What you are saying makes sense but what I see are basically the same payouts (small variation) but hugely varying maintenance fees. Sometimes the maintenance will be 2x the payout. Recently the last day or so there has been a lot more maintenance charges that have been more than the payout (per payout) if I average all of these transactions I get 75%+ maintenance in the last day or so. Is this how they do it? The payout is fixed per GHs and they vary the maintenance to compensate when they are unlucky?
No, the payout is not fixed per GH; the payout per GH is based on how many blocks is being hashes by antpool, divided by how many hashes were present on antpool to find that block. What you see in your daily graph in your account, is the average of that current day.
The (small) variation you see in the payouts on each block, is due to the above. A simplified example:
- 100 people hash, each with 1 PH of power, totaling 100 PH/s
- The current block reward is 12.5, so everyone gets 12.5/100 = 0.125 reward on that block
- Now 20 join in, also with 1 PH of power each, totaling 120 PH/s
- The block reward of 12.5 is now divided among 120 people, so everyone gets ~0.104167 reward on that block
What you see in the hugely varying maintenance fees, has to do with the time (the pool luck) it took to find a block. Remember, that the maintenance fee is being presented is the costs vs time (xxx $/day
) So when antpool find a block rather quickly ("lucky"), you see that represented as a 'reduced' maintenance costs on that block. And when antpool took some time to find a block ("unlucky"), you see that represented as a 'increased' maintenance costs on that block.Also, to a less volatile degree, the maintenance fee is subject to the price of the Bitcoin itself; though the price itself is a given fixed amount of $ per day, you pay your fees in Bitcoins. So if the price of the Bitcoin rises, your maintenance fee (paid in Bitcoins) goes down. And when the price of the Bitcoin drops, your maintenance fee paid in Bitcoin, goes up.