Yep, X13 is back to <50% LTC, pool has been disabled again for now...
Hi. New miner here. I'm loving the pool so far. I was just going to keep mine on X11. Does it ever get disabled, and if so how will we know, on our stat pages or in sgminer?
Like the post above me mentions, X11 hasn't been disabled (and doesn't look to be needed). X13 doesn't really bring much to the table past what X11 does, so very few coins are using it as a POW. Most of the coins that are still X13 have very little buy support and are kinda dying out. Most likely, if the current X13 ecosystem keeps up, it will be removed from the pool at some point completely (instead of up/down repeatedly).
As for how you'll know, either your miner will failover to a different pool (shown in sgminer), or I'll post something to the header of WP (and here). Although again, X11 going away is very unlikely.
With that in mind, what are your plans for the future - I'm guessing adding more algos isn't quite a priority right now? Is multi-algo switching still being considered? Based on what I'm seeing at rental sites there doesn't seem much going on beyond X11 and Scrypt at the moment:
http://cryp.today/current (although there is still some demand for X13/X15, which is kind of suprising).
I guess it could be argued both ways:
1) multi-algo switching doesn't make sense because X11 is de facto standard for GPUs (and Scrypt for ASICs of course) and as you mentioned X13 is likely to die out
or
2) multi-algo switching is even more important because it would allow miners quickly take advantage of X13 if it spikes up briefly (or X15 or anything else that WP might implement)
Edit: duplicate duplicate words.
At this point, I'm reasonably conflicted. Its basically the exact things you mentioned. Scrypt arose as an alternative to SHA as a "ASICs have come, we'll make our own casino, with blackjack, and hookers!" (futurama). At some point, Scrypt ASICs were announced, and everyone did the same thing, except about 3-4 different alternatives popped up (Scrypt-N, X11, X13, NIST). Scrypt-N and X13 look to have (for the most part) died off, and the community has centered around X11. There are definitely times when X13/Scrypt-N jump up to be the most profitable over a short period of time. But in all seriousness, there isn't much reason to add profit-switching for it.
Either Scrypt-N/X13 are enabled (profitable, disabled if horribly unprofitable), or X13 is the best to mine. Scrypt really isn't viable unless you're an ASIC miner at this point (same as SHA at this point). Which I think is reflected in our Scrypt numbers. WP is
heavily tuned for graphics cards, and still performs very well for those. However, Scrypt for the most part has gone to 99% ASIC, and we have to completely redo the switching algorithm for ASICs (its high on my list, just hasn't happened).
So, my list?
- Scrypt tuning for ASICs. We've got a ton of users who would benefit, just hasn't happened (its a _lot_ of tuning).
- Constant monitoring for new coins (we've got significantly better at this - lots of crons).
Algo-switching doesn't seem nearly as exciting as it did a month ago... X11 is dominating for GPUs (and looks to continue for the short term).
Payout switching ("I want to hold coin X, convert the rest to Y") is still pretty high on the list. I've actually got a proof-of-concept working here, with what is essentially a local embedded exchange (trading coins behind the scenes with other WP users automatically) to avoid exchanges completely. But its far from release ready... Definitely could be something to set us apart though...
