As for “it simplifies accounting”, I think you’re wayyyyy overthinking the complexity of accounting in a pool. It’s a really trivial Postgres DB and that’s it. Most of the complexity is to provide additional features users want like hashrate monitoring, device monitoring, etc. that obviously doesn’t change since users still want that info!
Discussion
Matt, you are playing semantics not me.
> it removes an entire class of liabilities that need to be tracked. The business owner no longer needs to be concerned with unredeemed shares.
This is the actual win. It simplifies life for the pool operator and reduces barriers to entry as a new mining pool.
> Most of the complexity is to provide additional features users want like hashrate monitoring, device monitoring, etc. that obviously doesn’t change since users still want that info!
Yes. And this is a dumb model. We can do better.
nostr:note1h29j4dt3kzreamzmpg8u9xkzxmwxnjwv8x4y0hmetg7yuqjmjq9sp29flx
> > it removes an entire class of liabilities that need to be tracked. The business owner no longer needs to be concerned with unredeemed shares.
WHAT?! No pool should ever, ever, ever not track the total liabilities in each ecash epoch. Sure, they can *in theory* stop tracking individual shares, but they still need to track the total shares and the shares redeemed to ensure bugs in the ecash system don’t bankrupt them.
> we can do better
Sadly, users want, like, a UI that tells them their hashrate and monitors their devices and such. That should be run locally, on that I assume we agree, but actually building that is the hard part here, not anything related to ecash. The ecash part doesn’t improve complexity here, you move the tracking locally but you still have to build it (and it’s harder to build cause you have to build it to run on the miners end)!
> No pool should ever, ever, ever not track the total liabilities in each ecash epoch.
You are jumping to conclusions. The pool tracks liabilities with absolute precision. The value add for the pool is that expiring ecash forces users to exit their position and claim their rewards. This allows the pool to zero out their liabilities in a rolling time window fashion.
> actually building that is the hard part here
Free and open source software means I can build it once and give it away to the world for free.
> You are jumping to conclusions. The pool tracks liabilities with absolute precision. The value add for the pool is that expiring ecash forces users to exit their position and claim their rewards. This allows the pool to zero out their liabilities in a rolling time window fashion.
This isn’t a unique feature of ecash. The pool could do this today if they wanted. Similarly they could not do it in an ecash system, if they want.
> FOSS means I can build this once
True, and to be clear I think this is something that should be built and would be great for the mining ecosystem unrelated to ecash! If miners start doing monitoring locally pools can track less things and that’s better for everyone. I’m still very skeptical that the last step of jumping to ecash-based shares is useful.
> they could not do it in an ecash system
Not sure I follow. This is possible and I am building it.
> I think this is something that should be built and would be great for the mining ecosystem unrelated to ecash! If miners start doing monitoring locally pools can track less things and that’s better for everyone.
Yes. It is orthogonal to eHash, (something you helped me realize :) but this is the tech we need to save bitcoin.
Nobody else has built it so I will build it. I'm gonna need help, tho.
I plan to elaborate at nostr:nprofile1qqsxhwmaw842y4zzzk580cfke4l5jr6xyh44v3v6pk59dnyzjm2a7vqcd5flv in May.
> Not sure I follow. This is possible and I am building it.
I was pointing out that liability expiry is unrelated to ecash. Pools can define liability expiry any way they want in their ToS. With or without ecash.
> local mining monitoring
Awesome! Glad it’s being built. Way too many years in the process… Have you chatted with the Sv2 folks about this? They have a protocol (starting to be) designed for auditing what shares you submitted that they want to standardize for proxy or device -> local monitoring agent.
You mean this repo? https://github.com/demand-open-source/share-accounting-ext
We are planning to migrate to a SRI extension using the share accounting extension as a model. I wasn't aware that it could be used on a proxy. That's pretty sick. 🤙