Quote from: DannyHamilton on Today at 07:30:43 PM

Quote from: henry_p on Today at 07:08:18 PM

I have a harder time understanding why any "solo miner" would pay 2% to some "service provider" rather than mine on its own.

I suspect that this is probably the biggest reason:

Quote

Solo.ckpool.org is extensively connected to high speed low latency bitcoin nodes for rapid block change notification and propagation.

Solving a block is only half the battle. First, the software that is building the block headers needs to hear about solved blocks as quickly as possible so you don't waste time mining a stale block at a height that is already propagated to a significant portion of the network. Then, once you do solve a block, you need to get it propagated to the majority of the network's hashpower before anyone else does the same.

2% a a fee feels a bit high to me. While there is some risk of losing a block due to poor propagation, I'd think that for most that risk would be less than 1%?

CKPool claims:

Quote

This is a NOT-FOR-PROFIT pool

But, I am left wondering where that 2% is going if it isn't being kept as profit. Perhaps running a pool like that is more expensive than I realize.

as danny is now seeming to realise(congratulations) that its CK that create the block templates and ck that make the payment arrangement to give 98% to someone.

the reason for the 2% is easy to explain.
2% was worth alot less years ago. and ck simply has not reduced it to 1% or less, in recent years.

Quote from: henry_p on Today at 07:08:18 PM

Quote from: pooya87 on Today at 05:02:02 AM

Quote from: henry_p on Today at 02:33:04 AM

Is it not more likely that a big enough mining farm mines to a lot of different reward address, making it appear as many small solo rewarders?

What would be the incentive?

A very large miner who want to stay low profile (i.e. not advertise to the world that he has massive mining power) may prefer to appear as a lot of smaller miners. The same way one may prefer to hold large funds across multiple addresses with lower values rather than some large amounts on one or very few addresses. The blockchain is public.

the user that got a 98% reward. has 4 asics averaging 3thash/s each, all using the same reward address
{
"hashrate1m": "10.2T",

"workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.Golf1",
"hashrate1m": "2.97T",

"workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.MegaRig02",
"hashrate1m": "0",

"workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.TheOmen",
"hashrate1m": "4.15T",

"workername": "3EoqjNmeaaVvVDCPbVXxQQRH6UFpDUqpPg.MegaRig01",
"hashrate1m": "3.41T",
}

Quote from: henry_p on Today at 07:08:18 PM

But in my opinion, neither do not satisfactorily explain the several blocks found recently.

ck pool manages
{"Users": 2325, "Workers": 13532,}{"hashrate1m": "26P",
thats ~ 13532 asics running at ~2thash/sec each

with 26peta at play all working to solve a block. every 2.3 months on average the pool is going to get lucky. and within that pool the asic that was the lucky one gets the win

out of 190exa hash 26peta is a 1 in 7300 chance of solving a block
every fortnight there are 2016 blocks so on average a block 'should' be solved by ck pool once every 1month 3 weeks
but looking at the last 10 blocks solved by ck pool, it has averaged at a rate of 1 every 2.3 months.
so it has had a period of bad luck and now having a period of goodluck.
thats the thing about randomness. its never an even projected/predicted result. you can have good and bad months