But hey, I have no real source other than hearsay.

Greg


On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Greg Sanders <gsanders87@gmail.com> wrote:

> From what I understand stratum is more popular.
>
> Greg
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 9:53 PM, David A. Harding <
> notifications@github.com> wrote:
>
>> In en/developer-guide.md:
>>
>> > @@ -3185,6 +3185,94 @@ Bitcoin Core.
>> >
>> >  ### Alerts
>> >
>> > +## Mining
>> > +{% autocrossref %}
>> > +
>> > +Mining adds new blocks to the block chain, making transaction history
>> > +hard to modify.  Mining today takes on two common forms:
>> > +
>> > +* Solo mining, where the miner is also a full peer on the network.
>> > +
>> > +* Pooled mining, where the mining pool is a full peer and the miner just
>>
>>  Luke Jr's pool supports it, but [getwork is] obviously not required.
>>
>> @instagibbs <https://github.com/instagibbs> I was under the impression
>> that getblocktemplate was effectively required for pools these days.
>> Here's some back-of-the-envelope math regarding the deprecated getwork:
>>
>>    -
>>
>>    Current network hashrate: 50,000,000 gigahash per second (GH/s) (
>>    source <http://bitcoinwatch.com/>) or 30,000,000,000 GH per block. To
>>    generate just 1% of all blocks thus requires 300,000,000 GH/s.
>>     -
>>
>>    getwork provides a single header with a single 4-byte
>>    nonce---allowing the generation of a maximum of 4 gigahashes.
>>    -
>>
>>    Dividing the 300,000,000 GH/s by the 4 gigahashes available in each
>>    request results in a minimum of 75,000,000 getwork requests a second.
>>    Even if it was possible to generate that many, each getwork request
>>    consumes 1 KiB of bandwidth (source<http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/360/what-are-the-bandwidth-requirements-of-a-mining-rig>),
>>    so that's 600 gigabits per second of bandwidth.
>>     -
>>
>>    Hacks like nRollTime can reduce the number of getwork requests by up
>>    to 1,000-fold (if everyone uses it---nRollTime is *more* effective
>>    the fewer miners who use it). That still leaves you with 75,000
>>    getwork requests a second and 600 megabits per second of bandwidth,
>>    which is an awfully big expense for a 1% to 5% commission on generating an
>>    average of 1.44 blocks per day. And with hashrates incleasing at 10% or
>>    more a month, it's just unsustainable.
>>
>> On the other hand, getblocktemplate can theoretically result in as few
>> as a single request per block per miner (regardless of hash power), but
>> more realistically one 5 to 50 KiB request every 10 to 30 seconds per miner.
>>
>> Anyway, that's why I ignored getwork in the section. However, I'm happy
>> to change it if I've made an error.
>>
>> —
>> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<https://github.com/saivann/bitcoin.org/pull/66/files#r11667072>
>> .
>>
>
>