Newby question. I've been mining with Eligius for a month now. How come it went from a 3-1/2 day payout, fairly consistently, to now a 5-1/2 day payout? Is that just the luck of the pool for now or is there another explanation. I noticed it happened around the time of this last difficulty increase.
Yes, the difficulty increase means that it takes that much longer for you to hit your threshold. Unless you build up your hashrate to keep up with the difficulty increases, your payouts will become less and less frequent, if you keep your payout threshold the same.
I saw absolutely no change from any of the other difficulty increases. And since we theoretically have the same amount of miners hashing away, makes no sense that it should take now 2-1/2 days longer?