Remove "generate bitcoins" from standard client?

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I think it's time to remove the generate bitcoins option from the standard client or at least put a strong warning on it.

We've had quite a few people say something like "I've run the btc miner for 3 months 6 months or whatever and haven't gotten anything"
I would say for every person that posts and tries to find an answer 10 or more just give up / think it's a scam.

At this point CPU mining is almost pointless. The amount of time it takes to get a block makes the chances of getting one so low.

What do you guys think? Obviously have a client available to CPU mine if for some reason someone wants to.

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[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

Quoting holy-fire because he said it so well.

"I agree with dsg and stonetz. To summarize the required changes to the site:
 - Remove the suggestion to turn on bitcoin generation.
 - Remove the estimates for the time taken by a CPU to generate a block. They will always be outdated and it's useless information (as Jim said, it already takes several years instead of what's on the site).
 - Emphasize that generation is done on a GPU by a separate software.
 - Add discussion of trading and references for possible places (Forum/Marketplace, otc, mtgox, Coincard+Coinpal...). Especially shops and organizations who consider accepting Bitcoin need information on easy ways to exchange them for fiat currency.

And, of course, the bitcoin generation should be removed from the client. It was nice for a while, but now it does little more than mislead.

Now, for the most important part - who should be contacted about all this? I'm guessing Gavin is one option. Are there any others in control of the site?"

[stakhanov]

I know I'm the minority here, but I think a big warning is enough.

I like the generation function of the default client. I'm not into mining, but I still like the opportunity to get lucky someday. Also, it reminds people of the existence of mining, which is good for the network. Mining should not only be in the hands of a few specialists.

BTW, why not add GPU generation in the default client? I know it will be a lot of work to support all platforms, but it doesn't have to be done overnight.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I know I'm the minority here, but I think a big warning is enough.

I like the generation function of the default client. I'm not into mining, but I still like the opportunity to get lucky someday. Also, it reminds people of the existence of mining, which is good for the network. Mining should not only be in the hands of a few specialists.

BTW, why not add GPU generation in the default client? I know it will be a lot of work to support all platforms, but it doesn't have to be done overnight.

Good point, I'm torn between remove it and a big warning.
If you could add the GPU to it that would be nice. Hopefully someone can say how easy or hard that is to do.

[dsg]

Adding GPU mining would add a lot of dependencies (OpenCL framework, etc) to the bitcoin client that 99% of people will not need. Therefore it makes sense to split mining into it's own application with those dependencies.

Also, remember that the bitcoin program is a financial program. It needs to be secure. The more bells and whistles added, the larger the attack surface and the more danger of subtle bugs creeping in.

Of course, mining should be explained - but there's no need to tease every user with the option when a tiny fraction of them will be using it. Those users can easily fetch one of the many miners available.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

QUoting holy-fire because he said it so well.

Thank you . But it will look better if you use the standard quoting format.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

QUoting holy-fire because he said it so well.

Thank you . But it will look better if you use the standard quoting format.

Not sure how to quote post to post... I can give it a try.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

QUoting holy-fire because he said it so well.

Thank you . But it will look better if you use the standard quoting format.

Not sure how to quote post to post... I can give it a try.

You don't need to use a forum feature for this, you can do it manually. You can use

Code:

[quote] or
[quote=Holy-Fire] or
[quote author=Holy-Fire link=topic=4786.msg70546#msg70546 date=1300887416]
and end with
[/quote]

Where the one that contains a link was copy-pasted from generating a quote in that thread.

[theymos]

It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

I was thinking about that too but won't someone who essentially never solves a block have a near 0 effect on the network?
I'd guess that if you solve a block every 6 months on average (or worse) you won't speed it up / affect other miners you'll just waste energy. Is there any benefit to it at all? Assuming you're not in a pool of course.

[MacRohard]

It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

That doesn't make any sense. Surely all hash/s help the network.. why should anyone be concerned about pushing other miners out of the market?

[MacRohard]

It should be removed, but Bitcoin should continue to provide getwork, and a reference miner should become part of the project. People will get used to the fact that mining requires downloading another program.

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

That doesn't make any sense. Surely all hash/s help the network.. why should anyone be concerned about pushing other miners out of the market?

Infact.. I think the network would actually be better served by hashing power being as widely distributed as possible - not concenrated in the hands of a small number of miners.

[barbarousrelic]

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

Could you explain this a bit further? I don't see how raising the difficulty is anything but a good thing. Also if people mining on their CPUs don't have a real chance of mining a coin, then I don't see how they will be any real negative influence on miners.


It's not low-scale miners' responsibility to make things easier for the high-scale miners.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

Could you explain this a bit further? I don't see how raising the difficulty is anything but a good thing. Also if people mining on their CPUs don't have a real chance of mining a coin, then I don't see how they will be any real negative influence on miners.

Yeah I'm lost too, seems it should either help or have no effect.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

Could you explain this a bit further? I don't see how raising the difficulty is anything but a good thing. Also if people mining on their CPUs don't have a real chance of mining a coin, then I don't see how they will be any real negative influence on miners.

Yeah I'm lost too, seems it should either help or have no effect.

I don't know if that's what theymos had in mind, but there's the environment to worry about. Using power for an efficient miner that makes a real contribution to network security is one thing, but wasting it on CPU mining is another.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

The thing I'm most worried about is that people will start mining just because they think they're helping the network, and this unprofitable mining will push more efficient and competent miners out of the market.

Could you explain this a bit further? I don't see how raising the difficulty is anything but a good thing. Also if people mining on their CPUs don't have a real chance of mining a coin, then I don't see how they will be any real negative influence on miners.

Yeah I'm lost too, seems it should either help or have no effect.

I don't know if that's what theymos had in mind, but there's the environment to worry about. Using power for an efficient miner that makes a real contribution to network security is one thing, but wasting it on CPU mining is another.

Agreed. At this point I'm more concerned with them giving up than burning an extra 100grams of coal but if you multiply that times 100000 it would be huge. The thing is and I could be wrong but it seems that CPU mining is so inefficient that even if you were using the servers at work etc you would be working really hard for what a GPU could do easily.

P.S. fixed your quote above, thanks for the tip

[tcatm]

I made a patch that removes the miner (not getwork): https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/132

[theymos]

I was thinking about that too but won't someone who essentially never solves a block have a near 0 effect on the network?
I'd guess that if you solve a block every 6 months on average (or worse) you won't speed it up / affect other miners you'll just waste energy. Is there any benefit to it at all? Assuming you're not in a pool of course.

If the idea spreads that mining helps the Bitcoin network, then tens of thousands of people might turn on generation. Many of these people won't ever win a block, but if some do, then the network will be affected. Every time an unprofitable miner wins a block (or whenever they contribute to a pool), the difficulty will go up.

When the difficulty goes up, the least efficient miners are pushed out of the market unless they are volunteers. Volunteers therefore take up a greater and greater portion of the network's total CPU. This is bad for at least two reasons:

• The network becomes less efficient, using more energy than it needs to.
• "Amateur" miners are not able to respond to threats as quickly as professional miners. They're probably not running the most recent version of Bitcoin, and even if they are, professional miners can make changes to Bitcoin without a new release. The situation is better when the amateur miner is part of a pool, but if the pool goes rogue, the amateur miner will probably not know about it.

It's also really going to irritate me if I see propaganda saying, "Do your part: mine Bitcoins!" or something like that, when the network is perfectly capable of running without volunteers.

[Jered Kenna (TradeHill)]

I was thinking about that too but won't someone who essentially never solves a block have a near 0 effect on the network?
I'd guess that if you solve a block every 6 months on average (or worse) you won't speed it up / affect other miners you'll just waste energy. Is there any benefit to it at all? Assuming you're not in a pool of course.

If the idea spreads that mining helps the Bitcoin network, then tens of thousands of people might turn on generation. Many of these people won't ever win a block, but if some do, then the network will be affected. Every time an unprofitable miner wins a block (or whenever they contribute to a pool), the difficulty will go up.

When the difficulty goes up, the least efficient miners are pushed out of the market unless they are volunteers. Volunteers therefore take up a greater and greater portion of the network's total CPU. This is bad for at least two reasons:

• The network becomes less efficient, using more energy than it needs to.
• "Amateur" miners are not able to respond to threats as quickly as professional miners. They're probably not running the most recent version of Bitcoin, and even if they are, professional miners can make changes to Bitcoin without a new release. The situation is better when the amateur miner is part of a pool, but if the pool goes rogue, the amateur miner will probably not know about it.

It's also really going to irritate me if I see propaganda saying, "Do your part: mine Bitcoins!" or something like that, when the network is perfectly capable of running without volunteers.

That makes complete sense. You're probably going to have some "grandma's basement" type of miners killing the efficiency and running some pro miners out too but I dont' see if having the same effect that an army of CPU's would. Thanks for taking the time to break that down for us.

[jgarzik]

We should remove the option, but not the miner.

If we remove the CPU miner from bitcoin, then people starting alternative block chains will not have a self-sustaining system.

Just disable it from the GUI, so that new users won't find "Generate coins?"