Think about it, having high priority LP is no benefit to any individual miner, whether he donates or not; particularly if he has a low hashrate. Its a benefit to everyone in the pool if he has a high hashrate.
It is a benefit to the individual miner since you don't get paid for rejected work. 0.1% more rejects means 0.1% less income. Some miners might be happy to get 10% of their 1% donation back through 0.1% less rejected work.
But yes, fast miners having reduced rejected work is of benefit to all miners in the pool in the way that we make use of a higher percentage of their hash rate, which means lower variance for everyone. I am aware that variance is still the number one challenge for this pool.
Im sure you're thinking hard of ways to give people an incentive to donate
Yep, I have a list of ideas, this is just one of them. Nothing set in stone.
You wouldn't like to have 150 CPU miners appear out of the blue and ruin your LP system by setting their donation to 50%, right?
They aren't gonna get any work done anyhow and your LP system is hosed.
Yes, I have thought of this too. I have two options in mind.
First solution: Put miners in groups determined by their donations, arrange miners within each group by hashrate. Example: First long poll messages go to those who donate 1% or more, fastest miners first. Then long poll goes to those who donate below 1%, fastest miners first.
Second solution: Donation gives a boost to your hashrate as seen by the long poll system. It would have to be multiplied up a bit to be noticable. Example: If you don't donate, your hashrate is unmodified. If you donate 1% you get a 5% boost. If you donate 2% you get a 10% boost. So a 5 MH/s CPU miner donating 100% would still only count as 25 MH/s in the long poll priority queue.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts. The goal is for the pool to be better than other pools even if you don't donate, but for the donation perks to be good enough to make it worth donating. This is a difficult balance to make and you can see many internet-based companies struggle with this sort of thing. Well, who knows, some may even donate just because they like the pool.
