Deadly Silence Peercoin Mining Pool

Economics Mining (Proof of Work)
1

Would like to announce the official first day of the Deadly Silence Peercoin Mining Pool. We went live just a few hours ago, we’re already up to 1.4 Th/s on the pool and growing.

Details/background - https://www.deadly-silence.org/ - this is where you can find us. We have two stratum servers, one located in Europe (eur.deadly-silence.org:3338) and the second in the United States (usa.deadly-silence.org:3338), we’re one of the first to offer a Peercoin server in the US. We’re starting out with a PPLNS payout system (1% pool fee) which we feel is the most fair for both miners and the pool, and dissuades pool-hopping. Vardiff is enabled, SSL, and 120 confirmations before round earnings are paid out - we felt 520 confirmations were a bit too steep. 120 is a solid number without being so low as to invite issues should a particular block become orphaned.

We have community chat and forums already setup and running - chat room at http://www.hardfought.org/phpBB3/chat/ and a digital currency forum at http://www.hardfought.org/phpBB3​/viewforum.php?f=25. We decided to keep chat and forums separate from the mining pools - if a pool has to be reset or come down for maintenance, the community chat and interface is still functional.

ArcticWolfie and K2 (me) are the server owners and operators. We both started out mining and decided we could run our own pool with a strong focus on community building and support, which we have found is lacking from the majority of pools that exist today. We’re always in the chat room, Wolfie is in Europe, I live in the states, so there’s always a good chance of catching at least one of us at any given time. You can also email us at admin@deadly-silence.org if you can’t find us online. I am also permanently parked in the #peercoin IRC channel @ freenode.

To help kick things off, we’re putting up a 10 PPC bonus for the person who finds the first block on our pool (staff excluded).

To wrap up - we’re new to the pool operation side of things. We’ve been working on this for the better part of a month, working out our game plan, running test pools with alt coins and hashing out the bugs, and so on. Are there still bugs to work out? Probably so. But we’re there to fix them as they occur and as quickly as we can with as minimal an impact on our users as possible. So give us a shot, join us in chat and jump in on the conversations there (they are lively, hah). If you have any questions, please feel free to field them here. Hope to see you there!

2

Some news, some good, some not so good…

Not so good - experiencing some issues with the USA-based stratum server. Until we get things resolved, please use only the European-based stratum server.

Good news - we’ve already found our first block in just over 7.5 hours with an average of about 1.3 Th/s total hashrate on the pool. The miners who have stuck around so far are about to see a very nice payout after confirmation.

Stay tuned, I’ll post again once our USA stratum server is behaving again.

3

Looks a nice pool, welcome to Peercoin :slight_smile:

Any miners confirm payouts work etc please post here for the benefits of all knowing the pool is stable and reliable etc

Fuzzybear

4

Hey everyone!

I have been mining alongside (and insulting) K2 and Wolfie for a number of months now and have no problem with recommending their pool to others.

While I have not received a payout from this particular pool yet (the block has not hit enough confirmations yet), I have mined at previous pools Wolfie has created, and never had a problem.

As for stability, I’m pointing at the European server, and it is super stable, unlike some I could (but won’t) mention.

The chat room is a great place for advice, as well as general off-topic chat. Everyone is really friendly with lots of long time members.

If you want a stable, friendly pool for mining PPC, check it out - deadly-silence.org.

Simon

5

[quote=“FuzzyBear, post:3, topic:1732”]Looks a nice pool, welcome to Peercoin :slight_smile:

Any miners confirm payouts work etc please post here for the benefits of all knowing the pool is stable and reliable etc

Fuzzybear[/quote]

Hi Fuzzybear, and thanks!

Will do. First block confirmation is almost complete.

Update to my last post - our USA server is back up and running just fine. Issue was a configuration flub on our end between the USA and European servers. Easily fixed once we identified it. We’ve implemented a couple other small fixes along the way. So things are going well at the moment. More to follow as once or first block fully confirms and workers are paid out.

6

Thank you simon :slight_smile:

7

Update on block confirmation - we reached 120 confirmations on our first block, and MPOS (the front-end we use) had an issue with that. Peercoin is hard-coded for 520 confirmations before newly mined/minted coins are mature. On our end we were still seeing the coins from the first block as ‘immature’ and the wallet back-end showing liquidity as a negative value. We fixed that by setting both network and payout confirmations to 520.

So long story short - our confirmations are now in line with how Peercoin was made. 520.

Which begs the question, how are other pools getting away with lower (and in some cases much lower) payouts? I suppose it’s possible if they infused their pools’ wallet with PPC beforehand to cover the shortfall for each immature block until it matured. But the inherent risk of that should that block orphan or if Peercoin experiences a hard fork and the pool follows the wrong blockchain… don’t think I’d be willing to risk that, neither as a pool operator, nor for the miners on my pool.

So there’s your transparency post for the day :slight_smile:

8

What is the number of last n shares for the PPLNS? I didn’t find this information on the pool site…

9

That’s a good question, and I’ll give you the best answer I can because I’m still learning a few things.

I want to say for our pool it’s N = Difficulty * 1.30 based on the PPLNS settings in our MPOS config. We started with the default values below:

$config['pplns']['shares']['default'] = 4000000; $config['pplns']['shares']['type'] = 'blockavg'; $config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount'] = 10; $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent'] = 30;

Since the number of shares is based on an average of blocks found, the default value of 4000000 (N) has already self-adjusted, and will continue to do so as more blocks are found.

So a couple things I am going to do, is 1) get a better understanding of what I just posted so 2) I can optimize those settings that work best for both the pool and the miners who use the pool.

Hope that helps.

10

[quote=“k2_1971, post:9, topic:1732”]I want to say for our pool it’s N = Difficulty * 1.30 based on the PPLNS settings in our MPOS config. We started with the default values below:

$config['pplns']['shares']['default'] = 4000000;

1.3 * Difficulty is not enough. For the hashrate at the pool right now, not even close enough. The number LastNShares graduades the variance for finding a block, so if it is just 1.3diff, that means that most blocks (say 95%) must be found by submitting less than 1.3diff shares. Otherwise the miners will loose, because after LastNshares further work is dropped.
However, the standard deviation is indeed higher than 0.3shares (1diff is the average for finding a block), especially on a pool with low hashrate. So personally I would be comfortable with a LastNShares value of at least 3*Difficulty. Of course that value must be adjusted after each block, because the difficulty changes after each block in PPC.

I know though, that D7 has LastNShares of 1.25Diff, but I think this is crap. D7 can only afford it because it’s the biggest pool for ppc with a very high hashrate, and it finds many blocks in short time… But when you look closer, you’ll find out that there are many rounds there that are longer than the average. Miners loose in almost everyone of these long rounds, because shares are dropped “too early”.
Then there is Fixx with LastNShares of 3Diff. They have a graph which shows the number of shares submitted over the last 85 found blocks… there you can see that most blocks (around 82 out of 85) are found within the “window” of LastNShares. That means in turn, that miners did only loose in 3 out of the last 85 rounds.

If I was you, I would think about a higher value for LastNShares. Something around 3*Diff or more maybe. It does better graduate the variance of long rounds and it will also prevent more effectively from pool hoppers, since the submitted shares on long rounds count much more for the next few short rounds. :slight_smile:

11

I’ve been coming to that same conclusion based on what I’ve been reading about PPLNS so far, I’m leaning more towards 4Diff or even 5Diff starting out (last I saw, Fixx’s pool was 5*Diff but maybe that’s changed). The estimated shares on our current block round has already self-adjusted to slightly over 6000000. Here’s the catch - MPOS doesn’t state clearly which config variable defines X for (N = difficulty * X). I posited that question on their IRC channel before I left for work, hoping someone knowledgeable replied. Thanks for asking about this.

12

Be careful not to set the LastNShares value too high, otherwise you might loose as pool operator ;).
Because in short rounds you’ll have to pay this LastNShares proportion to the miners, which might be too often more than the per block reward. That’s your risk as pool operator, which you need to graduate as well… usually via the long rounds.

Apart from that I am happy to see that the pool landscape is increasing for peercoin :). I will point my hashrate to your pool for a while, once the LastNShares question is solved…

13

Be careful not to set the LastNShares value too high, otherwise you might loose as pool operator ;).
Because in short rounds you’ll have to pay this LastNShares proportion to the miners, which might be too often more than the per block reward. That’s your risk as pool operator, which you need to graduate as well… usually via the long rounds.

Apart from that I am happy to see that the pool landscape is increasing for peercoin :). I will point my hashrate to your pool for a while, once the LastNShares question is solved…[/quote]

Hi plasmapelz,
I’ve been looking into this, but as far as I know MPOS calculates this all by itself. I asked their devs if there was anyway to set this value but they said it would balance itself out after 10 blocks (which is pretty hard for a new PPC pool). I got a small CTM pool running as well with PPLNS; https://ctm.deadly-silence.org/index.php?page=statistics&action=blocks
not sure if you can make anything out of the stats.

ArcticWolfie.

14

Hi ArcticWolfie

I had a look at the MPOS code right now, the git version here https://github.com/MPOS/php-mpos
The calculation of LastNShares is rather strange I think. There is the option to have a fixed value, which is probably a good choice when the network diff does not change very often. Then there is the option to set LastNShares to the average of the last x blocks, where x is configurable. This does only take into account the number of shares actually submitted by this pool, not the network average. So as you said, it is hard for new pools and maybe not so good of an option.

Another possibility is to set

$config['pplns']['shares']['type'] = 'dynamic'

and adjust

$config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent'] = 30;

This takes the average shares for last 10 blocks, as configured in

$config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount'] = 10;

and multiplies them by (100-30/100) - which actually decreases the value. Then it adds the shares of the current block multiplied also by 30/100. So you end up by a LastNShares value that is worse than if you set ‘blockavg’ as type. This ‘dynamic’ setting is also not documented, so it might be very new…

To sum it up, the LastNShares value is not very representative and the calculation is rather funny :(. It would be possible to come to a better value for LastNShares, when you edit the config file and make a small addition to the cronjob that is responsible for payout. Let’s say you want to have LastNShares to be 3*Difficulty:

Edit the cronjob file cronjobs/pplns_payout.php and locate the if statement starting at line 52 :

if ($config['pplns']['shares']['type'] == 'blockavg' && $block->getBlockCount() > 0) {
    $pplns_target = round($block->getAvgBlockShares($aBlock['height'], $config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount']));
  } else if ($config['pplns']['shares']['type'] == 'dynamic' && $block->getBlockCount() > 0) {
    $pplns_target = round($block->getAvgBlockShares($aBlock['height'], $config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount']) * (100 - $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent'])/100 + $aBlock['shares'] * $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent']/100);
  } else {
    $pplns_target = $config['pplns']['shares']['default'];
  }

Before the else statement at line 56 add another else if section:

if ($config['pplns']['shares']['type'] == 'blockavg' && $block->getBlockCount() > 0) {
    $pplns_target = round($block->getAvgBlockShares($aBlock['height'], $config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount']));
  } else if ($config['pplns']['shares']['type'] == 'dynamic' && $block->getBlockCount() > 0) {
    $pplns_target = round($block->getAvgBlockShares($aBlock['height'], $config['pplns']['blockavg']['blockcount']) * (100 - $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent'])/100 + $aBlock['shares'] * $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent']/100);
  } 

else if ($config['pplns']['shares']['type'] == 'ntimes-difficulty' && $block->getBlockCount() > 0) {
    $pplns_target = round($aBlock['difficulty'] * $config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent']/100);
}

else {
    $pplns_target = $config['pplns']['shares']['default'];
  }

This makes use of the fact, that the current network difficulty is obviously saved in the database for every block. You would need to verify that at a mysql prompt.

Then adjust the pplns section in the config file (originally located in public/include/config/global.inc.dist.php, starting at line 181):

$config['pplns']['shares']['type'] = 'ntimes-difficulty';
...
$config['pplns']['dynamic']['percent'] = 300;

That should be all :).

However, it is completely untested. Right now I have no time to set all those things up and do a dry run… so the code is just based on a sharp review and theory. I do also not give any warranty that it will work. If I have time, I’ll set up a test environment over the weekend - but maybe you guys have such a test environment already.
Another cool thing would be then, to propagate this LastNShares value onto the dashboard or elsewhere on the web page.

15

Thanks plasmapelz! We’ll see about running this in a test environment here in a couple days or so. Thank you very much for the feedback :slight_smile:

16

[quote=“plasmapelz, post:14, topic:1732”]That should be all :).

However, it is completely untested. Right now I have no time to set all those things up and do a dry run… so the code is just based on a sharp review and theory. I do also not give any warranty that it will work. If I have time, I’ll set up a test environment over the weekend - but maybe you guys have such a test environment already.
Another cool thing would be then, to propagate this LastNShares value onto the dashboard or elsewhere on the web page.[/quote]

thanks! going to setup a test environment tonight. Will PM you the link when I got it ready.

17

[quote=“k2_1971, post:5, topic:1732”][quote=“FuzzyBear, post:3, topic:1732”]Looks a nice pool, welcome to Peercoin :slight_smile:

Any miners confirm payouts work etc please post here for the benefits of all knowing the pool is stable and reliable etc

Fuzzybear[/quote]

Hi Fuzzybear, and thanks!

Will do. First block confirmation is almost complete.

Update to my last post - our USA server is back up and running just fine. Issue was a configuration flub on our end between the USA and European servers. Easily fixed once we identified it. We’ve implemented a couple other small fixes along the way. So things are going well at the moment. More to follow as once or first block fully confirms and workers are paid out.[/quote]

I can confirm payout works fine. The pool just had its first block fully confirmed, and my coins were paid out to my wallet address. Was very fast too, coins went right after the confirm, and I was able to fire up my wallet and they came straight in as soon as the blockchain synched. Great pool too, very fast, and the ops are very responsive, right on top of any issues, with plenty of communication via the chat site.

18

For the time being only the European server will be online!

19

7PM EST (UTC/GMT -4 hours) time zone PPC hashing party here @ Deadly-silence.org!

20

1TH already there, let’s keep it growing! ;D