How do I find the hash "market share" of P2Pool?

Question

P2Pool is a peer to peer mining pool, offering some advantages over centralized pools:

There is no central node to take down (assuming the pool is indeed fully decentralized). Pools have suffered from DDOS attacks in the past.
An open source P2P pool should theoretically be able to operate with zero fees.

How can I find out how many people are using P2Pool?

As currently phrased, this is fairly localised in time. What's the enduring question here? — eMansipater, Sep 08 '11 at 18:28
@eMansipater - "How should I talk to a database in Java" is also time-dependent, but that doesn't mean it's not a good question. I'd like to know the answer now - and if it change, let's change the accepted answer. — ripper234, Sep 08 '11 at 18:45
"Is X being adopted?" changes monthly if not daily. Talking to a database in Java, not so much (but that's still not an amazing question for SO. Much better would be "How should I talk to a database in Java in the following situation?" or "Which ways of talking to a database in Java meet the following criteria?" etc.) — eMansipater, Sep 08 '11 at 18:50
@eMansipater - perhaps "How do I find the hash 'market share' of P2Pool?" — ripper234, Sep 08 '11 at 18:53
You can find a graph showing the hash rate of the pool over time here: http://forre.st:9332/graphs/ (or at http://localhost:9332/graphs/ if you're running p2pool on your own machine). — Chris Moore, Feb 13 '12 at 06:05

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 31 '11 at 15:53

4

In concept, P2Pool is much stronger than centralized pools. Unfortunately, most centralized pools still hold a high hash-rate.

You can see the global hash rate, and its distribution at http://bitcoinwatch.com/

My opinion is that miners are used to using slush, deep bit, and btcguild - and are either unaware of the incentives of P2Pool, or don't care.

answered Aug 31 '11 at 15:53

Alex Waters

Is P2Pool cheaper than other pools? Can it be? – ripper234 Aug 31 '11 at 16:05
The largest reason miners use the "big 3" is reduced volatility. Now medium sized pools w/ various "pay per share" methods have reduced that demand somewhat but p2pool is proportional and in proportional pools size matters. – DeathAndTaxes Oct 13 '11 at 17:48
1

@ripper234 P2Pool charges a voluntary 0.5% fee, so it's much cheaper than some other pools. Deepbit charges 10% for example. – Chris Moore Feb 13 '12 at 06:07

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