Topic: Eligius: 0% Fee BTC, 105% PPS NMC, No registration, CPPSRB - page 240. (Read 1061843 times)

I agree with you in most of what you say, being my own preference to now mine on a DGM pool, whether better or worse, is a choice i've recently taken. With regards to the finders bonus, well, for me it is irrelevant really, for the specific reasons you state above; with only 170GH/s I am too small and will never be a block finder under current and future difficulty - except for some freakish luck, which I doubt will ever occur. But isn't it the case, as BTC price rises, tx fees need to be smaller - nobody wants to be paying an exponential fee to send bitcoins. this would in the end make it cheaper to use a credit card for purchases, which goes against the purpose intended for bitcoin in the first instance?

I'll remain with my thinking that giving the block finder a bonus is a good thing, even though I will never see that bonus personally, I think it gives extra incentive to mine.

I'm sorry, I misread what you wrote.

I suggest p2pool do the same... and was promptly informed that it goes against the purpose of Bitcoin.  As time goes by (as each halving occurs), the blockreward for miners decreases.  That means the incentive to mine relies upon transaction fees increasing.  Which means any pool that distributes transaction fees to the finder is going to have a problem.

I agree it'd be nice for the block finder to get some sort of reward ... however in the day and age of 4.2billion BTC difficulty, the only way little guys can stay in are with an even (yet proportional) distribution among all pool members.  Otherwise it'll just be the big guys, which will likely be corporations.

M

I never said anything about Eligius not paying tx fees. So yes it should be accurate and I'm not going to speculate on differences of opinion.
The actual difference lies in the fact that tx fees are divided on Eligius, on BP, all tx fees are paid as a bonus to the block finder. i merely mentioned this, as TodaysGandalf seemed to have a minor issue with the fact that he was a block finder, and received no bonus reward for being. BP addresses this.

I don't follow?  Eligius's home page says this:


Is that not accurate?

M

You hit the nail on the head so many points. Someone obviously doesn't realise where his payments have been coming from for all those weeks where he hasn't 'done all the hard work' and found a block. On a side note, I don't believe Ozcoin offers POT anymore, it does still mention POT on the home page which I think this just hasn't been updated in forever, the actual user configurable pool options state:
Not sure if any other pools offer POT?

The reality for me is donating is a faff.
Happy to pay a fee if things improve but for now have moved my 3th because I want regular payouts and stable stats.
Would prefer to stay as I have a lot of respect for the work lkj and WK carry out "as a hobby".
Look forward to a default fee and the inevitable improvements.

Okay...


How could you think you'd get anything more? That's the WHOLE point of pooled mining: getting regular, small payments, instead of gambling for a BIG payout you'd probably never get anyway.

Also, you protest about things not being clear, but according to the first sentence on Eligius FAQ page "Whenever a block is found, the most recent 25 BTC worth of unpaid shares are paid." If all the coins found in the block are sent to payed shares, then the finder gets nothing more. And according to the first sentence in the bitcoin wiki's article about pooled mining: "Pooled mining is a mining approach where multiple generating clients contribute to the generation of a block, and then split the block reward according the contributed processing power."

"Not one extra bitcoin was given to me for having the miner that did the work." -> You do realize that the miner that finds the block did not more nor less "work" than any other miner in the pool. It's pure luck. It doesn't deserve anything more.

And... That is bad? Everybody that mines everywhere contributes to the Bitcoin network, and they all deserve a fair share of the reward. Fair = in proportion of their hashing power. If it did not happen, a lot of people would stop mining out of frustration of mining for months and not finding anything, and the network would be weaker.

It also enables a fair spread of the initial Bitcoin production: the bitcoin economy may only take off if the coins are more or less spread across all the users, instead of a few that hold them all.

It does NOT compare to communism because everybody does have the same merit. Nobody works "harder" that anybody else. Well, you can double your hashrate, then you'll double your reward. But I repeat: The miner that finds the share has not done any more work than the others. It is pure luck.

You should try a POT (Pay on target) pool like ozcoin. It would suit your desires.

Or, you could update your settings for requesting shares of a lot higher difficulty. You'd find them less often, on average, but they'd pay that much more. Same average/expectation value, but much more influence of luck, so you could win more. (Well, on some other pool, because the reward system of eligius prevents anybody from earning more that 100% PPS.)


I don't understand why you say that once again... The pooled mining system spreads the money evenly instead of making a few rich "winners". That is the exact opposite of what you're saying. In any case, it is not satoshi's fault beacause mining pools are built by people on top of Bitcoin; they are not part of bitcoin itself.

You adress is going to be listed on the blocks page in the column "contributor".


So are most textbooks on pretty much every bit of human knowledge. It takes time to write good introductory texts for any topic. And Bitcoin is still in it's beginning! But the best way to learn about something is to try it hands on! But you should check the udemy course on bitcoin. It's really not bad and explains a lot. https://www.udemy.com/bitcoin-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-crypto/?sl=E0cddzFTKn1uFFkoCkA%3D

If Pool is paying reward to "finder" it is taken from everybody's  "normal" rewards. So "finder" is getting better reward from that one block and same time he is getting less reward from every blocks he doesn't find.
And because block finding is pure luck, as there is no extra burden for those miners, in long term this "finders" reward would sum up to same total reward as we are getting now.
In short term I think that having no reward for finding block is favorable for small hashrate miners, because most of blocks are finded by big miners.

I don't know how it can happen? Once you cross your minimum payout treshold, you ARE going in the queue, and stay there until you are payed!

Exactly. The balance age is how much time has elapsed since a miner has recieved it's most recent payment. (or the day they started mining if they havent recieved a payment yet).

Some very small miner may take months before they accumulate enough coins to cross the minimum payment treshold. People may also voluntarely increase the payment treshold upwards to be payed less often.

However, the greatest balance age is always payed in priority: so a miner who finally crosses it's payout treshold after two weeks will be placed earlier in the payout queue that a miner who crosses that threshold every day.


The main stats page says, at the bottom, that the average time per block, considering current pool hashrate and network difficulty, is 1:05 hours. Therefore, 48 blocks is 2 days, 4 hours. However, you may be pushed back a little by other small miner crossing their treshold and be put upper in the queue. A good rule of thumb to know how much wait will be necessary is to look at the balance age of the last miner to be payed out in the next block.

Quit griping. I found a block last August when the diff was 50 mil and I was mining with 12 gh. I would never have found it if I wasn't in the pool and neither would you, so stop whining and keep hashing.

I mine on bitparking now, and block finders get the reward of all transaction fees for that block. it's DGM and rounds can be long and arduous, but it's worth it.

Topic change!

I've started working on a pool desktop app. It's moving along pretty smooth except for the site unavailability hampering testing. The model is mostly done. All I have left to code up is pulling in the mined block data. I implemented both the historic api and WizKid's new api. Here's a screen shot of it pulling in my user stats.
http://i.imgur.com/5cFrgte.jpg
Here's one with the pool hashrate.
http://i.imgur.com/r906ONA.jpg

Doesn't look like much, but this part was the bitch. Once that's finished, the fun part begins. I'll work on the controller and then slap a view together. It'll start off simple. I'll have it just mimic the site but with one addition. I'll add the ability to set a min hashrate. If your hashrate falls below the min, I can have a giant window popup with a klaxon blaring. Once I get something simple done, I can add options, configurations, data analysis, skins,.... like a desktop widget displaying just your hashrate or have it run as a service simply checking your hashrate or payout, like a cha ching sound can play with a popup when you get paid, or a notification that you entered the payout queue.  Things like that.

This pool is pretty darn open and supplies lots of data. I don't fully understand what all the data means/represents so I'll probably need help with compiling them into useful things.

I can't mimic the nice graphs. The api doesn't supply a user's hashrate history. The best resolution for data is 1 minute for user stats.  So, I could make my own graph overtime while the app runs, but I think that is stupid.  It also doesn't supply individual worker info. I could use WebViewClient to load your user stat page then inject some javascript to display just the graphs and worker info in my app.  But, I've never done this and don't want to be pulling out my hair trying to get it to work.  So, if anyone knows how to do this, code it up and pass it along. 

I'll try to throw a quick android app together. I haven't messed with Android since Froyo so I'll be pretty much relearning it.  I have some Android knowledgeable friends at work that could knock something out rather quickly.  I'll copy off the slush pool app.  It's clean and simple.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eiabea.btcdroid

Also, if you own a chumby or infocast, I can throw something together for that too.  Leave it by your TV or on your desk and let it monitor. Here's a hack I did for the infocast. I got JBox2d to run on it.

http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=8333

Any requests, suggestions, or help is more than welcome.

Oh, also, when wizkid took the stats down, some of the api's were still available. So, some of the features that will be in this app would have still worked.

Resume bitching!

I think a fair number of those in favor of some sort of fee are donating. My setup is smaller, and I'm not bothered by donating or the prospect of a fee. They are providing a service (that bit of obviousness isn't directed at you - we're mostly on the same page, I'd assume, in most regards in this matter), and at a point where it was easier to manage, no fee was just fine.

In general and at the community:

It kind of reminds me of someone who's a good baker making cupcakes as a hobby-job, earning a bit here and there from people as the news about the deliciousness of said cupcakes spreads word-of-mouth. At some point, the person realizes they can either scale back in order to keep the wagon from flying off the wheels from their day job, or whatever you wish to imagine, since by trying to keep all plates spinning might cause the quality of the cupcakes to diminish. In this case, since the site tends to be the point of complaint, the hobby baker lacks time to decorate the cupcakes as nicely as before, so some customers stop buying, OR, the hobby baker can take it to the next level, charge a bit more for the cupcakes, and, yes, still lose are few customers, but by improving on their craft, draws in more customers that are willing to pay a little more, while still saving a bit than if they had gone to some flashier large-scale baker, who charges more but the actual cupcakes really aren't any better.

Perhaps a low flat fee, with also an option to donate, may be worth considering. In stead of 1% or even 0.5%, you charge only 0.25% (or whatever), which would still undercut competition and be low enough to attract people, and it's low enough that many users already donating won't have the attitude of "Well, now I'm paying, so why should I bother donating?" I don't know what it costs to run the operation. Not at all, so the numbers are a little arbitrary. I know most pools I've used charge 1% or more. I used Slush's pool for a while an thought it was fine, even with the fee, and at the time I left, the stat pages were no better, the look of the site was no better, and so on and so forth. Hell, even pools charging a considerably high fee ask for donations. This may rub some people the wrong way, but I'll just go ahead an say it: for a community of people that go on ad nauseam about their Libertarian, capitalist ideals, I see a whole lot of hands sticking out asking for donations for fuck all. (Don't get it twisted, one sees this everywhere sans gushing adoration for Libertarian ideals, which are always fine by me as long as those doing the gushing abide by them - the whole' practice what you preach' thing.) Eligius is a service, and generally a damn fine one at that. I love the fact that it is offered for free and people can decide what it's worth to them, but in the long run the altruism will most likely not be reciprocated may the majority, and things start to break down.

 I grow irritated when people come here bitching about not getting payouts fast and all kinds of other crap when they are using a service that is gratis. If the operators were thieves, or payouts were tied up for weeks, that would be cause for action. You use a free pool and it takes longer to get some issue ironed out, what the fuck else do you expect? Seriously?

To wrap up this monster of a post, put pen to paper, figure out how much you need to get where you want to go, and a little beyond, and derive a modest fee. Yeah, you'll take a hit in the amount of donations you're receiving, but you probably notice a fluctuation anyways as difficulty rises and some miners feel they can no longer afford to donate. Still, others will continue to reward you for quality work. The only thing to add is that by adding a fee, you will be open to a little scrutiny when the stats go into fail-safe mode every other day, and so on. As soon as you attach even the smallest fee to your service, the majority begins to feel even more entitled... And to an extent they will be, but only like 0.5% more than they were when it was all free and whatnot.

I learned a lesson today that disenchanted me with Eligius, pool mining and Bitcoin in general.

Last night, one of my miners found a block.  Hope against hope, it found a block!    With only 1.2TH at my command, with odds of five quadrillion to one, it found a block!  I briefly did the Snoopy happy dance.  25BTC!  That's $15,750!  The things I could do with that amount of money.  I could pay for the miners I had gone into debt to purchase and still have a nice chiunk of pocket change!  Stats were still offline so I couldn't see the impact.  I went to bed.

This morning I checked my payouts... and there was nothing.  Nothing but a measly 0.39BTC for four days of mining.  
$15,750 had been taken from me!  Distributed to the pool!  Not one extra bitcoin was given to me for having the miner that did the work.  Then I realized what a Communist plot pool mining is.  You have no chance to rise above your station in life comrade.  Your efforts are for the good of all.  You shall not benefit from your efforts beyond the average level of your hashing power.

Given my inability to afford to purchase at least 100TH of mining power, I will never know the joy of mining a block and receiving the full reward.  I could try mining solo, but I may never see that level of luck again in my lifetime without the aforementioned 100TH of mining power, and the target keeps rising.  With each person or group that struggles to surpass the competition by having more mining power that most of the pack, the difficulty rises almost exponentially.

In Bitcoin, as in life, the spoils once again go only to the wealthy power-brokers.  Satoshi you have failed to create the coin of the common man!  This shall be its fatal flaw that will either make Bitcoin fail entirely, or cause it to become just another currency used to manipulate and control the masses.

And we are back to normal, but my place in payment que went from 8 block delay to not yet eligible for payment.... (cry)

Don't get me wrong. I've always supported Eligius and donated my fair share and pointed most of my hash here but I'm a small (sub 1TH) miner and stats are important to me to know where things stand and maybe because I'm OCD about it. I don't expect pretty charts, just a working simple html page will do. Hope things improve because I really want this pool to shine having spent so much time at it.

And yeah I'm still here mostly (2/3rd at Eligius and 1/3rd at the evil Ghash.io because frequent payouts are sometimes nice too)