Undoubtedly there needs to be more than one person to switch, all users being equal. Yes, there are exception scenarios like a miner having 5PH of gear, in which case being the only one to switch would be absolutely beneficial.
Even if miners didn't switch to my pool, there are other options out there. Obviously as someone who runs a pool I'd love to see more miners use it; however, my initial post wasn't an advertisement for my pool (the advertisement is in my sig). The initial post is more of a PSA. Miners (other than Bitmain themselves), no matter how big or small, are guaranteed to lose coin by mining on AntPool.
As somebody pointed out earlier in this thread, people reading it are unlikely to be the target audience. I'm sure there is a large percentage of hardware owners out there who don't even know of this forum's existence. I'd bet there is a large percentage of hardware owners who never change a thing when setting up their miners. They just plug it in and let it rip. Ok, maybe they do some of the networking stuff - which any sysadmin would be familiar with - but changing mining parameters? Not in their wheelhouse, so they just leave that stuff alone. Hey, there are blinking green lights, so it's mining!
Just out of curiosity, I googled bitcoin mining pools. Which is probably what I did a few years ago, when I initially started mining and started with Slush. I believe he was running a no fee promo at the time.
Mostly what popped up in in the top 10 were Slush, BTC, GHASH.IO and a couple mining pool comparisons. Both the mining pool comparisons did not include some of the newer pools, including bravo-mining. One was a wiki
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_poolsYou might want to get that updated to include your pool. It would probably help our your hashrate.
I actually meant to update the wiki a long time ago... just never got to it, and until you just mentioned had completely forgotten about it
. Thanks for the reminder... I'll try to get it updated soon.
Just out of curiosity, visited the link in your signature to see your mining pool. Unless stats aren't updated, it seems to show that the last block found was five months ago? I'm all for diversification of hash power but perhaps the reason people go for the biggest pool is simply because of the guarantee of something, no matter how small?
Good luck with bravo pool!
No, you're not mistaken. My pool last found a block on 10/12/2016. I hope you also looked at the minimal hash that is currently pointed to my pool as well.
My point in the original post is, "If all the same miners mining on AntPool were mining on my pool, they would have made 13.88% more BTC". Well, on my pool it would have been 13.38% since I have a 0.5% fee.
People could be making a ton more coin for their hash, but because they think "OMG bigger is better!" they lose.
I get your point here. It's also based on some sort of lack of confidence - they don't think that it's feasible for them to break away from the biggest pools but often a better option is right around the corner. The reality is that if they joined a smaller pool, it would probably benefit them more.
When people point out that your pool last mined a block a few months ago, they ignore that every pool has to start somewhere and the only solution is for more people to join it. The problem is that the huge pools always have money to make great promotions, while the most principled people in Bitcoin seldom have money as they never profiteer enough in the first place to make these promotions. This kind of post is a great way to get the word out about this so I do think it's acceptable for you to be promoting your pool.
The funny thing is the big pools don't typically run promotions, even though they are the ones with the bankroll to do it.
Every promotion I've run has come from my own pocket. The server costs to keep my pool up are also from my own pocket. I opened my own pool a year and a half ago to provide people who were getting scammed the choice of an honest pool operator. I've spent quite a bit of my own time and money to keep things updated, including committing code to the GitHub repositories.
To date, I've given away over 11.5
BTC to miners on my pool.
