New poll question available

[Steve Sokolowski]

I've added a new poll question about the future of Nicehash.

We're currently investigating a situation where over $4000 was lost, potentially due to a security vulnerability in Nicehash's system. We will post more about the issue if Nicehash does not reply to our ticket, which has been outstanding for a week, within a few more days.

This is not the first time that we have dealt with Nicehash issues, and we are considering simply banning Nicehash from the pool. Please comment in this thread about whether you believe that's a good idea, and also vote in the poll we just put up.

[tucsondirect]

i personally feel nicehash needs to go, or be penalized for the abuse the pool sees... but my stake in the matter is very small

[CSZiggy]

Myself I haven't used nicehash since they were internally hacked back in Nov 2017 and have yet to make my balance whole.



I am at a loss how a place that sells hashrate could cause a loss due to their security to mining on this pool's site. Are they able to send 10GH and get credited for sending 12GH? The pool records what hashrate they are receiving from nicehash for that miner/user correct?

If the pool had posted a higher payout or higher block reward than what it was supposed to pay out, how would nicehash have anymore to do with a loss issue than someone else just turning on 40 machines that were turned off prior, or miningrigrentals or any number of the 10 other places you can sell and buy hashrate to apply to a pool.

Unless the prohashing pool was using its hashrate to mine over on nicehash for a payout that was not credited, I do not see how nicehash created a loss here. Could you explain how their site pointing hash to the pool equals a loss of profit on the pool.

[Steve Sokolowski]

Myself I haven't used nicehash since they were internally hacked back in Nov 2017 and have yet to make my balance whole.



I am at a loss how a place that sells hashrate could cause a loss due to their security to mining on this pool's site. Are they able to send 10GH and get credited for sending 12GH? The pool records what hashrate they are receiving from nicehash for that miner/user correct?

If the pool had posted a higher payout or higher block reward than what it was supposed to pay out, how would nicehash have anymore to do with a loss issue than someone else just turning on 40 machines that were turned off prior, or miningrigrentals or any number of the 10 other places you can sell and buy hashrate to apply to a pool.

Unless the prohashing pool was using its hashrate to mine over on nicehash for a payout that was not credited, I do not see how nicehash created a loss here. Could you explain how their site pointing hash to the pool equals a loss of profit on the pool.

As I stated earlier, I'll talk more about Nicehash after the matter is settled. We're pretty certain it's a Nicehash problem.

The purpose of this thread is to determine how many customers would be impacted by the change.

[JoeTheMiner]

Steve,

This would affect me as my mining bot uses NiceHash. I wouldn't be able to mine here anymore so I don't think this is a good idea to ban them. I don't know how they could have affected the pool (other than a block withholding attack) so interested to hear more about that when details are available.

[turbochicken]

I also run NiceHash bots, together with some manual NiceHash mining. So, I obviously think it would be a bad idea. I'd be forced to leave and find an alternative.

Was it just me, or was the poll question ambiguous? It asked "dollars per week would you move", but the selection was 'number of votes'. I'm assuming 1 vote = 1 dollar? Calculated for that user based on their mining activity over the past week or so? (Thus giving a weight to bigger miners).

Bear in mind that my (and I expect others) NiceHash mining activity fluctuates depending on certain variables. When conditions are more favourable I can mine up to x100 more than an 'average week' as I'm sure your data shows. So distributions of votes may not be fair (if you happen to make your poll during low, or indeed high NiceHash mining activity).

I'm just pointing this out, while trying to remain objective - It honestly wouldn't be a huge deal for me, I'd just have to reconfigure my system to use other pools. The main reason I use Prohashing is trust, reliability, API and web interface. You guys do a great job.

I'm also interested to hear more details about this potential NiceHash vulnerability as I don't understand how the pool would suffer? Surely only the NiceHash user? I've been screwed over by them plenty of times...

Which brings me to my final question - has Prohashing got any plans to buy/sell hashpower? I know another pool has just released a feature to do this. The more competition NiceHash has, the better. They currently have an unhealthy monopoly over this market imo.

[CSZiggy]

I find it amusing that the previous two posts both mention mining bots that use nicehash for their hashrates.
Last I checked using bots on this pool was illegal. You were only allowed to either use autopool or manually select coins.

But I am still of the opinion that its the cherry-picking bots that do operate illegally that are taking money away from the autominers that mine on this pool. Which makes the profits lower and drives potential miners away. That 5-10% profit margin can make or break a pool.

[JoeTheMiner]

I find it amusing that the previous two posts both mention mining bots that use nicehash for their hashrates.
Last I checked using bots on this pool was illegal. You were only allowed to either use autopool or manually select coins.

But I am still of the opinion that its the cherry-picking bots that do operate illegally that are taking money away from the autominers that mine on this pool. Which makes the profits lower and drives potential miners away. That 5-10% profit margin can make or break a pool.

It isn't against rules to run a bot. Only is against the rules if it uses information not publicly available. My bot plays by the rules and doesn't hurt the pool. There is a difference between a cherry-picking bot and the type I run. I use information publicly available from Prohashings API.

[Steve Sokolowski]

I read Nicehash's terms of service today and was pretty shocked. They disclaim just about everything. For example, I bet that most renters don't know that they don't even promise that you'll get what you're paying for. They basically state that you rent hashrate, and if those miners don't perform as advertised, then that's your problem. They don't even give you the seller's contact information when there is a problem, so their answer to any problem is "it's in the terms, go read them."

As someone else said, they also state that they aren't responsible for their own hack on December 6, 2017. They even say that they can seize your money if they suspect fraud, without listing any procedure for how to contest the seizure.

With Nicehash, there are big surges of hashrate that don't produce as many blocks as expected, and this issue occurs repeatedly. Most Nicehash rentals seem to be fine, but then every once in a while one rental causes thousands of dollars in losses.

Nicehash's unwillingness to take any responsibility for issues with their service is what causes the issue we're dealing with now. The level of customer service we want to provide is a higher standard than what Nicehash is willing to provide. The customers who rent these miners are being scammed by someone, so it isn't good customer service for us to push the liability onto the victims. I suspect if we decide to do that, then it will generate a lot of negative publicity. But we can't continue to accept Nicehash's losses either, so the only way out I see is that we need to ban Nicehash miners. But I'm willing to take suggestions on how to deal with this issue.

[JoeTheMiner]

I'm not for sure how you would deal with that other than banning them. I would really hate that if that's what you decide but I completely understand it if they are causing thousands of dollars in losses. I've noticed as well that their customer support has always said they are not responsible for anything. If there was another decent competitor to them I would switch in a heartbeat, unfortunately their isn't as far as I am aware.