Hello,

I'm still going through the p2pool code. I have however a few questions about how p2pool works.

1) Is it correct to assume that the instance of the Tracker class in p2pool/util/forrest.py is the actual share chain? It seems to keep track of all the shares in the share chain. Or is this assumption wrong?

2) As jtoomim pointed out, the "Time first seen"  on the p2pool web page comes from self.time_seen = time.time() of the class BaseShare in p2pool/data.py. I wonder how much time passes between this time_seen, and the addition of the share to the share chain. I'm trying to put some timers in the code, but I'm not very successful in my attempts. Can someone suggest a way to get the time between the "Time first seen" and the addition to the share chain. I would like to modify the p2pool client and run it on several computers to get an estimate of the time I need to add to "Time first seen" to get the approximate time it takes to update the share chain.

3) Another problem I'm facing, but which is related to the problem I have in question 2, is that the flow of a share between the moment the node detects its existence and the final addition of it to the share chain is not very clear to me. My image of the process is for the moment the following:
* the main function in p2pool/main.py creates an instance of class P2PNode from p2pool/node.py.
* the instance of P2PNode handles the p2pool shares and the bitcoin blocks, through functions like handle_shares, handle_get_shares, etc... This part I understand reasonable well I think. For example in the method handle_shares it adds the shares that were given as parameter to the method to the tracker if the tracker didn't know them already. I was able to add some lines to the code that return the time it takes to process the new shares.
My problem is that I can't for the moment connect the methods in P2PNode to the time function in BaseShare (and the classes that inherite from this class Share and NewShare). I don't understand how the processes in P2PNode are chronologically speaking arranged versus the time function in BaseShare. Would someone be able to clarify this to me? It would be a great help.

4) My last question is related to a discussion between jtoomim and veqtrus. From the forum posts I could understand that the share size is relevant to the size of the bitcoin blocks found by p2pool. Apparently the sum of the size of the transactions in the different shares tells us something about the expected size of the bitcoin block if a block is found by the p2pool network. So on average a share is found every 30 seconds. A bitcoin block is found on average every 10 minutes. Under the rules in the main p2pool network the shares are 100kb. So after 300 seconds on average the shares will have a total of 1mb transactions, and after 600 seconds on average the bitcoin blocks would be 2mb. Is this correct?
There is however something I don't understand. The hash of the header of the bitcoin block contains the merkle tree of the transactions the block contains. So these transactions can't be changed without changing the merkle tree, and the block hash. Now p2pool creates its own shares, which have also a hash, that can potentially be a hash that is accepted by the bitcoin network. This hash needs to have sufficient zeros in front to be considered as a block in the bitcoin network. So the share hash contains I suppose also a merkle tree of the transactions. This means I think that those transactions can't be changed either. My question is now, how can this work? How can the transactions of several shares be added to get for example after 300 seconds 1 mb of transactions in a bitcoin block. If transactions are added, then the merkle tree changes, and also the share hash. So the work done by the miners would be lost. Of course I know that I'm missing something, but can someone explain me how it works, and where in the code I can find it?

Thank you in advance