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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: sittingduck on February 02, 2016, 12:49:32 pm

Title: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: sittingduck on February 02, 2016, 12:49:32 pm
Ignoring the problems with mining in general... Which is better: a coin that is mining pool proof or one that supports pools? 

Why?
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: bytemaster on February 02, 2016, 01:17:33 pm
Mining pools promote centralization of block production, but decentralization of hashing power.

A system without mining pools would be dominated by large solo miners and smaller miners would be unable to participate at all.

Overall hashpower will be lower without pool mining.

Number of block producers would be greater (better censorship resistance).

Others?
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: xeroc on February 02, 2016, 02:10:27 pm
Overall hashpower will be lower without pool mining.
More energy is waste if you don't have a pool. Simply because hardware potentially derives hashes that have been derived earlier by another miner
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: bytemaster on February 02, 2016, 02:13:51 pm
Overall hashpower will be lower without pool mining.
More energy is waste if you don't have a pool. Simply because hardware potentially derives hashes that have been derived earlier by another miner

That isn't true, every user is generating a unique sequence because their key is factored into the hash, no two miners ever generate the same hashes.
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: Empirical1.2 on February 02, 2016, 02:14:55 pm
Mining pools promote centralization of block production, but decentralization of hashing power.

What about a coin with subsidized P2P pool? https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool

Quote
Decentralized payout pooling solves the problem of centralized mining pools degrading the decentralization of Bitcoin and avoids the risk of hard to detect theft by pool operators.

I don't understand mining very well but with a subsidized P2P pool couldn't hashers get the benefit of the much lower variance they get from a centralized pool but with a slightly higher reward while the network gets the benefit of reducing the centralization of block production?
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: monsterer on February 02, 2016, 02:39:16 pm
Overall hashpower will be lower without pool mining.
More energy is waste if you don't have a pool. Simply because hardware potentially derives hashes that have been derived earlier by another miner

Only true if orphaned blocks don't contribute anything.
Title: Re: Benefit of eliminating mining pools?
Post by: xeroc on February 02, 2016, 02:41:14 pm
Overall hashpower will be lower without pool mining.
More energy is waste if you don't have a pool. Simply because hardware potentially derives hashes that have been derived earlier by another miner

That isn't true, every user is generating a unique sequence because their key is factored into the hash, no two miners ever generate the same hashes.
I came to the same conclusion thinking about it more closely.