Defining "Time to maturity" as follows:
Maturity time: This is the average time it takes to receive the due reward. High maturity time causes loss of the time value of money, and risk of the pool being discontinued before the rewards are received.
(from
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_summary.pdf)
If you find the name confusing, call it "Average time to payment" or some such.
0. Background.
The old Eligius reward method had an average time to maturity greater than that for other methods (for example PPLNS) and certainly longer than 100 or even 120 network confirmations. If there is significantly poor luck, then it may take a while for miners to receive their payment. So while the variance in payments is zero (SMPPS is a PPS variant, so all shares are paid at B/D) the time it catualy takes to recieve your payment varies from no time at all to a significant amount of time. After a pool using SMPPS solves 1000 blocks, on average miners will have had to wait for the pool to solve ~ 8.4 blocks before receiving payment (Further explanation
here).
The derivation of time to maturity for SMPPS is derived in Appendix F of
https://bitcoil.co.il/pool_analysis.pdf1. Question.
Now that I've made clear the meaning of "time to maturity" and shown (with references, albeit my own work) how time to maturity was a problem for SMPPS, I'm wondering what the time to maturity is for the new reward method. Have you derived it yet? I think it's important for miners to know and understand there may be more waiting involved than for other methods. Threads like this one would be much less likely if it was more wisely known and explained.
The background you've posted is wrong. Eligius has always paid out immediately (or as close to it as possible); while there were some delays in SMPPS due to the variance of block finding times, the maximum rewards ever took was a mere 3 days since I made sure to send before any balance was waiting that long.
Well, it was nice of you to dip into your own pocket to pay miners, that's not a part of the SMPPS protocol.
Your blog misrepresents extra credit as "owed", which it is not and never has been.
This is something you've mentioned many times, and I don't understand it. If extra credit is not owed, why pay it? If you didn't pay it, would miners still earn 100% of PPS?
Most other reward systems (PPLNS, proportional, DGM, etc) never attempt to track or pay extra credit at all - under those systems, miners never get this. It is therefore unfair and possibly dishonest to count extra credit against "time to maturity".
I don't understand this. There's no need for other reward methods to track extra credit, since they're provable fair reward methods that have variance due to pool luck (which miners on Eligius do not experience). So what "extra credit is there to track?
CPPSRB also tracks a value similar to "extra credit", but the same still applies. With CPPSRB, extra credit is actually less likely to ever be paid due to how LIFO works. On the upside, CPPSRB gives actual rewards much more like proportional, so they fit with the actual block payout availability much better without any manual sends; in normal operation, no payout should be delayed more than a single block, and most (at least on Eligius) will be paid out in the same block they are earned in.
I read the info on the Eligius site for the first time, and it's quite an interesting reward method. By assuming that 100% of PPS value won't be paid (am I right in that?) you're able to make certain that reward are paid in a timely manner. So time to maturity is reduced to 100 network block confirmations, with a trade off of increased earning variance. I think most miners would be happy earning a little less if they didn't have to be worried about when it may get paid.
Have you derived (or otherwise calculated) the expected PPS miners will earn under the new method?