I've got a couple of questions.
First, I'm mining on extremepool.org. "My Stats" shows that my hash rate is only 2 H/sec with a single core processor. Yet if I solo mine with the daemon, it shows my hash rate as 9 H/sec (with the newest update from 17 May). What could be going on with that? Is the pool miner using the older, less-optimized code? At 2 H/sec, it seems I am wasting my time.
Second (and more importantly, I think), where the heck is all this hash power coming from?? It looks to me as though all of the pools combined account for only a very small percentage of the total hashing. It makes me wonder whether someone (or several someones) have figured out how to GPU mine Monero, and are grabbing most of the coins. If so, that is functionally equivalent to a private pre-mine, and I predict it will be bad for the long-term viability of the coin. And that would be a shame.
Any ideas?
Did you wait for a bit as someone else suggested and see if your hashrate normalised on the pool? I actually get a higher hashrate using 8 threads of simpleminer on my 8 core machine than I do from solomining (also on extremepool.com). Also are you definitely using the latest simpleminer binaries? You probably are but it doesn't hurt to check.
I have noticed that the hashrate seems to be a lot, lot higher at the weekends & GMT evenings. I personally believe that the majority of the hashrate comes from sysadmins, using computers at their place of work (offices, schools etc) during the weekend downtime. As others have said, GPU mining may be theoretically possible but due to the algorithm it's unlikely that GPU gains will be as much. It's also possible that people are using cloud computing services (AWS, Microsoft Azure etc...) to throw lots of kh/s into the network. This is likely no longer very profitable (if it's still even profitable at all) given current hashrates and prices.
I only got into this coin just as difficulty was beginning to skyrocket but I believe in the underlying technology, the developers, and the community that is building up around Monero. While it is healthy to have concerns, I don't believe that there are secret GPU miners currently dominating the network, and the growth has been (for the most part) due to increased awareness of the coin and the Cryptonote technology. I'm starting to see people talking about Monero all over the internet - the cat is well and truly out of the bag now!
I believe in the underlying technology too. That's why it is a bit distressing not be able to mine the coin profitably, even though I started trying around block 20,000. I believe enough in Monero to have bought several thousand on the exchange, in part because I wasn't having much luck with mining. I suppose if a lot of other people come to the same conclusions, and start buying instead of mining, the price will start to rise. I guess that would settle my concerns some.
