Has anyone actually done any maths about the negative buffer? Like how long in reality would the delay be?
I see a lot of people crying about it, but it seems as if many of them don't really understand what would the negative buffer really mean. It's not like you would get less btc for the work done. It would only mean, that the pay would be delayed a bit. Even if the buffer stays constantly negative, you would still get paid, when new blocks are found. But with a tiny delay.
The delay would vary depending on when the pool found it's next block and how quickly it was confirmed. So, for sake of argument let's say we hit 0 BTC buffer and everyone is paid. We then start working on the next block, building up shares we're waiting to be paid for. Let's say it takes 12 hours to find a block. We then have to wait for that block to get 120 confirmations before that 50 BTC can be released for payouts. Of course, during the time we're waiting for approval, we all keep building up more shares that are waiting to get paid. Even if you stop, you will eventually get paid for all those shares, assuming the pool doesn't go under.
Hopefully we'd find more blocks and work our way out of this, but it's not really a simple calculation to determine delay in payment.