Topic: Looking for opinions of a replacement for ARS PPS if it dies (Read 3632 times)

Tntmining.com is running a 0% fee proportional pool.  We are currently at around 10 gh/s.   

http://www.tntmining.com.   

No, a proper PPS pool has a reserve and pays out of it. If the pool shuts down for any reason (bankruptcy included) it still pays for the work already done.

There is no different here as far as SMPPS is involved. Raw PPS has an additional risk of "pool died, nobody got paid" because it promises more than it might be able to provide, but SMPPS never promises more than it has, so its balances are guaranteed to be available so long as someone doesn't steal it (eg, operator or some cracks the pool). Eligius intentionally doesn't keep a balance, by paying out as soon as you have accured a reasonable amount, so there is much less risk than other pools.

Its not such a big gamble . As long as you define a low enough Auto payout  or  manually  do it every day.
In the worse case you could lose a day ( maybe 2 ) of mining if the pools collapses before you get your payout.

Meni has been predicting the eventual fall of any 0% PPS SMPPS pool , Ars specifically,  for a while now.
I'm sure his math is correct- I guess it all goes to when "eventual" is.
So far  the hashers at ARS have gotten a premium service (most of the time ) and saved lots of BTC on fees.

You don't need it to get to >=0, as long as the balance stays mildly negative you'll get your payouts (in the limit). You're betting that the pool doesn't collapse (due to reaching a highly negative balance) before you finish getting your payouts.

Mining is always a form of gambling. And with SMPPS, you don't have to be mining when it goes positive. Even if you've stopped mining, you'll still be paid for extra credit you've earned.

So would you say then that SMPPS is a form of gambling you're betting that the pool will swing positive or at worst to 0 while you mine?

The LLN per se doesn't really say anything meaningful about a finite number of blocks, but fortunately, the CLT does. Over a time period where the pool should find on average 1000 blocks, the distribution of number of blocks found is Poisson with mean 1000, which is to a very good approximation normal with mean 1000 and standard deviation 31.62. This means that with probability ~50%, the actual number of blocks will be between 979 and 1021. So for a PPLNS pool, the payout will be w.p. 50% between 97.9% to 102.1% of the average. For an SMPPS pool, the buffer will be w.p. 50% between -1050 to 1050 BTC, w.p. 25% above 1050 and w.p. 25% below -1050.

It doesn't drift to negative in either case. The only thing affecting long-term behavior is the expectation and variance of the change per round. The bad luck is theoretically unbounded but highly negative values have rapidly diminishing probabilities so they don't have much effect on the overall distribution.

If the expectation is 0, the overall trend is to fluctuate according to Brownian motion, with a rate depending on the variance of the change per round. This means that any level - whether highly positive or highly negative - will be reached eventually. However, here Gambler's ruin comes into play - as long as it's positive you continue playing, but when it's sufficiently negative you quit, so you will eventually reach the point of ruin.

So ... anyway ... I switched my PPS (Meni ) and cashed out of ARS almost 3 days ago
Good timing I guess ...

Out of curiosity, how does LLN apply when we are talking about such low values in terms of the count of blocks.  I would think that LLN would apply to many pools over a long period of time, but would not apply to a pool that doesn't have thousands and thousands of blocks over a long period of time.  One or two thousand blocks doesn't seem like a sufficiently large number to apply?

The math is beyond me in either case, so that's why I ask.

*EDIT*

How can an unbounded good luck (and bounded bad luck) pool tend towards the negative?  I suppose this may a be rhetorical question, though, since the math is likely fairly complicated?

ESMPPS is more complicated, but not very different from this regard, so I'll focus the discussion on SMPPS. The relevance of the difference does not diminish, because what determines the attractiveness of mining now (which is relevant for current miners considering quitting, and others considering joining) is the current difference, not the relative difference compared to the pool's lifetime earnings.

The mentioned "real-world experiences" are about as relevant as me tossing a coin and stating "real-world experience shows that coins land on tails". It's random. The statistical properties of the process are understood. Whatever you try to deduce from the experience has no bearing on what we expect from the process, it only means that your sample is too small. The expected magnitude of the difference does grow without bound as time passes, that's a fact. We can discuss the specifics of this growth if you'd like.


Actually, this has nothing to do with it. You'd have the same problems if both good and bad luck were bounded, or if bad luck was bounded and good luck was unbounded. Even a "reverse pool" which pays for found blocks and is paid for every share, will have the exact same long-term risk as a normal pool. The central limit theorem guarantees that whatever the payout distribution for a single round looks like (as long as its variance is finite), the process will over the long run be equivalent to Brownian motion.

No, gambler's fallacy is just assuming that the next block will move the buffer/credit toward 0. Over a long timeperiod, the law of large numbers does apply. The difference, while it might grow, will also have diminishing relevance, at least with ESMPPS. Real-world experiences show that the difference does not in practice grow unbounded, however.

You beat me to posting. This is a fallacious interpretation of the law of large numbers known as the gambler's fallacy. The ratio between the pool's lifetime rewards and lifetime expected rewards will tend to 1, but their difference (which is the buffer) will not tend to 0 and will grow unboundedly in average magnitude. This can be easily verified by simulation.

Oh, we can calculate that, don't worry. You'll find (for pure Brownian motion) that the probability to reach a buffer of -m*B, starting from 0, at any time over a period of n rounds, is roughly 1-(m/sqrt(n))*sqrt(2/Pi). As n goes to infinity this goes to 1, so with probability 1 the buffer will reach that level eventually. However, it is interesting to note that the expected time to reach any level is infinite. Brownian motion is crazy.

It's not too bad if it stays negative as long as it's mild - it just means the maturity time will be about 5 blocks. But what some people may be missing is that there's no magic force pulling the balance towards 0 - that would be the gambler's fallacy. From -200 BTC it's as likely to go to -100 BTC as to -300 BTC.

The fact that pools get shut down due to lack of sufficient interest by the operator is another illustration of the problem with buffer methods. SMPPS is being marketed as "you will get 100% payout eventually". But if someone mines when the buffer is highly negative, and the pool gets shut down while he's waiting to receive payments, he will lose a significant portion of what he deserves. And this brings us back to the collapse scenario once the buffer becomes so low people realize it's better to go elsewhere.

The only thing open to interpretation here is whether using a method which is by design doomed to collapse is wrong. I say it is, but people are welcome to disagree on this.

The law of large numbers means that over time, any miner/pool's rewards will always drift toward average in the long run.

dont know if anyone else is watching closely
but
at ars
= SMPPS Buffer   -234.74753916 BTC
doesnt look good to me, been negative for over 24 hours and hashrate is dropping

While I will always defer to Meni with regards to the rigorous math, and I respect Luke-Jr's abilities and contributions to the bitcoin community, saying that any sort of credit system is not ultimately a downward spiral into oblivion over a long enough time frame is ludicrous.

You can take evidence, if from no other source, than trying to graph the luck of a pool, and it just happens to be a problem I've been working on lately.  There is a lower bound to good luck, that being 1 share.  There is no upper bound to bad luck - that is why, eventually, a pool issuing credit based on future work will eventually end up in the negative.

That said, it's entirely possible that in practice, that this eventuality would not happen in the expected pool lifetime, but to say that it will never happen is pure fallacy.  The time frame for it happening is another issue entirely, and I would have no idea how to even try to calculate that.

Arguing with you is futile, but I'll try. Obviously the paper is neither wrong nor biased.

You saying it doesn't make it true. Is there a factual error in what was written about MPPS?

They do, it increases their expected payout and reduces its variance. I wasn't talking about block withholding.

The drift is caused by external factors such as invalid blocks and withholding. In other methods these cause a decrease in profitability but not an expediting of a collapse.

Look up "randomness". Just because Eligius' buffer had a certain manifested trajectory is very little evidence of anything.

This kind of hopping does benefit the hopper and harm the non-hopper. Currently hoppers are busy with the proportional pools, they'll be happy to take advantage of SMPPS once those are gone. By your own admission the pool has only dipped in negative buffer area, so there was no observation of what happens when it is seriously negative.

Put bluntly, this paper is wrong and biased:

• MPPS does pay out fairly over the long-term to fair miners, at least in practice.
• While it is true that hoppers can hurt fair miners with MPPS, they have no incentive to do so. (remember that any pool can be hurt by the block withholding attack, so this is not a significant flaw)
• Terminology: SMPPS does not accrue "debt", but issues fiat "extra credits" when it cannot pay Bitcoins.
• SMPPS, in theory, will always drift toward 0-buffer 0-credit, it does not have any inherent negative drift.
• In practice, SMPPS has proven to have a positive buffer much more than zero (on Eligius, we have only very briefly hit 0-buffer a few times)
• While in theory, people might "hop" off SMPPS when it has no buffer, this is in practice not a problem. There was no mass exodus from Ars when its buffer hit zero and began issuing extra credit, and by now everyone has observed that so long as the pool remains online, it will eventually recover. Furthermore, this kind of "hopping" does not benefit the hopper nor harm the non-hopper.

Note that I only read the "Attempts for risk-free pay-per-share" section, and am not attempting to cover the other methods here.

I don't know what kano meant since Eligius uses SMPPS, just like arsbitcoin. If you want to know what's wrong with SMPPS you can have a look at section "Shared maximum pay-per-share (SMPPS)" (currently 4.2) of Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems.

Did it (again) and i don't see anything "wrong" ... can you be more clear?

Mt.Red has room for miners. + tons of new features.

Read the payout scheme details ... then you'll understand the probable reason why no one mentioned it.
(then of course there's the fact that the pool also severely screws with the block times ... IMO it's gotta be buggy to make it as bad as it is)

What about Eligius?

Holy crap, 4%!  At Hotdogs hashrate that's like $100 a month!  I'll wait 15 hours for $100, jeez.

I also highly recommend ABCPool.


I will leave it to pool owner to worry the sustainable issue . As long as you don't leave huge balance in pool wallet, you have nothing to lose.


At least you could set it to smaller value if you want. I used to donate 1.5%. Since now pool's hashrate jump to 440GH/s, I decrease it to 1%.

7.5% surcharge on Paypal Payouts ... OK I'm over that idea already ...

Ars isn't PPS, it's SMPPS. Don't dilute the term PPS by conflating it with other methods.

Do you seriously think they're not completely aware how many customers they would get if they could pull it off? PayPal has already frozen an account used by mtgox once, and mndrix's, and any other Bitcoin-PayPal exchange service.

It's interesting that they let Inaba off the hook, probably because he's not doing currency exchange but only paying for doing computational work.


If the pool's hashrate is low, and the reward method does not reduce pool-based variance, then miners will have high variance. If the pool uses PPS then the pool's hashrate is irrelevant for miners.

ABCpool sets the donation to 4% by default. I'm not sure how other pools do it but it seems a bit underhanded. Pools need fees, to compensate for work, hosting and (especially in PPS) risk, and pools get shut down every Monday and Thursday because their revenues do not justify these costs. We understand that. But please, be forthcoming about this, figure out what fees you need and openly publish them, don't play games.

Completely off topic, but I'd prefer not to leave it unsaid:
Yes I agree with Inaba - the PayPal issue is in the other direction.
The problem is random people paying with PayPal and then reversing their charges - coz in all those random people there's going to be someone who will try it.

But when one source is paying lots of people with PayPal, I don't see the problem either.
Of course Inaba could change his mind and start making payment cancellations, but why would he?
Not really much benefit in doing that and certainly a great loss in clients ...

Which reminds me ... I should ask TradeHill and MTGox to offer PayPal payments (not accepting PayPal, paying out with PayPal)
Next on my list of things to do ...

And how exactly is EMC's "Paypal thing" just screaming to be screwed?  First off, Paypal payments have been fine since the pool started in May (or was it June?) - if it was just screaming to get screwed, why hasn't it happened yet?  Secondly, I have worked directly with Paypal both through email and on the phone to setup the automated payments system for the site and they are fully aware of how the payments are handled, for what, when and why.  

Lastly, even if, for some reason Paypal decided to change their mind (which seems unlikely at this point, as I've processed thousands of payments through them) - how, exactly would that "screw" anyone, other than the Paypal option not being available anymore?

So I have to ask, how exactly would that end incredibly poorly under any circumstance?  

Now as for the "payout routine" - what does the hashrate have to do with the "payout routine," exactly?  You get paid just like any other pool... That said, ABCpool.co is a good pool though, I certainly don't have anything bad to say about them.  However, I have a really hard time trusting any PPS pool that isn't charging a fee - it's virtually unsustainable in the long run without huge cash reserves.  But it's good stuff while it's around!  Remember, there's no upper bound on the number of shares for bad luck but there's a lower bound of 1 on good luck.  

Besides, we have a cashout option to get your coins whenever you want (including your unconfirmed and even your unrealized score value) immediately if you just can't wait.

Well... he's right and he's wrong. There's not going to be a "best" pool, they're all going to differ slightly, and you'll have to make your own choice. I know I commented on ABC in the ARS thread, but figured I'd farm for more posts contribute some more of my valuable information here

The way I look at it, all of the pools are "active", save ARS. I mean, really, it's not like there's "dead" pools out there. Which always amused the hell out of me; WHO THE HELL WAS MINING AT ARS AFTER BT LEFT? I mean, there were a few 10k+ GH people still mining there. WTF? Are you people dense, or is your botnet really hard to change targets or something? ARS was good, ARS was one of the first big, good PPS pools, but my God people, move your damn miners. It's not like BT even posts anymore. I was honestly concerned he'd just outright vanish and we'd be out any coins we've mined. I can't imagine still having 10k GH/s pointed to a dead pool, Jesus.

Anyways, I digress. Here, however, is my opinion on the pools. Take this with a gigantic grain of salt. Do not try to argue with me, because frankly I'm *SURE* I'm wrong on some points, but you're going to need to do your own research anyways, eh?

YourBTC is closing. Too bad, so sad, at least he told us.

To me, Deepbit and BTCGuild and Slush are some huge, monolithic behemoths swallowing up the entire universe. Clearly, other people disagree with me. Though I do have to question if most people don't just use them due to their "size", and don't really look into it that deeply. They're not the cheapest, they're not the most stable, they're the biggest DDOS/pool hopper targets, and their interfaces aren't that unique/special/awesome.

OZCOIN is Australian. LOL AUSTRALIAN. I have them as a backup pool, since I figure if we (the pools located in parts of the world that don't have sex with kangaroos) all get DDOSed, OZCOIN might still be up. Please note: I'm kidding, OZCOIN, I love you, and have nothing against you.

EMC is just screaming to be screwed over with that whole Paypal thing. I can see that ending incredibly poorly. Plus, at, what, sub 200GH/s, the payout routine would bother the hell out of me.

ABCPool.co: This is where I'm currently at, mostly because, frankly, I'm lazy, easily bored, and just want my X amount of BTC a day. I then turn my X amount of BTC a day into X amount of dollars and spend the dollars on Yuengling. With ABCPool.co, I know I can buy X amount of Yuengling, drink my problems away, and forget about another week of life. I don't care how many coins we've found, I don't take glee in "Beating" anyone else in stats (because all it means is I bought more 5830s from Amazon than you, nothing else. It's not a skill, it's a money pit. Congrats, we've pissed away money on old video cards). I don't care what coins I found. I don't care how I compare to every other person in the galaxy. I just want my X amount of BTC a day, a stable server, and payouts. And ABC delivers that. I don't have to THINK. I just CLICK, and turn away. There's no surprises. There's no "oh, my heavens, we didn't find a coin for 12 hours, now I'm sad in the pants". If and when they add Namecoin mining, for that 1% bonus or whatever, that'd be even better.

But, each to their own, clearly.

All those threads you listed are useless.
I did read them after you posted that link and thus repeat the question: why are you posting spam here?

I also posted in the ARS thread that it would be better to ask the question in it's own thread so I did.
Please learn to read.
... and go away.

Why repeat one that's been repeated on repeatable occasions ?

Yes why did you?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-mining-pools-have-you-tried-what-did-you-think-of-them-where-are-you-now-53406
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/deepbit-pps-or-proportional-53676
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/whats-generally-considered-the-best-pool-to-join-53200
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/which-is-the-best-pool-for-mining-a-guide-for-choosing-the-right-pool-51261

Why create more spam ?

It seems that ARS may be on the way out.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.641492

So to repeat a question I asked in the ARS thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.643438


Yes anyone can look through the pages here but reading x thousand pages of posts to work out which is bests seems a bit over the top.

Just since a pool says they SAY they are the lowest fees and the best pool doesn't really mean much unless people actually use it and like it.

Anyone wanna suggest what they think is the best PPS and why?