Status as of Tuesday, April 3, 2018

[Steve Sokolowski]

Good morning!

• Last night, Chris successfully changed the load balancer so that it would better allocate connections to mining servers. Previously, we allocated 1/4 of all IP addresses to each server. Now, two servers have 3/16 of IPs, and the other two have 5/16 of IPs. That should improve CPU usage, and efficiency, until more mining servers become available in two days.
• Now that the "low luck" miners have started to be notified, it's becoming clear that many of the miners are renting hashrate from NiceHash. Please note that renting from a cloud rental service does not reduce your responsibility to ensure that rented miners are working correctly. Customers who use low luck miners will forfeit balances regardless of whether they do so intentionally or not. If you find yourself being identified as having low luck, then we suggest that you rent hashrate from different sources.
• To clarify many forums questions, we do not plan to discuss what is considered "low luck," because this changes over time. We are extremely confident that there are very few false positives, even before enhancements - and if you are targeted as a false positive, mining for a few more days will almost certainly result in returning to normal status. Again, it doesn't make sense to discuss what defines low luck because there is nothing a normal person can do about it; it just goes away by chance over time.
• I plan to spend the next 7 days significantly enhancing the "low luck miners" algorithm with about 10 improvements. The first step will be to expand the scope of the existing identification so that we can increase confidence and withhold even more balances, while removing the few false positives that have occurred so far. Expect some releases over the next few days as we use the information we are now collecting to improve the algorithm. Once finished, I expect that we will be able to eliminate over 99% of these miners. It's feasible that we can improve profits for everyone by as much as 11% as a result of these additions.
• The missing piece in this "low luck miners" investigation is the reason for the miners' existence, which would make it easier to troubleshoot. If it's a defect, we want to know what type of miners have the defect. If it's criminal activity, we want to identify the people or organizations responsible. Whatever the case, it's clear that a lot of people know about this issue, especially if GregoryGHarding's "conspiracy theory" about someone paying miners to run poisoned rigs is true. If Greg is right, and people are participating for profit, then it shouldn't be difficult to turn someone involved. If you are knowingly participating in a low luck scheme, we'll give you $50, release your withheld balances, and grant you immunity from legal liability for past involvement in the scheme if you are the first person to submit a support ticket explaining how the scheme works and what the benefit is for those involved.
• The fiber installation is on schedule to be completed on Friday. During the time the system is offline, the forums and E-Mail will be offline too. It is possible that payouts may be delayed on Saturday, since many exchanges only allow API calls from one IP address and it takes time to change them over. If you expect payouts on Saturday and desperately need the money, I suggest lowering your payout threshold before Friday to be paid as much as possible before the downtime.
• We have an 85% no-response rate on tickets, which to me seems pretty high. I want to try to figure out why so many customers submit problems, then never reply after being asked for more information.
• This week, Constance will be focusing on security issues. First, she will be adding a recaptcha ("I am not a robot" checkbox) to all user logins. Currently, there are about two million invalid password attempts per day from automated robots, and some money is undoubtedly stolen as a result of weak passwords without two-factor authentication. I just realized that the addition of a recaptcha will completely eliminate the ability of these bots to try numerous passwords, which means the criminals will need to employ humans to tediously enter passwords thorugh a time-consuming process. Constance will also be adding an "E-Mail on payout address change" textbox. The system will generate an E-Mail to the address in the textbox when a payout address is added, changed, or when the E-Mail address in the textbox is modified.

[mclarney2535]

Thank you for your update Steve. I got the Low Luck miner notification on 1-Apr and its still on my account. I personally own 2 D3's and 2 U1 Antminers that are the only hardware mining on my account. I hope im one of the false positives because I dont know what else it could be. I dont rent any equipment.

[balzsam]

Hi all, another great fog making in point 5. If the people can't explain or prove something they start making conspiracy theories.
What is "low luck" scheme? And what is "normal luck" scheme? What is "poisoned rig"? Is it a rig which do not have any real hash power and nevertheless finds encrypted blocks and earns money? Is it perpetum mobile or something better ? Can someone to mine cryptocurrencies on prohashing without sending real hash power there? Is it possible mining and earning without real computing hash power? How to find blocks without hash power? Is it really possible? I want such mining equipment.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I understand your concerns. I've made some progress in getting to the bottom of the "low luck" issue and am working with some customers on it. We've made some connections between observations we've had over the past few weeks and are coming up with a theory. We may also be on to who is responsible.

As of now, we don't have any evidence that any more than one or two people has been wrongfully identified. There are a number of people who we believe have been correctly identified but did not intend to conduct this type of mining. There is nothing that can be done by low luck miners to improve their luck, so we still don't plan to write a tutorial on how to do that.

I'm not confident yet in the strength of the evidence we have to discuss our results, given that making a false accusation could result in legal consequences. I'll keep people updated once we have strong enough evidence to make an allegation.

[CSZiggy]

I always thought Nicehash paid for total hashpower thrown on the account, not how badly the OC made errors appear, as long as the bottom line was total hashrate you got paid for it. If the errors were so bad the renter of the hash got squat they didn't care.

Or does this go back to that boost mining crap?

[balzsam]

"There is nothing that can be done by low luck miners to improve their luck, so we still don't plan to write a tutorial on how to do that."
That's mean that mining continuation is ineffective and didn't help?

[pavvappav]

So, if low luck miners switch to mining a static coin that takes little luck to find a block (Like today is Rabbitcoin, DonationCoin, or Trinity for Scrypt), then would they be classified as non-low-luck miners? (and at the same time rule out the evil-miner-selling-hashpower-to-cloud-mining-services theory).

If, even after selecting via the 'c=' param to mine a 'easy' coin, they don't yield finds you almost for certain know something fishy is occurring.

[Fausto]

Hey I have no problem being a "low luck" miner, which seams that I am, BUT can I at least get what I earned paid please? it is above the threshold .

btw, I only mined with you guys a few days and I am a little concerned in allocating my machines here if my balance don't get paid because this "low luck" of mine.

I can guarantee you I am a legit and have a fully working Antminer L3+ and it does work also with Nicehash and Litecoinpool.org, only here I had this issue.

I think I am a false positive. I am available for chat or email or phone call or whatever you think you need to see my case and help me nad yourselves with this issue. I am willing to let you guys even connect to my Antminer L3+ so you can debug this.

[CSZiggy]

Mine another day, then the low-luck should go away and you should get all the payments.

[Steve Sokolowski]

Mine another day, then the low-luck should go away and you should get all the payments.

Chris made some changes so that the problem goes away sooner. They should be released in a few hours, so I think you'll be very happy then.