner grow as the hours pass by.

It's some pretty ground-breaking stuff and I'm proud of our developers for working to bring the service to light as quickly as they have.

To help quell any questions about our ability to remain viable in this space, let's get a few things out of the way. The Bitcoin Affiliate Network is a privately funded venture with no debts or loans. This allows us to fulfill our commitment to provide not only great service, but supply you with a trove of your user data to audit yourself. We want you to be able to empirically analyze your earnings to keep us in check. We believe transparency and data are the keys to success in this space.

The best part about all of this? Soon we'll be opening the doors to our datacenter to the public so that you can come and see for yourself. We're not going to work out of a space as excellent as this and not share it with the community, so stay tuned for some open-house announcements so that you can come down and see what we've got in store for the future, in person. 

One last note to all of my fellow Bitmain S4 miners out there. Please update your firmware to new Jan 16th firmware image. They fixed a share committing bug and it will even out your hashrate.
No more wild swings! Just make sure you're connected to your BAN stratum server on port 3335 for a fixed difficulty at 2048 to ensure best performance!

Stay tuned for updates, open-house dates and some mining tips.
Looking forward,
Paul - 9600

Bitcoin Affiliate Network's Mining Pool - https://mining.bitcoinaffiliatenetwork.com

do you think we should get a new thread set up? it's still terrible to see all the shit in the first few pages

Thanks guys. I didn't receive a mail, so I wasn't aware that.

I got that email to and I was one of the effected users of the namecoin problem, in less than 5 minutes of responding to the email my account was fixed. I didnt really care about the namecoins either way but ti was nice they were upfront and fixed the problem almost instantly.

No the email that Gil sent out the other day said the DOGE coin being given out was just something extra even though the pool is not mining it.

What about the Doge field? Are you adding scrypt mining at your pool?

I thin k my worry stemmed from this forum. I would bet if I never used this forum I would not have ran so quickly in the beginning. But now I have learned a few peoples whose opinion is useless. SO that was good it taught me something about the peoples opinion I used to think were unbiased and honest useful tools for my mining experience.

I agree as I pulled my miners many times when things screwed up with the pool when it was new, now I don't worry at all.

I ran in the beginning, But as time went on I always saw everything we did was fully reimbursed, if there was a problem that cost us BTC s0br always reimbursed us with a bonus that usually covered our losses. It has been a great pool. I have recommended it to everyone I now.

When will the pool be back up?

I've been on the pool solid for about 4.5 months now, except when my rigs are rented out.

I don't worry about it and run away everytime there has been a problem, as they have always been sorted quickly. Getting 10% extra for months means most people are NOT going to lose anything even if the worst did happen which is very unlikely IMHO.

He has been excellent to work with over the course of this pools existance.
I'm always cautious though with pools and anything bitcoin. It's a risky business and I have been shafted before buy a pool operator who declared the pool closed due to losses. They then reopened later but would not pay anyone back for earned shares from the old pool.
So I worry when I see ongoing security issues.

I agree with you as I know for a fact s0br is a trustworthy person.

Hmm sorry to hear s0br got stolen from. Its amazing how many bullshit thieves there are in bitcons. I love how honest s0br has always been with us. He is a good man and runs a great pool. I am also very interested in his other projects he is involved with. So far with my experience with i'm and his admins they have always been very upfront when problems arise and even paid us bonuses in times we deserved it. I do not know the man personally but I wish i did.

+1
I have done the same.  But I'm back now and it looks like a payment went out about 30 minutes ago.  Here is hoping his security has improved and we can see a larger bonus again.

Thats understandable as I like the 2 hour payments and I talked to s0br on chat yesterday. The hack of his wallet and the loss of 2 blocks worth of coin ( 50 BTC ) put him in a position yesterday of having to wait till the two new blocks to confirm to use for payout as he had maxed out the limit that he could buy from Coinbase. . The way I understood he has bought coins to help make the bonus and or payments during slow times in the past. I have pulled my miners in the past a few times when I didn't feel comfortable with late payments but always came back once the payments were made. I have never had payments go 4 or 5 days but there is nothing wrong with a miner watching out for himself as there are plenty of pools to chose from.   

Completely understand, but also I understand that regular payouts when you say you want them every hour, 2, 6, 24 etc were a big selling point, the OP makes a bit point of it as a positive for the pool, but the payouts haven't been regular, they have been late, and now its being said that s0br is having to buy BTC to meet the payouts of the pool, not a good place to be imho.

And the bonuses were great, as long as you understood they were a marketing gimmick and were not meant to last, but as long as the payouts were on time who cares where the bonus comes from, its not the miners problem is it?

But if payments start being delayed or missed, and (crazy if true) rumours of having to buy BTC to pay miners, then the risk starts to look too great and the concerns expressed by the more knowledgeable people earlier in the thread start to be more clearly recognised, the worst fear is that its not just an hour or a days mining income that gets lost if the pool ups and disappears, if the payouts are delayed for 4-5 days and then the pool disappears then someone walks off with a lot of coin. For some that risk is now too big, time to move on.

s0br let it be know from the start the pool itself was not what this project was all about and with what I highlighted above is what I believe was his main project from the start and is to be his money maker, all he wanted was a pool to run it with.  

Looks like the bonus hasn't gone away completely just reduced to 1%