Topic: Bitminter bitcoin mining pool - shutdown mining 2020-07-01 website 2021-06-01 - page 4. (Read 324661 times)

Two in a day! :-D

Guys, I'm obviously not explaining myself as well as I should so I'll stop there before I annoy.

I understand luck/prediction etc.. And that in my example it could've happened the other way around. The example was just to point out PPLNS does have a flaw - I wondered were there other quirks?

I understand as well if there's no reason he comes and goes.. He may be bored, his other pool may be down, etc.

I suppose in it's most simple form my question was just:

    "Is there any little quirk of PPLNS he could be taking advantage of, reason he comes/goes?"

In it's most simple form the answer would've been:

    "Nah.. Probably has the pool as a failover or he's trying out some different ones, etc."

His coming/going doesn't bother me at all, I'd rather have lower payments more regularly. There's no ill feeling anywhere, just idle curiousity.

It may seem most fair that if you did 10% of the work between the time blocks A and B were found, then you get 10% of the coins paid out for block B. Because "you did 10% of the work needed to find block B".

That may seem like a fair system with no loophole. Unfortunately this is the proportional reward system which has a nasty loophole that gets abused. It is a very unfair reward system. Pool hoppers get paid much more than the 24/7 miners, on their expense.

PPLNS ("pay per last N shares/shifts"), pays the last N amount of work, for some number N. It may feel unfair if you did some work and it was no longer among the "last N shifts" when the block gets found so it didn't get paid. Then a big miner arrives, does a lot of work, after which several lucky blocks are found, so their work gets paid multiple times. It may feel like they are using a loophole. In fact it is completely random and could easily have been the other way around.

With PPLNS when you do a bit of work it is completely random whether it gets paid zero, one, two, or even more times. There is no way to predict it. There is no loophole.

If you feel bad that a big miner did most of the work in a shift that got paid 3 times because we found 3 lucky blocks, while you got "squeezed out" of this shift and didn't profit as much as you would have hoped - it was random. It could have been a shift that got paid zero times. In that case the big miner saved you by taking a larger share of this unlucky period of mining.

Mining is a lottery. Sometimes you get lucky and other times unlucky. The important thing for fairness is that the reward system makes it impossible to know whether future payouts will be high or low. That ensures a fair system with no loopholes.

Probably just like all the other whales that visit the smaller pools every now and then, he just has this pool setup as a failover.

Its most likely just random chance that a) they failed over here at the same time as b) they had good luck finding a couple of blocks.

You're just trying to assign a pattern or logic to something that is entirely luck driven.

No probs re: the luck side. What I meant, but could've done a better job of explaining (and which I think the OP meant!) is...

The 10 shifts/PPLNS isn't perfect. An example - the 2018-09-08 to 2019-01-21 dry spell where nothing came in... That was a 136 day run, but the first 96 days were wiped out.

So if a single person had provided 100% of the computational power for those first 96 days only, they wouldn't have seen a payment despite having done the vast majority of the work.

Assumption is that it all about balances out.. Say, A does 10%, B does 40%, and C does 50%, so long as those ratios are maintained for the 136 days, they get the payments they deserve. Otherwise, it'll wiggle around a little though, as people come and go etc, obviously.

On that 136 day block, I seem to remember some bigger players landing towards the end.. Perhaps thinking "It's gotta go soon!"..

Now C from above, might've provided 50% of the power for the first 96 days, but when the big fellas roll up, that percentage reduces and continues to with every shift.


So I think what myself and the OP meant was, are there any loopholes/weaknesses/cheats (whatever you'd want to call them), that may not be obvious to the layman, but which he could be using to give himself an (entirely legal!) little advantage?

It just seems peculiar he points his flamethrower over, but not all the time!

They got very good payouts because we had a bunch of lucky blocks in a row.

But that's only due to luck. And you can't predict future luck. So yes, gambling is the right word. But there are no stats or anything at all to improve your gambling odds.

Some people do believe that if you are lucky today then you will be lucky tomorrow as well. Other people believe that if you are lucky today then you have to be unlucky tomorrow because it has to even out. It makes no sense at all. But I guess people have their superstitions.

Hi Doc, sure appreciate that, didn't mean hopping as such.
There's no other stat anywhere they're keeping an eye on/evaluating, or even gambling on?
(At either Bitminter end, or whichever pool(s) they're bouncing between?)

Obviously just spreading the hash about a bit so its not all in one pool. Probably trying to figure out if they can earn more here compared to where they were.

You can't do this with PPLNS. That is the whole reason PPLNS was invented, to prevent pool hopping.

Pool hopping was a problem in the olden days when pools used the proportional reward method. You can read about it here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5072/what-is-pool-hopping

No doubt they've a method when to come/go, and how much work to do, to maximise profits..
Don't know enough about how the shifts etc work to have a guess at what that is, but if they're following the rules I suppose they aren't breaking them!

Seems like "Chet" has a few "friends" that "shift hopping"........causing all the lower hash rate miners( <100TH) lose some off their percentages for the current shift.
Makes one wonder just where they are getting their hash power. And why they all seem to join/login at the same time.....
Just saying.............

Yea thats what I mean, if we can get through them one per week at least it will certainly keep things balanced

Ya, that last payment was 2.5-3 times less what I'd had the two before.
But I suppose we've rattled through three blocks in just a couple of weeks.
Will the payments not balance out - less BTC but more frequent?
At the lower hash rate it was sometimes painful.. Particularly that 8th Sept to 21st Jan dry spell :-(

If he can get them a bit faster it may well make up for the massive hit in share percentage I've lost since he started mining here.

Chet has knackered the "Computational Power" box - perhaps he could donate some coins for a new one!

Power just there now was 365,805 Thps, but the CP box could only fit 65,805 on its screen! :-(

Nice to have banged through a 58%'er in 10 days, and already be 14.2% on with the next!

Chet is on a roll. Another block!!

Yet another block from Chet! I think we need to reach out to ol' Chet and make sure he knows the extra hash is appreciated as it speeds up the variance process for sure. Great luck is one thing, but even on shit blocks we'll move quicker. Thanks a million Chet and thanks everyone else that has been and continues to mine with the best pool...BitMinter!

583558   2019-07-03 03:14   2d 0h   1,196,982,206,336   7,934,713,219,630   14.0%   29,427.9   chetjstojanovich   

And Thank you for keeping that all running after that time!
(You where my first pool I started mining with, because of your "beginer friendly" software that you provided)

I hope all the best for next upcomming years!

Thanks Fuzzy. To be honest I rarely check in to the pool. Aslong as my instance of cgminer is running well I just let it do its thing. It is nice to get an email saying ive received a surprise payment into my wallet though, but im waaaaay off the payment threshold yet   

Ahem, ya know you folks found a block today right? Height 583257 2019-07-01 02:42    18d 16h    3,008,619,595,712    7,934,713,219,630    31.6%    8,009.2    chetjstojanovich
Just sayin' 'ding-dong' to wake up the folks here