Hi Steamtyme,
I just wanted to thank you again for reviewing our pool and ensuring that you provided valuable feedback and comparisons to other pools.
We hope to be the largest mining pool in North America by 2020 and hope you join us to reach this milestone.
Please see answers to your questions in the main Novablock thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5183959.100
Topic: [Review] - Novablock Mining Pool (Read 235 times)
Well my month is complete. This will be my final review on the experience, the reward comparison and my overall impression of NovaBlock.com
First I will say they definitely want to remain competitive, over the course of my review they decided they would also be implementing merged mining of NMC. This will keep them competitive in the PPS+ pool arena as it's offered on pools such as ViaBTC. I personally didn't take merged mining rewards into consideration, as I am only concerned with the BTC comparative for now. Looking at my rewards comparison you can see that I earned + 1.74% BTC using NovaBlock over the course of the month. This will be mostly due to a 2.5% fee with Novablock, for anyone who begins mining with them before they hit 2000PH, as ViaBTC has a fee of 4%.
Payouts were received with no issue. The reward earned is what I was sent and received in my wallet. So there were no fees deducted from my earnings. There is flexibility in setting your payout threshold, I used .01 for my rewards and once my final portion of a day is received I will change it to .005 for my final payout. I don't expect any issue but will update if something goes wrong. I do wish the payout threshold was visible next to the payout address on the rewards page. This will help people navigate their with more ease as it's "hidden" within the address Edit page.
The App. I really liked this feature. I was able to check in and confirm hashrate or double check payouts being made. It was particularly useful near the end of my review as I could check what was wrong when I received my "Low Hashrate" warning and "Miner Down" warnings. These were easily setup in the main dashboard.
Overall if you are a miner that wants to use a PPS+ system then I would recommend this pool. If you are interested in dealing with Merged mining rewards then I would wait until they implement NMC.
Things that need to be addressed or suggestions for improvements.
1) As mentioned above, if a worker name is incorrectly entered I would expect the pool to reject the shares. This will help miners notice an issue, and is a more honest way of doing business.
2) When merged mining is implemented, either cash out the coins yourself and provide miners with an equivalent BTC reward. This would be beneficial for those that don't want the hassle of selling these coins. Convenience is key.
3) Implement the example of what your miner should look like somewhere visible on the dashboard. This could be a generic mock setup including the Stratum address, Miner setup, and password.
4) More clarity on what the the transaction portion is in your PPS+ system. Is it set in stone or will it adjust if transaction fees increase? There have been several times in the last few years where the transactions add 10-20% reward for the block finder. It would be nice to know you get a piece of that, should it happen.
5) Leave your fee at 2.5%. This will provide you with a great advantage over other pools.
6) My biggest advice would be to offer PPLNS with a lower fee. Your pool is a good size for that and it is a very attractive feature to many miners, especially if you a large enough to reduce variance.
First I will say they definitely want to remain competitive, over the course of my review they decided they would also be implementing merged mining of NMC. This will keep them competitive in the PPS+ pool arena as it's offered on pools such as ViaBTC. I personally didn't take merged mining rewards into consideration, as I am only concerned with the BTC comparative for now. Looking at my rewards comparison you can see that I earned + 1.74% BTC using NovaBlock over the course of the month. This will be mostly due to a 2.5% fee with Novablock, for anyone who begins mining with them before they hit 2000PH, as ViaBTC has a fee of 4%.
Payouts were received with no issue. The reward earned is what I was sent and received in my wallet. So there were no fees deducted from my earnings. There is flexibility in setting your payout threshold, I used .01 for my rewards and once my final portion of a day is received I will change it to .005 for my final payout. I don't expect any issue but will update if something goes wrong. I do wish the payout threshold was visible next to the payout address on the rewards page. This will help people navigate their with more ease as it's "hidden" within the address Edit page.
The App. I really liked this feature. I was able to check in and confirm hashrate or double check payouts being made. It was particularly useful near the end of my review as I could check what was wrong when I received my "Low Hashrate" warning and "Miner Down" warnings. These were easily setup in the main dashboard.
Overall if you are a miner that wants to use a PPS+ system then I would recommend this pool. If you are interested in dealing with Merged mining rewards then I would wait until they implement NMC.
Things that need to be addressed or suggestions for improvements.
1) As mentioned above, if a worker name is incorrectly entered I would expect the pool to reject the shares. This will help miners notice an issue, and is a more honest way of doing business.
2) When merged mining is implemented, either cash out the coins yourself and provide miners with an equivalent BTC reward. This would be beneficial for those that don't want the hassle of selling these coins. Convenience is key.
3) Implement the example of what your miner should look like somewhere visible on the dashboard. This could be a generic mock setup including the Stratum address, Miner setup, and password.
4) More clarity on what the the transaction portion is in your PPS+ system. Is it set in stone or will it adjust if transaction fees increase? There have been several times in the last few years where the transactions add 10-20% reward for the block finder. It would be nice to know you get a piece of that, should it happen.
5) Leave your fee at 2.5%. This will provide you with a great advantage over other pools.
6) My biggest advice would be to offer PPLNS with a lower fee. Your pool is a good size for that and it is a very attractive feature to many miners, especially if you a large enough to reduce variance.
This will be the post I update my earnings in. It will be linked into the OP. This will help me avoid overediting the OP. I will Edit this post each time and add a break and date to track earnings reports here. This is only taking into account BTC rewards. I will do something looking at merged mining in the future.
Here are my initial findings after 5 days. I started the comparison on the 28th of September, as I was informed my mining fee was changed to 0% on the 27th. Now I didn't wait for that to begin reviewing, it just allowed me to use full days, and apply a straight 97.5% to my daily earnings. I am going to link the spreadsheet I'm using, it's not pretty but it tallies. If you notice any errors or have questions feel free to post here or PM me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qK1WvWXB51i37I-SjRLeR_WEeO2xXPwq0Uh8AVVGguo/edit?usp=sharing
Take away early on is that I have been more profitable on Novablock all 5 days. The average earnings being 102.61% of my ViaBTC/TH reward.
Side note here. During this time I also had my auto-payout set and received my first payout. I changed it to a threshold of .01 and will continue to monitor the time from passing the threshold to payout TXID.
Here are my initial findings after 5 days. I started the comparison on the 28th of September, as I was informed my mining fee was changed to 0% on the 27th. Now I didn't wait for that to begin reviewing, it just allowed me to use full days, and apply a straight 97.5% to my daily earnings. I am going to link the spreadsheet I'm using, it's not pretty but it tallies. If you notice any errors or have questions feel free to post here or PM me.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qK1WvWXB51i37I-SjRLeR_WEeO2xXPwq0Uh8AVVGguo/edit?usp=sharing
Take away early on is that I have been more profitable on Novablock all 5 days. The average earnings being 102.61% of my ViaBTC/TH reward.
Side note here. During this time I also had my auto-payout set and received my first payout. I changed it to a threshold of .01 and will continue to monitor the time from passing the threshold to payout TXID.
I should have them up tomorrow or the next day. Working around my work schedule and that will give me 5 or 6 consistent days to compare against. Considering the size of slush and how that should bring a near consistent reward, I may try and compare against them also in the future. In theory they should be a higher paying pool, but still subject to luck and variance.
Cheers , looking forward to payout reviews, as i like slush , but us based pool is ideal
Reserved for Changelog. Using Forum time and dates
October 4th - Added link in OP to rewards comparison. Also adjusted the fee from 3.5% to 2.5% until pool is 2000 PH in size.
October 4th - Added link in OP to rewards comparison. Also adjusted the fee from 3.5% to 2.5% until pool is 2000 PH in size.
This will be an ongoing review of Novablock Mining pool. You can find their Pool thread here on Bitcointalk. I am only reviewing their Bitcoin mining operation. I am receiving a 0 fee mining experience for 30 days while I conduct my review. I will update OP throughout the month, I plan to compare it against ViaBTC for earnings and general experience. I am currently testing out their NovaPPS+ system against PPS+ at ViaBTC.
To begin mining with Novapool you need to create an account. This is fairly straightforward and standard practice across most of the main pools. The username you select will also be the beginning of you miner worker names if you plan to point multiple machines at the pool.
Once you have created your account you will be able to assign your wallet payout address. This can be done by selecting the "Rewards" tab along the left hand side of the page. Scroll to the bottom and input your desired address.
You will be able to come back here and review your daily earnings. On this point I am going to request a better breakdown of the block reward portion awarded.
This was straightforward, the mining URL's are found on the Dashboard top left. The pop up window contains 3 addresses, I would also like to see an example of naming workers here, for simplicity sake. I did have to look through the help section before I found the reference, as I wanted to be sure it was available.
Through an error on my end I found a minor issue. I forgot to use a "." to name a worker. This then was no longer pointing to my account, but did still connect to the pool. It was a few minutes before I realised the error, as the worker never appeared in the Dashboard. I tested it again today to be sure.
Again it's very straightforward. You can easily set worker and hashrate alerts in the event a miner drops out or underperforms. The site also displays projected earnings/TH/day in several locations; including the pool stats page on your dashboard. I would like to see if that takes into account the pool fee of3.5%. 2.5% until the pool reaches 2000 PH
A nice feature available on the homepage is reviewing profitability of most available hardware for the last couple of years. It works like a profitability calculator by allowing you to input your utility costs and see your potential daily earnings by machine.
They also offer additional features and monitoring such as an App, which I will be trying out in the coming days.
As I said this will be an ongoing review. I have had my machines pointed there for about 36 hours. I will begin doing price and earning comparisons tomorrow. This is just my initial findings and experience.
Edit: Here is the post I will track all reward comparisons. I have linked a basic spreadsheet showing my calculations for earnings.
Getting Started
Go to https://novablock.com/ To begin mining with Novapool you need to create an account. This is fairly straightforward and standard practice across most of the main pools. The username you select will also be the beginning of you miner worker names if you plan to point multiple machines at the pool.
Once you have created your account you will be able to assign your wallet payout address. This can be done by selecting the "Rewards" tab along the left hand side of the page. Scroll to the bottom and input your desired address.
You will be able to come back here and review your daily earnings. On this point I am going to request a better breakdown of the block reward portion awarded.
Initial miner setup
This was straightforward, the mining URL's are found on the Dashboard top left. The pop up window contains 3 addresses, I would also like to see an example of naming workers here, for simplicity sake. I did have to look through the help section before I found the reference, as I wanted to be sure it was available.
Through an error on my end I found a minor issue. I forgot to use a "." to name a worker. This then was no longer pointing to my account, but did still connect to the pool. It was a few minutes before I realised the error, as the worker never appeared in the Dashboard. I tested it again today to be sure.
Ease of use
Again it's very straightforward. You can easily set worker and hashrate alerts in the event a miner drops out or underperforms. The site also displays projected earnings/TH/day in several locations; including the pool stats page on your dashboard. I would like to see if that takes into account the pool fee of
A nice feature available on the homepage is reviewing profitability of most available hardware for the last couple of years. It works like a profitability calculator by allowing you to input your utility costs and see your potential daily earnings by machine.
They also offer additional features and monitoring such as an App, which I will be trying out in the coming days.
As I said this will be an ongoing review. I have had my machines pointed there for about 36 hours. I will begin doing price and earning comparisons tomorrow. This is just my initial findings and experience.
Edit: Here is the post I will track all reward comparisons. I have linked a basic spreadsheet showing my calculations for earnings.
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