Only making the expected return per next-share-contributed be totally independent of the pool history/round-lengths can strategic entry/exit be made profitless. One way to do this is to pay a fixed amount per share no matter what the relation to successful blocks.. but that requires the pool to have a reserve and insure the long dry spells.
MaxPPS is like this, but makes the "reserve" per-user so they can't cheat the pool by withholding blocks.
So it shows as earnings, but they're on hold indefinitely until you work some more? An amount held hostage to ensure loyalty?
No, and I'm tired of refuting these ridiculous misexplanations that seem to assume some few elite
should pool hop while everyone else shouldn't.
Your examples at
http://eligius.st/wiki/index.php/Maximum_PPS always show miners with leftover 'value' balances, even with no intent to pool-hop.
The only way they seem to get these is by continuing to mine, right?
Disregarding the independent question of fees, it seems MaxPPS pays out less than PPS for any fixed time period. It approaches PPS over an infinite timeframe. Depending on the number of independent miners with small unclaimed 'value' balances, the operator might wind up holding an arbitrarily large balance in the 'value' reserve.
Hard to see why that would be preferred by miners when there are other ways to disincentivize hopping.
And I'm not even sure MaxPPS does completely disincentivize hopping. Whenever a miner has a positive 'value' balance, it seems hopping is still worthwhile: it's the best possible way to push 'earnings' up to the 'value' without overshooting which would leave still more 'value' held as a security deposit (if that's a more respectful term than 'hostage') to the pool operator.