Now that everything is back up and running, I'm going to announce a few changes coming to BTC Guild in the coming weeks:

1) BTC Guild will be moving servers again, to a datacenter than can offer more redundancy to the network for higher uptime.  It will be in Illinois, directly on nLayer's network (not a sublease of a sublease of a leased datacenter).

2) This move should be seamless compared to previous moves.  The new server will be sync'ing with the current database before any DNS changes are made.  Ideally, you will see 1 longpoll disconnect, and 1-3 rejects (depending on how big of a work queue your miner stores up), once your DNS has grabbed the new IP address.

3) The pool software will be receiving a few tweaks to be more aggressively aware of botnets which have seen a resurgence since bitcoin went back above $3.  This change will automatically enforce bans for inefficient workers.  While there is some luck involved in finding a share from a getwork, efficiency should never be below 50% after a few dozen getworks have been processed, unless the miner is grabbing significantly more work than it can use.

4) Mining teams will become available.  Similar to what is seen on Deepbit, a Mining Team is not a way to alter your rewards, but instead a way to group up with friends or colleagues.  Teams will have a stats page visible showing the most efficient members, the fastest members, and the luckiest members.


Along with these changes, the site will see a few minor improvements to page load times.  There will also be some work done on the backend to prepare for allowing users to choose between PPS with a 5% fee and PPLNS with a 2% fee, giving users a choice between two fair payout systems, neither of which can be pool hopped.