New features - Friday, September 12

[Steve Sokolowski]

We released the website features yesterday, since they do not affect mining and so that we can have a fresh slate to work off of this weekend. Here's what's new:

• There is a new "all-time balance" column in the "earnings" screen that displays how much a miner has ever earned in a coin (including past payouts). For existing accounts, the "all-time balance" started at zero yesterday, so those numbers will be slightly off until we can perform calculations to figure them out. For new accounts, the feature works as expected.
• The "miner earnings" charts, both the public chart and the private charts, have a slider below them that appears when there is more than seven days of data available. Previously, old data flowed off the left of the chart and was not visible anymore.
• The "coins mined per day" chart used to require about 300kB to load. Now, the calculations for this chart are performed on the server once per day and returned to the client, which is much more efficient in both CPU usage and bandwidth. About 8kB of data is now required for this chart, a 40x decrease from the previous value.
• I discovered an error in the profitability calculations that are shown in the charts and at the top of the page, which overestimated profitability by an average of 0.1%. Actual payouts were not affected by this issue; it was only a display problem. Even though the correct number is slightly lower, the reduced number of lost blocks is much more significant than that error was. At current, we beat Multipool by 10% and I expect profitability to increase by an additional 10% as the algorithm adjusts to the fewer lost blocks even before we make changes this weekend to enable more coins.
• There is a slight change in how "aged balances" are displayed. They now show up one day before payouts. What you see in the "aged balance" column is what you can expect to be paid tomorrow; if you subtract current balance minus aged balance, that's what will be left in your account after payment. After payment, "aged balance" changes to reflect what you will be paid the next day (if you exceed the threshold). If you don't exceed the threshold, then no payment occurs, but the aged balance will accumulate until you exceed the threshold and are then paid the next day. This should be more clear for users.