Prohashing Mining Pool Forums

joshn712 wrote:Why would the #1 first step not be to stop letting people sign up? sure there are all these others issues that may go with it. Bitmain and Innosilicon both stop selling when they can't meet demand. Why not here? It lets the owners control more rather then others controlling it.
I don't understand why not at least do that.. Unless of course you are only signing up 1 or 2 a day. You are working in your business right now not ON it.. shutting off signups is an ON issue...

Because the following will happen:

1. Customers who want to sign up will receive an error message
2. Those customers will read about the site and want an account
3. Smart people will list accounts on eBay
4. Large miners will bid up the price of accounts until they are valuable
5. Small miners will see that their accounts are worth more than their hashrate is earning and list their accounts
6. Small miners get replaced by large miners that use the same accounts because it is no longer profitable for small miners to buy accounts
7. The pool now has more hashrate than before, and customers paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for an account and are angry they aren't getting a certain level of service

Steve Sokolowski wrote:

joshn712 wrote:Why would the #1 first step not be to stop letting people sign up? sure there are all these others issues that may go with it. Bitmain and Innosilicon both stop selling when they can't meet demand. Why not here? It lets the owners control more rather then others controlling it.
I don't understand why not at least do that.. Unless of course you are only signing up 1 or 2 a day. You are working in your business right now not ON it.. shutting off signups is an ON issue...

Because the following will happen:

1. Customers who want to sign up will receive an error message
2. Those customers will read about the site and want an account
3. Smart people will list accounts on eBay
4. Large miners will bid up the price of accounts until they are valuable
5. Small miners will see that their accounts are worth more than their hashrate is earning and list their accounts
6. Small miners get replaced by large miners that use the same accounts because it is no longer profitable for small miners to buy accounts
7. The pool now has more hashrate than before, and customers paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for an account and are angry they aren't getting a certain level of service

I think you are making assumptions far beyond your control. But hey what do i know, I have only been doing this for 20 years. I employ people like you, people that are brilliant at programing but need help running a business. Again you are focused IN not ON. what you figure that out you will be better. Either way we are here to help if you like.

Also raising the fee for a pool that does not work is not the correct answer, we don't raise the fee for subscribers of our service to deter others. We fix the issue then grown, then fix and grow ..

Steve Sokolowski wrote:
Because the following will happen:

1. Customers who want to sign up will receive an error message
2. Those customers will read about the site and want an account
3. Smart people will list accounts on eBay
4. Large miners will bid up the price of accounts until they are valuable
5. Small miners will see that their accounts are worth more than their hashrate is earning and list their accounts
6. Small miners get replaced by large miners that use the same accounts because it is no longer profitable for small miners to buy accounts
7. The pool now has more hashrate than before, and customers paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for an account and are angry they aren't getting a certain level of service

That's quite an imagination you have there Steve

Let's give it a try then so we can earn least earn a few bucks selling our accounts on ebay, god knows they're worthless as it is.

Steve Sokolowski wrote:After reading all this, it seems to me that people want stability and the only true way to achieve that is to raise fees.

Well, I'd like it to be a little more complex than that, and I'm not sure why @vinylwasp's suggestions aren't being considered. He had some really good ones. If you fee me to death, I'm still gonna leave, because I'm not the one f***king up the pool, so why should I be the one paying for it?

vinylwasp wrote: 1.) An SLA model. On registration you agree to pay higher fees for guaranteed capacity in set GH/s bands - difficult to implement
2.) Pool fees start out very high and get lower and lower over a few days/weeks, the longer you maintain a fixed hashrate +/- 15% - easier to implement + rewards loyalty/penalises short term swing mining
3.) A policy is introduced which says short term miners (need a statistical definition) will be charged a high premium on their payouts (say 10%). You'd need to base it on a large variance in hashrate over a period time otherwise a swing-miner could just leave a single 100MH/s A2 mining permanently (so they appear to be a longterm user) while they swing 50 GH/s in and out a few hours per day while profits are high and break the system in the process.

These are great starting points.

I'd agree with #2. Loyal, consistent customers get reduced fees, short term, NH, opportunistic customers get butchered by high fees.

I think we all agree that NH is evil, and the root of most of our capacity problems. Well, then introduce this fee structure to hurt them. Consistent hashrate from hardware miners that stay here for the long haul aren't fee-d to death, and NH is. Boom.

What's wrong with that plan?

Steve Sokolowski wrote:After reading all this, it seems to me that people want stability and the only true way to achieve that is to raise fees. They would have to be double what they are now to make an appreciable difference.

Is that what people would prefer?

BANGS HEAD AGAINST THE WALL

So let me get this straight...your saying that raising fees will increase stability because current customers (mostly smaller miners) would leave because it isn't profitable, therefore reducing hash etc...? And this is the ONLY way to do it? I'll state this again, who cares if the accounts gain value? And this is assuming that your hypothesis of how it would play out, played out...personally I think maybe its a bit farfetched...but let's assume its set in stone through some magic crystal ball that this is what would happen...Let's play it on out further...

Smaller miners sell their accounts yadda yadda. So what happens next? Well, you kinda left out a few things in the middle, and this is based on what YOU have said. During this time you will be gradually improving stability, correct? And I'm assuming you are also planning to fix these issues to where they aren't there any longer as well, correct? Obviously this scenario wouldn't play out over night. So even the remotely intelligent people who are serious about mining wouldnt just put their accounts on ebay the day new accounts were stopped, therefore they would see the pool improving. So if your able to improve the pool even gradually, people aren't going to sell their accounts...Simple common sense. I would hope your improvements aren't going to take years, so before this end all scenario of yours played out, the pool SHOULD be stable enough to open up new accounts.

Now, like I've said before, I'm not promoting or dismissing this idea, I'm just engaging you on your comments. So, back to the raising fees...I'm sorry to sound like a smart a$$ but for the love of god man, go take Economics 101 at your local community college. I don't care how big or small the miners are, IF YOU ELIMINATE PROFIT, YOU GO OUT OF BUSINESS! Saying that raising fees therefore eliminating profit would make people leave the pool, therefore that's how to reduce hash...I can't fathom how this is POSSIBLY a decision that makes sense in running this business.

I'm not dismissing the fees idea altogether nor am i promoting it, but to the extent you are saying just makes zero sense!!!!! I just have to repeat myself yet again...make your current customers happy before you worry about the next guy because once the current customers leave, that new guy becomes those customers who left and follows suit.

People are coming here because they can make more money. If you take that away, they won't come...So you loose your current customer base and can't draw in new customers because they can't make money...this is how business works.

I can't begin to claim to know the technical aspects of this pool and don't claim to. But as a CPA whose built a large firm from the ground up only to have it fail and force me to live out of my car and then build a 2nd firm up again...I can speak to economics and business. Whether you know it or not and whether anyone will say it or not...I'm telling you, you are at or rapidly approaching the tipping point. You said yourself recently, and I concur, that this could be the largest pool out there...But also this pool could fail miserably!

I'm thinking I'm pi$$ing in the wind here but I like this pool and I don't want to see it fail. So for what its worth, that's my 2 Satoshi, yet again.

just a quick scan of the new comments since i posted. all seems to be directed to spikes in hashrate. i propose a secondary measure. when hashrate/workers hit a maximum limit, disable API requests, enable again once falls below set threshold, bots will move on to other pools, NH becomes a non issue, no fee increases, pool stability.

GregoryGHarding wrote:just a quick scan of the new comments since i posted. all seems to be directed to spikes in hashrate. i propose a secondary measure. when hashrate/workers hit a maximum limit, disable API requests, enable again once falls below set threshold, bots will move on to other pools, NH becomes a non issue, no fee increases, pool stability.

Hell yeah!

@Steve Sokolowski - please comment on this perfectly valid recommendation

GregoryGHarding wrote:just a quick scan of the new comments since i posted. all seems to be directed to spikes in hashrate. i propose a secondary measure. when hashrate/workers hit a maximum limit, disable API requests, enable again once falls below set threshold, bots will move on to other pools, NH becomes a non issue, no fee increases, pool stability.

Definitely the best idea so far!

I completely agree with disabling user signup and limiting hash rate until the issues have been ironed out. People can point excess hash rate elsewhere while the pool is being upgraded.

If we don't disable user signups people would sign up under multiple accounts, still achieving the same hash rate, is why to disable user sign up, add an option that says "Let us know when you're accepting new user accounts" shoot them an email once the new servers have been added.

Next idea, for people with higher hashrates why not give them there own dedicated stratum server?

Raising rates is the wrong answer, it won't get rid of the traffic that you have, you would have to raise the rates in such a way the pool would no longer be profitable.

As one of the smaller miners, raising the pool fee would probably drive me away, depending on how much of a rise it is.