Quote from: jake262144 on May 09, 2012, 05:28:04 AM

Stickied? Well done, let's hope the hash rate skyrockets to 3xx where it belongs.
Thanks for all your hard work Doc.

Yay! Congrats everyone, we made it

This should help with recruitment of new miners.

Quote from: Fefox on May 09, 2012, 12:12:07 AM

Have a few categories: Open Class / Bitminter Client only class / FPGA Only / GPU / CPU

Detecting which miner software people are using is already done, but whether they mine on FPGA/GPU/CPU is more difficult. I could make BitMinter client report it (make it an option maybe), but other miners won't.

Quote from: Fefox on May 09, 2012, 12:12:07 AM

some kind of 50/50 donation draw. all donations of every .0005 or some set amount is a ticket to the draw, 50% stays with the pool, the other 50 goes to 3 winners 1st 25% / 2nd 15% / 3rd 10%

I like this idea. That would give an extra incentive to donate during the race, which could hopefully cover some of the expense of prizes.

Quote from: Fefox on May 09, 2012, 12:12:07 AM

I really like the idea of, "Best Proof of Work"

Yes, I think that might work better than the number of proofs of work. Best proof of work = the proof of work with the lowest hash. I like how this is verifiable. If your miner reports when it creates a block (bitminter client does) then you can verify that blocks you created are credited to you. You can double check the hash on blockexplorer if you want. Lowest hash wins. Maybe call it "finest quality minting".

Anyone can get lucky and create the "best" block. But more hashes means a better chance to win.

Only downside is, if someone creates a block with an extremely low hash, others may give up as they see it as impossible to beat. So the race might effectively end near the beginning.

Quote from: P4man on May 09, 2012, 07:05:41 AM

If you are going to make it simply a MH race, it will attract only GPUmax buyers, and those wont stick around. If you are going to make a competition of sorts, Id make sure everyone has at least a chance of winning, so you can attract any kind of miner and they might stick around.

You are right. What do you think of "best proof of work"? It may strike a good balance between hash power and luck. It's the same thing as with creating blocks. The race stats could even show "difficulty to beat" for the 3 best blocks.

Quote from: P4man on May 09, 2012, 07:05:41 AM

Id make a mining raffle, where every submitted share is a ticket giving a chance to win. YOu might even allow people to buy additional tickets, although I assume the price wont make it worth it.

The 50/50 donation draw suggested by Fefox could work as a kind of raffle.

Quote from: P4man on May 09, 2012, 07:05:41 AM

As for the prizes; well, the higher the better

. Adjust the chance of winning to make it worth your while. Maybe you can throw in some feebies, like allowing the winner to chose some text to embed in the block header for posterity?

Hmm, yeah. That is a cool prize. blockchain.info shows the generation coinbase interpreted as text. The winner could get to include a message in a block we create after the race is over. Maybe put some restrictions on it so offensive messages are not allowed.