Start out as a new miner. Mine 16 shares. With average luck, you'll get paid for those 16 shares. With above average luck, you'll get paid for those 16 shares, and some people who mined before you also get paid for their shares. With bad luck, you get nothing.
Expected value is less than 100%, even if there are no orphans, unless you assume that Eligius lasts forever.
The difference is that once you stop mining with Eligius, the pool will still pay you out shares if it is lucky, whereas every other pool will stop immediately (or after a few hours with PPLNS)
Well, yeah, that is the difference.
I'd say it's also a disadvantage.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a significant disadvantage. But the idea that you one day might have dust which will disappear in 30 days later unless you go back to mining, and that collecting that dust would be necessary to get the same expected value as everyone else,
is a disadvantage.
That is where the expectation value of Eligius goes back to 100%, and it is where you "benifit" of the phenomenon that "handicaps" you when you start mining, that is, if the pool is lucky, it pays older shares, not your shares.
But again, you only capture that extra % if someone keeps mining after you stop.
Hopefully it's small. I suspect it is. Maybe even negligibly small. I'm curious as to what it is, though. I guess it depends on too many variables, though. Among other things, will everyone else stop mining with Eligius when you do?
I agree that to uncover shares buried deep into the share log, you will probably wait a very long time. But it is as unliquely that a significant amount of your work will pay other than yourself. So it evens out.
It evens out so long as Eligius keeps growing, perhaps. But that can't happen forever.
Sure it matters. The people at the very end of the shelved share list have virtually no chance of ever getting paid for those shares, in large part because the block rewards keep going down and the difficulty keeps going up.
In Eligius pool, the shelved shares are NOT stored as a given BTC amount, but a fraction of the block reward. When the pool finds a blocks, it then pays the shares at as function of the block reward at the time the block was found, not at the time the share was submitted.
So your balance in units of "block reward fraction" does not depend on the actual block reward. The expected "worth" of the unpayed shares will be cut in half when the block reward will half.
Not exactly. The expected value will decline more smoothly than that. But for the most part I think we're saying the same thing. The expected value goes down as the difficulty goes up and the block rewards go down.
Eventually Eligius will cease to exist. At that point, if there are any shelved shares, then Eligius has paid out less than 100% PPS (including transaction fees) minus orphan %. Those shelved shares are never paid.
Yes, but Eligius will have never owned such money. All the unpayed shares left are only attribuable to the pool's bad luck. A PPLNS pool would not have done any better. No body is ripping off anybody here.
I'm sorry if I suggested that.
(Although, possibly somebody is ripping off everybody, if anyone is engaging in a block withholding attack.)
Yes a given user might have had more money (even over 100%!) if the PPLNS pool was lucky when the user mined on it. But a given user might as well have had less money if he was unlucky when he mined on it.
Whether the pool is PPLNS or CPPSRPB, on average users have had exactly the same reward. The only difference is that there is more variability in PPLNS: Some users are over-rewarded, others are under-rewarded. BUT THE AVERAGE OF BOTH METHOD IS THE SAME.
The average over all the participants over all time, yes. The average of a new participant, no.
Just consider a miner who once mines a single difficulty 16 share.
At that point, you chose which method you prefer. If you prefer to gamble, you should prefer PPLSN. You might get lucky. Or not. With CPPSRB, you cannot go over 100%, it is true, but you cannot go as far under it as you could with PPLNS.
With CPPSRB, just as with PPLNS, you can get 0%. Again, consider a miner who once mines a single difficulty 16 share.
It also depends on what you define as "fair". What is fairer:
-That everybody's work, whatever the time it is submitted, has equal worth? That CPPSRP
I'm not sure what you mean by that. It's certainly not true under CPPSRP (or any sane system) that 1 gigahash, whatever the time it is submitted, has equal worth.
-That the pool should pay shares more if it is luck and pay shares less if it is unlucky? That PPLNS
In any case, this debate is slightly pointless, because, for any user who has been mining for a few months, the difference between both method is very, very small.
Right now it is. I'm worried about block withholding attacks, though, and the cost of that attack to the attacker is much smaller under CPPSRP than PPLNS.
I am interested though, in calculating just how small the difference is assuming no block withholding, though. Or at least putting a really small upper bound on it.
