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Is everyone else just using a single payout address?
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I do, but I'm certain some people use multiple addresses for various reasons. But the only real one I can think of is as a way for slower miners to force more frequent payouts (even at just 1 Hash per minute, you can get payed every week if you switch addresses weekly). But even then, you only need to cycle between a few addresses for this to work.
If you use different addresses from the same wallet, when you make a transfer, the client will use funds associated with multiple addresses to make up the total amount of the transfer, effectively binding those addresses in the public record.
If you use addresses from different wallets, then you increase the risk of loosing coins due to a mistake as you switch between wallets and an astute observer might still be able to link those addresses if you ever transfer their contents to a single account in order to make a larger payment.
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There are times where a miner might have to stop mining for legitimate reasons (say winding down from mining for good) and if this happens to happen during a time of poor pool luck, they get screwed. There needs to be a mechanism that those people get caught up, even if its the lowest priority.
While the greed in me would like to encourage as many miners as possible to quit in order for the difficulty to go back down. Therefore anything that discourages potential quitters is a bad thing. The jerk in me finds it hard to sympathize with people who don't want anything to do with mining but still insist on maximum payment for past mining. I guess I would be fully satisfied if we could limit it to only miners in other pools quitting (at least until solo mining with a single GPU becomes a viable option again)
