Pool hopping... ethical or not?

[gnaget]

After reading a thread on pool hopping, I am a little discouraged by the number of people who think there is nothing wrong with pool hopping.  Now, I am wondering if I am in the minority here, so I ask you...  is pool hopping ethical?

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[pennytrader]

everybody's moral standard is different. asking the question just brings more meaningless arguments, same as if you ask if downloading mp3 is ethical.

[grod]

And why would it matter either way?  If your moral code is based completely on whether or not taking advantage of others is ethical you'd have no way to function in a modern society without just about every one of your actions voilating your moral code.  Starting with eating, receiving a salary, using financial institutions, driving...

Why would you draw the line at other bitcoin miners lining up to give you money?

[gnaget]

And why would it matter either way?  If your moral code is based completely on whether or not taking advantage of others is ethical you'd have no way to function in a modern society without just about every one of your actions voilating your moral code.  Starting with eating, receiving a salary, using financial institutions, driving...

Why would you draw the line at other bitcoin miners lining up to give you money?

I draw the line at causing undue harm to innocent people.  None of your examples results in me causing harm to people, by pool hopping, you are taking money away from people who are content with receiving their fair share for their work.

[MaGNeT]

I like to quote this:

You know, pool hopping is cheating, plain and simple.

You're stealing from the honest miners who participate in those pools.

Pools are a zero-sum game. Your gain is someone else's loss. And since you haven't done anything positive to help find a block -- quite the opposite -- you're stealing the extra, not earning it.

And don't tell me you're using "math skills" to earn more money -- thieves and con men work at their trade as well. It's still theft.

Matthew

[error]

The people to blame here are the pool operators, not the hoppers. It's the operators who encourage pool hopping through their hopper-friendly payout schemes.

To make matters worse, a large number of the miners who are being "cheated" WANT the hopper-friendly payout scheme. It's hard to argue that someone's being cheated when he asks for it.

[grod]

Exactly what error said.

Pool operators benefit from the largest possible pool membership.  They don't take a hit for pool hopping.  It's no accident that the pools named in the "other thread" have shown tremendous hashing growth lately relative to others.

Some pools are optimized for pool hopping.  Others are optimized against it.  The freedom to choose which one to use is up to you, no coercion is involved.

Also, if you live in the first world and don't think your standard of living comes from harming people living in other parts of the world you're deluded.  I won't go into detail, you can get there yourself by starting with a google for "third world exploitation" and "human cost of globalism" or even, most pertinent to this audience, "third world electronics recycling."

[joulesbeef]

none of them ban it in any TOS or when you register.

there are very simple methods to prevent hopping.

If they dont prevent it how can I care

[pennytrader]

Also, if you live in the first world and don't think your standard of living comes from harming people living in other parts of the world you're deluded.  I won't go into detail, you can get there yourself by starting with a google for "third world exploitation" and "human cost of globalism" or even, most pertinent to this audience, "third world electronics recycling."

+1

I actually moved one of my miners for pool hopping.

[FlyingFlapjack]

Here's why it matters.

A better question is, is it sustainable? And the answer seems to be...nope, and it won't last much longer. Most of the pools are shrinking while BTCGuild, Deepbit, and Slush are looking like they are going to be the only winners.

One crazy thing about the bitcoin community is that the 'clever' guy is more common than the 'average' guy. Or you could say, the average guy for the bitcoin community is a clever guy.

It's funny...I'm not at all an expert on academic approaches to ethics and morality, but one of the famous ideas from the field does apply here: Kant's categorical imperative. Basically, 'what if everybody did that?' Generally, a clever guy can say 'well, most people aren't clever so we don't have to worry about that nyah ha ha!' But the bitcoin community doesn't work like that.

What if everybody mined for a while on a small pool, then jumped off before the block was finished? A plague of grasshoppers...

Well, it is working more like this: what if the majority of miners did this? Then the minority of honest miners would gradually leave for bigger pools. When the hoppers come back for the next round, they find a major reduction in the pool's overall hash rate. Some of the hoppers look at the trend in rates and decide sensibly that it's not worth coming back to this particular pool at all next time. It's a death spiral.

The small pools seemed to be doing ok when it was still a few days avg per block. Now that it's about a week or more for a lot of them, they're falling off.

Can they change their payout structure and survive? Maybe...but maybe not. It'll be challenging for a pool that has lost a lot of its average hash rate to get people to come back. How should they do it?

[bcpokey]

As with almost all questions, you have to define the scope of what you define a problem before you can ask if something is a problem, and you of course did not, or else the answer would be clear and the thread would die.

So I argue that the question has no meaning but to the individual. I don't pool hop, though I can't say that I am averse to the idea. I consider it an annoying and legitimate strategy given the current climate. Anyone can do it, the tools have been provided free of charge by gracious people, and the benefits have been clearly laid out. As has been stated the pool operators don't care and/or encourage it. The action itself causes harm to no one except those that actively choose not to engage in the practice because they are lazy or don't understand the benefits or whatever, and are free to engage in the activity themselves.

So, I don't engage in it, but I see no problem with it. Don't like it? Support a pool that does not allow pool hopping and/or solo mine.  Simple.

[grod]

Also, if you live in the first world and don't think your standard of living comes from harming people living in other parts of the world you're deluded.  I won't go into detail, you can get there yourself by starting with a google for "third world exploitation" and "human cost of globalism" or even, most pertinent to this audience, "third world electronics recycling."

+1

I actually moved one of my miners for pool hopping.

I haven't.  I expect the free market to take care of this for me.  I invoke the fat-and-lazy-trumps-beliefs defense and simply mine at a not vulnerable pool.

[AngelusWebDesign]

The people to blame here are the pool operators, not the hoppers. It's the operators who encourage pool hopping through their hopper-friendly payout schemes.

To make matters worse, a large number of the miners who are being "cheated" WANT the hopper-friendly payout scheme. It's hard to argue that someone's being cheated when he asks for it.

So your argument is basically:

"It's the victim's fault -- they made it TOO DARN POSSIBLE so I couldn't resist!"

Or, to compared it to a more physical form of theft:

"It's the store's fault I shoplifted -- they didn't have adequate mirrors/personnel/security, so they were practically BEGGING to be shoplifted from. It's not MY fault!"

Let's see, why not apply that logic to other crimes as well:

"She was so hot, your honor! You should have seen how she was dressed! It isn't my fault I physically overpowered and violated her...she was BEGGING to be raped..."

Talk about a slippery slope. Such an argument makes a mockery of morality.

[error]

The people to blame here are the pool operators, not the hoppers. It's the operators who encourage pool hopping through their hopper-friendly payout schemes.

To make matters worse, a large number of the miners who are being "cheated" WANT the hopper-friendly payout scheme. It's hard to argue that someone's being cheated when he asks for it.

So your argument is basically:

"It's the victim's fault -- they made it TOO DARN POSSIBLE so I couldn't resist!"

Or, to compared it to a more physical form of theft:

"It's the store's fault I shoplifted -- they didn't have adequate mirrors/personnel/security, so they were practically BEGGING to be shoplifted from. It's not MY fault!"

Let's see, why not apply that logic to other crimes as well:

"She was so hot, your honor! You should have seen how she was dressed! It isn't my fault I physically overpowered and violated her...she was BEGGING to be raped..."

Talk about a slippery slope. Such an argument makes a mockery of morality.

The problem with your argument is that absolutely nothing is being stolen. Pool hoppers are playing by the rules as laid down by the pool operators.

[bcpokey]

The people to blame here are the pool operators, not the hoppers. It's the operators who encourage pool hopping through their hopper-friendly payout schemes.

To make matters worse, a large number of the miners who are being "cheated" WANT the hopper-friendly payout scheme. It's hard to argue that someone's being cheated when he asks for it.

So your argument is basically:

"It's the victim's fault -- they made it TOO DARN POSSIBLE so I couldn't resist!"

Or, to compared it to a more physical form of theft:

"It's the store's fault I shoplifted -- they didn't have adequate mirrors/personnel/security, so they were practically BEGGING to be shoplifted from. It's not MY fault!"

Let's see, why not apply that logic to other crimes as well:

"She was so hot, your honor! You should have seen how she was dressed! It isn't my fault I physically overpowered and violated her...she was BEGGING to be raped..."

Talk about a slippery slope. Such an argument makes a mockery of morality.

 

None of those examples are applicable. Raping a girl isn't a zero-sum game. Taking an item someone else paid for using force or deceit is not zero-sum either.

The closest example I can think of would be going to work at a few jobs only at the time of the day when a boss showed up to make rounds and check on if people are working or not, while everyone else was working 9-5, and drawing a check from each one instead of the people doing more work getting a raise. A rather convoluted situation that most people would consider ludicrous, and I highly doubt anyone would equate with raping some girl.

Again, the tools are there for everytone to freely pool hop if they wish, and in fact if everyone pool hopped statistically payouts would even out for everyone as though no one were poolhopping. If they don't like pool hopping they can go to pool-hop unfriendly servers or solo mine. Pretty simple solution to a perceived problem.

[max in montreal]

We are in a hobby that needs constant tweaking. We must tweak for the better.The extra 3% using the new phoenix tweak, the better pool for less stales, taking out a hard drive to save on energy, Windows versus Linux, and finally to hop or not.

The pool owners can stop it if they wanted too, but they do not.

I need to get the most from my setup, if you do not thats cool too. My morals are extremely low, so it does not bother me.

[MaGNeT]

There is one way to stop the poolhoppers:

Start poolhopping yourself... It only works if a small part of the users do it...

[ahitman]

I draw the line at causing undue harm to innocent people.  None of your examples results in me causing harm to people, by pool hopping, you are taking money away from people who are content with receiving their fair share for their work.

I can say the same thing to someone who spends money adding more GPUs to their own farm:

By spending $2000 on GPUs and mining with them, you are taking money away from people who are content with receiving their fair share for their work.  You raise the difficulty of the whole network and I make less money because of that.

[dayfall]

There are still people who don't believe pool hopping robs them of anything.  And some are quite rude when you try to reason with them.  I say it is morally sound to pool hop these people.  The pools that make a good faith effort to prevent pool hopping should not be robbed in this method.

[bcpokey]

I should listen to my own words. Now that hopping has gained more traction (used to be a very small group), I need to look at which pools are getting hopped and either change the miners on thre to hoppers or move my hashes elsewhere. I'm lazy so someone help me out here, where is the list of commonly hopped pools?