Bitcoin Forum

As stated in the Topic, deepbit is becoming to strong! :'(

Bitcoins wont be save anymore!

We have to act!

DoS much?

Is this true? Is there anywhere we can view the current statistics? I thought DeepBit has had over 50% once before.

AFAIK even if worst case take over of deepbit network happened it would only mean temporary problem for bitcoin network, as new client version will be released to reject fake block chain, and people will stop using deepbit at that point, and probably more in the future once they have had that sort of thing happen.

so dont fret, but sure peeps out there should be better educated that being with biggest pool doesn't necessarily have any particular advantages worth choosing it for.

i started with deepbit but have since moved to a local (my country) based pool which has a real tight nit and helpful community that you get that chance to become friends with in irc etc.

 :D

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

True, I forgot about that. But yeah, bitcoinwatch is showing DeepBit has close to 50%. I really don't know why so many people use DeepBit, what is the attraction? Popularity?

The bigger the pool, the less time a block is found so ppl see a steadier rate of income (less variance)

It's weird, some days ago polls were balanced...

It'll never be allowed to go over the 50% barrier, at the very least i'm sure tycho will prevent it himself.

The sky is falling!!!!!

Why would Tycho limit his own income?  He gets 3% of the pool, so bigger is better I would assume.

I think you need to take into account the recent DDoS attacks - BTCGuild is still done for example and I know that is a popular pool

Eh, I won't act like a know a lot so I'll ask.
Would it be bad for a pool to exceed 50%?

when a pool owns over 50% they can in theory do everything bitcoin doesnt want them to :P

like:

freeze accounts, reverse transactions (by delay effectivly)

and introduce bogus blocks since they are the ones who varify them ;)

Whew, that would be very very bad  :P
Anyhoo, I'm mining at bitcoinpool.

yeah I changed the pool but mine is getting DDosed !

Nah, I'm good.

  Personally I dont worry about this (but then Im possibly quite wrong) as why bother with this? when they are making so much anyway. Perhaps someone more in the know can slap some sense into me? ;D

Does anyone know if BTCGuild is going to re-open?

I moved to a smaller pool even though Im not mining much i directed my miners to the Bitclockers.com (http://www.bitclockers.com) pool

If the assumption spreads the block chain is compromised, his BTC income will be worthless in notime. And for this to happen, it must not be true. Some short selling jerk could easily throw in fake chains and claim double spending on some of the transactions deepbit validated. Until the mess is cleaned up, BitCoin might be dead anyways.

So unless a pools mission is to destroy trust in BTC, it's absolutely in their interest to never come close to 50% hashing power.

Try www.coinotron.com :)

Would Slush's be a good alternative?

Any pool is a good alternative when Deepbit is hovering within 2-5% of taking the majority. You guys don't have to stop mining deepbit altogether but if a majority of miners point just 1 or 2 cards somewhere else, you will help Bitcoin maintain its integrity as a whole and also help a smaller pool get onto their feet. Double awesome!

And if they're doing incredibly well as a result of retaining such a large membership in their pool, why would they risk that by engaging in the types of shenanigans you're talking about?

True but what if someone hack deepbit ? By being popular they also become a target

I switched from BTCG to DB due to the DDOS (why are botnets so bad anyways?) and so far it seems my payouts aren't nearly as high as when I was with BTCG.  Sure my uptime is better, but whats the point of being connected 100% of the time when being connected at <24/7 yields more profits (in my case anyways). 

There was also just a difficulty increase.  This may be why you see less earnings.  Just one other option to consider.

If only the value of BTC went up along with the difficulty  :-\  Mining is still profitable for me but if the value gets left behind as difficulty takes off...  It's a depressing thought that one day I may have to hang up my hard hat...

Necromuch?

There's a rather large difference between my avg. Mhash on the webUI for deepbit compared to my GUIMiner stats.  difficulty increase or not, I find a 33% discrepancy to be rather peculiar to say the least.  With BTCGuild, all my stats were spot on. 

Im getting more bitcoin using PPS instead of proportional.

Well if you arent happy and looking for other options, see my sig :)

That's amazing, a pool owner gets 1.5% of all bitcoins minted...and people still keep signing up...

Because the owners of the computers in the botnet never agreed to others using their computers?

Depends on the pool.  deepbit takes 3%,  other take none.   It ranges anywhere from nothing to 3%.  I think its amazing that people stay at deepbit when they have the highest fees.   I guess its the instant payout option.   Only thing i can figure. :)

I know their fee is 3%. Of the block solve prize of 50BTC plus transaction fees, they pay miners 48.5BTC. I was pointing out deepbit's profits: if deepbit is 50% of the network hashing, and solves 50% of the blocks, and keeps 1.5BTC each + ~.1 transaction fees,  they are solving about 75 blocks a day, that's about 120BTC profit -> $1,800 a day that deepbit makes.

The point of this thread is that bitcoin is designed so that no one entity has enough computer power to be able forge a sequence of blocks on the bitcoin network. This is to protect against attacks by malevolent actors. It was not anticipated that the users themselves would pool up and give a single party control over the majority of hash power.

The chart at http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/ (http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/) had deepbit as more than 50% of the hash power seconds ago, but deepbit just disappeared and appears to be down.
http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=350x200&chd=t:0.85,3.75,22.87,5.92,0.00,3.13,55.24,0.28,6.71,1.04,0.22&cht=p&chf=bg,s,00000000&chl=ars|BitcoinPool|slush|bitcoins.lc|btcguild|MtRed|other|bitpit|btcmine|bitclockers|swepool

I don't think most people understand the danger of a single pool controlling 50% of all Bitcoin mining.  Since after 6 confirmations a transaction is verified, all it would take would be to submit fraudulent transactions and succeed in attaining 6 blocks in a row to make them permanent, vastly undermining confidence in the network and Bitcoin.

At 50%, there is a 1.5% chance every hour that were deepbit compromised it could falsify transactions and make them stick.  Were deepbit only at 20%, there would instead be a 0.0064% chance.  Ideally, no pool should be more than 10% of the total networks hashing power, giving instead a 0.0001% chance of defrauding the network.

To put this another way, if a pool with 10% of the network hashing power was compromised it would take an average of 19 years to defraud the network with false transactions.  A pool with 20% of the network hashing power would take only an average of 108 days.  A pool with 50% of the network hashing power could break the network in an average of a mere 11 hours.  While it is absurdly unlikely that a pool would remain compromised for years or even months, a pool could easily be compromised for a day or two before anyone would notice - longer if the hacker was very skilled or backed with powerful funding (such as by a government).

It should be readily apparent the danger of letting a single pool control such a high percentage of the mining market.  We all need to do our part to diversify the network by hashing with smaller pools until no single pool controls more than 20% of the network's hashing power.  

I recommend Triple Mining (58Ghash/s, 0.5% network hashing power) for its unique features and friendly community if you're looking for a smaller pool that rewards its members.  If interested, check out the link in my sig.  If not, find a smaller pool that suits your tastes and focus your hashing power there.  If you don't, there is a good possibility that in less time than anyone thinks the value of a BTC could be zero.

No, there isn't. But thanks for shilling your pool so I know which ones never to go to.

No need for the hostility . . .  If you disagree with my workup in the previous post, I'd welcome your feedback. 

No need to have thousands of threads on the exact same topic, either. And yet, here is another one.

Do "PANIC! Deepbit is too big!" threads and "BTC will never succeed" threads make up over 50% of this board yet?

I am on Slush's pool until BTCGuild is back online. I will never join any pool whose owner attacks another pool for being too successful.

Have a nice day.

+1 :D

I don't object to the success of any pool on that fact alone; quite the contrary, I believe successful entrepreneurs deserve the success they have achieved.  That said, a lack of diversification in mining pools weakens the entire network, and all you're doing is sticking your head in the sand and saying 'it could never happen'.  

I provided the statistics of how it *could* happen.  Its your choice if you decide not to take action based upon the facts, but don't deny that the facts exist purely because you don't like the direction they point to.

It's the stability and reliability that makes it worth it.  BTCGuild and BTCMine kept having problems every time I tried them.  I ended up losing far more in BTC production because their pools went down than I would have paid simply to stay at deepbit.  So I stay at deepbit.

I replied to exactly one line of your post. Re-read it. Calling what I replied to a "fact" is ignorant, or you're just trolling. You skipped a lot of logic between your statistics and your conclusion.

Pool diversification is great. Accomplish it with merit, not by attacking pools with a bigger chunk than yourself.

You replied saying that my conclusion was erroneous, without saying why.  Objecting to the conclusion without objecting to the steps to get there shows a lack of understanding or willful ignorance.  Perhaps I missed a step in my explanation.  If this is the case, tell me where the step was missed and I can attempt to explain it or admit my error.  Otherwise your objection is utterly meaningless without reason and evidence; unless you think that Bitcoin will continue to be seen as valuable when people can spend your coins for you without your consent? 

Also; when did I 'attack' any other pool?  I didn't say anything bad about deepbit other than the somewhat obvious dangers that occur with a pool that large.  I'd say the same thing regardless of what pool it was, because being that large is dangerous to the network as a whole.  If pointing out the reality of a situation paints a particular group in a bad light, you can't hold the artist responsible.  I just call it as I see it.

Burden of proof is on you, not me, for making a statement like that. You went from pointing out a possibility to concluding it was highly likely "soon."

Regardless, posting in the umpteenth thread about deepbit being dangerous is not doing you any favors. I don't have a personal problem with you, props to everyone who starts a pool. I'm telling you - as a guy with a decent amount of mining power - this shit is beyond old. Reading past all the nonsense going on here is exhausting now. There have been A LOT of these threads. ENOUGH ALREADY. If you are determined to restate and re-argue this point YET AGAIN, there's no way I'm signing up on your pool.

That's my advice to you, as a pool op, take it or leave it. I'm not bumping this thread any more. Peace.

What is the concrete scenario of deepbit (or some Other pool) to do something bad?

The pool attracts people because one get something in reasonable time. Its really disheartening to newcomers
to wait for more than a day (eg, the other pool I am mining on, shows 01day(s) 15hours current round!).

When I see that, I want to redirect my miners somewhere else, even without reading about how pool-hopping
is bad.

What is the alternative? Solo-mining with waiting for 50BTC for 2 months? Some other wonderful new pool,
which is not stable enough?

What is the real compelling incentive to switch? And where to switch to?

I provided the evidence and numbers for my position. 


Have you considered that maybe there really is something to our concerns?  This is the first I've commented on this particular subject, but if others are saying the same thing (and we reached this conclusion independently) does that not give credence to the idea?


If you're not interested in discussing this point, that's fine by me.  Others will surely be curious, and I'll be happy to explain my conclusions to them.  If my conclusions are inaccurate, I would appreciate their inaccuracies being pointed out to me so I can stop misleading people.  But until evidence is shown that convinces me that they are not accurate, I will continue to share them widely.

Oh, and I'm not a pool op.

Can't find it elsewhere. Is it so, that only block-generating bitcoin "clients" are verifying transactions?
What is the point of leaving the non-generating clients open then?

I'd switch if there was a good alternative offering the same as deepbit.

Currently I see no need to change

A block is simply a register of transactions.  Finding a block is simply verifying those transactions.  This means that only the miners who find a block are verifying transactions since the previous block was found.

These days people don't typically mine through the client (except some CPU miners).  The only reason I can see to leave the client open is to allow it to catch up to the blockchain, and automatically download every new block without a delay.

Thank you for clarification. Then I see the whole point with deepbit.net.

i dont see it as a real problem, if deepbit decided to abuse the power of having more than 50% then everyone would leave them, giving them less than 50% :P

or u can just keep the system balanced and join another independent pool, like mine :) 

I realy agree that there should be more pools that balance the total hashrate between more then just a few big pools out, if you like to join the TENOBIS MINE feel free to do so! http://mine.tenobis.com

A I missing something? According to the charts Slush is almost as big as Deepbit.
Seems as long as their is direct competition it's not the end of the world.

There are plenty of alternatives offering a much better deal than deepbit.  Deepbit charges the highest fees of almost any pool out there.

The Fees of the large pools was one of the resons why we made the TENOBIS MINE a 0 Fee Pool http://mine.tenobis.com

So there are many alternative pools out there ;)

I don't really get why people mine at Deepbit. There are many pools that are big enough to not have any significant variance in solving blocks that do not have any fees. The 50% issue is a problem but that's just one of the reasons to not mine at Deepbit, the other one is the fees.

See http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8653.0

A lot of people love the pps (pay per share) system. And it seems that nobody can do the math and see that the pool gets more or less 10% from the miners. I guess those are the same miners that are happy when the newest mining gets them another 0.1% - switching pool would bring an order of magnitude more... It seems a lot of bitcoin miners like to pay the highest fees. One wonders how that fits in the bitcoin world.

PPS was more important when computational power was small and rounds lasted for ever (couple of hours or even days), now it is useless because as you said it cost much larger fee.

Oh and I would gladly return to Slush's pool but for now it is not fully compatible with newer versions of Diablo Miner. Deepbit gives me almost 15% more Mhps (including much less stales on Deepbit). Older versions of Diablo are some 10% slower on both pools