Earnings errors resolved

[Steve Sokolowski]

There were two earnings errors on March 2.

The first error involved an incorrect Dash price that was received at 5:30pm EST on March 2. The price caused miners who were mining Dash during that time to be credited 1000x normal earnings. After hours of investigation, Chris was unable to determine the root cause of the problem. However, he was able to determine the correct earnings and adjusted balances. For that minute when the price was incorrect, customers received our normal 15% bonus - but since the problem only occurred for one minute, the impact of the bonus was minimal. Customers who were overpaid as a result of the error have negative balances and have the good fortune of being able to earn back these debts at the now lower value, given that coin prices have declined overnight.

Because Chris was not able to determine the cause of the problem, he instead added yet another failsafe. Now, if pool earnings increase more than 33% between yesterday and today, payouts will be automatically delayed for manual intervention.

A separate issue affected one customer who sent a lot of ethash hashrate to the pool to statically mine Ethereum. The hashrate appears to have been rented from Nicehash in response to a configuration error where we incorrectly believed the block reward for ETH was 3 instead of 2. While we originally intended to pay at the incorrect rate of 3, we found that there are no blocks recorded as having been found during this time. The error is not a database problem, because the blockchain also does not contain any records of Ethereum blocks having been mined by us. There was an ETH block found last night by someone else as well. We're still trying to figure out what the bug is that affected this one customer; that is why the earnings for March 2 appear to be higher than most recent days.

[CSZiggy]

Customers who were overpaid as a result of the error have negative balances and have the good fortune of being able to earn back these debts at the now lower value, given that coin prices have declined overnight.

So if a coin was worth $100, and it has now declined to $50, how is that a good fortune if they now have to mine 2X as long to repay?
whether its $ owed or payout coins earned owed back, wouldn't it have been good fortune only if the price INCREASED meaning they got paid extra for a full days worth of mining but then would only have to mine a percent of the next day to repay it? If the coin prices have declined doesn't that mean more work is required to repay?

A separate issue affected one customer who sent a lot of ethash hashrate to the pool to statically mine Ethereum. The hashrate appears to have been rented from Nicehash in response to a configuration error where we incorrectly believed the block reward for ETH was 3 instead of 2. While we originally intended to pay at the incorrect rate of 3, we found that there are no blocks recorded as having been found during this time.

I was unaware a block actually had to be found in order for a non-solo miner to be credited with rewards. I thought BTC was turned off from time to time after being mined for a while and no blocks being found. Were all the miner's on BTC not paid during the time they were mining and not finding any blocks at the pool? I've mined LTC statically before, and got paid for the full days worth of mining, but the pool has gone days at a time before hitting a LTC block and yet I still got paid. Was the nicehash user solo mining? If not solo mining then whether a block was found or not shouldn't effect the rate the pool was advertising it was paying out that would have made that user pay money for a contract to come here and mine at that rate.

[ajs]

"have the good fortune" => Sarcasm

[Muleslayer]

yes it was very nice to see a $5.00 day jump to a $50 day!
fair is fair but it really sucks to see a negative balance in earnings!
I have at least 8 more days at a negative balance to get square with you.

[Steve Sokolowski]

Customers who were overpaid as a result of the error have negative balances and have the good fortune of being able to earn back these debts at the now lower value, given that coin prices have declined overnight.

So if a coin was worth $100, and it has now declined to $50, how is that a good fortune if they now have to mine 2X as long to repay?
whether its $ owed or payout coins earned owed back, wouldn't it have been good fortune only if the price INCREASED meaning they got paid extra for a full days worth of mining but then would only have to mine a percent of the next day to repay it? If the coin prices have declined doesn't that mean more work is required to repay?

A separate issue affected one customer who sent a lot of ethash hashrate to the pool to statically mine Ethereum. The hashrate appears to have been rented from Nicehash in response to a configuration error where we incorrectly believed the block reward for ETH was 3 instead of 2. While we originally intended to pay at the incorrect rate of 3, we found that there are no blocks recorded as having been found during this time.

I was unaware a block actually had to be found in order for a non-solo miner to be credited with rewards. I thought BTC was turned off from time to time after being mined for a while and no blocks being found. Were all the miner's on BTC not paid during the time they were mining and not finding any blocks at the pool? I've mined LTC statically before, and got paid for the full days worth of mining, but the pool has gone days at a time before hitting a LTC block and yet I still got paid. Was the nicehash user solo mining? If not solo mining then whether a block was found or not shouldn't effect the rate the pool was advertising it was paying out that would have made that user pay money for a contract to come here and mine at that rate.

It's not necessary to mine twice as long. The debt is owed in coins. Since the coins are worth less, the debt is also worth less.

In regards to the issue with the low-luck miner, the documentation states that we reserve the right to halt payments to customers identified as low-luck miners. Despite that, we have never actually executed that action upon anyone. In this case, the odds of the results we saw occurring by pure chance are less than 1 in 10 million, indicating that there is almost certainly another cause. We're investigating that now to see what we can find.