Quote from: Meatball on August 16, 2011, 05:05:04 PM

Quote from: being on August 16, 2011, 04:46:23 PM

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.

Actually, if everyone stopped mining when the buffer was negative, there would be btc earned that would simply not be paid at all under the current PPS model, even after all mined blocks had been confirmed. Roll Eyes

But if everyone continues mining, the pay could be delayed indefinitely. If you wanted to know a certain timeframe, the best you could do is a probability simulation that the buffer would return to non-negative value within that timeframe. You would have a % chance of return to positive, which would mean the pool got caught up on payments. The math is not easy.

from a blackjack website: "Risk of ruin problems are mathematically usually very complicated. It is easier and more convincing to run a random simulation instead."