[BOUNTY] Mining Pool Proxy — Let Small Miners Combine Power (50 RTC)

[zhanglinqian]

Closes #258

🦞 Mining Pool Proxy for RustChain

Aggregates attestations from multiple miners and distributes rewards proportionally.

🎯 Problem Solved

Individual miners with weak hardware earn tiny rewards. The pool proxy:

• Allows small miners to combine their computing power
• Enables more consistent reward payouts
• Lowers barrier to entry for new miners
• Increases total network participation

🚀 Quick Start

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements-pool.txt

# Start pool server
python3 pool_proxy.py --port 8080

# Connect miners
clawrtc --pool http://localhost:8080

# View dashboard
open http://localhost:8080

✅ Requirements Met

✅ Pool proxy server (standalone Python script)
✅ Accepts attestations from multiple miners
✅ Submits combined attestation to RustChain node
✅ Tracks each miner's contribution (uptime, hardware score)
✅ Distributes epoch rewards proportionally
✅ Pool dashboard (simple web UI)
✅ Connected miners list
✅ Per-miner stats (uptime %, contribution weight)
✅ Total pool rewards
✅ Payout history

📊 Features

• Hardware score multipliers for vintage hardware (PowerPC, 68K, SPARC)
• Contribution weight calculation (hardware × uptime × attestations)
• SQLite database persistence
• Built-in web dashboard with real-time statistics
• API endpoints for stats, miners, and rewards
• Configurable pool fee (default 1%)
• Test suite for validation
• Comprehensive documentation

📦 Files Added

• pool_proxy.py - Main pool server (650+ lines)
• requirements-pool.txt - Python dependencies
• POOL_PROXY_README.md - Documentation
• test_pool_proxy.py - Test suite

Ready for testing!

[liu971227-sys]

Blocking review:

1. Scope mismatch for this bounty PR

• PR claims mining pool proxy (#258), but diff also includes Docker deployment, nginx configs, badge workflow, and node integration changes.
• This mixes unrelated deliverables and makes acceptance/payout mapping ambiguous.

2. Operational blast radius is too broad for one merge unit

• Runtime, infra, and feature code are bundled together, which raises rollback and incident risk.

Please split into focused PRs. For this bounty PR, keep only pool-proxy files (pool_proxy.py, tests/docs, and strictly required wiring).

I can re-review quickly after split.

[Scottcjn]

Thanks for the submission! Important design concern: RustChain avoids traditional mining pools. Our PoA consensus is 1 CPU = 1 Vote with hardware fingerprinting. Pools create Sybil risk. We would consider an affiliation/guild model instead — miners stay individually attested but share visibility/stats. No single operator controls multiple hardware identities. If you want to rework toward that model, we are interested!

[Scottcjn]

Closing — mining pools fundamentally conflict with RustChain's 1 CPU = 1 Vote design. Pools create centralization and Sybil risk. See new bounty for coalitions instead — a governance model where agents form voting blocs while keeping individual hardware identity. Thanks for the effort!