Topic: pool speed (Read 1256 times)

I'm sure pool owners see this from a better perspective than I do, but here is my anecdotal experience: I was in a lower hash rate PPLNS pool (without shifts, low N) for a while. We were going through an unusual period of > 3 days without finding a block. Suddenly several large hashers joined the pool and my PPLNS expected reward dropped to a fraction of what it had been. It could easily be argued that those hashers helped find the block, even though it was a regular user that found the block, but my loyalty to the pool was rewarded less than it should have been because of the new hashers. The jumpers left after the block was solved but continued to get PPLNS rewards for the following blocks that were solved much more quickly.

In a higher hashrate (and lower variance) pool it is much easier to stomach someone adding significant hashing power. However, typically pool jumpers have less of an impact because of the size of the pool, for example a 0.1 % increase rather than a 20% increase to the overall pool's hash rate. Even if that is not the case though, if the typical time to solving a block is an hour or two, the loss of reward is just a blip before the aggregate pool's hashing power solves blocks more quickly and my daily expected reward remains the same.

The short answer is that there are a lot of things that affect reward besides the pool speed. In the example I gave, this could have been solved by increasing the size of N such that loyalty to the pool was not penalized as harshly during periods of low luck. Incidents like the one I described are, in my opinion, the reasons why it is hard for lower hashrate pools to break in. I like the idea of a less centralized system, but I also need to break even on my miners, and as a hobbyist (not professional) miner I still want somewhat consistent rewards. I have no problem waiting days for a reward, but if someone can swoop in at the last minute and cut my reward in half or worse, that's an issue for me.

 

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10731/mining-pool-hashrate-effect-on-a-miners-income

Before bringing in the factor out of anyone's control (variance/luck), there is one thing to remember on ALL pools:

Your expected value per share is in no way tied to the pool speed.  Your expected value per share is Your Speed compared to Network Difficulty.  A certain hash rate will always *expect* to get a certain payout at a given difficulty.  It doesn't matter if you're 300 MH/s or 300 TH/s.  It doesn't matter if your pool is 1 GH/s or 3 PH/s.

As far as I know, there is no payment method where this is not the case.  There may be small caveats, but in general if you mine at X pool, it doesn't matter what that pool's speed is, or what it's particular brand of payment method is, as long as it's not a flawed method (hoppable), and as long as the pool is stable and doesn't have any kind of bug hampering it's overall BTC generation.



What larger pools offer is reduced variance.  This does not mean variance immunity.  Since you're on BTC Guild, you can flip over to the PPLNS Stats page and look at the graph at the bottom.  Each point on the graph represents approximately 50 minutes (one shift).  You can see certain times where a block of 50 minutes worth of hashing only made 42-50% of what it would expect.  Other times where 50 minutes of hashing may have made 150-200%.  In the long run, it has been ~3.5% above expectation (lucky).

The big difference on a larger pool is how quickly the pool returns to the expected payout range.  You might have really bad luck.  You might have really good luck.  That doesn't change on any pool (except for PPS-based payment methods, which are higher fees).  The difference on a large pool is generally if you look at the average variance during a single difficulty, it is more likely to be at expectation.  Smaller pools will (generally) be further from expectation (but it can swing in your favor just as easily as against you).

no its ok i understood thanks for the info

Um, where to start?  Lol.

Of course the more hashing power you have, the more you make.  But I don't think that's what you meant to ask.  But big miners don't get a larger piece of the pie than the small guys.  Everyone is paid the same amount per share.  It's just that the whales submit more shares to the pool during each shift.

Why do I suspect that none of what I said makes any sense to you, lol.  Maybe someone could explain it more clearly in the BTCGuild thead.

i just got on to btcguild so when i figure out how to mine i can use it, but was wondering about one thing

pool speed right now is at 1.8 th/s

if there a difference in the amount of btc you will get depending on your hash rate? like if i say only do 333mh/s or if i go over the avg say 3 TH/s will the payout always be the same?

thanks for any help