THIS POLL IS NOW SUPERSEDED BY THIS NEW POLL:
https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=100301
Please cast your votes on the new poll. Thanks.
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After many discussions on IRC, I am putting to vote a change to the Eligius miner reward system.
I would prefer that, on the honor system, only Eligius miners with some amount of EC on their address vote on this poll.
This is a two part proposal. Please read carefully!
Background/Reasoning:
As of now, the pool has accrued a substantial amount of "extra credit" under the SMPPS system. This is causing reward payouts for active miners to be significantly lower than 100% PPS.
From what I can tell, a large portion of the "extra credit" is being slowly paid to miners who have stopped mining at the pool entirely, thus slowing the reward payout for active miners who are currently supporting the pool.
I believe that miners who support the pool through good and bad luck times should be rewarded and have a good chance of reaching 100% PPS. Recently, due to the pool's run of bad luck, many miners have left the pool. This makes it much harder for the remaining miners to catch up and pay the extra credit to the inactive miners, potentially to the point where it becomes statistically improbable. These proposals, if adopted, should provide a system which makes mining at Eligius, even during bad luck times, more reasonable and more enticing than the system as it exists now.
On a personal note, I recommend voting YES to both proposals. I believe that these changes will make the pool more viable in the long term and give miners, new and old, more incentive to mine at the pool.
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Part 1
For the first part of this proposal, I propose that extra credit payments NOT be made to miners who are not actively mining at the pool. Further, I propose that extra credit reward payouts be adjusted like so:
- Miners who have an extra credit balance may not be paid more extra credit in a round than they have earned normally for the round. (For example, if you have 1 BTC in EC, and you mine 0.1 BTC in shares, the biggest reward payout you can get from that block would be 0.2 BTC (your earnings plus and equal amount of your extra credit)).
- The extra credit that is not able to be paid to a miner (inactive, low hash rate, etc) under this system will be added to the available funds for paying active miner extra credit.
This setup rewards active miners during unlucky times (such as now) over those who have stopped supporting the pool.
If you believe this is reasonable, then vote "Yes EC Limit".
For details on SMPPS please see http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Shared_Maximum_PPS.
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Part 2
As the second part of this proposal, I propose that Eligius switches to a reward system based on CPPS with backpay rather than SMPPS. On average, this should get miners the same amount as SMPPS. The advantage is that even when the pool is having a run of bad luck, when the pool is lucky for even one block, you will get 100% PPS for that block.
Please read http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Capped_PPS for details on CPPS.
I propose that if you agree with the above proposal AND CPPS with backpay that Eligius implement "CPPSBAM" as described in the link above, which rewards only active miners.
If you agree with CPPS with backpay, but not only for active miners, then I propose we use "CPPSEB" as described in the link above.
For the vote, if you agree with CPPS with backpay, please vote an option with "Yes CPPS".
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Any questions or clarification please post or see us on freenode in #eligius. I'd be happy to answer questions.
Thanks!
-wk
P.S. - I just want to point out to clear up some misunderstandings that no miners will ever lose any earned extra credit under any of the proposed reward systems. *Please* read http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Capped_PPS#CPPS_with_Backpay_for_Active_Miners_.28CPPSBAM.29 carefully! It specifically explains that even inactive miners never lose their extra credit under CPPSBAM.
Edit: Clarification that this is for the miner reward system (initially ambiguously referred to as payout system)
Edit: Added P.S. to emphasize CPPSBAM does not mean losing extra credit.