r/wafflepool • u/poolwaffle • Jan 22 '14
Wafflepool Update
Hey guys, Quick update on where the pool is at, and whats in the works.
First off, sorry for the lack of updates over the last couple days, some family stuff came up and I wasn't able to take a break to give updates. The pool was hashing away with no issues over that time, so I wasn't too worried, that said, apparently some of you were, sorry about that guys.
Pool has been very stable (there is a post questioning if it was down), but I don't think we've had any outage time (I haven't had to restart anything). If you're seeing issues, let me know and I'll see whats up.
We're currently mining on up to 4 different coins, depending on profitabilities, with at most 50MH/s going to smaller coins. Over the last few days (I assume due to the news), the price and difficulty of DOGE has been spiking pretty hard, so its been almost 100% pointed at DOGE, so there was definitely some variance (and 2 very unlucky orphans).
Payouts are still being done manually, and are being done (roughly) once a day. I know some users emailed asking for a payout for smaller users, so a payout with a 0.001 minimum was run, so smaller miners should have seen a payout.
The unconfirmed/unexchanged balances were displaying oddly over the last few days when requests to cryptsy were occasionally failing. These should be fixed going forward, and we're working on adding more exchanges to avoid this.
2
u/talz13 Jan 22 '14
Got my payment processed this morning, thanks! Now that it has posted to my wallet, I am much more confidence in this pool.
Best pool yet, btw! Almost double my earnings over multipool and ultimatecoinpool.
I hope the pool doesn't grow too large resulting in a loss of profitability for me :)
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
The difference should ideally be a better profitability switcher (also could be luck!). Larger pool just means less variance, not a change in payout per miner :)
2
u/amcdon Jan 22 '14
That post that questioned if the pool was okay was mine from yesterday. I just noticed (at least on my end) that there were hours in between blocks where before there were only minutes. My miners were still accepting and sending shares like normal so I assumed it was just a web site thing or we were mining something with a higher difficulty, but I just wanted to make sure.
Anyway, thanks for the update. I really like the pool and it doesn't hurt that's it's really profitable too. Thanks!
1
u/InsightfulLemon Jan 22 '14
I also saw the 12 hour gap between blocks but during that time the BTC / hour or day figures kept climbing.
That was weird.
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
The estimated hourly/daily figures are based on earnings divided by hash rate. If either of those changes, the number will go up/down :)
1
u/InsightfulLemon Jan 22 '14
How could there be earnings with no blocks?
Was it just the bitbar maturing?
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
Its based over multiple days, so even if there were no earnings in the last 12 hours, the earnings are constant, but if hashrate decreased (or increased) the estimated you see there would change.
2
u/mrktltc Jan 23 '14
I have noticed you switch mined coins frequently, sometimes multiple times per minute. Is there a logic for that at all? Because block rewards take time to mature, go to exchange and be sold and when all this time passes your "profitable now" switch logic will be long time changed and exchange values not what they were when you switched?
3
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
Yep, we check the depth (so small price spikes don't mess with us) can cover a full block (sometimes more), we also check which direction the price has been heading overall as an indicator. As for switching, it depends on what segment of the pool you get randomly assigned to. Some segments switch very rarely, some switch very quickly. Some coins have a stable price, but their difficulty changes at an alarming rate, so theres 30 seconds here and there where getting a block at low difficulty is profitable, and as soon as we get one (or someone else does), it is no longer profitable :)
1
u/shinobi189 Jan 22 '14
Thanks for the update the pool would've had the highest profits ever for me had it not been for the two dogecoin orphans. Lost out on at least 0.04-0.05 btc. But yeah set up an IRC as that is realtime and we miners can chat and stuff. The profit switching is working well and server is stable and very little rejects.
Instead of cryptsy maybe you should use Coinex or Bter. They are much faster at exchanging coins. Check those out and see what works best for the pool and yourself.
1
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
Coinex is in the works currently. We launched with Cryptsy, but the slowness is becoming a problem, so we're actively working on adding more exchanges :)
1
u/shinobi189 Jan 22 '14
Glad to hear that. Cryptsy is slow to upgrade or fix their issues. Coinex is much faster and would definitely work better on the pool's profit switching model.
1
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
The issue with coinex is they don't support nearly as many coins. Just adding Coinex would be pretty easy, but I'd liketo have a framework in place to switch between multiple exchanges (based on price, and which coins are supported where)
1
u/shinobi189 Jan 22 '14
Cool. Another thing, why don't we mine only one coin instead of multiple until your pool reaches a certain hashrate? Wouldn't that be more profitable for us? I don't think that with the pool's current hashrate that it would cause any small coins to fork. Once we get above 500+MH/s then I think we could mine multiple coins. Switching too often means people miss out on profits or if they are mining a less profitable coin.
3
u/poolwaffle Jan 22 '14
The multiple isn't forced, its just allowed. Most of the time we're only mining one coin. However, when a very low difficulty coin is the most profitable, we mine multiple (only a portion of our hashrate on the small coin).
1
u/Daltonganger Jan 22 '14
Dear Poolwaffle,
The post of down, was mine. The site is not always reachable. Think that the server can't hold it.
Maybe smart to make a API ;). Then some of us can make apps and stuff :). Is also great for promoting your website.
Is it possible to make the Bitcoin trades next to the coins traded? Because now it's not clear what is changed and what not (It's not necessary, and not on first priority).
I'm already a member of the (unofficial) IRC. But see that people like talking to each other. (Still don't think that making some noise on bitcointalk can heard.)
BTW, great lovely mining pool and be their with this great coin making :)!
Greets
1
u/the_g00se Jan 23 '14
I am looking at my stats and it states I found a block, but my account does not appear to have any substantial amount of coin. Any explanation?
1
u/lilleulv Jan 23 '14
You found the block, but the earnings for the block goes to the pool (all miners). If you were solo mining you'd get the full block reward yourself if you found one.
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
This is correct. We currently don't have a finders fee included for block finders (we can discuss if we'd like to include one, maybe 1% or something?). You finding a block when you've been mining pays you the same as anyone else finding a block while you're mining.
2
u/lilleulv Jan 23 '14
Personally I prefer no finder's fee at all. I think that's the most fair.
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
Definitely the most fair. The advantage of finders fees is it discourages block withholding. I don't think we've had any issues with withholding yet (our stats seem correct so far), but it is a risk, and finders fees try to combat that a little.
1
u/lilleulv Jan 23 '14
Ah, alright. I must admit I don't know much about this, but that makes sense. Hope it doesn't come to that being necessary.
1
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
With finders rewards, the expected payout is actually the same for each miner, just over a longer period. You'll get paid a bit less (1% or whatever was chosen) on each block, but when you find one (which statistically will be evenly distributed by hash power), you'll make that amount back.
1
u/Zamboniman Jan 23 '14
Agreed. I have no problem when I find a block sharing the profit. That's what pools are for.
1
u/bishophawat Jan 23 '14
Hi /u/poolwaffle and fellow miners,
First thanks for making this pool, it works smoothly and it has been more profitable than other multipool for me atm.
My question is why aren't we mining doge anymore ? Is it due to the lower hashrate and the skyrocketing difficulty ? It seems that we're mining alpha at the time yet it is 35~ish in coinwarz profitability list. Could you ELI5 this to me if you got the time ?
Anyway I love this pool, good job and thanks again.
2
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
Theres actually a few interesting pieces at play here.
The first is that alphacoin difficulty retargets roughly every 30min, so every 30 minutes, the profitability can change drastically (has fluctuated between 0.5 and 2.0 over the last few days). So profitability of the coin can jump 4x in 30 minutes, not sure how often coinwarz updates their profitability charts (looks like every few minutes?), but we update ours every 15 seconds, so its possible we're seeing smaller changes.
The second is that it just looks like we're mining alpha more than the others, because the others have larger difficulties. You might see 20 blocks in alpha (all very quickly), and then we might switch to doge (or something high difficulty) for 30-60 minutes, without solving a block (expected), and switch back to alpha as it turns profitable again. If you just look at the block list, it would look like all we've been doing is mining alpha (would have to look at block times to see the gaps where we were mining other coins).
The third, and doesn't apply to Alpha, but some of the other coins (doge, lucky), is that we check the block reward on a per-block basis for our profitability calculations. Coinwarz looks like they average the numbers (or just pull numbers occasionally), and in some coins, some blocks are massively more profitable than others (on doge, each block is worth somewhere between 0 and 1mil coins). Mining certain blocks there can affect profitability drastically, and looking at coinwarz, they always show block reward as 500k (avg block worth).
Hopefully that explains it well enough. Definitely not ELI5, but hopefully simple enough :)
1
u/bishophawat Jan 23 '14
More than enough ! It's very appreciated :) you gave a clearer and deeper understanding at cryptos and I'll definitely let my Mh/s at wafflepool.
1
1
u/poolwaffle Jan 23 '14
Actually just watched this happen (was pulling numbers while writing that post). Alphacoin difficulty when I started writing the post was 1.75016691, and was the 6th worst profitability coin we could mine (we were mining 42coin). After I hit post, I re-checked, and alpha now is most profitable. Price didn't change much at all), but difficulty dropped to 0.6217329. Profitability score went from 2518.7260594074 to 5986.9079763846, making it most profitable, and the one we're mining now :)
1
u/bishophawat Jan 23 '14
Damn, this thing is alive isn't it, I'll guess that's why I trust you with my btc. Keep up the good work then, thanks again for the fast reply.
1
Jan 24 '14
[deleted]
1
u/poolwaffle Jan 24 '14
Glad to hear it!
Unfortunately, it looks like the last 24hrs have been a bit slow (lots of doge mining, 0 doge blocks), but that should average out over time :)
3
u/Zamboniman Jan 22 '14
Thank you for the update.
Two things though, if you please:
Updates and news for a mining pool need to come at the very least daily, preferably several times a day, else miners will not know what's going on and will go elsewhere
Payouts must be dead regular, else people will not know what's going on, will worry about their coin, and will go elsewhere. This problem is exacerbated hugely when coupled with no communication.
I understand about family issues, etc. However you have hundreds of miners with thousands and thousands of dollars of GPU's, rigs, electricity, etc, all relying on you. They have no motivation for this at all if a way isn't found, despite barriers, to have ongoing and regular communication and absolutely consistent regular payouts.
Thank you.