Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys, just wanted to point out some (somewhat unsettling) stats again:
Deepbit is approaching 50% of the hashing power once again  :-\

While I dont have any beef with the operator of Deepbit ([Tycho] I believe), I have a beef with the security of our beloved Bitcoin.
As most of us know, the blockchain is secure as long as nobody controls more than or equal to 50% of the total hashing power of the network.
Deepbit seems to be ~40 percent, and has been climbing due to the massive influx of new miners and hardware. I'm not OK with that (Nothing personal, Tycho).

I suggest that those on Deepbit should switch to other, smaller pools, or some of the more powerful miners at least divert some of their resources to other pools to maintain a good hashing distribution equilibrium.
<advertisement>Furthermore, I would like to put in a plug forhttp://www.Bitcoins.lc (http://www.Bitcoins.lc); they are a 0% fee pool supporting long polling. Check em out. </advertisement>

Here is a chart of the current distribution:
http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=350x200&chd=t:39.50,2.84,16.04,0.62,12.02,18.54,2.26,7.15,1.02&cht=p&chf=bg,s,00000000&chl=deepbit|BitcoinPool|slush|bitcoins.lc|btcguild|other|Eligius|btcmine|swepool

Thanks for reading and supporting the security of Bitcoin ;D

I think Deepbit has a good thing going for it. Tycho has worked hard to give it features that the large user base of miners want. Until other pools offer at least as much as can be found at Deepbit, people aren't going to switch. Other pools need to focus on stealing what Deepbit already has. It's harsh to say it like that, but it's the truth. While collectively it is in Bitcoin's best interest to switch pools, individuals aren't going to make that choice until the market makes it enticing for them.

I've stayed with Slush's pool personally because I have no reason to move elsewhere. I like the system, and it's in no danger of approaching that 50% danger zone. I have to admit that I've been eyeballing BTC Guild due to the 0% fee and the option of having miner idle alerts.

simplecoin.us is pretty attractive at the moment, one of the smallest though.

MUST feature that Deepbit has, and other pools dont:
- you dont need to wait for confirmed balance, since there is only one counter with the confirmed and unconfirmed balance together that you can payout
- very simple and straightforward design with gadgets and other crap that people like

Thats it!

until other pools dont include this, people wont move. because this is (and obviosuly the hash rate) what makes deepbit so stable and likable to be.
You just have to start mining and check the ONLY counter every hour to check how are you doing.
And you can easily know how you made in the last 24 hs (to the right "= X BTC in last 24 hs"

I was at BTC Guild for a couple days but, I had a lot of stale shares and idle miners and they had some downtime, so I moved back to deepbit.

I'll give BTC Guild another shot in the future....

I switched to BTCGuild just about 24 hours ago.  I'm currently running 8723 (67) Shares (Stales).  I think they got the problems ironed out.

True, that's pretty nice, but you pay a hefty fee for that.

I hope you know that the *real* way to secure the network is to set up permanent nodes...

... NOT switch pools, right?

I mentioned in the other thread you were in that these "weaknesses" are synthetic weaknesses created by end users.  You're perpetuating that weakness with a fancy graph.  Even if all of the pools were only 25% and each pool had only a handful of work nodes....

.... it's just as easy to DDoS 12 machines as it is to DDoS 1.....

I'm  not that familiar with other pools, so I can't speak to them, they may have awesome features, I just don't know about them which is why I'm not going to mention them:

BTCGuild has the same options as deepbit.net for .5% less fee. If you donate 2.5% (you get to choose how much to donate rather than it being decided for you) you get:

0.5%: The crying smiley face next to your donation percentage will be replaced with a happy smiley.
2.0%: You would be able to receive Miner Idle email warnings, which notify you if a miner has not submitted work in a certain timeframe.
2.5%: You would receive your rewards without waiting for 120 confirmations on the block. This includes receiving payouts for blocks which become invalid.

The only thing it doesn't have is a 24 hour average, which I agree is sucky, but is it really such a dealbreaker? You get free money for sacrificing it. And if you don't need instant payout you get even more free money. Neato.

They had some downtime while migrating to new servers, and seem to be back up and running now. I personally like deepbit, I think Tycho has done a great job, but 50% is 50%, and so BTCGuild looks attractive to me. I encourage people to solo mine and do smaller pools as well, but deepbit and btcguild are my experience for now so that's what I speak to.


Apples and oranges for this thread. He is speaking of double-spending attacks and the like rather than overall network security from outside DDoSing and whatever.

I am not worried...

I believe tycho has our best interests in mind.. and his own as well.

He stands to make much more money over the long run by running a successful pool than fucking us all over right now.

Within 1-2 months I would say that pool competition will have increased greatly and this will no longer be a problem.

Kudos to tycho for running such a top notch pool.

The whole pool model is part of the problem.  There is a natural economy of scale in that the biggest pool has the lowest payout variance. 

Until there is some kind of fix for that, this problem will come up again and again.  Today it is deepbit, in the future it might be some other pool (or it might still be deepbit), and even a small number of large pools isn't great, because a few pool operators could collude to reach 50%+.

I'm not sure you understand.  Knocking something offline doesn't actually accomplish anything.  Well, it shouldn't...

Security, including double spending, is enforced by the network itself.  Pools perform work ("hashing") to upkeep the network including verifying coins, coin transfers and generation.

If someone decided to take down the 4 largest pools (guaranteed to be over 50% of the network) then they could attempt to poison the chains for double spending and other fun stuff provided they could convince the leftover nodes their transactions were legitimate for some length of time.

If a majority of the network that is left over includes more private nodes than poison nodes.... the integrity can be maintained.

The security, both against double spending and other shennanigans as well as DDoS silliness, is built into the bitcoin network.  For the umpteeth time - pools create synthetic weakness.

What would be even more interesting......  Let's say an attacker could either spoof or otherwise redirect requests from a pool operators client.  Or perhaps manage to get that client to trust it as a node rather than the existing bitcoin network through the IRC mechanism.  Or the attacker was able to modify a bitcoin.conf to point to their poison nodes.  Not only could they contribute poison blocks but they could even just continuously send out unproductive (stale/corrupt) work.  The pools would appear up and working at 100%, but they wouldn't be performing the current work for network enforcement (or generation, of course).  Toss in a few poison nodes and double-spending would probably be achievable.  Even better - miners will think the pools simply aren't productive thanks to their misunderstanding of complexity and abandon the whole thing.

Even more interesting would be if the attack could intercept work from the clients and claim it.  Now there's no need to control the network for double spending - you've just made an attacker quite the rich individual and none of the pool's participants are the wiser until it's far too late.

Another factor is possibly crooked pool operators.  On the other hand, there is no contractual agreement - so really, there's no way to be crooked, now is there?  There are certainly no consequences.  There's a peer-trust faith that drives these pools with no governing body.  A pool operator could easily shut the whole payout operation down and walk away without any ramifications whatsoever.  The outcome becomes everyone hates bitcoins because the overclocker crowd is so vocal about "hackers" stealing their money.

So yes, for the umpteenth+1 time, pools create synthetic weakness.

tl;dr Hack hack hack, give me an easy target, pools create several synthetic weaknesses.

I was with Deepbit from its 50MH/s era (good old times).

But I switched a week ago. First, I do not want to increase its dangerous proportion of the total hashrate. Secondly, as I mine 24/7, I do not want to be "robbed" by pool hoppers. They can lower my income on deepbit, but not on pool with protection to this.

Perfect way to put it.  Thank you. :)

One change -
s/DeepBit/any pool or all the pools or any single weak point you synthetically create/$

Most of you are totally missing the point. It is completely irrelevant if tycho can be trusted or not.
Simply the fact that a pool > 50% might exist is a huge security issue for the network.

Somebody has just (and I am saying "just" because no matter how much you pay attention to potential security risks, there is always a chance you get hacked, e.g. by undisclosed exploits) to take over the servers and then can be harmful to the network.

Another potential issue: Somebody with huge hashing power and the right knowledge could take down all major pools at once (e.g. via DDoS, there are kinds of ddos you can hardly mitigate, so this IS doable) which then would only leave the solo miners, according to the chart at about 400Ghash/s.
Then somebody could crank up his own mining equipment (at maybe 450ghash) and would have over 50% of hashing power under control.

I want to state that I never intended to imply or otherwise question Tycho personally or otherwise.

I am questioning the majority of miner's intent and commitment to the project.


Where do you happen to have 450GH "lying around" ? :)

Somebody who sees a danger in BTC to his own buisiness (which could be quite a few institutions, banks, paypal, governments) can easily raise that amount of hardware (If they do not already own it).
Assume for example that a 1,7ghash rig costs about 900€, that would be less than 250k Euro.

You have to recall the fact that it won't be the small miner who wants to harm the systems, but rather big organizations

I always find these threads amusing, especially from the 'free market' types. Unregulated markets naturally tend towards monopolies. At the end we will wind up with a single large pool and perhaps a few other minor ones that people are in for ideological reasons. At some point a less than ethical pool operator will appear and he will figure out that it is in his best interest to take out the other pools by any means available to him. As long as he kept his mouth shut it would be impossible for anyone else to know he was instigating trouble with the other pools. For a recent example, if btcex had not said anything, nobody would have known he was ddosing MtGox.

As the difficulty rate goes ever higher, you will see miners join toward the largest pools. After all, would you rather mine in a pool that finds blocks in hours or one that takes days or weeks to find one? There will come a point at which 100-300 Ghash/s pools just don't cut it anymore. These pools will in turn either dissolve or get absorbed by other, larger pools, thus increasing the larger pools' hashing power, and making it difficult for smaller pools to find blocks...all in a vicious circle.

There are reasons that every industrialized country in the world has anti-trust laws. Because they have already learned the hard way what happens when you let the market 'self regulate' itself. You get things like Standard Oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_oil). If the US and EU did not have anti-trust laws, everybody reading my words would be doing so with IE on a Windows based computer.

If markets don't tend toward monopolies...then why has nobody made a successful competitor to MtGox?

This ridiculous crap again? Please go shit in someone else's thread.

I just like that [Tycho] gets ~60GH/s. Thats quite a good break if you ask me ;p

I wish I had made a pool.

I don't think my 700MH/s would be enough to attract people though ;p

You are a fool, and your post is inappropriate. Lupus_Yonderboy is absolutely correct, and he is outlining the single biggest threat to bitcoin. He is also making his point in the correct thread.

See this thread for a possible solution:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137

This urgent problem demands an immediate solution.

Precisely. This is so obvious that it boggles the mind that so many people here keep missing the point.

decentralized mining may offer a solution:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137

during the time Deepbit was down a week or so ago I went to BTC Guild and Slush's pool IIRC, and mined there while Deepbit was down, what a fuckmess, for the hours (probably a couple hours on each pool) I put in I got zero payout, ZERO, fuck that shit, my payout balance goes up every hour on Deepbit, so if Deepbit is where I can get "paid" (so to speak) that's where I'll mine...   

Wow, so a 24 hour loan is worth that much to you? I thought people were smarter than that

worth what...? the 7% fee...? yep, I'll still get more paying a 7% fee on a larger amount than I will paying a 2.5% fee on a much smaller amount, or maybe I just don't get it...? that is just my assumption, care to explain...? I'm pretty new to this, but the bottom line numbers seem to speak for themselves imo...

So what? What actually happens if deepbit controls half of the hashing power? They get the most BTC? Oooooh, big deal, mine on deepbit then.

Geez, people.

Go educate yourself

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page

On the latest charts it shows the "other" section at 6.57%. This means that 93.46% of the network hashrate is currently in pools. Really, you shouldn't worry about the double spend, etc attacks. Just think of the personal economic gain of having 2.7% of the entire network hashrate for your own. Meaning if the pools concentrated down to a monopoly and one pool had 90% of the network hashrate, with a 3% fee (.9*.03=.027). Multiply that by the average number of bitcoins mined per day (7200, I believe?) and at the current exchange rate of ~$18US...(.027*7200*18)=~$3500US PER DAY. Or roughly $100k per month, and that is if the price stays constant (and it won't).

People get killed over far less money. Don't be surprised when some ethically challenged indviduals make this a serious business. The world is not as pure as some would apparently like it to be. It will be in someone's best financial interest to eliminate their competition either by buying them out or other, more persuasive measures. Not neccessarily lethal, but there are many, many things that can be done to take someone off the net for months or years, all relatively cheap.

I'm sorry that the way things work in the real world, with real people, does not meet the idealogical expectations of many on this board. The pools will consolidate over time, and a savvy operator will own multiple pools, so as to deflect suspicion and/or >50% fears. Miners will tend to go with pools that have less downtime and bigger payouts (whether real or perceived.) It is a natural progression of the market, and eventually where things will wind up.

Please note that I am in no way accusing anybody of any sort of malfeasance, but there is a lot of incentive for it out there, and that incentive will only increase as the value of bitcoins does. Even if there is no wrongdoing though, the network hash rate will still be controlled by a very small number of people.

Don't hate the players, hate the game. This is what a free, unregulated market looks like in the real world. Capitalism at its finest.

Which is why we need more threads like this one:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137

@all power miner

Please switch to a smaller pool, if deepbit is to huge the price of bitcoins fall and bitcoins won't get accepted as normal currency.

offtopic: We should have to get a license to mine, and another one to post.

I think the regular person approaching bitcoin can be prone to anxiety. I know I am at least, and if I need to wait to get my BTC shares, I have the feeling that I'm makiing less BTC. I guess we should simply do the math and get some experience. But deepbit is recommended to newbies as a good starter pool. So it makes sense that if the community grows, deepbit grows also.

Are people using the pay per share option? That's the only place that deepbit excels over other pools. And it's a terrible option unless you're a very intermittent miner. BTW PPS is not 7%, it was only 7% during the "apology period". It is normally 10%.

In a free market, even with monopolies there is still the threat of competition. Let's say that Nike has a monopoly in shoes. As long as everyone is getting what they want at a reasonable price, who cares? The reason why, even with a monopoly, Nike isn't going to start charging $1,000 for a pair of low quality shoes is that they know it would entice competition. They want to keep their monopoly so they refrain from doing that because, at a reasonable price and reasonable quality, there's no incentive for competition. Hence, the mere fact that someone could enter the shoe market will prevent Nike from getting uppity.

Monopolies aren't bad unless they're enforced involuntarily which requires government action. Voluntary monopolies aren't a problem.

Unless it was really hard/expensive to begin making shoes, there was a very steep learning curve, or some other similar reason that someone could not easily enter the shoe market. Then Nike would have a lot more leeway in charging prices.

http://img6.mediafire.com/5d401f09e5bfc76dfbabf48bf3060ad2afc318c13062f6b6fb03025f29593a276g.jpg

They're getting a bit too close......

If it's difficult to enter the market then Nike had the same difficulty entering the market. Turnabout is fair play.

Uhm, what evidence do you have of this? I mean yes, I understand the theory, and have heard it about a billion times, but what *evidence* is there.

The person you quoted gave a couple of good examples of non-governmentally enforced monopolies. Standard Oil. US Steel. Neither of these were monopolies enforced by governmental action. Both caused terrible drains on everyone, especially the workers (I doubt the people lining the gates begging for a days wages would have said that everyone was happy) who were essentially forced into servitude by the situation. But this is getting offtopic, I'm still looking for evidence.

Barrier of entry to market is not as trivial as you make it sound. Yes it may sound "fair" that it's difficult to enter a profitable market for late comers, but it doesn't help your point that monopolies are balanced by potential rivals if the barrier to entry is so high that competition is almost impossible.

EDIT: As a potential counter example, look at microsoft. An inferior product at hugely inflated prices from a terribly inefficient company that is essentially a monopoly due to legacy support requirements and an almost impossibly high barrier to entry at market.

All that matters is that it's dangerous to Bitcoin. Regardless of how the attack happens. Once the confidence in a currency is lost, it's gone for good. If you believe in Bitcoin you should be doing what you can to protect it. Even if it means more variance. I'm moving to Eligius right now.

Look, if I have a business harvesting moon rocks and you complain that I'm charging too high of a price or that it creates a terrible drain on the workers then start your own company. If you can't find investors willing to risk their money then what right do you have to say that the prices are too high? All prices are too high since consumers would like to get everything for free but when dealing with economics we have to evaluate actions, not words.

Let's take oil for example. It's rare and hard to acquire. Therefore, the prices they charge reflect this. If the price of oil is too high then people will switch to other sources of energy. If they are still buying it, it doesn't matter if they are grumbling about the price, clearly the price isn't too high, otherwise, it wouldn't be selling. The same applies to any other natural monopoly. Free market monopolies aren't "bad" as long as you get rid of the idea that you should be able to get everything for free. The prices will always approach what it's actually worth.


That's just opinion, nothing more. Perhaps the software itself is inferior but you can't consider it in a vacuum. You need to consider human capital, how many people understand it, use it, can program with it, what kind of support there is for it, etc. If Linux was so wonderful, it would have taken over by now. Counterexample, Mozilla Firefox. Internet Explorer had a monopoly but now it's losing market share daily. Firefox is king these days.

None of your responses represent an answer to my one question asked of you.

What evidence do you present that the monopolies formed under a free market are balanced by an invisible potential competitor? Internet Explorer is a terrible example, as it was sued under Anti-Trust laws and the evil government forced Microsoft to change its practices to create more "fair" competition.


I had a feeling that by opening the conversation up with any side commentary that I wouldn't get an answer so I will not make further response. This is not to reject your points or brush them aside, but I do want an answer.

There is ample evidence of monopolies acting unfairly when their monopolistic power grants them that ability (some has been given, so let's not argue over this part). Where is your evidence in the real world (not simply theory) of monopolistic companies held in abayance not by government or anti-trust law, but by the mechanics of the economic principles you espouse? I'm honestly curious.

That's not accurate unfortunately.  That assumes that Nike will act ethically and that their only recourse to maintain their monopoly is the manipulation of their product's price and quality.  If Nike has a monopoly then nothing prevents them from acting unethically and taking other steps to prevent competition such as using their size to demand exclusive contracts for raw materials necessary to produce shoes or overpaying for those materials thereby increasing the market's barrier to entry.

This is the same way with an ultra-powerful monopolistic pool.  They can use their size and resources to prevent competition by dDosing for example.

Where are you guys getting that nifty pie-chart? Is it auto-generated somewhere? What's our current total network power?

Please provide some kind of evidence for this claim. How exactly did the government intervene so that Internet Explorer was forced into more "fair" competition? Has Microsoft stopped bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? No, they haven't.

Since you've failed to back up your claim, I can only assume you are referring to the European Commission's settlement with Microsoft whereby Microsoft agreed to present users with a browser selection screen. The problem with that theory though is that it only applies to EU countries and only happened with Windows 7, several years after Firefox had already been chipping away at Internet Explorer. Unless you provide some new information, your claims don't hold water. Firefox is exactly the evidence you required yet, unsurprisingly, it doesn't "count".


The same argument applies to the raw materials monopolies. You are just welcoming competition by not selling to whoever bids the highest.

Pay no attention to that chart.

This is the real chart:

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=p&chs=250x100&chd=t:90,10&chl=|Teh%20Bitcoins&chco=FFFF88,ecedf3&chf=bg,s,ecedf3

http://bitcoinwatch.com/ (http://bitcoinwatch.com/)

Wouldn't you want to be on the winning side though...?

This is the most brilliant thing I've read in a long time!

Biological Darwinism?  Survival of the fittest organism?

You do realize that deepbit is dependent on the bitcoin network, right?  In other words, it can be considered a biological parasite or even a natural predator.

If you, as a supporter of that parasite or predator, kill the host organism..... you're equally dead.  There are no more shmoo to eat.  The entire ecosystem collapses into nothing.

Where's that guy I called naive?  He *has* to read this...

Yes, you did miss your point. :)

Unless I'm misunderstanding, your opinion is simply "eff the system as long as I get some cash out of it."

And for the record, you can't blindly say we're all "economic Darwinists."  I certainly do not rob little children, homeless people or the elderly for their cash or possessions and say "pwnt for lulz!  Darwin bishes!"

Getting pretty close... :O

DDoSing? Man, you're thinking small. A pool that has 51% of the hashing power, besides everything else mentioned here, can also simply ignore blocks made by anyone else, effectively making their pool the ONLY way to mine. And this is the scariest attack their is, since unlike double-spending which is short-term, this would cause long-term problems if a pool was able to maintain their majority hashing power long enough to stop people from mining for nothing in other pools.

The reason why people join pools is to make money. If you shake confidence in BTC, it will become worthless. Why would any pool do this? You can say that the pool operator might start doing it but miners would leave in droves.

The question is, would it really shake confidence enough? The miners won't mind - other than the initial shock on the exchanges, they'll be making MORE money since the difficulty would go down to whatever the single pool is putting out, not what the whole network is outputting. If the attack can be held long enough, it will be impossible to reverse without shutting down the pool through some other means, thanks to the 50% requirement needed from the rest of the network just to regain control.

In fact, this attack could happen right now in a much harder to detect manor. The major pools could silently collude to slightly increase the amount of invalid blocks other miners create, causing the affected miners to move to their pool, which has fewer invalid blocks.

THIS x1000

That's pretty much what I was thinking after reading your first post.  Large pools are a natural result of how Bitcoin is designed, and for the individual miner, the best case would be taking part in a pool that has 100% of the hashing power.

Unfortunately the problem is only going to get worse.  As more and more hashing power is added, and as bitcoins go up in real value, the lump sum value of solving a block will go way up while the chance of doing so will go way down.  In the very, very long term it might average out, but nobody is going to be willing to wait that long.  And I'm not really sure it's reasonable to expect them to, to be honest.

From a variance standpoint, Bitcoin's design makes the largest pools the most attractive.  Which is bad for the security of the currency, and unfortunately an unavoidable result of how Bitcoin works.  You can trust that people will "do the right thing" and move to smaller pools, or you can trust the pool operators not to abuse their power, but the whole point of Bitcoin was to avoid having to place that kind of trust in individuals.

No, the whole point of Bitcoin was to put the power to choose who to trust, or not, into the hands of individuals, and the way that's done is by voting with hash power. If you trust Tycho and think he's offering a fair deal, you hash for him. If you trust some other pool operator instead, you hash for them. If you want to go it alone, that's an option with its own risks and rewards; one of the rewards might be the ability to selectively prioritize your own transactions, or other such things.

The point is, he doesn't really control that power. The people giving it to him are engaged in an implicit contract that he's offering, and if he violates the terms of that contract, some people will stop trusting him.

Interestingly, most of you are worried about the fact that he might double spend, and instead missing the enormous cashout potential any large pool operator has.

Think about how big a block reward is in terms of USD right now. One block is worth $750 USD. Just cashing out by stealing all the generated reward a pool operator has control of, until everyone wises up and leaves, would be enormous.

You are already trusting that they aren't going to do this to you. Eventually enough people would leave the pool if he did something naughty that he would lose his power. No matter what that naughty thing is.

For the kids who don't remember the browser wars, the first antitrust case against Microsoft was in 1998: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft . That case is the only reason that Apple is still a company, that Linux wasn't throttled early on, oh and it is also the reason your precious Firefox was able to be developed. MS was forced to open up their APIs by the resulting judgement from that case (amongst several other things). US V. Microsoft changed a lot of things in the computing world. But please, don't let facts stand in the way of your preconceived notions.

Right now there is a significant barrier to entry for any solo miner:the difficulty. Again, miners will migrate to the larger pools because those are the ones going to be paying more often, and soon the difficulty level will get so high that only the largest pools will solve multiple blocks per day.

Why attack the chain if you own most of the network? Simply sit back and rake in the fees from the miners. Far more profitable in the long term. Seriously, attacking the block chain is like killing the golden goose. A pool operator who works their way up to owning most of the network is probably not going to mess with the block chain, that could damage the exchange prices drastically (possibly permanently), and make all their time, effort and trouble worthless. Far better to let everything run as normal, with 2-3% of the network's mined coins each day going to that operator's wallet.dat

His name was [Tycho]...(chants repeating)

Well, the individual miner is just in for profit and has nothing to gain from the pool's ability to disrupt the functionality of the network, so we could safely assume that s/he has an incentive to take away this ability from the pool. So, assuming that we have a mining system that does this with few enough disadvantages, almost everyone with significant stakes will switch. If this is possible, I wouldn't call the current problem an unavoidable result of how Bitcoin works.

Here is one approach: https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137

Another could be creating a more distributed mining environment. For instance, we could embed an optional standardized pool functionality within mining software, that could be turned on at the user's will. Miners could constantly switch nodes that they get work. In this case though, a trust system or a sophisticated distributed accounting system would be needed.

That's a good point.  I was thinking in terms of centralized power, which I was thinking Bitcoin was designed to avoid.  But although deepbit has a lot of power, deepbit doesn't really control it, as you pointed out.  Anything bad going on, and it's very simple for everyone who mines in the deepbit pool to switch to another pool.  It's a democracy of sorts, really, with the amount of control a pool operator has being directly tied to how much trust miners have in them.  And given the relatively low cost to switching pools (as long as you cash out fairly often), a lack of trust can translate into a lack of power VERY quickly.  Which is in contrast to the central control of most currency.

Thanks for the insight, I really hadn't thought about it that way.

And for this hours public service announcement....

This is completely wrong.  Your memory must be fuzzy.

Not only did it not have anything to do with Apple and Linux development, but it wasn't really a factor.  Deep integration of IE on Windows based systems has nothing to do with Redhat going out of business and the Linux kernel being forgotten.

There's a movie on Netflix you can watch for some actual interviews, opinions and facts.  I think it was called 'Revolution OS.'

My comment about it being an unavoidable part of Bitcoin was the finding of increasingly rare (from the standpoint of any individual miner), but increasingly valuable blocks being a key part of Bitcoin's security.  Those make it valuable for individual miners to join pools to make the rewards of mining more stable.

But as you point out, switching pools is an easy and obvious thing for miners to do.  And it doesn't take THAT big of a pool to even out the rewards of mining.  I'm not sure being part of deepbit is better from that perspective than being part of any number of other, smaller pools.

The guiminer has deepbit as #2 in the list. The #1 went down shortly after I setup my miners so I tried deepbit, saw it had a really helpful interface and have since had no reason to switch. I would guess this might play a roll in its popularity.

My memory was perhaps a bit fuzzy at first, but I did take the time to read the article, at least:



Left unchecked, Microsoft would have used its power to elimnate all of its competition. Another quote from further down the aritcle:


The lawsuit was multifaceted. While the deep integration of IE was a major portion of it, that was not the entirety of it, as the article plainly stated in the 1st paragraph.

Tycho EARNED every percentage point deepbit gets with his hard work. If you don't like that he is approaching half the network, make your own pool to compete with his. The reason he has what he has is because of the feature his pool offers and his dedication to the stability of his pool. It is simply the best pool. Everyone hates people that do things they can't do.

Jesus, same bullshit with you guys every time. There is absolutely no support for your side so you just nitpick at little things to avoid confronting that fact. I specifically asked you to focus on one thing which you completely avoided twice. I failed to back up my claim? Because I specifically said I didn't want to focus on that. I don't see myself stating anywhere in that quote you provided of me saying that MS was forced to unbundle its software. Good job diverting.

I almost wish I had studied psychology because I'm so fascinated by how people can be so skilled at avoiding any reality in persistently believing whatever they want.

Deepbit does not have any great features that other pools dont, even so, the stats update is one of the worse out there. i mean, 1 hour balance update, wtf. Most of other pools are in real time, or nearly to.
Instant payouts is pointless for me... waiting for confirmed too, why i will ever want instant payout?? thats good for starters only, and after two weeks they lost interest in it too.

The only advantage of deepbit over other pools i see it is the payment methods, they are kind of unique, swepool now has the PPS too, but it is a new pool. Some people dont like the score method, and those are staying in Deepbit, the other mayor pools out there (Slush, BTCGuild and BTCMine) are using score methods, Slush, BTCGuild and BTCMine seen to be better pools for me, i like the stats of Slush and BTCMine, those are much better than Deepbit. BTCmine only lack a way to known how many money im doing per day like Slush.

Addicionally, the fees of Deepbit are excessive at this point.

You whant to known why Deepbit is the bigger pool? because it its the older one, Deepbit was on pair with Slush until 2 months ago, when the total hash rate of the network was ~1.5Thash and dificultty something in the ~90.000, then the Hash rate started to climb like crazy, that was because of the publicity, and the news about "Bitcoins" and "free money with vga cards" started to be posted on forums of all around the planet.

So far ive see about 20 guides on diferent forums around, all of those "Bitcoin starting guides" are writting about using Deepbit to mine, most of them are the same, copy&pasted on another forum...

Thats why Deepbit is the bigger pool.

Personally, i feel both Slush and BTCMine to be better, in all aspects. BTCMine has been having problems with LP lately, but i think is working ok now. Seriusly, i need a good pool with a good averange hash rate, no problems with disconnections (thats why i leaved slush), with good stats and security(i love th BTCMine bitcoin adress lock)... i dont need imposed fees and the useless instant payouts. Bitcoin.lc seems to be good but way too small to join at this point.

This is like "Internet Explorer", there are much better browsers, why it its the most used??? it may have something to do with Windows ::)

Sorry for grammar errors, im from Arg.

Come join continuum pool, new pool started by martok just last month, we have 10Ghash, pps, *new* web and old RPCinterface, and 0% overhead (whatever martok's expenses for running the server are are deducted from the winnings, and that's it.) I have been making much more btc ~50% with continuumpool than I did on deepbit, even though payout is sporadic.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8660.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8660.0)
http://www.continuumpool.com (http://www.continuumpool.com)

Here's where you're a bit fuzzy on a few things:
- This was for residential/home computers.
- Apache was beating the pants off of IIS and it's stupid single-instance expenses.
- This literally has nothing to do with A) a machine someone isn't browsing from, B) any commercial machines.
- Firefox would've been adopted, anyway, the experience would've just sucked (oh, wait, that happened......)
- IE being "cool" wouldn't have swayed the adoption of Linux into Governmental and Scientific industries.
- Over 9,000 other parts of the big picture.

Back on topic -

OMG sky is falling double-spending I don't understand how this works my mining rig isn't profitable kilowatt per hour Captain Planet!

I say again, the advantage of the biggest pool is the lowest payout variance.  Pools like Eligius have some great features like zero fees, etc. but they suffer because sometimes they get zero blocks in an entire day.  That never happens with deepbit.  Deepbit gets a few blocks an HOUR most of the time.

Pooled mining is a natural monopoly for this reason.  There needs to be some kind of technical fix, like the one previous linked in this thread. 

And even if deepbit is kept below 50%, it's still the case that the big pools as a group have the same natural advantage and will tend to control a big share of the network.  Two or three pools that control 50%+ (quite a bit over in fact) is not good because it is too easy for two to three pool operators to collude.  In fact there is no way in general to know that two "separate" pools aren't actually run by the same person.

It will always be easy for pool operators that make up >=50% hashing power to collude.
You will never know whether pool operators are colluding. Which ones can you trust? Best not to use any of them.
Yes, they are out to get you.   :)

FWIW, this ceases to be a concern with the PPS payout scheme. I get my earnings from continuumpool almost instantly.

Sure, and you pay a 7% fee for that privilege.

It boggles the mind that the majority (or disturbingly close to) of miners are joining a pool with 3%/10% fees when free alternatives exist...

We're well into the phase of people setting up miners for friends and family and just letting it run or non detail interested people following instructions with deepbit as the pool example to set up. As long as either can stand the noise, heat, or extra electricity usage they will just let it run. Some might even be watching to make sure they're getting someone out of it. Either way, they're most likely not reading all the doomsday prophecies here.

Doesn't boggle me a bit.

5%

Not a bad price to pay if you don't like variance. But yes, bigger pools have lower variability on proportional or score based schemes as well. So best way to solve the current problem would be taking away the control of the list of included transactions from the pools.

I disagree with the assumption that Standard Oil was a predatory pricing unfair free market natural monopoly.  At it's peak they had something around 80% of the market.  When prosecuted this had fallen to around 64%, and no doubt would have continued.

http://mises.org/daily/2317

Also, Microsoft depends on patents and other government grants of power to maintain it's position.

Not sure if it's a solution, but is the 50 coin payout hard-coded into bitcoin?
When I got one of those, on my CPU, in a couple of days that was great - but surely would make more sense that as the difficultly went up, the payout was divided into it? (and therefore negating this whole pool mining malarkey).

To do that you would have to modify the protocol. Go ahead and write a patch to do that. It won't be accepted into the official bitcoin client and I won't download any client that has that in it.

I'm at a loss here. What's the connection with the protocol? And why would you object? What do you say to this proposal (https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137)?

Everyone gets all information from the network. You would have to modify the bitcoin protocol to limit someone from getting all information. It is a reactive response and against the ideals of the system.

The thread does not solve any problem, it proposes an alternative and has nothing tangible to show yet. It was written when there were only a few other pools than deepbit. There are more alternatives now, there are 6-7 other pools and growing every week. It does not solve the fact that there are other pools and people aren't using them.

A better use of time would be implementing this: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=7622.0 At least then if something showed up on the network that looked like the attacks that everyone is so worried might possibly happen then there would be verifiable proof and reason for those who pay attention to the forums to move somewhere else and make deepbit smaller.

I don't know what you mean by limiting someone from getting all information, or how it would be applied in this case. Maybe we aren't talking about the same problem. I haven't seen a proposal involving a protocol change in this manner.

The basic idea is, if the pool operator doesn't have deciding power on the transaction list that gets in the block, a "public" pool, or any colluding group of them wouldn't be considered an attacker with high computing power. I'm not suggesting that there is an easy way to do that, but merely, if it could be done, it would solve the problem at hand. I don't have a clue how to do this with a protocol change, it's best if we approach this from the angle of, where the pool gets work from.

The basic idea in the mentioned thread does solve this specific problem, if it can be feasibly implemented, which is something yet to be proven. Either way, I think it's a step in the right direction. Of course it doesn't solve the fact that there are other pools and people aren't using them, that's an unrelated matter. The idea is applicable whether there is only one pool or a multitude of them.

Right now deepbit is like 46% of the network  ::)

I'd like to see deepbit take over more than half, so that people will stop complaining once they realize that Tycho is not going to do anything evil.

Sigh, people need to stop freaking out.

And...I'd like to see a giant comet hit your house, then see if you complain, or exist.

It's not about Tycho and his intentions...its about the fundamentals plain and simple.

Man...moment...machine. Let's hope some intervention happens...

Nothing is going to happen once it reaches 50%.
And once it reaches that point we will all see.

We will see...someone pop the box and play make-a-chain.

Or, hopefully, a few will change those miner args and give it a break for a sec.

It does need to be pointed out that the magical threshold is not 50%+1. It is theoretically possible for an adversary corrupting 30% or 40% of the computation to eventually succeed trick the rest of the network into forking the block chain within several hours to days according to a study performed by a group of MIT students for the 6.857 Computer and Network Security class. I don't have their graphs/slides, but I can ask them for their data (and suspect they already haunt these forums).

Perhaps nothing will happen the first day. But IT IS A security RISK and that's a fact.

You could play to try shooting yourself with one revolver and one bullet. And maybe the first time you won't die, but that doesn't mean it's not a risk.


That means it already is a security risk.

Oh, wow! A security risk!

I swear, some people.

Some people = You.

hmm, I thought we were all on the same page regarding a single entity gaining 50% hashing power being bad, I'm very surprised that some people claim not to see the problem. apart from the double spend threat from the owner himself. somebody could take over deepbit and have instant control, not a hack, literally kicking his door down, for somebody looking to attack bitcoin, like the government or somebody else, the problem goes from how do possibly gain 50% of this?, 20 new supercomputers? or somehow get worldwide synchronised take downs with cooperating governments? hmm how will we get the budget for that? oh wait, there's deepbit... 1 SIMPLE DOOR! 50% ta daa!  or it could be targeted via severe denial of service to be taken down briefly to weaken the total network for a fast attack, if any of those happen the confidence in bitcoin may never bounce back,

I remember somebody saying we could check to see if a double spend ever happened, like that's the end of that problem, but that is completely missing the point, its not the single double spend transactions he would get away with that's the problem, the fact that we know it happened after the fact would be the CAUSE of the massive loss in confidence in bitcoin, the news stories would be EVERYWHERE, panic selling would start immediately causing more panic selling it could potentially kill off bitcoin right now before it gets going,

it IS a big deal.

It´s because everyone has the $ $ sings glowing in his eyes. Fast and easy money!11! independent currency? who cares about that idea?
Tycho, if you are long-term interested in this project then disable registrations for some time ...

Right now:

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/9163/sinttulodwu.png

This is bad news for bitcoin.

Holy lap dancing jesus.
http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=350x200&chd=t:48.09,3.03,20.58,1.50,12.03,2.52,3.82,7.92,0.51&cht=p&chf=bg,s,00000000&chl=deepbit|BitcoinPool|slush|bitcoins.lc|btcguild|other|Eligius|btcmine|swepool

If we start to see a breakdown in Bitcoin security, then the value of bitcoin diminishes greatly. People will sell. The coin itself goes all great-depression on our asses.
Honestly, it is in not just OUR best interest, but DEEPBITS best interest to shave off some of that power.

Or DDOS. I'm not saying we should as a first resort, but DDOS is always an option when this magnitude of cash is at stake.

I started with bitcoinpool.  I got tired of idle miners.
I played around with some of the other pools, slush, etc.  Didn't seem to provide enough info/data for me to know how I was doing.
Went to deepbit.   No idling miners (so far), lots of data available to judge progress, etc.

People want minimum drama and results for their efforts.  The security threat people are talking about is below 50% anyways, so it just sounds like jealousy to me at the worst, anti-free choice at best.

Although I've said it before I'll say it again, while I fully support the idea that deepbit getting too many people is a bad thing I will have to interject some things here.

Most miners are not on these forums, and so these warnings will go unheeded because most people just found out about bitcoin from their friend, or some news article that mentioned bitcoin and the largest pool deepbit.

These same people are the ones driving the price of bitcoin through the roof and making it all kinds of profitable. So... we all enjoy enhanced profitability and hate the threat to bitcoins security. But for now one comes with the other. You'll have to get the word out through other channels than this thread though if you want to have any chance of making a difference.


If I wasn't already sure that you knew nothing from your avatar (it could be ironic) the above confirms it. Plenty of pools provide plenty of information/return comparable or superior to deepbit. There is nothing special about the pool except for two things:

1) Highest hashing rate -- translates into lowest variance (although when there is variance, the low payout makes it very very very unprofitable).

2) Pay Per Share -- The best option for casual miners. This to my knowledge only exists on deepbit. If you are a serious miner though this is a horrible option (10% off the top).

Payouts, information, all that other stuff is just bunk though, even steven.

Judging people by their avatars.  You must be new to the internet.  Real mature.  Plenty of larger pools? No.  bitcoinpool was one of the best in this aspect, but given I had to restart my miners 2-3 times a day, and they were idle most of the evening while I was sleeping and most of the day while I was at work, who cares?  I can't speak for the plethora of other smaller pools because I haven't tried them and I am not interested in wannabes.

Haven't been there long enough to confirm or deny, ill take your word for it.  Ill see how it goes for a while and adjust if necessary.

People need to see data to feel comfortable.  Or at least I do.  It helps drive the illusion of "can I trust this pool operator."

The "50% of the hashing power" problem is no hard limit. It's an average case calculation. It is very well possible for deepbit to fork the block chain *right now*, and it would not require much luck. If they had 55% of the hashing power, it would require slightly less luck than it would require now.

The good news is that such an attempt would not go unnoticed...

Until slush gets DDOS'd...

I didn't say anything the first time I saw your avatar, only in conjunction with your post. This negates your response.

Anywho, just look at the graph that's been posted a number of times, bitcoinpool is relatively small. Large pool alternatives -- Slush, btcguild btcmine. All larger than bitcoinpool. I've used slush and am not a fan, I've used btcguild and it's basically a smaller deepbit with idle notification (but no PPS) and a lower (or 0) fee. I can't speak to btcmine, but I've heard good things about it.

The point though isn't just that there are alternatives to deepbit that are just as good as it (which there are), the point is that if you are concerned that your magical money fountain is going to dry up, then mining on deepbit makes as little sense as staying on a pool that requires your miners to restart every night. Maybe less sense.

Im going to agree with the idea that Tycho should close registration. Keep deepbit at 40% of the total, or thereabouts. It wont stop the pool's expansion, since existing people can still expand, but it'll slow the influx of new people. There's a lot of good Tycho does with deepbit, and the mining community in general, but I really dont want to see 1 pool have the majority of the power. Ideally you'd have 3 or 4 pools with about the same share, or 1 with slightly larger. 1 pool with 50% or more is just bad news..

Better than blocking new registration is to INCREASE THE FEE according to the pool relative rate.

Something like:

40% - 3% fee.
45% - 5% fee.
48% - 8% fee

etc.

It could kind of auto-regulate into slightly above 40%.

Good for Tycho, good for all of us.

Kinda offtopic:

You should try out gbyte.dk if you live close to Denmark. We're a small group of danish people mining together.

Whatever you say.   Not really worried about your opinion of me or my avatar.

Yes, there are alternatives.  I do not disagree with you on this.  As far as making less Bitcoin on deepbit, I apologize for not simply taking your word for it...I am of the school of "prove it".  I will stay there a while and see how it goes.  If that makes me an idiot in your book, I don't really care.  If end up agreeing with you after some times passes, you can say you were right and I will go somewhere else.  

MY entire point was I just don't see the risk of one pool owning 50% of the mining share.  The security threats exist regardless.  I want a pool that is reliable and gives me good results.  So far, this is the only one I have tried that does that.  No, I haven't tried them all.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_computing_power

I'm not entirely sure what security threat you're referring to, perhaps this is where our disjunction arises.

There is a very specific security threat when a single entity controls 50% of the networks hashing power. That is the point of this thread and why people are crying foul of people using deepbit. This security concern does not exist otherwise, and it's a major one concerning control of the block chain which bitcoin exists upon. If you are unaware of this, that is why I mentioned that you seem to be lacking knowledge of it. If you were aware of it and simply do not care, well, nothing I can do about that. We've tried to warn people.

The size of "Other" shrunk pretty significantly. 3 days ago it was some 35%.

Sorry, I do not get it. Please, explain. Who will run a pool with lower fee?

That was because Deepbit was DDOS'd down for a while; people went solo.
Also, huge influx of new miners that probably didn't know about pooled mining.

if deepbit tries to do anything shady, its hashing power will get close to zero real fast, and that will be the end for it.


people telling deepbit to limit new registrations, would you cut yourself short in place of deepbit?

Well, Bitcoins.lc has NO fee. So there is a good option.

This is not the problem: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=12120.msg170365#msg170365

When the damage is done - it is done. BTC will rapidly lose value and I doubt they'll ever recover again. Because that would break one of the major advantages: security

50% isn't actually a hard limit. It is possible to do the same attack with 40% or even less, it will just succeed less often.

Ok, so the risk is still there, and needs to be addressed. No firm limit, check. Either group action or voluntary responsibility will work. Ok.

So who's it gonna be? the miners? tycho? Or the (some) miners setting up tycho for the chain?

All it takes is pop-a-box. Or corruption...

But we don't have any of that lolololololol

But, when about 10% of people move from deepbit to another 0% fee pool, then it will fix current situation, won't it?

All this panic is amusing to me. I'd rather see what attacks can be accomplished and how the community can recover from a successful attack. That way, when people ask "what happens if..." we can say "it did happen and we survived it". Of course, some people are a little over-invested and don't find it amusing at all.

There are more problems than simply forking the block chain and double spending. 50% is a hard limit for being given control of parts of the block transactions. Leading to a whole can of worms in the grand scheme of bitcoin. The idea is that the less opportunity there is for malicious and potentially devastating problems with the block chain the more trust there can be in the idea of bitcoin as a viable tool.

Approaching 40-50+% lends itself to being far more vulnerable to all kinds of faith shattering events.


The more the better, but if 10% of Tycho's users moved out that would definitely grant a large margin of error. The problem is, what is 10% currently? He has about 2.2THash of power, so that's 220GHash. If you assume each user as having 850MHash of power (which is more than most actually have) that's about 250 people.

There aren't even half of 250 replies in this thread. It's a bigger feat to accomplish than you might think.

This!!

Honestly, people need to stop freaking out.

They will notice (umm, some of them), when the increased fee will be announced. Check my original post.

That would not happen at all. The fact that few deepbit users have even seen this thread is proof of that.

I never thought I'd have to say this, but we'll need to start a bounty to DDoS deepbit if Tycho doesn't do SOMETHING soon.

I agree that people seem to have a weirdly grand idea of the users of deepbit. Deepbit users can't be bothered to nip a potential problem in the bud if it doesn't affect them, but if there was a malicious event initiated by deepbit against other pools that didn't affect deepbit users they would suddenly rise up in arms?  ::)

I don't want to start a pool war though, announcing deepbit DDoSes certainly isn't an appropriate response in my eyes. People will have to live with the consequences of their actions, if deepbit gets so large that it eventually overwhelms bitcoin and causes peoples money glazed eyes to miss the looming demise of what they expect to be a never ending gravy train, well, so be it.

It's rather irresponsible of both Tycho and the miners on Deepbit to continue in the current fashion.

I can understand Tycho's personal hesitation to limit the number of users allowed to mine at Deepbit considering he's probably making a lot of money right now. However, his short term gains could very well disappear if something were to happen to destabilize the whole Bitcoin economy as a result of one pool's greater than 50% share of the hashing power.

I think the increased fee structure is a brilliant idea to provide Tycho with more income while also using market principles to drive some users to other pools. It could be instituted with a rather low rate increase for different levels at first and then ramped up to drop network power down to the desired global level.

As for miners, I've never understood people's fascination with Deepbit. You're paying through the nose in order to get an instant payout feature. Have some patience and settle in for the long haul, you'll make more coin and stress less.

DDoS you say?

http://www.mediafire.com/?089mnf5vg6rr6m6

If they hit 50%; DL and run start.bat.

EDIT: This is NOT something I want to do; it is the security of Bitcoin that I am interested in. I dont want to see something as great as this go down the toilet due to a single pool gaining too much power.

why would deepbit have vested interest and be investing resources to damage itself, its reputation and bitcoin network? i can't find any reason
your projected loss of value is just a speculation. my speculation any loss of value/confidence will be temporal until things gets fixed and made stronger.

I wouldn't mind stress-testing system as early as possible which may provide learning experience how to deal with similar treats later on when network grows significantly. Although that's what test blockchain is for.
I have no problem being in over 50% mining pool until there is a problem

Until there is a problem? Why dont you want to prevent a problem?
Its not a matter of weather Tycho can be trusted or not (I believe he can), but the fact that we would allow Bitcoins security to be compromised all because of a single pool.

Deepbit DDOS tool here: http://www.mediafire.com/?b7gnz418m1w947d

Well this is simply the problem with people (today? always?) that is widespread, not limited to bitcoin. The old aphorism "If it aint broke, don't fix it." comes from this thinking. I don't really know how to get people to realize that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." They just simply don't seem to want to listen to it. This is part of why I don't feel it is ethical to attack Tycho for what is not really his fault but ours.

I agree that I'd prefer to see deepbit continue for the long haul, but if we are in a small model world version of what bitcoin will some day be, I don't really see the point of saving something doomed to fail.

EDIT: And if this turns out to not be a problem at all, that's great too. Yay.

there is nothing to prevent at the moment.
i believe i have most earnings at deepbit if you can prove me i can earn most elsewhere i will certainly research and consider it, but telling 0 fee is better than any fees at major pool while same pool gets most of blocks is silly.
if we get our security compromised i believe network will rebound and come out stronger.   analogy, if you grow your kids in maximum disinfected environment, bacteria free, they will grow up with weaker immune systems and will be bound to many health risks in the future because their immune system did not learn how to fight off microbes and adopt in life.

Why on earth would [Tycho] limit his pool, do you honestly think he cares about Bitcoins? Nope, he is making a LOT of money, far more than Im sure people realise, even if it does go down, hes built a (very nice) website and pool and is reaping the rewards from creating something which cost him almost nothing.

Would you give up thousands and thousands of free dollars? Nope, you wouldnt if you were running the pool.

Yes, it might affect the security of Deepbit, but if it does happen, he will be sat there with 10's if not 100's of thousands of $$ / EUR / £ - im sure it wont tug on his heartstrings at all.

Hes making money off other people doing the work, hell i wish i had the knowledge to do it?!

Then you wouldn't mind DDoS'ing the pool?

I honestly am not that bad to be honest, I wouldnt maliciously attempt to take a pool down, I have no idea how to.

I can understand however people who have invested thousands of poinds / $ into mining rig etc getting worried, however, my mining rig is my gaming rig, 6990 and a 6970 in trifire, I had already bought the stuff, what i make back from it (which so far is more than both cards combined) is free money for me, its good while it lasts but one thing people didnt bank on is GREED - its how the world falls down guys.

Can anyone genuinely say, that if they were making hundereds of thousands of pounds that they would give it up? he is going to set himself and his family up for life if it carried on like this, I have to say, if it was me, I dont think id do it, and i think if others were in the same situation 99% of people wouldnt want to lose that income.

There are other competing pools. One, for instance, is Bitcoins.lc. 0% fee; you will make more in the long run (around 3% more...)

please read what i've said.    0 fee don't compare with highest earning pool even if it is not free!  prove otherwise and I may convert. please run 2 identical cards side by side for a week and show earnings in bitcoins.lc and earnings in deepbit, if you get more coins in bitcoins.lc and can prove it make most short/long term then we'll talk, actually you will have nice chunk converted from deepbit.   so far reason tells me i have more luck with deepbit even if it's at premium cost.

It genuinely makes more sense to go to a different pool.

Tycho charges a 3% fee for Proportional work and a 10% fee for his Pay-Per-Share model. If any miner were to switch to a 0% fee pool,  of which there are a few, that miner would earn 3-10% more BTC.

People have the misconception that being in a larger pool guarantees you will make more BTC. This isn't the case. Having more hashing power just means that the variability of what you earn for each block will be more stable. On a smaller pool, the amount an individual earns for each block will vary more, sometimes by several bitcents. Averaged out over time, usually 7 days is all it takes, the total amount earned from each pool, if you discounted the fees they take out, would be the same.

With the exception of Tycho's instant payout button, there is NO advantage to mining on Deepbit that can't be found elsewhere.

Err how do you think bitcoin mining works?

At time scales of a week, yes, you will make 3% more on a 0% fee pool. LUCK is the same on every pool. Deepbit has more miners, therefore can solve a block quicker, but you get much less payout per block (LESS 3%). Another pool w/ less miners working will take longer to solve a block, but the payout is higher.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it  ;)

What the f does that mean  ???

F'd if I know, I just work here  :P

 :o ???  ::)

very simple, largest entity takes biggest slice.   the blocks that deepbit sloved  is a loss everywhere else. with us in deepbit you have less chances of solving blocks! if your 0 fee pool doesn't mine any blocks or mines very minimal, what's good 3% more of 0 earnings?
with your philosophy everyone should be mining solo, and i would not mind mining solo, but waiting for a few month on average to catch a block is a risk i don't want to take, the more network grows the less chances i have ever finding a block without even counting difficulty variable in.  large/est pool provides constant earnings and more chances for a pool as a whole to get the block faster than anybody else.
thats how pools became essencial, once it was difficult to solo mine, next it will be difficult to mine at smaller pools.

Yes, it takes the biggest slice; but you get payed LESS because you are contributing a proportionality less amount of power to their pool.
In the long run you get the same amount of coin. You have a higher variance if you are in a small pool; but in the timescale of a week this is negligible.

run 2 cards/rigs/DCs for a 24hr/week/month/year/etc in parallel deepbit and other pool and show me that with deepbit you earned 3% less than in smaller pool, then i will believe you. for now deepbit works great for me and roughly for the other 50% of the network and we have an instant payout!

No, that is not at all how it works. Every block solution is independent of the other. If you are talking about of the 2016 blocks per difficulty level I guess that's true, deepbit solves the most blocks out of all the pools. And as you stated each individual miner is paid proportionally of that to what they contributed.

The only difference between pools is the luck of that pool, whether on average they solved more or less blocks than their proportional computing power should have. A user who has 1% of the total networks hashing power should however on average earn 1% of the bitcoins (minus fees).

It's apparent that statistics and math mean absolutely nothing to you. Like so many others, the PayDay Loan option has you with Dollar/Bitcoin signs in your eyes. All the while, the man behind the counter is laughing at you.

You don't need to force someone to run 2 gpus. Just look at the statistics page of any pools. Compare their hash rates with the amount of blocks they've solved. Then calculate the difference of fees. Done. It's very simple math and you will see very quickly you're wrong.

Bitcoins.lc has instant payout.
AND when 50% of the network is controlled by Deepbit, we get some major security issues!

Its frivolous to "prove it", because it says ON the website that they take 3%.

the luck. coincidentally the larger your hashing power - more luck you have, deepbit in its share size is more lucky finding blocks than any other pool.  i totally understand that i or anyone can go solo mine and by some odd chance be getting all blocks for the rest of your life and everyone else be making nada -   very unlikely though, so the more hashing power - faster blocks can be solved. in my view as i have repeated previously i feel more lucky mining at deepbit than dancing about 0 fees elsewhere or going solo, for now.

its naive to ask someone to cut their earnings for the greater good of __incert_your_mega_humane_reason_here_because_it_is_obvoius_you're_trying_to_protecting_your_own_interests__

I'm very excited about bitcoins and would love it to see it succeed, my hashing power so little that  i don't see dollar signs in front of my eyes accompanied with sounds of cash register like you make it sound.
if you are not happy with deepbit - don't mine in there. when i won't be happy with deepbit's performance - i will switch to something else. what is the problem again?

I put together a Deepbit DDOS kit: http://www.mediafire.com/?b7gnz418m1w947d

the luck. coincidentally the larger your hashing power - more luck you have, deepbit in its share size is more lucky finding blocks than any other pool.  i totally understand that i or anyone can go solo mine and by some odd chance be getting all blocks for the rest of your life and everyone else be making nada -   very unlikely though, so the more hashing power - faster blocks can be solved. in my view as i have repeated previously i feel more lucky mining at deepbit than dancing about 0 fees elsewhere or going solo, for now.
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What the hell are you talking about? The higher your hashing power the LESS luck you have. That's what variance is, it is how much you stray from the norm (good / bad luck).

If you have more hashing power you have lower variance, meaning you have less good / bad luck and are closer to the calculated average.

You can feel however you want, but that's not how math works. And since bitcoin is a digital currency math is what rules.

That's definitely immoral and probably illegal depending on where you live.

Hmm... true.
Links taken down.

Why not create a tool that generates scripts for new users to use BitCoin, or some useful function, rather than DDoS scripts?  How does attacking a site lots of people enjoy accomplish anything positive?

Several ways...isn't that the competition-based argument. The same people who float deepbit now float Sarah Palin's financial needs.

You should put that script other places...once they verify the forged blocks deep's putting out you'll need it lol.

Heh the DDoS script was overkill; working on some scripts to easy-switch over to some other pools.

Just switched back to slush's pool purely for this reason.

I always liked slush's pool better anyway. Was riding out the 0% fee on deepbit. Now that it's over, no reason to stay.

50%...

Bump because there's not enough deepbit threads on the main page.

This issue worries me, and I have been thinking about solutions.

I have to admit I did not read this entire thread, but can someone please tell me if the following can be done?

I think that having pools is necessary, because the large number of miners makes the probability of getting a block reward very low, and most people prefer a steady income to a 'lottery-like' system. So, it makes sense for miners to organize themselves into large groups, preferably with at least a few percent of the total mining capacity per group.

On the other hand, it is not good for Bitcoin if the decision-making of what transactions are accepted is centralized in such groups. Such decision-making should be either left to the individual members in the mining pool, or it should be made centrally and then checked by the members.

If I am correct, several mining pools (deepbit is one of them) use the same RPC protocol, which is supported by multiple mining programs. This thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1458.0) describes the RPC protocol. Apparently, the pool server sends blocks to the members, which can then search for solutions of the hashing problem.

The solution:
Can't we make the mining software such that it checks the validity of the block that is sent by the pool server, before it starts solving the hash problem? If most miners use such software, then the pool leader can't do anything like double-spending, even if the pool covers more than 50% of the mining capacity.

Next: how to convince miners to upgrade their mining software?