When setting up my P2Pool node, I did some math and tried to assess the state of the code. I think the calculation I used was something like: 25BTCx$1000/BTCx1%=$250/block. Let's assume the price is $500 and P2Pool gets one block/day. 25BTCx$500/BTCx1%x30days/month=$3750/month or $45,000 per year. It did not appear to me that anybody was working on the code full-time (or even half-time).

I set my pool donations to 0.1% It is a level that triggers a "consider donating more" message in the log. Part of the reason is that the code does not work with mining proxies. I have examined the code and determined what the problem is. The slush stratum proxy that I looked at tries to auto-detect stratum support by sending a dummy getwork request first. However, P2Pool also auto-detects the protocol the miner is using. In this case, it falls back to the getwork protocol, which the mining proxy does not support. I could not see an easy way to disable the autodetection because it is also required for overloading the pool stats. I even thought of a possible simple work-around, but have not gotten around to testing it yet: Make use of the x-stratum (would have to look up the exact name) header that the proxy expects. TL;DR: I figure I can donate patches rather than BTC... If I can just find the time.

I suspect that default 1% donation to one developer may actually discourage code contributions and encourage forking. That is, forrestv gets all the credit if somebody submits a patch. I don't think that is intentional though.