having now completed 30 days - here is my final review. Many of the things I will say have also been said above by others, so I apologize for any repetition.
I agree with Kano that with a low fee that the pool does risk going broke if the reserves are not sufficient, NovaBlock states that this is not an issue:
We have multiple avenues of business such as: consulting, own/operate mining farms, design and construction of mining farms, hardware sales and more. In addition to this, we have strong financial backing so the risk of us going broke is very low.
Some proof of that backing would still be nice.
I like that they added a referral program, though it is only for miners with 5 PH or more.
ReferralsAt NovaBlock, we strive to make everyone as profitable as possible and spread the wealth! This is why we are now excited to introduce the new NovaBlock Referral Program (NRP).
To spread the name of NovaBlock to everyone we are offering a reward for anyone that introduces new clients to our pool. Please let me know if you're interested in joining this program.
As we roll this out initially, we will focus mainly on referrals with greater than 5 PH. This is to ensure that we do not receive too much volume where we can't keep up/keep track of payments and referrals. We will slowly decrease the minimum size referral as we get more comfortable and streamline this system.
PM here if you are interested and we can send you a contract.
And that they are adding Merged Mining (looks to be NMC based on rewards page showing NMC up near top right)
Merged MiningWe have heard your feedback, our goal is to make mining as simple and profitable as possible.
We will have an exciting announcement regarding merged mining coming soon in the next week or two. Look forward to it
The hashrate on the stats page - can that be verified? Up above, NovaBlock states they have 700 PH of their own hashing power on the pool - the page is showing that the pool has 715 PH (at this moment) does that mean that there are only 15 PH worth of miners here? While entirely possible, I would like that clarified. Mainly due to that the amount of blocks being reported as found by pool greatly exceeds the expected amount of blocks based on reported hashrate.
My suggestions for the website:
- Add a PPLNS - very little risk here for the pool as payments are only made to miners if the pool finds a block.
- Have auto-refresh enabled on the worker page
- Add block notifications with stats (hash rate/diff) This could be done on the graph on the dashboard or at least listed on a separate area
- Add options to the dashboard graphs that allow users to change date/time ranges
- Add other stats such as CDF, show pool luck over past 25, 50, 100, 250 blocks, maybe show which miner actually "found" the block
I have used their app as well since mining here - love the app, no complaints at all with the app.
Here is my final comparison on per TH rates as I compared them to ViaBTC. NovaBlock did come in as a bit more profitable but only by about 1.5%, which would be due to my 0% fee for these 30 days - had they been charging me the 2.5% fee rate that they are currently advertising, ViaBTC would have been almost 1% higher. This is not a huge amount by any means. But with more hashing power it could easily add up.
