Anti-Pool Hopping Added! Please Read!

[Geebus]

We've added in code that will hopefully result in pool hoppers being deterred from leaving rounds early.

Essentially, the way this works is;

If the round duration at the end of the round is greater than 1 hour, each user is looked at to see their 'window of participation', which is the time difference between their first and last submitted shares.

If the time difference between their shares is less than one half of the round duration, their share count will be reduced by 50% and the other half of their shares will be credited to an account setup by the pool operators.

We've monitored this over the past 10 rounds and seen no higher than $0.75 BTC worth of shares removed per round from pool hoppers, and on average, less than 15 accounts are affected per round.

We believe that this will become an effective deterrent for pool hopping, as it will remove the benefit of doing so, add incentive to stay participating in the pool, and at the same time, offer FairUser and Myself a minimal compensation for all of our hard work and late nights.

We considered our options and alternatives with this for quite a long time before deciding to implement it and we believe it is a fair method that allows an easy correctable course of action for each affected miner to take.

Edit: (Posted this below, but added it here too)

I wanted to clarify exactly what this is doing...

As an example, lets say the current round has been going for 2 hours when we solve a block. Our framed window for checking on pool hoppers will be 1 hour.

Each user will then have timestamps taken of their first and last share of the round to see if the difference between them is greater than or equal to 1 hour. If it is not, we will assume they're pool hopping and we will discount their shares by 50%.

It doesn't matter if the user joins 30 minutes into the round and leaves 30 minutes before it ends, as long as they were present for a minimum of 50% of the round duration, they will not be affected.

On average, this affects 5 - 10 users per round.

This does not make shares submitted later in the round have more value.
This does not favor GPU over CPU miners.
This does not affect any user if the round is shorter than 1 hour.
This is not a score-based system.

[charleston69chew]

I say you take 100% or 50% to you and 50% to the rest of the pool. If you are pool hopping go fuck yourself.

[Geebus]

I say you take 100% or 50% to you and 50% to the rest of the pool. If you are pool hopping go fuck yourself.

We decided on 50% as the supposed benefit from pool hopping would be only an additional 30% income, and there is always the possibility that a legitimate miner simply got disconnected and was unaware, in which case, we don't want to penalize them too strictly... but I appreciate your vigor.

[Inaba]

I like this plan!

[brc]

I might be misreading this, but lets say JonnyMiner joins the pool 5min into a round, and then is disconnected at 2hrs in, and never reconnects, his time difference will be 1h55m. If the round lasts for more than 3h50m, he will only get 50% of what his alloted shares should be, correct?

I don't know a lot about pool hopping, but I would assume that someone who wants to would use one of two different strategies, neither of which this protects against. Could someone enlighten me as to the normal strategy taken by pool hoppers?

[RobertRibbeck]

I like your plan
But that doesn't address those hopping in when a block is bound to be found shortly
They can just as easily hop in during the last minutes

[cccm]

I like your plan
But that doesn't address those hopping in when a block is bound to be found shortly
They can just as easily hop in during the last minutes

well if you 'jump in' at the end you'll not submit that many shares to start with. not to mention, how do they know they jump in at the last minutes, it can just aswell take another 2hours to solve the block?

[freelancer]

Well...
I understand your point, fighting cheaters and such, and basically I agree with you.
But, for me, since I don't run a dedicated mining rig, I need the ability to shut down the thing sometimes at night, or during work (sometimes I get freezes with Adobe Acrobat + miner). In your pool solving a block takes time spans which are in the same order as sleeping/working for me, so I would probably end up getting the 50% cut quite often. This will get even worse with the next difficulty projection (150000, ~50% increase).

And, lately I found my miner (Phoenix 1.4) often idling around and requiring a restart on your pool, which further reduces the payout.

Where can I see If my payout has been reduced for one round?
You should really implement some history page for each user.

[Geebus]

Well...
I understand your point, fighting cheaters and such, and basically I agree with you.
But, for me, since I don't run a dedicated mining rig, I need the ability to shut down the thing sometimes at night, or during work (sometimes I get freezes with Adobe Acrobat + miner). In your pool solving a block takes time spans which are in the same order as sleeping/working for me, so I would probably end up getting the 50% cut quite often. This will get even worse with the next difficulty projection (150000, ~50% increase).

We considered situations like this quite heavily before implementing this, but we came to the decision that the few honest miners that may be effected by this does not warrant allowing the large amount of pool hoppers to be allowed to benefit from the work of others. I'm sorry, but thats the choice we made.

And, lately I found my miner (Phoenix 1.4) often idling around and requiring a restart on your pool, which further reduces the payout.

Thats due to the attacks that were happening against the pool, there are many threads about it.

Where can I see If my payout has been reduced for one round?
You should really implement some history page for each user.

We don't have a history for it implemented yet, but we will as soon as possible. For now, you can see in your bitcoin wallet when the payment gets sent for the block and is ~50% of your average.

[Geebus]

I wanted to clarify exactly what this is doing...

As an example, lets say the current round has been going for 2 hours when we solve a block. Our framed window for checking on pool hoppers will be 1 hour.

Each user will then have timestamps taken of their first and last share of the round to see if the difference between them is greater than or equal to 1 hour. If it is not, we will assume they're pool hopping and we will discount their shares by 50%.

It doesn't matter if the user joins 30 minutes into the round and leaves 30 minutes before it ends, as long as they were present for a minimum of 50% of the round duration, they will not be affected.

On average, this affects 5 - 10 users per round.

This does not make shares submitted later in the round have more value.
This does not favor GPU over CPU miners.
This does not affect any user if the round is shorter than 1 hour.
This is not a score-based system.