Kano,
Talk to me about the SPLNS payment method and the pros and cons there. I was just reading your buddies pool info and it sounded intriguing although I am not convinced. Serious question. I googled it and there was no information.
Firstly it increases variance even more than by it being a tiny pool.
Your reward is based on the luck of the shares your miners find - which is something you have no control over.
Here the reward is based on the work you do, not the luck of each individual share you submit.
i.e. here it's fairly based on the work you do, not some other random calculation.
The luck element here is of course the basis of how PPLNS works - the luck of everyone on the pool finding a block.
The ramp up and down in his SPLNS is stated as not linear, so it would require an analysis by someone with a good statistical background to see if it has basic exploitable flaws in the function used.
The blockfinder on SPLNS loses his first block finder fee coz the pool code wont code in the block finder (see p2pool code how to do that - I guess it's beyond him
)
Of course having a block finding fee also increases variance and makes the chance for little guys to take sizeable rewards from large miners.
Basically it's a pool for small miners - anyone with a large hash rate wouldn't go near it if they had any sense - thus being all small miners makes that pointless also
They keep going on about how the early miners get a better cut of the 5Nd until the pool has mined 5Nd.
Yes that's correct, if you join before they reach 5Nd you're paying the early miners some of your rewards and thus getting less yet again.
He also doesn't test his code and leaves that as a risk to miners and the general public.
That pool lost a whole block coz he didn't even try to put a proper test block through his code.
It's easy to test low diff blocks, change one line in ckpool and one line in bitcoin
(I even told him that last time he lost 2 blocks on his solo pool due to not testing code and ignoring someone pointing out the 1st block that was lost)
The current git (dated Nov-2017) for ckpool crashes every time if you start it in node mode ... yeah he doesn't test his code ... one would be a fool to go near a pool run by an arrogant prick who thinks he's gods gift to coding, and doesn't need to test his code properly, but has no computer training, and has clear cases of people losing out due to his arrogance.