Topic: What I love about P2pool (Read 3562 times)

What i love about p2pool is the fact that it's decentralized and open source. There is no one behind it, no one managing it, no one that can do idiot things like eligius did, no one scamming me, no one keeping the transaction fees, it's like solo mining but with the advantages of the pool. And, since it's p2p and decentralized, no need for servers and expenses to keep them (like a normal pool require)

the big plus about p2pool is that all miners build the block itself. it is not decided by forrestv - its the miners.

the only problem with big pools is that they decide which block (means transactions and features like bip16/bip17) to mine.

smart mining just means: the pool does only handle the payout and share counting, but does NOT decide about the block contents. this means a pool is not able to attack bitcoin - even if it has 90% of hashing power. and the miners still have their "votes" (votes as in this bip decision thing)

if all pools would use smart mining we dont have to fear 51% attack from a hacked pool any more.
of course the risk of cheating pool ops or stolen pool wallets will remain (stolen pool wallet risk could be circumvented as well, but thats up to the pool) - but the biggest issue for bitcoin itself is the 51% attack.

i know that eligius/luke-jr is working on something like that and bitpenny has a working implementation.
BUT: it seems that the bitpenny protocol cannot be used with other pools (dont know why; just heard that in a chat) and i dont know if that what luke-jr will do fits the average joe.

if cgminer gets a smart-mining client (as an addition) i am very sure that many pools will support its protocol.

sorry my english is not that good to explain it in more detail. but if you are really interested about that ask gmaxwell, gavin or luke-jr (all three a bitcoin devs). i am sure they would love you to support that idea (smart-mining was first mentioned by gavin (afaik); i am just trying to push this idea - because i really love it)

i would prefer if sombody with money could convince ck (author of cgminer) to invent a smart-mining protocol. as soon as pools starting support for this it would solve ALL problems regarding big pools.

i think this is much more needed than another p2pool.

Your project will be a fork of the current P2Pool software?

Sure... I agree with that... In fact, was this that I mean... A lot of P2Pools, not only one...

the democratic part is that you run your own bitcoind and decide yourself which transactions to mine.
example: bip16 / bip17

gavin and luke-jr where both talking to pool ops to support their bips.

with p2pool. all they can do is supply a patched bitcoind and EVERY miner decides for himself....

I'm excited about p2pool as well. But I don't see what makes it democratic. The software is written by forrestv. We don't vote for software features. p2pool is very much controlled by forrestv. I think this is important to understand. At the same time it's important to understand that democracy is not necessary in the context of computer software. If we don't like that p2pool is run by forrestv, we quit. We are free to leave p2pool at any time, and so it becomes a non-issue that it's controlled by a single person. Our choice to leave at any time keeps the author in check, since he is well aware of this fact.

This, not democracy, is the power of open source software.

Giving 0.5% is too much for you? Then put --give-author 0 and it's free.  If you couldn't disable donating, then I would agree with you that p2pool isn't free. But as you said, it is optional, so you are wrong.

+10

i would love if you implement smart-mining within your pool. (means that your miners are building the block which they mine). i know eligius is working on something like that.

i dont have a problem with big smart-mining-pools

but i would stay at p2pool just because of its coolness-factor

100% of the hashpower by single software solution is not a very good idea. Some bug or exploit can lead to a disaster.
Yes, it sounds good, but 100% is not healthy for ANY single entity.

+1000

1- There is no pool operator (no P2Pool central operator), avoiding giving too much computational power to who knows;

2- O P2Pool CAN and SHOULD have more than 51% of the hashpower! That's it! If P2Pool owns, for example, 80%~100% of the hashpower, we will be much more safe!!!;

3- You are the pool operator of your own pool (P2Pool instance);

4- The P2Pool is IMMUNE against DDoS attacks;

5- Low latency (less hops) from your miners -> your pool (your TCP packages do not need to travel the world to reach your pool);

6- All infrastructure of your CryptoCurrencies mining rigs resides within your own dependencies;

7- Have (almost) native support for Merged Mining (I have bitcoind, namecoind and devcoind behind my P2Pool right now);

8- And the most cool feature is: the coins you have mined, appear into your wallet as "generate"! Just like old times!  ^^


Long life to P2Pool and to Litecoin, Bitcoin, Namecoin and Devcoin!!  

Best!
Thiago

I can confirm that I just put it there today.

It is in the Top 10 now.

I love the fact that it's hashing rate is continuing to increase, and soon it'll be stickied in the forums (meaning it'll be in the Top 10.)

I didn't know about the donation. But since it is a configurable parameter, you can change it to 0.0 if you want, voila you got a free pool. As mentioned before, you got to keep the tx fee.

When averaged in with the probability you will get the 1% yourself, it comes out to free.

Put another way, p2pool isolates you from 99% of your variance instead of 100%... Still pretty good if you ask me.

well i just checked it for you:

main.py line 943
    parser.add_argument('--give-author', metavar='DONATION_PERCENTAGE',
        help='donate this percentage of work to author of p2pool (default: 0.5)',
        type=float, action='store', default=0.5, dest='donation_percentage')

author fee defaults to 0.5% which is 0.25btc per block.

for me an optional donation counts as free.
buty anyway; 0.5% is the default donation if you want to see it that way.

Well if there is an optional parameter that defaults to giving the author 1% of each found block....idk.. i would call that not free

- It is decentralized as it consists of multiple miners connected in a p2p fashion. Thus making it democratic as well.
- If bitcoin verification is decentralized but mining is centralized, the whole system stands on a shaky ground. With p2pool like mining system, there no one point failure for bitcoin generation.
- I don't know if any pools steal. But I was talking about forum posts like https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/miners-are-getting-jacked-for-15-20-of-earnings-60706.
- I am not sure where you got the idea of 1% fee in p2pool. But if you check the coinbase transactions in p2pool mined block, you can look for yourself that it is not so.