Initially we re-launched
ethpool.org as a simple solo mining pool where the block finder gets 100% of the block reward. We could confirm quite quickly that mining ethereum is subject to an incredible high variance. A miner with 25MH/sec found two blocks in one hour (lucky guy) while miners with +200MH/s did not find a block during a full day.
So we tried to combine the best of solo and pool mining into a new payment concept. The new concept awards the full block reward to the miner who did contribute the most unrewarded work to the pool.
The system works like this, every miner starts with 0 credits at the pool. Each submitted valid share increases the credits of a miner by the difficulty of the share. When a block is found the miner holding the most credits will be credited the full block reward and his credits will be reset to 0. This way each miner will receive a predictable payment as soon as his credits at the pool equal the current block difficulty (+/- a few credits caused by the global variance of the pool). You can see the current ranking table at
ethpool.org/credits.
As a side benefit, the pool never holds on to any funds. Block rewards are paid in full (meaning uncles & transaction) immediately after 10 confirmations.
Check us out at
ethpool.org! Pool fee is currently 0%!
Comments
there is a pool's hasrate currently about 9 GH/s and nothing mined from 45min !
my miner work well on the pool, no problem of connection...so where goes the ether ?!
everybody can check here :
https://etherchain.org/account/0x4bb96091ee9d802ed039c4d1a5f6216f90f81b01
No block was mined from an hour..
but it's still active... http://ethpool.org/
I've been paid 4 times in the past 24 hours and that is all that matters.
Paid are ok, but don't you ask yourself if is it possible that the pool use the hashrate given by miners to mine with another adresse just for an hour ?
but you should have right, it should be the variance, i'm certainly paranoid
Regardless, it is easy enough to estimate your daily earnings using any of the various online calculators and directly compare against what the pool is paying over a day (or longer). So far, it has been inline with what I would expect given my hashrate.
So it's near from the expected calculation (70% of the estimate calculation).
Basically, 1.4 estimated Ether per day, is a very low sample size and makes it difficult to accurately test whether the pool is paying fairly, or not.
Based on my rate of Ether (~20 per day), I say the pool is paying fairly.
Regarding cheating by the pool, certainly every pool could do that, at the end it is up to you to decide how much you trust the respective pool operator. We try to be as transparent as possible and provide an earning estimation for each miner on the miner's overview page. This way it is very easy to check if a miner receives what he is supposed to receive (+/- certain unknown factors like difficulty evolution and block time).
Also we have added individual charts for each worker. Check it out!
Also the credit accounting scheme has changed to distribute the rewards in a fairer way. 100% of the block reward will be credited to the miner who did contribute the most work to the pool. Rewards are paid immediately after 10 confirmations.
Each submitted share will increase the credit of the miner who submitted the share by the share difficulty.
The miner who accumulated the most credits will receive the reward of the next mined block and his credits will be reset to his current credits minus the credits of the runner up miner.
Usually a miner will receive a full block reward as soon as his accumulated credits equal the current block difficulty (+/- pool luck).
Also we have set the pool fee to 1% in order to cover server cost and further pool developments.
I thought 1 block reward will be given to us and it should have 5 eth.
Read more https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/2262/eli5-whats-an-uncle-in-ethereum-mining
The idea is to split the block reward into x (can be from 2 - 5) equal parts and reward the first x miners having the most credits accumulated. This means miners will move faster trough the credits ranking table and also get their rewards faster.
The target of the payment scheme is still to hold no funds in the pool for more than a few minutes, essentially keeping the pool's balance close to zero at all times.
Any opinions on this approach?
Happy mining!
I think the current payment scheme is the best. You new payment scheme will make it like traditional pool.
This will distribute the block rewards faster and slow miners will not wait that long before they receive their reward. As the additional transaction fees are paid by the pool there is no disadvantage for high hashrate miners.
We will let you know as soon as the update has been put in place.
Thanks!
The payout structure is similar to solo mining but with a predictable payment. Traditional solo mining on ethereum is subject to an extremely high variance. Sometime it take more than 3 times longer to find a block compared to mining estimations. This pool addresses the issue by reducing the mining variance.
One additional benefit of this payment scheme is that the pool essentially never holds significant amounts of Ether as blocks are paid out immediately. Contrary to other pools where the pool operators hold a large amount of Ether till the next payment.
What chance does someone with a small rig have to get any payment vs a large farm with 1PH for example? Won't the 1PH always trump the small miner with let's say 50MH or less?
I mine on pools with SHA256 and altcoins but just don't get this pool payment scheme.
You mine on the pool and your miner finds a share with a difficulty of 2000000 and submits this share. The pool then checks if the share is valid and if it is valid it will increase the credits of your account by the difficulty of the share. This is how all miners gather credits on the pool. Miners with a higher hashrate will gather credits faster compared to miners with a lower hashrate.
Now if the pool finds a block the full block reward goes to the miner that currently has the most credits accumulated. After that the credits of the miner that received the block reward are reset.
The current credit ranking of all miners on the pool is displayed on the Credits page. The miner on the top of the list will receive the full reward of the next mined block.
It is essentially similar to a car lap race where each time a car (=miner) finishes a lap it gets an reward. Faster cars (=miners having a higher hashrate) will make more laps and receive more rewards compare to slower cars, but eventually also the slower car will finish a lap and receive its reward.
I am sorry that the concept is not that easy to explain. Also it is quite unique for ethereum mining as the block time of other currencies would not make such a system viable.
Another benefit of the pool compared to solo mining is that you are able to verify that your miner is setup correctly. Some miners experience problems with their dag files which cause them to produce invalid blocks. This is quite difficult to detect during traditional solo mining.
-Best Care
David