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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stan on December 14, 2013, 09:20:30 pm

Title: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Stan on December 14, 2013, 09:20:30 pm
The Ideal Mining Pool

During the past six weeks I have agonized while I watched my fellow ProtoShareholders labor in the minefields.  It breaks my heart.  So much pain and suffering.  So much uncertainty and frustration.  So much wasted time and resources.  So much for an incurable engineer to reinvent!

If I were going to design the ideal (objectively fair) mining pool what would it be like?  Well, here’s my Top Ten wish list.  How would yours be different?

Make it easy.  I hate to see people shut out because they don’t have the technical expertise to configure a bunch of source code and IP addresses.  Why can’t I just spend a millibitcoin to the pool’s Bitcoin wallet address and, boom, I’ve rented a mining node for a month?  Spend a whole bitcoin and I’ve got 1000 miners working for me.  Let all my earnings show up in my Keyhotee wallet automagically, without me lifting a finger.

Make it uniform.  As long as mining is intended to be a fair lottery why can’t we have everyone use miners with the exact same performance?  Who said this was supposed to turn into an engineering contest for miners?  That whole circus is just a side effect allowed by the fact that we assume open source software is the only way to achieve transparency.  Its not an end it itself.  Homogeneous mining pools would implement the purest form of lottery if we just had a way to enforce such a rule.
 
Make it incorruptible. I hate seeing bot nets and proprietary pools running off with the lion’s share of a distribution intended for real stakeholders.  Why leave the currency exposed to such abuses?  This is not an engineering and hacking contest!  Set up one official authorized pool and just audit its inputs and outputs to keep it honest.  Let’s see, I rented 1 BTC worth of miners out of 100 total BTC paid to that public wallet address.  I should get 1% of the total new shares created in the transparent block chain.  If I did, I can tell its working fairly.  Why does the lottery need to expose itself to hackers with a counter-productive agenda?

Uh, gee, I guess I don’t need ten wishes.  I’ll settle for these three.  Let the developer run a single authorized cloud pool. As long as we can prove it is honest by inspecting its transparent inputs and outputs, who cares?  If it gives me the same percentage of its outputs as I gave to its inputs, what’s not to like?  Why tie the developer’s hands by forcing her to open her well-intended lottery to unnecessary avenues of attack?  Take my money and give me my share.  Done!





Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: markzookerburg on December 14, 2013, 09:38:04 pm
Stan I will PM you regarding this.
Hopefully we can work something out together
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: phoenix on December 15, 2013, 01:09:08 am
I like the idea here, not sure if you could actually pull it off
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Stan on December 15, 2013, 01:12:18 am
I think the tone of this is not helpful

You may be right.  Consider it de-toned.  :)
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Stan on December 15, 2013, 01:20:40 am
Frequently Asked Questions that Would, No Doubt, be Asked

Don’t you need decentralized mining to secure the network?  You can secure the network better using decentralized proof-of-stake technology.  You don’t need proof-of-work mining for that.  And that’s a completely different issue than developing a fair way to distribute shares into circulation.  Security and distribution are only co-mingled because that’s how Bitcoin started the ball rolling.  Secure the network any way that works, but for distribution just take my money and give me my share!

Isn’t this advocating centralization? Decentralization is a tool to be applied where you need to engineer incorruptibility for the long haul.  In the case where you are distributing a currency over a relatively short period from a developer whose reputation is on the line, whose performance you can transparently audit, and who you are already trusting to faithfully implement the currency and then give up control of it -- what is the benefit of further decentralization for its own sake? 

Where does the rental money go?  To the developer — to support, promote, and grow the value of the shares you just got.  To build better wallets and block-chain browsers.  To build better trading exchanges.  To write better manuals and provide hot-line support.  To run world-wide ad campaigns and promotions and speaking engagements.  To create paid jobs and bounties for erstwhile volunteers.  To introduce new products.  What’s the alternative?  Pay an Amazon cloud farm to convert electricity into heat?  Bitcoin consumes over a billion dollars a year this way!  This is a perfect place to invoke a billion dollar innovation!

And what if, after renting miners this new way for just one new block chain, that ideal pool kept on giving you the same number of shares, at no cost, for every one of its developer’s future block chains as well? 

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the term “merged mining”, doesn’t it?
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: coyote47 on December 15, 2013, 07:54:46 am
Are you angry at the people mining PTS right now? You sound angry. I think people are generally earning PTS in proportion to their contributed col/min are they not? That sounds fair to me.

No one is going to give you BTC to run your own private mining pool.

Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: phoenix on December 15, 2013, 02:48:01 pm
Are you angry at the people mining PTS right now? You sound angry. I think people are generally earning PTS in proportion to their contributed col/min are they not? That sounds fair to me.

No one is going to give you BTC to run your own private mining pool.

What he's suggesting is that this would be the only way of getting new PTS. In this system, Invictus isn't running a mining pool, they're running the entire PTS Blockchain. This way, they can collect all the money being wasted on mining, and use it to develop more DACs, fix flaws, and make the DAC industry more well known
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Lighthouse on December 15, 2013, 03:51:42 pm
I think Invictus should not completely forsake potential users and advocates just because they have no time or skill.  Referrals is a bad system, makes the whole thing look like a pump because they get paid by the person.   If instead you let them get invested without that cost BEFORE advocating, the positioning is very different and they're not being directly paid by Invictus to pimp their product, instead they gain by the increase in value overall.

People who have no money or skills tend to have a LOT of time, seriously - Make sure you do give-aways and promotions, all of which should build your reputation.  You could reach out to some of the larger crypto blogs and give them the chance to host the contest for their readers.  The blog gets traffic, invictus gets introduced to a new audience, and the chance to win something valuable for nothing is exciting.   That is the primary thing you are doing here, removing the excitement from mining and turning it into an investment.   Fine for people who want that, but the gold rush atmosphere of early PTS did good things for the project as well as bad.   
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: bytemaster on December 15, 2013, 04:19:20 pm
I think Invictus should not completely forsake potential users and advocates just because they have no time or skill.  Referrals is a bad system, makes the whole thing look like a pump because they get paid by the person.   If instead you let them get invested without that cost BEFORE advocating, the positioning is very different and they're not being directly paid by Invictus to pimp their product, instead they gain by the increase in value overall.

People who have no money or skills tend to have a LOT of time, seriously - Make sure you do give-aways and promotions, all of which should build your reputation.  You could reach out to some of the larger crypto blogs and give them the chance to host the contest for their readers.  The blog gets traffic, invictus gets introduced to a new audience, and the chance to win something valuable for nothing is exciting.   That is the primary thing you are doing here, removing the excitement from mining and turning it into an investment.   Fine for people who want that, but the gold rush atmosphere of early PTS did good things for the project as well as bad.   

Gold Rush is mostly over now.... it did its job marketing wise and the community has been founded.   
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Lighthouse on December 15, 2013, 04:23:26 pm
I think Invictus should not completely forsake potential users and advocates just because they have no time or skill.  Referrals is a bad system, makes the whole thing look like a pump because they get paid by the person.   If instead you let them get invested without that cost BEFORE advocating, the positioning is very different and they're not being directly paid by Invictus to pimp their product, instead they gain by the increase in value overall.

People who have no money or skills tend to have a LOT of time, seriously - Make sure you do give-aways and promotions, all of which should build your reputation.  You could reach out to some of the larger crypto blogs and give them the chance to host the contest for their readers.  The blog gets traffic, invictus gets introduced to a new audience, and the chance to win something valuable for nothing is exciting.   That is the primary thing you are doing here, removing the excitement from mining and turning it into an investment.   Fine for people who want that, but the gold rush atmosphere of early PTS did good things for the project as well as bad.   

Gold Rush is mostly over now.... it did its job marketing wise and the community has been founded.   

Good point, and now that it's founded its success is a guaranteed quantity, right?   

Wrong.   Who is in charge of Marketing at Invictus?  This is all about marketing and I don't think thats part of your job Bytemaster.
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: bytemaster on December 15, 2013, 04:24:22 pm
I think Invictus should not completely forsake potential users and advocates just because they have no time or skill.  Referrals is a bad system, makes the whole thing look like a pump because they get paid by the person.   If instead you let them get invested without that cost BEFORE advocating, the positioning is very different and they're not being directly paid by Invictus to pimp their product, instead they gain by the increase in value overall.

People who have no money or skills tend to have a LOT of time, seriously - Make sure you do give-aways and promotions, all of which should build your reputation.  You could reach out to some of the larger crypto blogs and give them the chance to host the contest for their readers.  The blog gets traffic, invictus gets introduced to a new audience, and the chance to win something valuable for nothing is exciting.   That is the primary thing you are doing here, removing the excitement from mining and turning it into an investment.   Fine for people who want that, but the gold rush atmosphere of early PTS did good things for the project as well as bad.   

Gold Rush is mostly over now.... it did its job marketing wise and the community has been founded.   

Good point, and now that it's founded its success is a guaranteed quantity, right?   

Wrong.   Who is in charge of Marketing at Invictus?  This is all about marketing and I don't think thats part of your job Bytemaster.

Point well taken...
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: jeff777 on December 15, 2013, 06:00:04 pm
Yeah, I agree.. Saying the gold rush is now over.. Is like saying, hey new people don't waste your time here! Not good marketing at all..
And that was one quick gold rush!
I'm very sure most of these companies will go the way of the dot com bubble! But the ones who conduct proper business with the clients the public and miners.. (They could be giants!)
Having said that.. What is the best mining pool? I'm not having luck running ptsminer 0.4.. keeps shutting down on me..  Thanks! Happy Holidays All!
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: zvs on December 16, 2013, 06:52:08 pm
Yeah, I agree.. Saying the gold rush is now over.. Is like saying, hey new people don't waste your time here! Not good marketing at all..
And that was one quick gold rush!
I'm very sure most of these companies will go the way of the dot com bubble! But the ones who conduct proper business with the clients the public and miners.. (They could be giants!)
Having said that.. What is the best mining pool? I'm not having luck running ptsminer 0.4.. keeps shutting down on me..  Thanks! Happy Holidays All!

http://ptsweb.beeeeer.org/  gouges the least of the lot
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: jeff777 on December 17, 2013, 02:29:49 am
http://ptsweb.beeeeer.org/  gouges the least of the lot
[/quote]

Thanks, Can I use cgminer for that pool?
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: td services on December 18, 2013, 08:46:32 am
I find the POW mining to be a waste of resources unless it supports some useful activity to create value for the DAC, like providing public storage, cpu power, or other distributed resource for lease, or network bandwidth. The make-work nature of mining was what originally turned me off to Bitcoin. I later appreciated Bitcoin's other features, despite the waste inherent in the mining.

I've noticed in some of the comments in various threads that some people feel that rushing in to be an early bird should somehow entitle them to receive a disproportionately large reward.

I'm favor combining a funding round similar to Mastercoin-Exodus, the concept of Protoshares/Bitshares in Digital Autonomous Corporations (DACs), and proof of stake, decentralized exchange, like NXT. There is reward for early adopters to build momentum while avoiding too much of a bubble and subsequent fall back.

The funding would be an equal number of tranches, say 1000 of 1 BTC each, with a linear decrease of  Angel shares per tranche, 10,000 Angel shares for first tranche down to 10 Angel shares final tranche, total cap 1000 BTC for 5005000 shares. 10% additional developer shares, 500500, would also be created for a total of 5505500 initial Angel shares. Investors may purchase partial tranches for fractional Bitcoin. When a tranche is filled, any remaining investment is issued Angel shares at the exchange rate of the next tranche. I would announce a planned launch date for funding and allow presale of shares for equal distribution of shares out of initial tranches sold during presale. The numbers above are for example and could be adjusted prior to launch to suit the community's preferences.

My goal is to incorporate the best features of MSC, PTS, and NXT into a new system which maximizes funding for development, allows plenty of time for investors to participate at a risk level and price comfortable to them, and avoids the initial speculative bubble by providing a smooth buy-in curve. Proof of Stake mining continues the distribution and encourages participation in the network.

The Angel shares are used to fund new start-up DACs, allocated with stakeholders voting to approve new start-ups, start-ups exchanging shares for Angel shares from investors, and then Angelshare DAC exchanging assets with the start up for shares in proportion to the amount of Angel shares invested.

The funding round and development shares are used to fund development with bounties and salaries. Governance is by proof of stake voting with proxy by stakeholders and proxy override as an option at anytime on a vote on a particular issue.
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: Troglodactyl on December 25, 2013, 06:45:51 am
Stan,

This thread seems to be poorly named.  You seem to be arguing that "The ideal mining pool" is a traditional centralized IPO.  IPOs are great for many businesses, and you could certainly argue that an IPO would have been more efficient for getting Invictus' DACs started than PTS, but what you're describing doesn't seem to have much to do with mining, and wouldn't be as inclusive and encouraging of third party DACs honoring the PTS social contract.
Title: Re: The Ideal Mining Pool
Post by: bytemaster on December 25, 2013, 07:08:02 am
Stan,

This thread seems to be poorly named.  You seem to be arguing that "The ideal mining pool" is a traditional centralized IPO.  IPOs are great for many businesses, and you could certainly argue that an IPO would have been more efficient for getting Invictus' DACs started than PTS, but what you're describing doesn't seem to have much to do with mining, and wouldn't be as inclusive and encouraging of third party DACs honoring the PTS social contract.

You are correct, this analogy was meant to show how if mining is viewed as a black-box then it is no different than an IPO except that with mining all of the capital is destroyed.