Mining pool test - An audit of 4 major ZEC pools

I realize I may have come across as a bit of an F2pool fanboy in the past (love the PPS consistency) but I’m not one to limit my options, and alternative ZEC mining experience for me was admittedly only with Suprnova which I found terrible.

Since I had a unix box with four identical 7950’s on hand (all Sapphire Dual-X HD7950, same undervolted bios, same modest clocks tallying 195h/s on claymore 10 in nofee mode) I decided to have a go at some statistical analysis.

Included in the study were F2Pool (of course), SuprNova, Dwarfpool and Flypool… Unfortunately I wanted to keep all stats from the same rig or else coinmine.pl would have been a target of mine also. Maybe down the road.

Of note during my sample over 4 days this week, day 2 posed a bit of a glitch or DDoS attack on Dwarfpool’s stats front end but all shares were counted and awarded.

After day 2 I switched to ssl encryption for Flypool and Suprnova since they offered it. Since I was in nofee mode this posed little to no difference in coin output.

[img]//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/zcash/original/2X/c/cc7fcc655dd7eb338bdac33a86ceb3dc90ce5f41.png[/img]

RESULTS AS FOLLOWS

The basic result (as an F2Pool fanboy) was fairly surprising:

Suprnova daily average output over 4 day sample: 0.01725
F2pool daily average output over 4 day sample: 0.018209995
Dwarfpool daily average output over 4 day sample: 0.0179318525
Flypool daily average output over 4 day sample: 0.01968

This was for an consistent average hash rate of 195H/s

Dwarfpool roared ahead early on, took me completely off kilter but had long spells with no blocks found on day 3 and then at the end of day 4 which substantially lowered its average and allowed FlyPool to take the crown overall.

Daily output was as follows with top performers of the day in bold:

    Day1                Day2                Day3               Day4           

Supr 0.0167 0.0184 0.0169 0.017
Fly 0.01944 0.02004 0.0202 0.01904
F2 0.01913016 0.0170826 0.01834198 0.01828524
Dwarf 0.02102721 0.02075111 0.01224441 0.01770468

Suprnova, as I have commented in previous posts… continued to substantially under perform. This time during the whole 4 day sample period coming out on bottom by a fair margin. Shortly after switching to Suprnova’s encrypted ssl server there was a 15 minute span where I was not connecting to the server for some reason, slightly lower (than the usual low) output can be noted at 68h sample period. Otherwise up time was 100% for this pool and all others.

F2pool wasn’t ultimately as superior as I had thought. It was consistent however. Dwarf was a serious contender, not sure if it was plain bad luck that the DDoS and 5-6 hour periods without a block happened during this 4 day span but I did email the admin with some questions and received a prompt and reasonably helpful reply. I would certainly be willing to give Dwarfpool another try in the future.

If I were to do this over again from the start I would have used Suprnova’s anonymous service instead of creating an account and logging in to check stats periodically. At this point I think I have lost enough profits with them though, and will no longer point any of my miners at those servers.

Below are samples from about every 4-9 hour ranges. The hour periods aren’t quite accurate but what is 100% accurate (and most important) is that the samples were taken from all four pools at the exact (within a few minutes) same time.

Complete results below:

                2h              6h              9h              14h             18h
Suprnova        0.0028          0.0043          0.00710         0.0108          0.0127
Flypool         0.00298         0.00565         0.00847         0.01252         0.01479
F2Pool          0.00342587      0.00540378      0.00807881      0.01206289      0.01417031
Dwarfpool       0.00194295      0.00700330      0.00978087      0.01585492      0.01585492?
                21h             24h             27h             34h             38h
Supernova       0.0154          0.0167          0.0178          0.0266          0.0284
Flypool         0.01748         0.01944         0.02149         0.0313          0.03204
F2Pool          0.01760740      0.01913016      0.02091812      0.02772563      0.02896988
Dwarfpool       0.01841846      0.02102721      0.02566824      0.03251574      0.03389649
                42h             48h             52h             60h             64h
Suprnova        0.0324          0.0351          0.0386          0.0454          0.0478
Flypool         0.03708         0.03948         0.04413         0.05157         0.05421
F2Pool          0.03343559      0.03621276      0.00397645      0.04648660      0.04844491
Dwarfpool       0.03660347      0.04177832      0.04458077      0.04987837      0.05130574
                68h             72h             76h             82h             86h
Suprnova        0.0495          0.052           0.0538          0.0582          0.062
Flypool         0.05677         0.05968         0.06352         0.06825         0.07251
F2Pool          0.05135270      0.05455474      0.05782642      0.06260428      0.06592747
Dwarfpool       0.05130574      0.05402273      0.05804559      0.06249757      0.06663951
                90h             96h
Suprnova        0.0622          0.069
Flypool         0.07516         0.07872
F2Pool          0.06872565      0.07283998
Dwarfpool       0.07043799      0.07172741

I captured screen shots during each sample period as available for viewing/confirmation here: [url=https://mega.nz/#F!LJhCnbzC!OXdEiM08UK8_7FFeBQHwmw]MEGA.

I hope this is helpful for some of the ZEC miners out there. I welcome any comments/criticism as I tried to be as non partial and scientific about this as possible.

6 Likes

Very informative! Thanks for your work :wink:

Ey Thanks mate, useful information.

was no sweat, just reposted from my bct thread and realized some may be staying away from there for whatever reason.

very helpful!
thank you @smak