Topic: Pool Reward Comparison - page 2. (Read 4719 times)

Thanks, Luke-jr for clearing that up!

For the first two blocks I though "oh, no advantage from lucky blocks anymore... how sad". But now the current block has already over 2,000,000 shares and my estimated payout is still rising! Usually I only get 0.007 BTC from each block but now it shows 0.012 BTC.
That's the fairest version I can think of, which is probably why so many people voted for it.

If you want to screw over the pool, use one with Straight PPS! If you want to participate in lucky blocks, solo mine! If you want nice constant payouts from your constant Mh/s, come to Eligius with MaxPPS!!!

Edit: Aaaand I just got my first payout from Server 3 in block 133729, 0.34 BTC! Thanks a lot!

Your first flaw is in assuming there's something inherently fair about the Proportional method. This usually comes from the misconception that people can make progress mining. The fact is that over 99.99% of shares are completely worthless and do absolutely nothing for the pool. They have no relevance whatsoever to the block that might (or might not) be found at the end of the round. Only 1 share finds that block, by itself, with no help from the other shares.

The goal of pools is to pay miners for lower-difficulty fake "blocks", while collecting the rewards itself from the real blocks. This reduces variation for the miners. Proportional is simple, but by far not the only way pools might decide to pay miners. The most fair method, with least variation, is to pay them 1/difficulty for each difficulty 1 share: this is called Pay Per Share. In comparison, Proportional pays miners more than their fair (PPS) reward when it finds a block quickly, and less when it takes a long time to find a block. Because of this uneven distribution, it is most effective to implement "pool hopping" to mine on the pool currently offering the highest reward per share (ie, the one with the fewest shares in the current round).

Straight PPS was originally implemented by OneFixt2 for BitPenny, and is a popular option at Deepbit despite their 10% fees. However, it is more vulnerable to true cheating, and when this happens, the pool operator takes the infinite hit from it.

Eligius has (after much notice and even poll from members) switched to a system almost like PPS. Miners are generally paid the full 1/difficulty reward for each share (without the huge 10% fees historically associated with PPS), but the system keeps track of what the pool has itself earned overall, and limits payouts to ensure the operator does not take a hit when there is cheating or extreme unluckiness going on. At the same time, it tracks what miners would have earned under straight PPS, and if someone was ever underpaid (due to not having the funds available) will pay them a bonus later if it has extra funds (from lucky/short blocks).

All the payout systems will eventually tend toward the same total payout over time, with one exception: due to the proportional method's predictable unfairness pattern, miners can achieve 30% greater earnings than their work's fair pay. Those who do not implement pool hopping, see an effective 30% loss over time. This is the primary motivation for avoiding the proportional system.

It is easy to show that your claim is false.

Check the stats you linked. See block 0000000000000BE284219936487F7A2310CD7D795FF7EA5E40C57AA1AE18C85C?
It says "Contribution 0.0399 %".
0.0399% of 50BTC = 0,01995BTC. However, the guy earned 0.02131669BTC. So he got more than the proportional expectation.

If you keep watching the stats, you will notice the same for any round longer than average (i.e. more than 1,379,223 shares for now), unless the pool happens to be on a longer period of bad luck.


Please read (and understand) about MaxPPS before making these claims. But it's nice to see you want to stick to the facts from now on. (I do understand you're upset because the eligius US payouts took pretty long. However your claims about MaxPPS are wrong.)

Obviously one lone miner getting gypped can't create a streissand effect, but I'm merely attempting to create a thread for discussion of those who have experience with different miner reward systems.

First, I'd like to thank artifact2 for being so gracious in hosting these really awesome statistics on the eligius pools --> +1

1) The standard proportional payout is Contributed shares % times 50 BTC (or block shares given / block shares total x 50 btc)
so, if you contribute 1% of a certain block round's shares, you get rewarded .5BTC, .5% = .25BTC, etc. http://www.btcguild.com/index.php

2) Since the eligius pps hit me in the wallet around June 14th, I've noticed Eligius PPS consistently rewards less than the proportional expectation. For a sample address given on the stats page http://eligius.st/~artefact2/blocks/16U5HHxjTxp4ir1NhDr3F4jnqGCScRJwvt, we can calculate this simply - eligius pps reward over first 4 rounds of "s3" = 0.03632554 + .02131669  + .10553334  + .12322369  =  ~.286 BTC
But, the reward if this was proportional would be (0.2382 + .0399 + .2578 + .2464) / 100% x 50 btc = .391 btc expected

So, a difference of .391 - .286 ~ .105 BTC (out of .391 expected) for a proportional loss of  ~ 27%

Hopefully this loss will approach zero over time, or whatever cut the pool operators coded for themselves.
***So, if you plan to mine forever under a wtfpps system, you might not have a significant reduction in payout, but you will NEVER have a higher payout than proportional in short or long term scenarios.

But either way, it's good to get these facts out in the open for potential miners before they choose where to submit their work.
I'd appreciate it if responders stick to the facts, rather than emotional attachment to the pool or it's operators.

*edit