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I've always paid out uncles directly after they have been confirmed.
Well, its a "bonus" - bonus means it's something someone has to pay for, it's not a bonus from the network which I get for free and then give it to the miners, I'd have to pay for the bonus or at least mine the coins which I then give away, how should that work with a large bonus over a long time if the pool runs on 0% fee ?
As already said,
I'll add some more bonuses once my rigs are free again, they're rented currently, and I can mine a few coins for the giveaway, however I cannot to this all the time as I don't have indefinite money .. The coins for the bonus must come from somewhere
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OK, so this is the kind of statement that really makes me wonder who's doing what to whom. Why on earth would you rent your mining rigs? The only way you can make more money renting them, rather than mining the blocks, is to rent them for more than they can mine. The renter would have to be extremely challenged with math to rent a rig for more than it can mine. So, it would seem, either you or the renter aren't thinking very clearly. Am I missing something?
On another note, how can you operate a pool with zero fees, even without a "bonus"? You at least need to recoup your operating expenses and compensate yourself for your time spent overseeing the pool.
Of course, a pool, by it's very nature, allows the operator infinite opportunities to skim money. From what I've seen, even the pools that charge a fee barely yield payouts similar to solo mining, and frequently the payouts seem way short, to me. Are people so stuck on instant gratification that they are willing to accept small, frequent payouts, rather than solo mine and know that they are getting what they (their rig(s)) are working for? Pools are another layer between the mining rig and the network and, especially with Ethereum's fast block times, network latency is a very import factor in your mining efficiency. Notice that all the pools report much higher uncle rates than solo miners; this is a sure sign that the pools are introducing delays (higher latency) in the block processing chain between the network and the miners.
I'm a solo miner (obviously), although I keep looking at the pools, since that's what most people seem to do. Every time I consider pools, I come to the same conclusion: they are all potential scams, to one degree or another, and they do not yield as good a payout, over time, as solo mining. You just need to be patient and let the probabilities express themselves, in do course. As with most things in life, the closer (more directly connected) to the source you are, the better. Just my take on it.
-Best Care
David