Topic: Vladimir's essential self-defence guide for Bitcoin Miners - page 4. (Read 13271 times)

I wasn't claiming you could know whether or not the round would be 18000000 shares - just that if you had happened to move to another pool at 1800000 and it had had 9 rounds, then you would have made more btc.

As for the actual reason poolhopping works without knowing the future, well if you know enough about statistic and understand how the number of shares submitted before a pool finds a block follows a *geometric* distribution, then you should be able to figure out the expected value of any given share for yourself. I couldn't, and had to run simulations to check.

I'm not here to shoot down others without having some basis for my arguments - there are more than enough people who do that in the BTC forums.  As for simulation, I can look at actual results to see outcomes.  I could set something up quickly that would simply demonstrate that across all users and all pools, with a randomly sampled number of shares to solve blocks, that the average number of shares will equal the current difficulty.  If I participate proportionally, I will get a proportional payout.  I think the underlying point that hasn't been made well is that some pools might pay unfairly.  That harks back to the OP, which makes the point if your pool or strategy is consistently delivering poor results, then look for something better.  As I said, I'm churning shares through deepbit and it tells me at the moment it is about 3% longer per block than expected, which is nice because earlier it was at +10% (and average block time fallen from 25 minutes to 23 minutes).

The point I was making was that even for a block that has been running 18 million shares, there is a probability for the next one share to solve the block.  Blocks don't require a set number of shares to be returned before "solving", and it could continue to run for another 18 million shares to.  The distribution isn't perfectly Poisson, but close enough.

Every looked at the distribution of solve times in the block-chain, a nice sequence of values there.  Some long, some short, but as happily reported and adjusted occasionally, resets aiming to preserve 10 blocks per hour.

 A 10 x difficulty block is one that requires 10 times the share contributions of a normal difficulty block in order to solve it. ATM that means a block of 18 057 000 shares. Can you explain to me where the screwed logic is?

You're suggesting that between difficulty resets every pool solves a block at difficulty shares every time? Surely you've been involved with bitcoin mining to believe that! A quick look at btc-poolwatch.com gives bitclockers total shares at 78% of difficulty, bitpit total shares at 19% difficulty, mineco.in total shares at 51% and triplemining total shares 460% of difficulty. All different totals. If you meant they solve blocks at the same number of shares - difficulty*1 - then that is also just plain wrong.

But I'm glad I was able to give you some enjoyment at work.


BTW - ever get around to running a simulator so you could work out your answers for yourself? Instead of just shooting everyone else's down, I mean.

That refers to the length of a pool round by comparing the number of round shares to the difficulty. This is a common way of discussing the length of rounds, because when calculating a pool's average round length, it may be a different amount of time depending on pool hashrate, or a different number of shares depending on difficulty, however a round always has a 50% chance of being solved in the same number of user-submitted shares (which are difficulty 1) as the current Bitcoin difficulty. Thus, a 2x difficulty round would be twice as many shares as was expected to find a block solve.

Your strategy is to use the pool with the highest fees? Kudos! That's worthy of being picked on!

Yeah it's sad that a p2p, decentralized currency is at risk from an attack against one organization (deepbit). If hopping deepbit can help drive away some of the hashrate currently there, it's just that much more rewarding.

I looked at https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.478871 and thinking it over while walking to work gave me some entertainment.

It becomes farcical at the point it talks about "Take the extreme example of a pool hitting a 10x difficulty block"  LOL  between difficulty resets, they all have the same difficulty.  Such screwed logic is not backed by the input mechanics or the observed results.

If you want to pick on my strategy, I mine at deepbit because it was easy to set up and the fee was reasonable.  Last 24 hours average time per block is 25 minutes (yesterday 21 minutes).  Roughly 5Ghash or 1/3rd so should be getting a couple of blocks per hour.  It tells me the variance in shares submitted per block is +9.6% at the moment and I get similar payments for a 2 minute or 100 minute block, but on average 20-ish minutes I get a proportional share of what I've contributed.  If I skipped out on a block after an hour and mined somewhere else, my shares still contribute to the next block found (whenever that is, and proportionally), and same with a pool I might jump to.  My averages don't change (assuming fair pools) because my work and the distribution lambda have not changed.

btw, if the pools are set up correctly, pool hopping should make little actual difference over the long term - the notion of ethics is odd unless somehow brand loyalty counts for something - do we get bitcoin-miles for staying with one pool, I haven't looked.

Back to the point of this thread - Vladimir posted up something to help tell if your pool is biased, and added in the variable covering hopping because some people think it makes a difference.  Maybe they're the same ones who like losing money in ponzi's or gambling.

Oh, don't worry. We ethical miners have seen the huge red flag and are hopping on Mt Red. That huge swing in hashing power has led to 6 blocks in the last 24 hours. Again, compare to the anti-hopping polmine who hasn't solved a block now in 5 days (corresponding with their full implementation of anti-hopping measures). It's all coincidence, of course.

But if hashing power = work done then the Samuel Goldwyn quote seems apropos:

"The harder I work, the luckier I get"

OK, try this link then:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.478871

I suggested a reasonable hash rate because operating at 1 Mhash there are appreciable probabilities of not completing shares or making a reasonable contribution.  At least when calculating at a reasonable speed and reasonable time span, so of those noise effects drop away.

I there were no pools (everyone was their own pool- solo), or one pool, I have a chance of finding the block for every share I crunch.  If I am in a pool where people come in and out, or I jump around, my chance of finding a block does not change, nor does it change for anyone else.  A bit like playing roulette (which I don't do because of the stacked odds) - one spin or table is much like another.  If hopping worked so well, people would be doing this in casinos.

Great thing random chance.  Full points to the poster mentioning "gambler's fallacy".

There's a bunch of chartporn on the bitHopper thread, or you can try this simulator.
https://github.com/organofcorti/byteHopper-s


The actual Mhps is not important, just the efficiency.

Yeah, on deepbit...

There are pure PPS pools with 0% fee out there too, just sayin'... since PPS is NOT dependent on pool size, you have only little to loose.

Well written and gave me a chucle.  But I do not think the anaolgy is correct.

You started with the elephants and got em all, did the cows and pigs.  Now you are on the sheep and running low.  Hoping does make money now, but like mining will become less and less.

Interesting, the system throws random answers (returned shares) at a problem and people attribute long solves to "luck" rather than just the normal probability distribution of solving a block.

If I jumped to a new pool that found the block as soon as I joined, I might get 0 shares out of 100, because the pool was "lucky" to find it right then, but my 100000 shares in the previous pool will contribute to the next block found there anyway.

Willing to be proved wrong, someone might want to supply a link that shows, over a period of a month or longer, for 1000Mhash mining (ie, non trivial) the average return from sitting versus hopping?

When the easy prey dies off then we just take our strength, knowledge and numbers and begin hunting elephants. It's not even fun until that point, anyway

Nice tusks, btw.

Difference in fee structure made the expected payoff for proportional higher than pay per share, plus I can withstand the increased variance over time.

because no matter what, hoppers gonna hop. 

A) Rational people act rationally - hahahahaha. That's a good one.
B) I'm likely the source of the "lazy" tag for miners who just sit on one pool and don't try to optimize their mining revenue. I'll add that if these miners are anti-hopper then they are more than likely intellectually dishonest as well as lazy. I only have to reference the polmine miners who are fleeing the pool now that they are stuck on a 9 million block. There are numerous examples of miners "hopping" away from pools when they hit long blocks. Those are just slow hoppers. The deepbit 24/7 miners really are lazy and are detrimental to bitcoin. We hoppers provide a valuable service to bitcoin itself, which is infinitely more important to me than some whiny miners.

I can't say it better than Vladimir himself:  "Guess just like predators in nature you serve your purpose, eliminating stupid miners and advancing evolution and making bitcoin stronger. Whoever mines constantly in one of the pools successfully hopped by you surely deserves what he gets."

Well, actually I guess I can say it better and did privately to Vladimir 2 hours before he started this thread:
"Taking your point to its logical conclusion though you have to acknowledge that it is we hoppers who are the ethical ones. We are working literally around the clock (check the irc channel and git commits) to improve our methods and that in turn improves bitcoin. The miners who just buy a GPU, point it at a pool and walk away are the true leeches on the system, the unethical ones. They are the ones looking for money for nothing. We hoppers are at least putting in the time to justify our small percentage of extra earnings. We improve and strengthen bitcoin - they add nothing. If we can drive them out, fine. Hell, you do your best to convince every other miner in the world to quit. We are simply aiding in your effort, we are an extension of your effort.

I understand you have to take a public stance against us. That's alright. We both know that you benefit from us. We can continue to play the game. We aren't enemies, we are both on the side of making bitcoin dominant. Everybody plays a part. You keep playing yours and we'll keep playing ours."

Vladimir launching a PR campaign to try to paint himself as the defender of miners is a little on the nose. He's the most predatory of miners and for that I applaud him. At least he gets it and is self-serving even in his "self-defense" diatribe. You bleeding hearts with your "concern" for those poor miners hurt by hopping are dangerous to bitcoin. The sooner you get out of the evolutionary path and the bitcoin gene pool, the better. You want to compete against world currencies and yet you weep for the weak and ignorant? You will be devoured by the global financial market and spit out before you can even get your boots on.

haha!  I clicked the link and was like "Hey! what happened to abc pool?" and then i was all like "oh...doh!"