Whalesburg MVP 0.4.0 Significantly improved payouts, Revolutionary Smart mining proxy 2.0, Powerful profits calculator and so much more Whalesburg Follow Aug 2, 2018 · 6 min read

Dear Whalesburg Community,

Our ongoing quest to build the perfect all-in-one mining platform continues with the shipping of our latest upgrade Whalesburg MVP 0.4.0. Here’s a rundown of the improvements we’ve made in the just over two weeks since our last shipment:

NEW REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES:

Significantly Improved Payouts with PPLNS

Let’s start with the money. The timely and transparent payouts is a top priority for us, so our developers are constantly working on improving that process. In this release we’ve decided to switch to Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) payouts calculation model which will lead to more accurate payouts. Here’s how it works:

Previously we had been using the proportional system, which distributes the block award to all who participated in the mining of a given block. At first glance this system seems fair but is possible for bad actors to game it by engaging in so-called “pool-hopping.” There are always times of higher and lower profitability of the pool. Pool-hoppers exploit that by jumping from one to another trying to find momentarily profitable pool and staying there just long enough to get the reward before moving on to the next one.

With the implementation of PPLNS, the number N is calculated dynamically based on the current difficulty of the network. By assigning to N a value of, for example, twice the current difficulty of the network, the block reward is distributed amongst miners who contributed for twice as long as it took to find the current block. This means that miners are rewarded for sticking with the pool over time, making it impossible for pool hoppers to exploit the system at the expense of miners who actually contributed.

The advantage of the new system can be seen in the graph below, which shows that the reward of miners who are attempting to pool-hop is much lower than what it would have been calculated before:

PPLNS as it is now implemented in Whalesburg also allows us to more fairly distribute rewards even when multiple coins are being mined at the same time. As you know, the Whalesburg pool automatically chooses the most profitable coin for mining based on each miner’s rig setup. Since there’s a wide variety of setups among pool members it may happen that, for example, half of the members mine UBQ at a profit of 110% while the other half mine ETC at a profit of 106%.

Our new system allows the difference to be spread out fairly among all pool members based on total hashpower and time contributed. Thus all miners can rest assured that, over time, they will be fairly compensated for what they have contributed to the network.

2. Smart Mining Proxy 2.0: A Completely New Solution For the Mining World

We’re excited to announce some major upgrades to our smart mining proxy server that we believe will have a big impact on the crypto mining world. To start, at a fundamental level we’ve completely rewritten the proxy server code so that it now takes into account the accumulated experience of each miner. The upgrade also includes a big improvement to the management of memory and competitive processes, with the aim of giving each miner the fastest mining process result.

Thanks to this overhaul, the new smart mining proxy server makes it possible to continue mining even when:

Changing the coin to be mined

Switching pools while mining the same coin

Reconnecting to pools in the case of network or pool failures

Load balancing between pools

In all of the above cases, the new service will keep the connection with the miner by making the necessary operations itself. These include authorization of the pool and command sending repetition on failure.

In order to better diagnose any problems with mining, all our mining services that include proxies now use a Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) for the packages involved in mining. This tracing system allows us to more easily diagnose any problems, as well as to restore events.

Our smart mining proxy 2.0 also includes several new mechanisms to determine:

The health of pools

The service no longer relies on the availability of the pool API, but instead takes into account the stratum protocol data within each connection.

The internal state of the proxy

Now we have more metrics so we know more about the current process including who is connected, what distribution, and what pools are involved.

The health of the connection of the miner.

Instead of simply relying on the established TCP connection, now the proxy looks inside the exchange, taking it into account. This will help the system to more quickly understand any problem, if there is one, that a miner may be experiencing.

BRINGING USER EXPERIENCE TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Profits Calculator

You asked for it, we built it: an intuitive but powerful calculator.

Every miner wants to know how much they can earn right here and now. We’ve integrated that ability right on the main page (as well as on your stats page) so you can always easily reference your expected yield in the next hour, day, week, or even month.

A lot of work went into the development of this tool. It combines eight factors to calculate a better estimation of profits than — we believe — any other tool out there. These are the variables considered:

Network difficulty

Network hashrate

Pool hashrate

Average block reward

Average block time

Coin to BTC exchange rate

BTC to ETH exchange rate

To make the tool even more accurate, we don’t rely on average network values. Instead the tool uses the more accurate statistics gathered by our pool data. Not only that, but when you enter your hashrate into the tool, it first determines which coins will be mined by the pool if you connect, then based on that it calculates the expected profit — we know of no other profit calculating tool that has this ability!

2. Instructions

As you may know, one of Whalesburg’s goals is to democratise crypto mining by making it easier for anyone to get involved. To that end, we’re always working to simplify the process and, where necessary, provide education on frequently encountered problems. Our mining instructions page is one of the venues we use to provide such education. In this release, you’ll notice some additions to that page including instructions for how to generate a config file for hiveOS and Phoenix miners.

3. Monitoring Bot for Telegram

We’ve designed a convenient Telegram bot to assist your monitoring activities. Here’s what it can do:

The bot notifies you when a worker did not have a share for more than the specified time (which is five minutes by default). It also warns about the return of the worker if it has the share. The bot can show current status relating to:

when the last share was submitted

what the current hashrate is

how many workers are online

how many workers are offline

Please feel free to add @whalesburg_monitoring_bot

You can also disable notifications if you are experimenting.

IMPROVING OURSELVES

UI: Leaner and Meaner

Even though we are constantly adding to and improving the application, we always make sure to cut unnecessary bloat wherever possible. So we are very pleased to confirm that this release is actually 70 kB lighter than the last one, meaning bandwidth load has been reduced by 15%. It may not seem like much, but as software junkies we know every byte counts.

It’s also important that the suite of tools available to miners using our platform is easily accessible. To that end we are constantly tweaking the front-end. In this release we’ve included display optimization for 13-inch screens which are commonly used to monitor diagnostics on dedicated mining rigs.

Thanks as always for your support.

Please watch out for the next upgrade coming soon!

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