Quote from: clown on January 19, 2014, 02:42:00 PM

Quote from: mdude77 on January 19, 2014, 02:38:51 PM

It has been attempted before. I forget what it was called ... someone put up a server to do just that, complete with merged mining. It was fairly popular until it was hacked. I think you search the forums you can find it, I think the source might be available as well.

M

You'll have to enlighten me, I've searched long and hard and didn't see anything. Care to drop a name?

I just remembered the name. Was p2pmining.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66202.0

There wasn't any risk to the pool operator, to my knowledge. The basic principle was the subpool had it's own share chain (or equiv - could manage with a properly designed database) to track the p2pmining users. Each share was also submitted to the real chain under the p2pmining address. When a payout occurred, it was divided among the users in the subpool based on their piece of the subchain. This also allowed merged mining to occur at a sub pool level, instead of basically solo, which is what p2pool is now.

The downside, of course, was it was a mini centralized pool, subject to possible pool operator abuse and hacking. Hacking is what brought it down..

M