[ANN] profit switching auto-exchanging pool - www.middlecoin.com

[ButterBread]

With these higher payouts the last couple of days, I'm wondering, has anyone been mining elsewhere [Suspicious link removed]?) and had the same increase there?

Or is this just a middlecoin thing?

(seriously)

[The Fat Miner]

I have been reading this thread for a while and i understand what you mean, People do jump to conclusions, But what do you think the reason is for so many flat lines lately ? I mean, It seems to me everytime the site backs up with a lot of unexchanged coins the stats get switched off , Any ideas why?

By the way I'm not complaining because the pool has been paying me well since i started using it.

There's been flat lines lately because we're got over 15Gh/s worth of users generating a lot of database transactions, and the statistical software (apparently) doesn't scale too well with that. It also usually happens while h2o is sleeping, he is still somewhat human, so he needs a few hours of shut eye every night. During the day he is monitoring the pool software and can catch problems before they start.

Sure I can understand its a fair amount of data, And that it might be sketchy software/ Poor server hardware.

What I don't get is a pool that's actively paying out on a daily basis upwards of £100,000 is coming to a standstill statistically, Because one man goes to sleep, (While we just so happen to have massive amounts of unexchanged)

The handling of the site and the pool and the data, If you don't mind me saying, ''Should'' now be treated with a higher amount of urgency because of the status it has achieved.

Or perhaps I'm wrong and we should all accept a man that's earning £3000 a day can just forget about it until hes ready to wake up ?

Why is it your concern how much h20 is earning?  Envy?  Jealousy?

You don't like it, find another pool.  As long as my earnings here exceed those of any other functioning multi-pool with automatic BTC payout, I couldn't care less how much he earns.

H2O is running a profit-making business.  He doesn't attempt to hide how much he's making or how much he charges for his services.  If it seems excessive to you, then move along, or start your own pool--maybe you can earn big bucks too.

Where did i say it was excessive ? I've not once said I envy him or am I jealous, Good luck to him, Theres no need for you to go telling everyone to get lost because they have an opinion.

[aclass]

....

The handling of the site and the pool and the data, If you don't mind me saying, ''Should'' now be treated with a higher amount of urgency because of the status it has achieved.

Or perhaps I'm wrong and we should all accept a man that's earning £3000 a day can just forget about it until hes ready to wake up ?

I guess you will get some flame from this ... but you deserve it a bit.
The pool is still an one man army and it does seem like it was designed that way. For somebody like you, who is worried for some meaningless stats, this might be important. For the other part of us, who looks at the transactions to out wallets, this means nothing. After all, we are here to GET PAID and having every minute stats is just an extra.

If you are saying h2o should skip sleep because you want your stats... think again and move on. I think he should get as much sleep as he needs so he can be with a fresh mind and work on bottom line improvements.

And he is earning the amount because there are results from his work. Soon it might be £3000/hour and this again will be because of the bottom line results and not because of the every minute stats.

Now stop being stats-addict and find something meaningful to do during your day instead of hitting that F5 button.

All this also applies to all you other stats-addicts.

[bullus]

Seems like the stats are frozen again..no tweets

[Biggen]

Noticing that the web stats are flat lining.  Generally I wouldn't have a problem with a database problem anywhere else as it shouldn't impact payouts since we are still mining.

However, there does seem to be some correlation here at Middlecoin between flat lining web stats (read: database issues) and poor payouts.  I am hoping this isn't the case as we have been kicking ass for several days in a row now and there is no reason today's payout should come in less than 25% (or more) than yesterdays unless it's because of unexchanged.

[aclass]

Noticing that the web stats are flat lining.  Generally I wouldn't have a problem with a database problem anywhere else as it shouldn't impact payouts since we are still mining.

However, there does seem to be some correlation here at Middlecoin between flat lining web stats (read: database issues) and poor payouts.  I am hoping this isn't the case as we have been kicking ass for several days in a row now and there is no reason today's payout should come in less than 25% (or more) than yesterdays unless it's because of unexchanged.

I guess you've also noticed that even if one day we get low payouts ... we catch up the next couple of days... if not, look closed at the previous stats

[ButterBread]

What I don't get is a pool that's actively paying out on a daily basis upwards of £100,000 is coming to a standstill statistically, Because one man goes to sleep, (While we just so happen to have massive amounts of unexchanged)

The handling of the site and the pool and the data, If you don't mind me saying, ''Should'' now be treated with a higher amount of urgency because of the status it has achieved.

Or perhaps I'm wrong and we should all accept a man that's earning £3000 a day can just forget about it until hes ready to wake up ?

Why is it your concern how much h20 is earning?  Envy?  Jealousy?

Err.. But that's not what the man was saying, not at all.

Oh, and what a great "shut the f**k up or get the f** out" comeback to a reasonable observation (slow applause). After 20 pages or so, it was long overdue

Damn miners, coming here and questioning the operation of a pool they share 3% with!

Next thing you know they'll be questioning the rock as well! Heresy I tells ya, pure heresy!!

But seriously, I think the man raised a valid point. An operation this big shouldn't depend on one man.

"it's just a display issue, will be fixed soon"?

True, but anything could be happening to the pool when stats are down and no one would ever know about it. It's not like they are ever corrected afterwards (or even could be corrected, since coingeek simply captures the real-time values).

So for all we know the pool could go caca-cuckoo while the stats are down and/or the operator's asleep.

[jam3zs]

Could someone intelligent please explain something to me.

One of my cards (290) has the following stats:

HRA: 870 kh/s
Rejects: 3.6%
WU: 811.7/m
HW: 0

So by my calculations the efficiency is 101.9%

efficiency = WU * 65536 / 60 / 1000 / HRA
(*100 to get res. as %)

How can it be that high with 3.6% rejects?

[Biggen]

Wonder if H2o is/has considered bringing on a SQL programmer, even on a limited basis, to help him out with the DB issues?  Seems like we are averaging one or two issues a week now.

[The Fat Miner]

I guess you will get some flame from this ... but you deserve it a bit.
The pool is still an one man army and it does seem like it was designed that way. For somebody like you, who is worried for some meaningless stats, this might be important. For the other part of us, who looks at the transactions to out wallets, this means nothing. After all, we are here to GET PAID and having every minute stats is just an extra.

If you are saying h2o should skip sleep because you want your stats... think again and move on. I think he should get as much sleep as he needs so he can be with a fresh mind and work on bottom line improvements.

And he is earning the amount because there are results from his work. Soon it might be £3000/hour and this again will be because of the bottom line results and not because of the every minute stats.

Now stop being stats-addict and find something meaningful to do during your day instead of hitting that F5 button.

All this also applies to all you other stats-addicts.

I'm not a stat addict. Neither am I'm naive, The point I was making with the amount he is earning, Is that he can more than afford to employ extra staff to help with the running of the site and the pool, If that isn't a valid point then i don't know what is.

You can all say how great the pool is and be as defensive as you like , Fact is things could be improved drastically and with the finance flowing the way it is, It could be fixed as we speak.

[codon]

Sure I can understand its a fair amount of data, And that it might be sketchy software/ Poor server hardware.

This.  It's unlikely to be a software issue because a) it works most of the time and b) he has said the database needs "catching up".  This is a classic indicator of database I/O starvation.  H20 is using AWS and for a database of this nature, you need high I/O.  Amazon offers EBS storage blocks, but these have terribly variable performance and low IOPS.  They did create two new SSD instances types (HI1, I2) but those are all sold out.  So he's probably struggling with dropped database connections, long running queries, dropping and re-adding EBS volumes to his software raid 10, etc.

The coin trading algo is most likely database driven as well, and very time-sensitive, so my concern is that coin trading efficiency suffers when this happens as well.

[sykal]

the only problem i have with the stats flatlining, is that it lead to one of the lowest payouts last time it happened. and no, this was not followed by a large payout either.

see for yourself
http://middlecoin2.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/reports/12nDW2yYFeiLMyZB2kqNY82wEU4D5cMRxf.html

[The Fat Miner]

Err.. But that's not what the man was saying, not at all.

Oh, and what a great "shut the f**k up or get the f** out" comeback to a reasonable observation (slow applause). After 20 pages or so, it was long overdue

Damn miners, coming here and questioning the operation of a pool they share 3% with!

Next thing you know they'll be questioning the rock as well! Heresy I tells ya, pure heresy!!

But seriously, I think the man raised a valid point. An operation this big shouldn't depend on one man.

"it's just a display issue, will be fixed soon"?

True, but anything could be happening to the pool when stats are down and no one would ever know about it. It's not like they are ever corrected afterwards (or even could be corrected, since coingeek simply captures the real-time values).

So for all we know the pool could go caca-cuckoo while the stats are down and/or the operator's asleep.

Exactly! Somebody with some sense.

[ButterBread]

For somebody like you, who is worried for some meaningless stats, this might be important. For the other part of us, who looks at the transactions to out wallets, this means nothing. After all, we are here to GET PAID and having every minute stats is just an extra.

Since absence of stats causes a blind spot, it could very well be that payouts turn out lower than they could've been because of something that happened during the blackout. For someone who's here only for the bottom line, I would think making sure he gets the best possible deal would be interesting. No?

Me, on the other hand, I just come here for the ambiance and free drinks of course

If you are saying h2o should skip sleep because you want your stats... think again and move on. I think he should get as much sleep as he needs so he can be with a fresh mind and work on bottom line improvements.

I didn't see him saying that, he was suggesting getting some help to make sure things go well 24/7. How can you argue with that?

[ButterBread]

Wonder if H2o is/has considered bringing on a SQL programmer, even on a limited basis, to help him out with the DB issues?  Seems like we are averaging one or two issues a week now.

Why do you think he's having problems with the SQL programming?

[ButterBread]

Sure I can understand its a fair amount of data, And that it might be sketchy software/ Poor server hardware.

This.  It's unlikely to be a software issue because a) it works most of the time and b) he has said the database needs "catching up".  This is a classic indicator of database I/O starvation.  H20 is using AWS and for a database of this nature, you need high I/O.  Amazon offers EBS storage blocks, but these have terribly variable performance and low IOPS.  They did create two new SSD instances types (HI1, I2) but those are all sold out.  So he's probably struggling with dropped database connections, long running queries, dropping and re-adding EBS volumes to his software raid 10, etc.

The coin trading algo is most likely database driven as well, and very time-sensitive, so my concern is that coin trading efficiency suffers when this happens as well.

How does he avoid these issues affecting the mining itself then (i.e. registering shares) ? I mean, that in itself sounds like a lot of DB-traffic as well.

[jedimstr]

Looking back at the Twitter posts, it looks like some people have been helping him privately with his MySQL issues, but it would be nice if he took on a good SQL developer to optimize his setup further.  

With all the easy access to the money involved, I wouldn't blame him if he was wary of taking on more direct help.  Whomever has access to the SQL db essentially would have the keys to the kingdom so...  I know a lot of pool admins are paranoid about that and rightly so.

With hacks like what happened to Hashco.ws recently, I'd be wary too.  Eleuthria from BTCGuild has expressed similar wariness on bringing on any direct help for the same reasons, and he runs the second biggest BTC Pool out there.

[willittobe]

Gee, I wish I wasn't the only person having the issue where I can only stay connected for 20 minutes at a time before stratum starts dumping shares into the void.

Meanwhile other pools still work just fine, and my configuration never changed.

Extremely odd and frustrating.

[ButterBread]

Eric Maxey (H2O) picture:

That's not as athletic as I imagined him to be, juggling huge amounts of coins all day

Oh well, Bruce Dickinson puts on his pants just like the rest of us -- one leg at a time. Except, once his pants are on, he makes gold records!

[RickJamesBTC]

Maiden forever!

Oh look, it's tealover back to whine some more when everyone else is happy. Now it's bordering on stalking, I can't figure it out. Are you really still mining your two cards on this pool tea? With all your shit talking ?