I have observed that to some noticeable degree people with double digit gigahashes being let's say "smart gigahashes" and exhibiting more rational behaviour than, say, majority of "sub gigahash" miners.
Suppose, once one has more or less serious operation going, one has to start calculating yield and fighting for every extra percent of it. As opposed to "lets set it mining while I am not gaming" crowd.
Shrinking margins surely will push evolution forward big time as well.
Topic: Why would you mine with anything BUT a PPS pool? (Read 6550 times)
Could you explain what you mean by that? I didn't understand it.
This group of people as mentioned by "wtfman":
Quote from: wtfman
One part knows what they are doing, another big part probably not, and a small part does not give a shit.
Which is probably a majority of miners. When they finally see shrinking earnings & start doing some thinking, PPLNS and PPS pools will explode in popularity.
Or maybe it's began already.
@Graet, Very reasonable post about selecting a pool, I second basically everything you said there.
Somehow, it seems that there is a significant number of irrational miners out there and one cannot count on them acting rationally.
Somehow, it seems that there is a significant number of irrational miners out there and one cannot count on them acting rationally.
Indeed, one can usually count on the majority of miners acting irrationally.
@Graet, Very reasonable post about selecting a pool, I second basically everything you said there.
Somehow, it seems that there is a significant number of irrational miners out there and one cannot count on them acting rationally.
Somehow, it seems that there is a significant number of irrational miners out there and one cannot count on them acting rationally.
Doesn't seem too popular just yet but I think as more people check it out they'll gain some traction.
It will, as soon as this group of people starts thinking rather than just going with 'whatever is the biggest pool'.
Could you explain what you mean by that? I didn't understand it.
I'm making more BC mining at Arsbitcoin (PPS Pool) than I was at deepbit. Pretty happy with switching over.
oh, wow, surprise, surprise
I'm making more BC mining at Arsbitcoin (PPS Pool) than I was at deepbit. Pretty happy with switching over.
Doesn't seem too popular just yet but I think as more people check it out they'll gain some traction.
It will, as soon as this group of people starts thinking rather than just going with 'whatever is the biggest pool'.
One part knows what they are doing, another big part probably not, and a small part does not give a shit.
While I do advocate for pure PPS pools (biggest advantage to the miner), I do realize PPLNS is probably 'the' perfect system for new pools.
It needs no startup capital, it's protected against exploiting by hoppers, & it rewards miners fairly.
Give it a year and prop. pools will be history, PPLNS will be the most popular
I've started mining at rfcpool which just switched to PPLNS with 0% fee. I've checked out quite a few pools and to be honest, this site looks like it's run by someone that knows what they are doing. The coders hang out in their irc channel, which is a plus.
I'm mining there now as well. So far I'm getting more BTC/day than I was on BTCguild. I agree that the site is well done. Simple yet functional design that supplies me with all of the info I care about. It's fast & secure and there aren't any ads. Doesn't seem too popular just yet but I think as more people check it out they'll gain some traction.
Simply send a share that already solved a block in the past to that miner - if he doesn't submit the valid solution, either ban him right away or retest with another known getwork - then swing the banhammer.
This is a nice idea on first glance but unfortunately totally defeatable.
If the share was solved in the past then it will be in the blockchain. Thus it can be seen that the miner is being tested and he will send it back regardless. A hash table lookup of 140,000 blocks would be pretty trivial.
You would have to find a winning share yourself and NOT make a block out of it, then keep that getwork to one side for future miner tests. And then hope that withholders don't collude and inform each other about your getwork test and add it to their database of ones to always submit back - then you'd need to generate another
Well, that's dangerous for the pool - but not a miner.
If you have a high stale rate on a PPS pool (or any pool), just switch to another one - there are enough programs out there to do so unattended even.
Also such attacks can be detected - and someone directing a significant workload to a small PPS pool will anyways hopefully be tested very fast by the pool owner.
Simply send a share that already solved a block in the past to that miner - if he doesn't submit the valid solution, either ban him right away or retest with another known getwork - then swing the banhammer.
If you have a high stale rate on a PPS pool (or any pool), just switch to another one - there are enough programs out there to do so unattended even.
Also such attacks can be detected - and someone directing a significant workload to a small PPS pool will anyways hopefully be tested very fast by the pool owner.
Simply send a share that already solved a block in the past to that miner - if he doesn't submit the valid solution, either ban him right away or retest with another known getwork - then swing the banhammer.
He means because bad luck will make the pool owners run out of money and shut down.
I personally think that smaller PPS pools are very dangerous to run and mine on, especially if they have a low or zero fee. A malicious individual with access to a competing proportional or the like pool can pull off a bankrupt-to-kill scheme by focusing all shares submitted onto a target PPS pool, but discarding all blocks submitted (this pool would itself by acting as a worker for the PPS pool, but passing the work onto its workers). The losses could be covered up by increasing share stales and marking all blocks as stales, and they would be limited at approximately the PPS pool's fees. The miners would simply feel a long block since the submitted blocks are being marked as stales, but the PPS pool would be paying almost twice as much they earn if the attacker had similar hashrate! Then the attacker withdraws at once all the funds of the PPS pool and resumes normal business, having managed to bankrupt a competing pool.
I've started mining at rfcpool which just switched to PPLNS with 0% fee. I've checked out quite a few pools and to be honest, this site looks like it's run by someone that knows what they are doing. The coders hang out in their irc channel, which is a plus.
Given I don't have anything like a complete list of mining pools, I'll rephrase to say that right now the best bet seems to be to find a 0% fee pool using PPLNS and which includes the transaction fee reward.
Perhaps PPLNS on mineco.in has the highest expected return without the extreme variance of solo mining.
Oh, why that particular pool? Something the other PPLNS pools don't have?Personally I mine PPLNS at simplecoin.us (I lose block reward transaction fees but gain more in reduced stales).
Their site seems to be down at the moment, so I can't compare stats, but ours has phenominally low stales too, and transaction fees are rewarded to miners 
Looks very good. I only mentioned mineco.in because it was the only pool I knew of (before your post) that did offered PPLNS, 0% fee, and transaction fee rewards (I know they are small right now but this is a big plus in my book). For me, the grace period for supplying shares for a recently expired round is technically a minus. Other than that, the list of features is impressive though I would expect to see some mention that there is no fee on BTC withdrawals. At 25 Gh/s the variance is fairly high but I'm sure it's much better than solo mining for most people.
Given I don't have anything like a complete list of mining pools, I'll rephrase to say that right now the best bet seems to be to find a 0% fee pool using PPLNS and which includes the transaction fee reward. Avoid PPS unless you've calculated the expected return vs. solo carefully and are happy with the reduction. Definitely avoid proportional unless you intend to pool hop.
Perhaps PPLNS on mineco.in has the highest expected return without the extreme variance of solo mining.
Oh, why that particular pool? Something the other PPLNS pools don't have?Personally I mine PPLNS at simplecoin.us (I lose block reward transaction fees but gain more in reduced stales).
Their site seems to be down at the moment, so I can't compare stats, but ours has phenominally low stales too, and transaction fees are rewarded to miners
There are many factors to consider when selecting a pool and reward system (in what I consider decreasing order of importance):
Pretty much you just have to work out what's best for you.
PPS reduces (but does not eliminate) the need to trust the pool operator and completely kills variance but will usually come with a significant fee.
Solo mining eliminates all problems on this list apart from the rather extreme variance (this is one of my favourite methods).
At this point the best returns would probably come from pool hopping on the largest proportional pool you can (switching to a low fee pps pool). This will usually give a high expected return and at low variance. You have to keep your eye on the mining forums though because it's only a matter of time before proportional pools die out.
The worst would probably be mining on a proportional pool without actually hopping but this could be trumped by paying a 10% fee at a PPS pool.
If you have an ethical objection to pool hopping then it's hard to beat solo for expected returns. Perhaps PPLNS on mineco.in has the highest expected return without the extreme variance of solo mining.
Personally I mine PPLNS at simplecoin.us (I lose block reward transaction fees but gain more in reduced stales).
- Pool operator trustworthiness (absolutely critical!)
- Pool hopping (applicable to reward systems with a proportional element only)
- Stales and server reliability
- Fees (including withdrawal fees)
- Variance
- Bonuses (find our next block for us and get a bonus 1 BTC!)
- Block reward (50 BTC or 50 BTC + transaction fees - does not apply to PPS)
Pretty much you just have to work out what's best for you.
PPS reduces (but does not eliminate) the need to trust the pool operator and completely kills variance but will usually come with a significant fee.
Solo mining eliminates all problems on this list apart from the rather extreme variance (this is one of my favourite methods).
At this point the best returns would probably come from pool hopping on the largest proportional pool you can (switching to a low fee pps pool). This will usually give a high expected return and at low variance. You have to keep your eye on the mining forums though because it's only a matter of time before proportional pools die out.
The worst would probably be mining on a proportional pool without actually hopping but this could be trumped by paying a 10% fee at a PPS pool.
If you have an ethical objection to pool hopping then it's hard to beat solo for expected returns. Perhaps PPLNS on mineco.in has the highest expected return without the extreme variance of solo mining.
Personally I mine PPLNS at simplecoin.us (I lose block reward transaction fees but gain more in reduced stales).
Maybe PPS is good when the speed decreases and proportional scores are good when the speed increases.
You don't benefit anything from *other* pools discovering blocks faster & pushing the network 'speed' up
If deepbit gets lucky tomorrow & finds 50% more blocks than normal (hence pushing up the block discovery speed significantly)
your earnings at Slush or any other proportional pool are not going to go up, only deepbit members benefit from it
Pure PPS on the other hand pays always the expected outcome, which is currently 50BTC per 1806098 shares submitted.
There are no variance swings or luck & the size of the pool, network speed etc. is irrelevant
As you can see, 24/7 prop. mining is the worst method in existence.
Since there are 0% pure PPS pools like abcpool.co and btcpool24.com,
I assume miners want to voluntarily lose money to hoppers and inferior payment methods by favouring other types of pools.
Bottom line: Every day you do not mine at pure PPS pools (or exploit prop. pools by hopping) you lose money.
That graph is based off of a period of very poor luck.
As you can see, 24/7 prop. mining is the worst method in existence.
Since there are 0% pure PPS pools like abcpool.co and btcpool24.com,
I assume miners want to voluntarily lose money to hoppers and inferior payment methods by favouring other types of pools.
Bottom line: Every day you do not mine at pure PPS pools (or exploit prop. pools by hopping) you lose money.
That graph is based off of a period of very poor luck.
Jump to: