Topic: Well that blows (Read 4285 times)

OP, did you read this? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools

It is a comparison of different pools and what reward mechanisms they use and what fees they charge etc. It is best to check out a few and do your own research before settling on one that you are comfortable with. There are different options, so you can choose the one that suits your mining pattern. For me, I found that PPS works best when I am mining intermittently (DGM/PPLNS proponents, please ignore, this is my personal preference only).

Hopping does work. Hoppers earn 20 to 30 % extra (maybe less now that there aren't that many reliable proportionate pools) as compared with non-hoppers. This extra has to come from somewhere and the general consensus is that it comes out of the pocket of 'honest' miners. Whether or not you have a problem with this is for you to decide.

If you lost your 8 hours mining at slush (as someone pointed out), then it's just bad luck and a lack of understanding their reward system. They mention on their home page that they follow a "Score based reward system", and provide a link to a detailed explanation. Even the short description provided in the mining pool comparison link given above says "Score based system: a proportional reward, but weighed by time submitted. Each submitted share is worth more in the function of time t since start of current round. For each share score is updated by: score += exp(t/C). This makes later shares worth much more than earlier shares, thus the miner's score quickly diminishes when they stop mining on the pool. Rewards are calculated proportionally to scores (and not to shares)."

So the best thing to do now is to choose the pool that suits you best (there are other PPS pools with less fee than 50BTC, so you can try them also) and move on 

Then why did you add to it?

Who cares about 6 cents enough to go on about it so much? 

Then obviously you have not read the post.

Aaron

I've never had any problem with slush's pool. The payouts per share are about the same as the PPS pools(maybe a little more, IDK), the shares update on my account screen every few minutes, and I get an auto payout every .05 BTC. I don't see where the problem you're having is. Surely, your GPU isn't slower than my crappy 9600GS at 8.4 Mh/s. 

Woah dude, If you have ANY knowledge that your going to be turning off your hashing equpiment, Use PPS...

Most pools run Anti Hopper payout style like DGM and (sometimes a tweaked) Prop by default, Just setyour miner to PPS

Yeah, the key is to find a pool you like and just stick with them.  It's relatively easy to figure out who is ripping people off and who is paying pretty well.  Find a decent PPS pool with low fees, sign up and just stick with them.

Meebs said

I second this quote, been using 50btc and BitMinter myself and happy with both so far, some pools are just scams to rob you of your work.

no need to apologize eleuthria.   thank you for taking the time to answer.

Aaron

Yes of course a pure pps pool is more attractive to some miners (lower fees are better) - but the pool takes that fee in exchange for that risk. If they weren't making money they'd shut the pool down. I like pps (especially merged mining pps pools) - since I'm too lazy to speculate with bitcoins and since I don't care about the merged coins I can just let them pile up.

But I actually mine at a pure pps (merged mining) & a pure proportional (load balanced) - with deepbit as a backup incase either of those go down. On a long enough timeline the pps pays the best.

People can talk about luck and mining anywhere, but the larger the pool the less variance over time (although at 1% of network hash rate you'd probably be better off solo mining).

PPS pools function on probability (and depending on how low they set their fee, gambling).  They pay a rate of (1 / Network Difficulty) * 50 BTC * (1 - Pool Fee%).  So the rate you get paid per share on a PPS pool will only change roughly every 2 weeks, when the network difficulty adjusts.  That is why PPS pools charge fees, it is a gamble.  The lower the fee, the more the pool operator's are gambling that they won't hit a run of bad luck.  organofcorti (or was it Meni?) has a writeup about the odds of PPS pools going bankrupt based on fee/how much BTC they've set aside as a buffer.


EDIT:  So apparently the post I quoted was a bit older than I thought, didn't notice that this thread has been going for about 3 weeks.  Sorry if you already figured out how PPS rates are set/modified since the original post.

figure it out yourself.

Aaron

You're certainly allowed to have an opinion.

Glad to hear you found a pool that suites your taste.  That's what everyone should do.

Please do share how anti-hopping pools are easily exploited.

and you complaining about my complaining is not going to do jack either buckwheat.

I am not allowed to have an opinion that differs from yours?

I am in different pools to be honest and sorry to rain on your parade but these anti hopping things are still easily exploited by someone who isn't just a script kiddie or drone and actually has half a functioning brain.

IN the end, as long as they keep the sheep happy the pool operators make tons of cash off their work.

Aaron

Honestly, if you don't like it, then move to a different pool.  I mine 24/7 on the same pool, so for me, anti-pool hopping calculations are very welcome.  I don't want someone stealing 20-30% of my revenues by hopping my pool.  If that's something you don't care about, then by all means, join a pool that pays straight up proportional.  Or just join a PPS pool, as has been suggested half a dozen times already.

Complaining about it isn't going to do jack.  Those calculations are there for a reason, and many of us appreciate that reason (and therefore mine on those pools).

That's true zieke but then they will be finding coins faster, and hence paying for the bigger service.

Let's just for example say   1 bit coin is worth 10 dollars.

when you solve a block you get typically 50 bitcoins....  that's 500 dollars.

the pools generally take about 5 percent,   that's 25 dollars out of that 500.

a pool like slushes can get typically 10 blocks or so a day give or take.   yes yes, some blocks can take 7 hours,  yet I have seen others take 14 seconds...   that's 250 dollars a day to the pool operator.

that's 7500 a month profit to the pool owner,  less server fees.   shit, in many places you can get a super reliable mondo whomper server et all for 500 a month.   Still a nice profit.


Out of curiosity,  a pool like slushes as an example, what kind of bandwidth DO they use monthly?

Aaron

This statement is entirely true. Though if the pool get's big enough they'll probably have to get a more expensive service.

I have to agree with firefop on this one,  if someone did the work, they should be compensated for it.   Sometimes I have to use my computer for other tasks and have to shut down the mining a bit,  it really sucks if I have to lose 3 hours or 8 hours worth of mining, just because I wasn't there for the last 12 minutes or whatever.

I understand why pools do this, but do not necessarily agree with it.  So what if you spend all your time there BFD, the work that 'hopper' accomplished DID add to you guys figuring out the click for your money.  If they didnt do that, you'd be there even longer waiting for your payout.

Im not saying that the pool owners need to change their rules, that's not my place, and it is what it is.  I am just making my feelings known on it. 

Also on this, the pool operators are NOT going broke on this. hosting is dirt cheap, and with a bigger pool, they ARE raking in the cash.  Don't try to say you are not either, because you'd not be doing all of the pool management stuff if you were not getting compensated for it.  and No I do NOT believe you are doing it solely because you love 'helping out' the community.

Aaron

Anti-Hopping is bad because its inherently dishonest. It's obfuscating the payout method to the point where the average user can't figure it out. In addition there's no good reason for it. If a pool can afford to pay X per share, from the pools perspective it shouldn't care if that's 10000 users with 1mh/s or if it's 10 users with 1gh/s - it's still paying out the same. It basically amounts to the pool operator being able to punish people who can't mine 24/7 or who have spotty internet service. Trying to prevent this is just silly.

Yes thats the variance in mining,

when you mine pps you get always the same, and the pool has to maintain a buffer for the bad
times when a block takes 10 million shares or more, thats why most of the real pps pools have a fee.

But over a long time frame it should even out.

AFAIK the pps payout is based on the difficulty, at the moment it is  2864141, which means
on average it takes you that many shares to find a block, so pps with 0 fee would be (1 / 2864141) * 50 = 0.00001745724 BTC/share