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

i understand that meebs but if a mining evolution generates say 100k shares then each share is worth a certain amount of the 50 coins earned.   if the evolution generates 10M shares because it was a long ass mining effort to find it, then the shares are worth less, but you will have more of them.   your 'profit' from the coin find will be essentially the same but your shares will not be the same.  that 50 coins split between the shares, each share should be worth more coins per with a short find time.

Aaron

that is the ENTIRE point of a pps pool.. equal payment for a share, no matter when why or how.

I kind of see that idzy, and it appears there really is no perfect solution.

I try to mine always but sometimes I need the computer for some other crunching and with both video cards burning at 100 percent,  watching a movie is out of the question, so will shut one down,
or crunching some blu rays or something.    It just sucks when I put say 8 hours into a 10 hour coin, but because I was gone the last 45 minutes my shares effectively dropped to zero, because they are only looking at the last half hour.

Im on the 50btc pps now and it seems a share is always worth the same amount, been that way for days it appears,.  I would think that the value would change slightly as the overall time changes to find them.

Oh well, Ill quit crying and go lay over by my dish now 

Aaron

Hoppers jump on a pool like slushes stick around for 30-45 minutes and if a block isnt found in that time leave to another pool starting a new round.  They get their "fair" share on the short rounds but that reduces the share of the loyal miners that will stick it out for the 14 hour rounds.

On the long rounds they get nothing, or if they are lucky they might get a little bit if the round ends shortly after they leave.

The way I see it is if the round is less than 3 hours then I do better than I would on a pps pool but the hoppers make it less profitable on short rounds. But I stick out the long rounds because on average if I keep track of the # of shares I submit I find I still make more sticking with slush then I would on a pps pool.

But if you don't mine constantly then you are better off on a pps pool.
 

I understand that shadow, as I have seen in slush's pool, the value of the shares goes up and down, but the value is 'estimated' and only paid out after the block is found, and the real number is figured out right?

So for 'hoppers'  I am assuming they watch the different pools, and when one starts a new block, they hop in early get a bit and then get out of it, looking for another new one?

Im just trying to learn all this and honestly don't have the time to hop all over the place, I want to set my rig up and leave it run w/o having to constantly babysit.

I will give the 50btc pool a try and see how that works out for me over a few days.

Thank you for the education everyone.

Aaron

Nicely summed up.

Ascholten - bottom line - if you want the "fairest" (by the criteria you outlined) payout for the amount of work you put in, join a PPS pool like BTCGuild. You will be happy.

Because the shares early in a round on a proportional pool have a higher predicted yield than shares later in a round.
When people hop, 24/7 miners get in less shares early in the round and so their average predicted yield is lower.

jwzguy, how does it screw over the people who stay there?  If I do say 1/100th of the work, isn't it fair that I get 1/100th of the bounty?

If a 'solution' is going to take  X calculations to get to the bottom of it, doesn't my 'share' bring you that much closer to payday?  Doesn't my work bring you to that solution just that much quicker?

IM not trying to be an asshole, but how does someone hopping hurt?  Again unless, as I said before a certain pool is just going to pay for 'being there' and not 'how much work' you actually contributed.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, im fairly new here and don't know all this stuff yet that others can take for general knowledge.

Thank you.

Aaron

Hopping is bad because it screws over the people who stay on a single pool.
If you don't like the reward calculation, switch to a pool that uses a different one. I use BTCGuild, and every share is paid out exactly the same amount.

Thank you for the reply shadow.  I was under the impression that they were 'fair' as they claim and all your work gets treated evenly, everyone gets their 'fair share'.  Obviously not.

With that, why is hopping bad?  If I do  one percent of the crunching work, and I get 1 percent of the profits, why is that a bad thing?  If I stay longer, and technically do, say 15 percent of the crunching work, and get 15 percent of the share, that's 'good' or the way it is 'supposed' to be right?

Are there pools out there where it's just the 'participation' that matters, not how much you participated, in which this actually IS a problem?   If so, very odd.

Aaron

That's how score proportional systems work. The value of your shares decays rapidly over time, so on slush only the last maybe 15 minutes worth of hashing actually matters to any great extent when a block is found.
It makes the thing a little bit less profitable for hoppers basically.

graet,  no,   I did not submit 8 shares out of the millions.  I submitted 8 hours worth of mining out of the total 14 give or take an hour or so.

So let's say my normal 'cut' would have been 10 cents,   if I did half the work I  normally did, then my cut should be about  4 to 5 cents...  (i say cents but you know what I mean)

My point was I DID submit significant work towards this block but got flat out ZERO for it.   Even if as you said, I only submitted 8 shares out of the entire job, I should still see SOME, small return for it.  I have had blocks like that where I submitted such a small amount it said 0.00000000  I see that as what you described, the rounding, but when it just flat out says ... you share... NONE,  that tells me it didn't even consider me.

Aaron

He's talking about Slush's pool, they had a 14 hour block yesterday and now that they've changed c on the score system there shares lose value quite quickly...

I'll try to decipher

the pool you mine on had a 14hour block
you submitted 8 shares (maybe more) of many millions of shares

when the block completed you had so few shares that when rounded down you get 0.0000000000 BC
you probably did earn 0.00000000000001 BC but the pool software only shows to 8 decimal places (the accepted standard)

what are you mining on and what software?
a cpu that does 8 (or a few more) shares in 14 hours is costing you more in electricity than you could ever earn back.

switch to a PPS pool like 50btc or ozcoin or btcguild

you'll get paid the exact same for EVERY single share you submit no matter what or when.

What pool? Sounds like Prop with some sort of anti-hopping hacked-together solution.

Switch pools.

Just got done thru a 14 hour block to find the coin.
I crunched probably 8 or those mostlikely more.   
I shut down the crunchers for a few hours because I needed the comp's power for other tasks.

Typically I get from oh say 6 to 10 cents worth of BC per completed unit.,

I got exactly  0.0000000000 BC share for all that work.

so I give you that many hours of crunching and get shit on? 

so all the work I did in the 'middle' doesn't count for squat for the overall payout?  That's not what the site claims.

WTF.

Aaron