Quote from: DaveF on Today at 01:07:10 PM

A very interesting point, Loyce had scraped all the blockchain data needed to conduct such a study, I have the tools and skills to do what you want, the problem is I can't seem to figure out a perfect and fair way of doing so.

This kind of study could probably work only by comparing two pools and not the whole PPLNS vs PPS pools, another problem would be the fact that some pools are PPS+ while the others are FPPS, where the former pays the block fees in PPS while the latter pays it in PPLNS so the profit from the transaction is subject to the pool ability to find blocks in the first place as Novepool has explained - if someone knows how one would EXACTLY go about all these factors I would be willing to conduct the study.

Although based on my own experience which can't be used as evidence since many factors could have affected it, I made more BTC mining on a PPS+ pool despite paying a larger fee, it has been about 2 years since I moved nearly all of my hashrate and the gears I manage on PPS+ pools (currently testing Binance pool for one of my clients), before moving to PPS I divided my hashrate power between PPLNS and PPS+ pools and IIRC in the course of 4-6 months PPS+ was the better option, but again, many factors could have contributed to the results, and for the record, the reason I moved to PPS was not this tiny little experimental I had.

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PPLNS pool that only finds a block or 2 a month / week if they miss the big fee blocks

What seems to be easy to guess is that PPLNS pool with small hashrate that finds a block once in a blue moon will be the less profitable compared to large PPLNS pools (pool fees ignored), since the fees reward spikes only last for a few days or weeks at best, those small pools's chances of hitting a block during that short period of time are slim, while large pools will most certainly manage to hit a few blocks with handsome fee rewards.