semux.info's pool is available, but is very full.
semuxpool_com is available. It does pay out for votes, but is not validator yet.
I joined this pool two days ago. You're right, it's pretty full. My first payout was only 0.16 SEM (despite putting 1400 votes total across the five validators in the pool).
The pool cant get full, the more people that join and vote, the more blocks the pool gets to forge, the bigger the payout is for everybody.
The pool calculates payout on a weekly basis, and pays out on mondays I think.
Your payout was small, because you joined at the end of the period. Probably even joined at the end of the last day. And one of their top validators was offline for most of that day.
With 1400 sem, you should get around 4 sem a week. Depending on pool luck.
Triple that when the main-net is launched, if they increase the voting reward accordingly.
The pool can be full. The more people that join and vote, the smaller share each SEM gets you.
if you have one vote in a 31k vote pool, you get 1/31k
if you have one vote in a 70k pool, you get 1/70k
A validator is not rewarded any more or less depending on how many votes it has
it gets the same priority, same number of blocks forged regardless.
A validator only needs ~32k to forge blocks. The semux.info pools all have 70k+. thus, a pool with 32k will pay out *twice* as much per vote.
@Override
public String getPrimaryValidator(List validators, long height, int view) {
byte[] key = Bytes.merge(Bytes.of(height), Bytes.of(view));
return validators.get((Hash.h256(key)[0] & 0xff) % validators.size());
}
There's no notion of votes when deciding who gets to forge next block, only that they have enough votes to become a validator.
There's no luck involved. For any given block, I can tell you who the next 200 validators to forge blocks will be, and in what order. (Validators are re-evaluated every 200 blocks, so order will change at that point)
It's in your best interest to vote for the pool with the lowest votes that still qualify for validator status (assuming pool fees are equal)