I also noticed my last few payments were lower than previous, with no change to my hash power pointed at this pool.
Ditto. Its below a 1:1 ratio for the past 2 blocks. I thought it was due to the rented hashes lately. Isn't it?
The reward is relative to your hash rate vs the pool hash rate.
If you check each reward it shows both.
From the Rewards page, it is just: "Your BTC" = "Miner Reward" * "Your N Diff" / "N Diff"
So if you had 1% of the hash rate in the payout range, you'd expect to get 1% of "Miner Reward"
"Miner Reward" is of course "Block Reward" * 0.991
The pool reward hash rate is "Pool N Avg"
So if your hash rate is constant and the pool rate goes up, your reward will go down.
If your hash rate is constant and the pool rate goes down, your reward will go up.
Of course statistically, if the pool hash rate goes up, then we would expect to also find more blocks.
And if the pool hash rate goes down, we'd expect to find fewer blocks.
So the expected result is the same.
Luck has been on the low side for a while, but of course that's just luck and of course nothing can be done about the past
(which luck is of course derived from)
