Right, this post is meant to provide incentive for pool OPs to come forward with more evidence for us to take them seriously and not waste our hashpower on pools that crap out in the first hour. The mining community has been taken advantage of too much by everyone (miner devs, pool ops, coin devs, etc ...).
As someone who has seen a few equihash coin launches, be careful with the pool you choose. BTCP is already perceived as a scam (and I mean, really, have you seen Bittrex's announcement https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001271272 ? The zcl team could have had BTCP listed, but I guess pump greed was too much ... anyway, I'm ranting)
For instance, be careful with Suprnova ... for some reason foreign to me, this pool still has a lot of followers, but you may want to consider the following:
- the pool is known to crap out on mainnet launches, when a ton of new miners suddenly connect (the Zen launch last year was a total fiasco on Suprnova, it had more orhpaned blocks than mined blocks during the first 24h)
- the pool OP is known to quickly blame DDoS attacks when the pool is unresponsive (see Zen launch)
- note so related, but the pool OP is also known to lie about the network fees (all fees are high, but he charges you for transactions about 100x more than the network fee, yet claims it's only paying the network fee, his Zclassic and Zen pools were such examples)
If @ocminer (suprnova pool op) is here and cares to provide a reassurance for the BTCP mainnet (besides "it's all good!"), then this is an opportunity for him to do so.
BTG pools at mainnet launch were also virtually a complete fiasco - with claims of DDoS attacks all around (yet 12h in advance on testnet they were all claiming the moon).
All the pools posted here so far are either new pools or tiny pools, offering no reassurance that it can withstand the hoards of miners that will connect when mainnet launches. None of the people advertising their pools posted about the hardware config (the guy before, who has 0 posts here on BTCTalk, says "My Pool is a totally free mining pool with 0% fee. We have a redundant setup and we can scale infinitely." ... really now?)
For anyone looking for a pool with _some_ promise of reliability:
- stay away from pools advertised by folks that have 0 posts here
- stay away from 0% fee pools (hashrate skimming risk too high)
- stay away from pools which offer a single server or a single server location
- look to see if they mine other coins, check the pool hashrate for all other coins and compare it to the network's hashrate, if it's below 1% then I wouldn't touch it, if it's above 5% then it _may_ be worth something
- look for pools that advertise a chat (discord, slack or telegram (yuck)) and then check it to see if the pool OP is active (and if they know whet they're doing)
- look for pools that are already active on testnet AND which will switch your miner automatically to mainnet when mainnet goes live, without you having to reconnect
- question the pool op regarding the hardware
- English ... you probably want pool OPs who can actually speak and understand English. It can be frustrating (and I'm being very polite here) when you ask a question and the pool OP gives a completely orthogonal answer (or worse, eventually resorting to sarcasm because you're not already an expert). If you see that the Discord/Slack/Telegram channel is 99% Russian or Chinese, then, well, good luck!
- etc
- basically, DYOR to get as much reassurance as possible that you won't waste your first 24h
So, pool OPs ... please come forward. Post your server specs, locations, number of servers, limitations (e.g. max nr of connections before banning/throttling), support staff, chat, availability, any dev skills etc ... Large miners won't touch these pools with a long pole (well, they may not touch BTCP at all, but that's a different story).
ALSO, BTCP DEVS, RHETT AND GANG ... YOU REALLY NEED TO ANNOUNCE AN EXACT TIME FOR MAINNET LAUNCH!! Otherwise everyone will be certain you have allowed instamine for your buddies (as if the current BTCP shit image wasn't enough). Stop this bullshit about "sometime tomorrow", "in about 2 days from the fork" etc. You want us to take you seriously, then act accordingly.
p.s. for reference
As someone who has seen a few equihash coin launches, be careful with the pool you choose. BTCP is already perceived as a scam (and I mean, really, have you seen Bittrex's announcement https://support.bittrex.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001271272 ? The zcl team could have had BTCP listed, but I guess pump greed was too much ... anyway, I'm ranting)
For instance, be careful with Suprnova ... for some reason foreign to me, this pool still has a lot of followers, but you may want to consider the following:
- the pool is known to crap out on mainnet launches, when a ton of new miners suddenly connect (the Zen launch last year was a total fiasco on Suprnova, it had more orhpaned blocks than mined blocks during the first 24h)
- the pool OP is known to quickly blame DDoS attacks when the pool is unresponsive (see Zen launch)
- note so related, but the pool OP is also known to lie about the network fees (all fees are high, but he charges you for transactions about 100x more than the network fee, yet claims it's only paying the network fee, his Zclassic and Zen pools were such examples)
If @ocminer (suprnova pool op) is here and cares to provide a reassurance for the BTCP mainnet (besides "it's all good!"), then this is an opportunity for him to do so.
BTG pools at mainnet launch were also virtually a complete fiasco - with claims of DDoS attacks all around (yet 12h in advance on testnet they were all claiming the moon).
All the pools posted here so far are either new pools or tiny pools, offering no reassurance that it can withstand the hoards of miners that will connect when mainnet launches. None of the people advertising their pools posted about the hardware config (the guy before, who has 0 posts here on BTCTalk, says "My Pool is a totally free mining pool with 0% fee. We have a redundant setup and we can scale infinitely." ... really now?)
For anyone looking for a pool with _some_ promise of reliability:
- stay away from pools advertised by folks that have 0 posts here
- stay away from 0% fee pools (hashrate skimming risk too high)
- stay away from pools which offer a single server or a single server location
- look to see if they mine other coins, check the pool hashrate for all other coins and compare it to the network's hashrate, if it's below 1% then I wouldn't touch it, if it's above 5% then it _may_ be worth something
- look for pools that advertise a chat (discord, slack or telegram (yuck)) and then check it to see if the pool OP is active (and if they know whet they're doing)
- look for pools that are already active on testnet AND which will switch your miner automatically to mainnet when mainnet goes live, without you having to reconnect
- question the pool op regarding the hardware
- English ... you probably want pool OPs who can actually speak and understand English. It can be frustrating (and I'm being very polite here) when you ask a question and the pool OP gives a completely orthogonal answer (or worse, eventually resorting to sarcasm because you're not already an expert). If you see that the Discord/Slack/Telegram channel is 99% Russian or Chinese, then, well, good luck!
- etc
- basically, DYOR to get as much reassurance as possible that you won't waste your first 24h
So, pool OPs ... please come forward. Post your server specs, locations, number of servers, limitations (e.g. max nr of connections before banning/throttling), support staff, chat, availability, any dev skills etc ... Large miners won't touch these pools with a long pole (well, they may not touch BTCP at all, but that's a different story).
ALSO, BTCP DEVS, RHETT AND GANG ... YOU REALLY NEED TO ANNOUNCE AN EXACT TIME FOR MAINNET LAUNCH!! Otherwise everyone will be certain you have allowed instamine for your buddies (as if the current BTCP shit image wasn't enough). Stop this bullshit about "sometime tomorrow", "in about 2 days from the fork" etc. You want us to take you seriously, then act accordingly.
p.s. for reference
My Pool is a totally free mining pool with 0% fee.
We have a redundant setup and we can scale infinitely.
We have a redundant setup and we can scale infinitely.
Dear Cryptoeyes,
everyone or almost everyone is hosting the mining pool on a single dedicated server on OVH. I'm not doing this.
I'm an Amazon aws solutions architect certified and I'm able to architect and scale an IT infrastructure from a 0 load to almost infinitely. And that technology is called the cloud.
I have already setupped everything with this strategy so Redis server, Stratum server, Payment server are on different istances already. How many did in the same way?
Furthermore the web frontend is already protected by a caching solution (in Amazon).
So I agree with you, going with 0% fee mining pool is a risky, but how much are you risking? Just come mining on my pool and then after a few hours let see if you get the right reward.
Thank you,
Thomas
