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?
The previous difficulty increases were pretty small: 3%, 8%, 5%. (Any of which would have been the lowest difficulty increase in over a year. To have 3 such tiny increases in a row was almost hard to believe.) The most recent one was 20%. The upcoming one will be in the 15% range.
Your payouts occur only after you have entered the queue. (How long it takes for your payout to occur once you've entered the queue can vary by 24-48 hours, depending on the pool's luck and some other factors, including how many other people enter the queue ahead of you.) You only enter the queue once you have hit your threshold. If the difficulty is 20% higher then it will take 20% longer to hit your threshold. That would take the 3.5 days to 4.2 days. (Add on an extra 5% and we're at 4.4 days.) The rest of the difference is easily explained by normal queue variance. Read the link in my sig for more explanation of the queue.