Author

Topic: Would you build a unique new BTC mining pool if you had the resources? (Read 212 times)

hero member
Activity: 1423
Merit: 504
So my strategy is simple...  I must build it, hit a block, pay it out, then show that its a real deviation from other pools and most importantly show that its here to stay.

Longevity, perseverance and yes finances will be tested during this process however I think I'm up for this battle.

Testnet should suffice with key "hey it works" data.

The route you propose by hitting a block is'nt the best strategy imo, the first block would likely spark a few news articles and growth spurt
but, the cost is a unknown variable making it very risky,so risky its a bad idea. You will absolutely need community support for it to launch.

full member
Activity: 562
Merit: 139
A feature that I would like to see all morning pools adopt is payments that are made to a PayNym.

I know that there is a single mining pool that currently does this but I feel like it should be the industry standard. You have to either provide a single address that receives multiple payments OR you can change your address between each payout but that seems like a lot of work and you're bound to receive multiple payments at the same address occasionally just because life gets busy and you can always change your address on time.

Mining pool payouts paid to PayNyms would be the best way to preserve privacy and protect miners from mining pools as well as preserving on-chain privacy.

Thoughts?


Honestly I am of the mindset that a no wallet pool is the best for all miners.

After hitting on CK's solo pool to me.... his payment method seems to me to be the most appealing for a miner. It's more transparent and the open source nature of the code does prove that.

With regards to changing your payment addresses I would then say change your address on the miner(s). Nothing is truly anonymous and thinking that a username somehow protects you from the blockchain explorers just seems to have little advantage in my opinion.

I believe you SHOULD be able to track the payments from a pool to keep its integrity.


I think the crowd you're rolling with would be proud of you moving on as your luck has been beneficial to them and a great learning experience for you.
If not, doesnt matter evolve into your own.
Your operational overhead will be a key factor.  I'm all for a new pool going up. However it presents its challenges.
even self hosting a pool on a single centralized server can get pretty costly after energy, upgrades & vpn cost. if you grow you have to scale.
Security is whole another thing.
Combine this with the fact you may never see reward if it doesn't take off it could become a costly endeavor.
Established miners won't migrate farms to you unless the numbers make sense, with no historical data the numbers won't be there.
Now if your talking about a solo pool #sendit!!
I'm not trying to convince you not to do it
But I have. It was a costly learning experience that failed rather quick for me.
So now I mess with things like private ravencoin pools and stuff.

I know this will be a tough road ahead to convince folks to try this new scary system...

So my strategy is simple...  I must build it, hit a block, pay it out, then show that its a real deviation from other pools and most importantly show that its here to stay.

Longevity, perseverance and yes finances will be tested during this process however I think I'm up for this battle.

Ultimately I want to share the joy of mining and further decentralizing within the community.
hero member
Activity: 1423
Merit: 504

If I build this (which I believe I now must) I promise to all not make this about earnings or about a balance sheet but about doing my part (since I have been personally blessed by BTC mining) to help others share that experience and success.

My biggest concern is that this project will offend several of those that helped me get to that point (even though luck had a lot to do with it). I won't name names but I have publicly thanked them in the past as their previous efforts in programming and running pools have changed my life personally and professionally.

I think the crowd you're rolling with would be proud of you moving on as your luck has been beneficial to them and a great learning experience for you.
If not, doesnt matter evolve into your own.
Your operational overhead will be a key factor.  I'm all for a new pool going up. However it presents its challenges.
even self hosting a pool on a single centralized server can get pretty costly after energy, upgrades & vpn cost. if you grow you have to scale.
Security is whole another thing.
Combine this with the fact you may never see reward if it doesn't take off it could become a costly endeavor.
Established miners won't migrate farms to you unless the numbers make sense, with no historical data the numbers won't be there.
Now if your talking about a solo pool #sendit!!
I'm not trying to convince you not to do it
But I have. It was a costly learning experience that failed rather quick for me.
So now I mess with things like private ravencoin pools and stuff.

 

 
member
Activity: 216
Merit: 93
Humble Bitcoin Stacktivist
A feature that I would like to see all morning pools adopt is payments that are made to a PayNym.

I know that there is a single mining pool that currently does this but I feel like it should be the industry standard. You have to either provide a single address that receives multiple payments OR you can change your address between each payout but that seems like a lot of work and you're bound to receive multiple payments at the same address occasionally just because life gets busy and you can always change your address on time.

Mining pool payouts paid to PayNyms would be the best way to preserve privacy and protect miners from mining pools as well as preserving on-chain privacy.

Thoughts?

full member
Activity: 562
Merit: 139
Now, as a thought experiment as to if there is a better way to build & run a pool that is a different thing. And yes, if you really think you have something better it is probably worth it. Just don't go too far down that path before as you noted you wind up in the list of failed pools.

-Dave

Dave,

This is exactly what I am looking to develop. A unique place for all to mine that has a monetary reward with the biggest reward being further decentralization as the focus.. Failure is always a possibility but a wise man once told me "nothing beats a trial but a failure". I feel I must try.



Considering that the current centralized mining pools have control over what vote they set in the blocks they prepare whenever there is a new protocol proposal to vote on, I'd say we definitely need some new and serious work be done in the mining pool software to give that power back to individual miners that connect to that pool instead. After all we need to revive the 1 CPU 1 vote idea.

Pooya87,

You hit the nail right on the head. I see significant control over where BTC is heading specifically from big mining companies and pools. In my mind these contradict Satoshi's concept (this is just my interpretation). This is exactly why I feel I must embark on this project / process.

If I build this (which I believe I now must) I promise to all not make this about earnings or about a balance sheet but about doing my part (since I have been personally blessed by BTC mining) to help others share that experience and success.

My biggest concern is that this project will offend several of those that helped me get to that point (even though luck had a lot to do with it). I won't name names but I have publicly thanked them in the past as their previous efforts in programming and running pools have changed my life personally and professionally.




legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
Considering that the current centralized mining pools have control over what vote they set in the blocks they prepare whenever there is a new protocol proposal to vote on, I'd say we definitely need some new and serious work be done in the mining pool software to give that power back to individual miners that connect to that pool instead. After all we need to revive the 1 CPU 1 vote idea.
legendary
Activity: 3458
Merit: 6231
Crypto Swap Exchange
That might be because P2Pool (for Bitcoin) haven't been updated since late 2018.

Single developer Jtoomim? Which P2Pool you checked? For reference, i meant https://github.com/p2pool/p2pool where the main contributor is forrestv.

ETFbitcoin,

Yes I read through most of the 800+ pages (admittedly skimming through many of the pages of posts) on the pool and it does appear that Forrestv was adding in Jtoomim to push his code into the master.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.18981247

When analyzing the two versions of P2pool that I came across it seemed to me that Jtoomim remained as the last active developer for the code use with BTC however there has been no further development.

P2pools network concept was unique and I do like the idea however I am just not sure that this is the right foundation / pool code to start with.

jtoomim is at times pushing out some updates / fixes / tweaks but not a lot. Some as recently as a few months ago https://github.com/jtoomim/p2pool/tree/master/p2pool

With the way pools are going it would be a tough call. Having all the money and resources and so on to develop and run a pool from scratch is one thing. But, in that respect would there be a better use of all that money and time? Better wallet? Better BTC processing for merchants? Better education for regulators?

Now, as a thought experiment as to if there is a better way to build & run a pool that is a different thing. And yes, if you really think you have something better it is probably worth it. Just don't go too far down that path before as you noted you wind up in the list of failed pools.

-Dave
full member
Activity: 562
Merit: 139
That might be because P2Pool (for Bitcoin) haven't been updated since late 2018.

Single developer Jtoomim? Which P2Pool you checked? For reference, i meant https://github.com/p2pool/p2pool where the main contributor is forrestv.

ETFbitcoin,

Yes I read through most of the 800+ pages (admittedly skimming through many of the pages of posts) on the pool and it does appear that Forrestv was adding in Jtoomim to push his code into the master.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.18981247

When analyzing the two versions of P2pool that I came across it seemed to me that Jtoomim remained as the last active developer for the code use with BTC however there has been no further development.

P2pools network concept was unique and I do like the idea however I am just not sure that this is the right foundation / pool code to start with.

 
legendary
Activity: 2842
Merit: 7333
Crypto Swap Exchange
ETFbitcoin,

The only issue I find with P2Pool right now is that in its current state it can't accept shares when mining from any of the newer miners.

That might be because P2Pool (for Bitcoin) haven't been updated since late 2018.

Now if all fairness I do like the P2Pool concept but with only a single developer Jtoomim which has added a ton but seems to have dropped the project as far as I can see this just doesn't look promising.

Single developer Jtoomim? Which P2Pool you checked? For reference, i meant https://github.com/p2pool/p2pool where the main contributor is forrestv.
full member
Activity: 562
Merit: 139
Rather than creating something new and unique, i'd rather improve P2Pool[1]. A quick reminder, P2Pool is decentralized Bitcoin mining pool where people don't need to afraid pool will steal their money or use the hashrate for unethical usage (such as 51% attack or censoring certain transaction). Unfortunately Bitcoin miner doesn't seem to be interested with P2Pool, probably due to requirement of running full node. But P2Pool manage to found it's place on Monero community[2] where the pool has about 7% global Monero hashrate.

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool
[2] https://p2pool.io
ETFbitcoin,

The only issue I find with P2Pool right now is that in its current state it can't accept shares when mining from any of the newer miners.

For example not a single S19 will connect and submit shares. I have the same issues on MMPool which looks to me to be a branch of that base code.

Honestly, I would prefer starting with a more stable platform that at least allows the most recent Asics to connect.

Now if all fairness I do like the P2Pool concept but with only a single developer Jtoomim which has added a ton but seems to have dropped the project as far as I can see this just doesn't look promising.

Now with that said I would be up to offer a bounty if someone could modernize their code though to work with newer versions of Asics, bitcoincore, ubuntu and python!!! Smiley

legendary
Activity: 2842
Merit: 7333
Crypto Swap Exchange
Again assume that worldwide resources, network and hardware are not a hinderance to the projects success.

Care to share your thoughts?

Rather than creating something new and unique, i'd rather improve P2Pool[1]. A quick reminder, P2Pool is decentralized Bitcoin mining pool where people don't need to afraid pool will steal their money or use the hashrate for unethical usage (such as 51% attack or censoring certain transaction). Unfortunately Bitcoin miner doesn't seem to be interested with P2Pool, probably due to requirement of running full node. But P2Pool manage to found it's place on Monero community[2] where the pool has about 7% global Monero hashrate.

[1] [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool
[2] https://p2pool.io
full member
Activity: 562
Merit: 139
Okay I've got the flamesuit on and lets let the constructive and civil discussion begin....  Tongue

If you choose to vote then please comment why!

Many of you are legends on here. Some run your own pools, some develop hardware, some firmware and some contribute directly to BitcoinCore itself.

I completely respect each of you for your contributions to BTC community and mean no disrespect by what I am about to throw out here.


As a miner I believe I have come up with an unique idea that pertains specifically to a deficient area in the BTC mining pool space.

Given the concept and idea that I believe it doesn't exist currently....

Would you ever consider building a unique BTC mining pool if you had the resources?

Again assume that worldwide resources, network and hardware are not a hinderance to the projects success.

Additionally, just as many of you know that many have tried and failed in the mining pool space.

I fully comprehend that trust must be built and that could take years of paying out on time means everything. I do understand the importance of open source coding. I also understand the importance of network architecture and most importantly that the pool may fail just due to lack of interest....

However, even with all of that up against me everything in my gut is telling me to forget the naysayers and get help building this new concept pool.

Care to share your thoughts?

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