Bitcoin Forum

There are a certain number of ASIC manufacturers.

Has anyone suggested the idea of labeling bitcoins mined on the equipment of a particular manufacturer so that the manufacturer can offer separate incentives, bonuses for the owners of bitcoins mined on their equipment?

miners who own these ASICs are usually connecting to a mining pool which will be setting the coinbase transaction (and any "label" on the newly mined coins) so it is not possible for the miner with the particular ASIC to do anything.

also bitcoin network should not be a place for advertisement!

Those "labels" could be easily faked and it would be impossible to reliably verify whether the coins have been mined on hardware by a specific manufacturer.

The only way to "advertise" your hardware brand on the blockchain is by running a pool yourself and some manufacturers actually already do that. (AntPool for example. Bitfury used to run a pool as well, not sure what happened to them. Maybe they just stopped advertising their hashrate)

well, OP_RETURN exists to allow people to insert arbitrary data into confirmed transactions, and that's mainly because it would be possible to do so anyway, so making a feature out of it (albeit not at all accommodating due to the 40 byte limit) was a compromise

if people want to pay for their blockchain stored grafitti, then who are we to argue?

They could start their own pools and reward miners with a unique altcoin or NFTs or something. The question is what demand would there be for such a token/coin? That’s what makes exchanges somewhat special, they bring demand for their own coin by accepting it for exchange fees. I guess a mining pool could rent hashrate using their own coin, but that would be quite a gamble and I’m not sure it would be as utilized or profitable.

I like the way you named it. “Labelled Bitcoins”; as if the miners glue a sticker on top of the coins.  

 

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Seriously, there are ways to add hidden messages in the block chain. The simplest is by using OP_RETURN (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_RETURN). But, since you referred to miners, then just enter it to your coinbase message. What you described applies since the genesis block. Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks, remember? That's a coinbase parameter (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coinbase).

A bitcoin is not an object, virtual or otherwise. There is nothing to label. Labeling bitcoins would be like labeling each drop of water in swimming pool.

Regardless, what is the incentive for ASIC manufacturers pay people who own bitcoins originally mined on their hardware, even if it were possible?

How difficult is the implementation of the scheme, when such a fake would be impossible or as difficult as possible?

Advertising is the engine of trade.
Where there is value, there is advertising, and vice versa.

It is possible. Such manufacturer could create HD wallet and publish its public key. Then, each device could have one of the child private keys. In this way, any miner using such equipment could use it to sign any message and prove that it has such equipment. For me, it seems pointless, but technically it is possible.

When solo mining, proving that particular equipment was used to mine a block is trivial, all that is needed is checking the coinbase transaction. When mining in pools, proving that is harder, because it is possible if miners will switch to Stratum v2 or similar protocols where they can control their blocks.

Point, for example, is to get some kind of tokens on the bitcoin chain that carry additional value in addition to the value of bitcoin itself

True! Ignoring some of the other practical issues (e.g. pool mining vs solo mining) this brings up another interesting problem though:

1) Assuming non-hardened child private keys, once the private key of a single miner is compromised, the private keys of all miners are compromised [1]. Keeping private keys secure from someone who has full physical access is somewhat possible, but quite a challenge. Especially if the pot is not the contents a single hardware wallet but a whole network of mining hardware.

2) Assuming hardened child private keys, you get rid of the security concern above, but the manufacturer would not be able to verify the signatures [2]. Unless they derive and store each hardened private key in advance which comes with a different host of issues.


[1] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/90627/what-are-the-consequences-from-the-leak-of-xpub-and-child-private-key

[2] https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/extended-keys

well, I think this is actually a problem (an insoluble one)

attesting what your equipment was when mining a block is trivial. Proving it is not, and I'm not sure how you could achieve it.

Any scheme used whereby the miner or the manufacturer of the mining unit certifies what spec of machine was used could be manipulated (and real-world miners may end up using a mix of unit types in practice, that's another hot mess to contend with). Same goes for the location; using all kinds of IP proxy rules out determining origin using IP addresses. And the algorithm used to mine the blocks is entirely generic, the concept would not work if that were not true.


so, yes, it's a strange idea.

There are two possible ways.

The first is that the manufacturer will not mind that his label is put even untruthfully. It is for advertising purposes.

And the second way is that the manufacturer deploys its own small private chain (or non-private) in which the correspondence between the equipment id and the public key is fixed. It could look like a side chain in which only bitcoins with their labels go, there could be a division of values. A miner would send bitcoins to that network, receive a token of that chain, and return bitcoins back to the main chain.

Why not? You bought some equipment, so you received some private key from the manufacturer and as long as that manufacturer sells miners with unique private keys, it is possible to identify which customer mined which blocks. It is the same kind of proof like with Casascius coins: the private key is protected from viewing by anyone and if you want to sell that mining device to someone else, that person will be able to tell if that private key is still inside or was it revealed by scraping something, detaching some factory labels that has "warranty void if removed" or similar signs, etc.

Also, mining device don't have to lock coins on manufacturer's key, all that is needed is signing blocks with that key, for example in the same way as you can see in signet.

Edit: I can also imagine a system where the customer first send some public key to the manufacturer, then it is turned into physical connections on that board to make it read-only, and then that device is mining ECDSA vanity addresses with manufacturer's name. In this way, the final key used for signing messages is a combination of the manufacturer's key and the customer's key, to fake it they have to cooperate.

was it not reduced to 40 bytes, or was that in a dream? :D surely it wasn't reduced to 40, then subsequently bumped back up to 80 again?




no, and no

you're conceding already that the manufacturer or the miner can falsify the information (or sell the public key in a block signing scheme): trust required


cryptography can secure data

cryptography cannot secure real physical objects in the real world

no amount of extra cryptography can solve this problem

What makes us limit ourselves to trustless and only cryptography in order to obtain the required functionality? Just an understanding that it is ugly to spoil a clean implementation with dirty inclusions? :)

What else would you do though? Hire mining inspectors that regularily check mining operations around the globe whether they run hardware according to regulation? :D

Seriously tho, at the end of the day the most straightforward solution would be to simply get in touch with major mining pool operators. Given an attractive enough sponsorship deal you'd surely find operators willing to add your tagline to whatever blocks they mine. Whether this advertising money wouldn't be better spent elsewhere is a different question. Depending on ones intent this would digress from the original idea of incentivising people to use specific mining hardware though, leaving only the advertising aspect.

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Imagine that ASIC manufacturers have found a parallel application for their devices, which is in demand by millions of consumers, and not by tens of thousands of miners.
The idea would have gained more interest.

Ah I see! You mean like what if instead of making circuits that are application specific to Bitcoin mining, they would make processing units that could also be used for, let's say, graphics? 🤔

There is nothing to imagine. Has someone forgotten what the 'AS' part of ASIC stands for? Application Specific. The chips can only do 1 thing - process hashes.

Now perhaps someone can come up with a different purpose other than validation that the results of matching a hash can be used for but the mfgrs have nothing to do with that part of the equation.
Such as a RISC processor or GPU? What a ground breaking idea... :P

Yes! Or if they continue to target business clients instead they could create something like an array of gates with programmable fields 🤔


But yeah, to get back on topic: ASIC miners as used for Bitcoin can do literally nothing else but process hashes. You could use the excess heat for heating, but that's about it as far as consumer use cases are concerned.

whoa, that's some 18th century thermodynamics thinking you're stuck in there homie

we can take:

• the excess heat
• all the consumer use cases
• the color of the miner they  were all hashed on

...and put them all on blockchains! Then we put those on.... ONE BIG BLOCKCHAIN!

actually, let's just hash every possible thing in the whole world, and see if it doesn't unify quantum physics and relativity?! even if it doesn't, the rig would be awesome ;P we could put it on a monster truck?


sorry, I'm a little bored of this thread :)

I don't have everything ready yet to dispel boredom. But the topic is part (and not very mandatory) of another, much larger and not boring at all.

In the topic of bitcoin tags, of course, the most interesting question is the algorithmic proof that calculations (any flow of information) had a specific hardware source. If algorithmic is impossible, then it would be interesting to know about the ways that make it as difficult as possible to replace (things like mac, IMEI, etc.)

Convert the heat generated from hashing back into electricity, which is then put into more hashing, which is put into electricity....

You could call it
The perpetual mining machine!

Bitcoin can be tagged as is.  Tags can exist in blockchain in the forms of : private keys, public addresses, balances, addresses of the transfers to/from.  This of course relies on the ability of someone who has access to those keys, can prove the tags, etc. The question is whether you can trust the tags.  (If someone has a private key with a specific tag, then it relies on their willingness to share that private key.)  There aren't any tags in existence that are immutable -- MAC and IP addresses can be spoofed. Blockchain is the closest immutable human creation due to the wide distribution of nodes/ledgers.

For a tag to follow a specific coin, you might need a different specific ledger.  Maybe you could sell a mined coin in the form of the coin itself, with an associated NFT that follows a dominant line? I don't understand NFTs, but that seems like it would be doable. Or the miner could list coins produced by it on a simple website...

For a hardware specific tag, you'd have a key that could sign for the veracity of the generating hardware. I can't think of a 100% hardware/software method of verification yet that was completely devoid of the human element to prevent fraud.

But what happens as soon as the coin is mixed with others?

YES! INFINITY BITCOINS!

In bitcoin, there is no absolute mixing, since all the inputs and outputs are always known, there are no balances in the chain, only history.

But for an optimal and complementary scheme of separating the value of bitcoin from the value contributed by specific manufacturers of devices for miners, it is just possible to think about creating side chains of manufacturers. In which there would be just a real separation.

If tags were added to each bitcoin that was mined, then you would eventually result in infinite tags to a child coins after used coins are mixed.

Labelling coin is a bit late at any rate based on a miner, considering 18/21 M are already mined, and everyone can have a record of the inputs/outputs/chain history. A miner in 2021 could probably just declare that they mined particular coin to all if they want and it was done under X requirements, considering the difficulties of mining and requirements for tax reporting.

Is it now impossible for any transaction in bitcoin to find out through a retrospective study in which blocks all the components were extracted by the miners? I do not know how difficult it is to calculate, but since there are all inputs and outputs in the circuit, it is certainly possible.

The protocol, by the way, could provide that in the bitcoin chain, the additional value from the manufacturer lives no more than n blocks, so as not to really load the main chain and motivate miners to immediately output the mined bitcoins into the side chain to clear the bits from the labels and receive the manufacturer's tokens.

Would this result in a lack of fungibility?
How would you prevent label abuse? At what point should you prevent labelling? How many labels would you consider possible or feasible?

Should we label every coin based on who owned the previous transactions as to whether they were a republican/democrat/libertarian/socialist, or whether they believed in christianity/judaism/islam/shintoism/buddhism/etc?

I understand that certain things become collectors items and criminality should be traced, but that seems already inbuilt, so I don't understand the further uses of such a thing. A manufacturer can give plenty of incentives to use their own equipment. I'm sure they could come up with other methods to provide tracking mechanisms if they really wanted to, but would a manufacturer risk changing the fundamentals of blockchain or potential security holes?

Yes, why not? The only question is what kind of community, who will fill this label with value. Equipment manufacturers were mentioned first of all, because they could potentially really give this additional value quite noticeable, they could implement their own sub-chain. And also, the question of the possibility of some proof of mining on the equipment of a particular manufacturer is still relevant.

I'd say that is a pretty big question.

Specifically, labeling coin with previous political beliefs would destroy the functionality of the coin by limiting the transaction ability of users. Some might view such labels as creating a dystopian control over the world. In reality, enacting such labels users would cause a coin with a high barrier to entry, and users would not use it and move to a coin with lower barriers for use. Practically, this would also require a lot more synching of data between nodes, making it less distributed and secure.

I can see some argument for a manufacturer labeling coin mined by it, but that is a marketing method that doesn't require a change of bitcoin protocol, and can be done wholly off-chain.


Can you name any 100% trustworthy source? I can't.

All actors will inherently behave within their own self interest.
Your self interest and my self interest are not the same and will occasionally compete.
Some actors will find ways to abuse any system for their own self interest, so it's best to consider safe guards.

It's best to find ways in which all actors are awarded for acting in a mutual self interest.

because

• it's easy to fake
• if the units of a currency aren't uniform, acceptance could be harmed

really you're straying into various ideological territories with this thread, which is not what the dev and tech forum is about


technically, what you're suggesting cannot be achieved, which you readily conceded earlier. why are you still talking?

There are still technical aspects here, even without ideology. For example, if you drop the topic of proving that a digital label corresponds to a real physical object (even unsubstantiated attempts to do this also have technical aspects), but simply give the miner the right to put this label.

 Then such a technical aspect has already been raised here. How difficult will it be in any transactions to allocate tags attached to coins during mining? I assume that this complexity is not infinite, but how big - it would be interesting to understand. Immediately, the second question arises technically, does it make sense to limit the lifetime of tags inside the bitcoin chain to a certain number of blocks?

I thought there was some dislike in your question. Or was it just my imagination?

they've got it already, they can sign any data and put it in their block reward transaction. someone has said this in the thread already

And this fact immediately offers to solve many applicative, including technical problems.  In what applications is this already used?  After all, you can do interesting things with this feature.
For example, sub-chains without pre-mining, but with PoS, in which coins are also mined by bitcoin miners, in case they freeze their bitcoins in these sub-chains for a certain number of bitcoin blocks (the lifetime set by the protocol of this sub-chain), on some kind of smart contracts.
I wonder if this has not been implemented anywhere yet.

OP_RETURN already have some usage, such as
1. Colored coins. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Colored_Coins (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Colored_Coins)
2. Connecting to side chain. https://blog.omni.foundation/2019/07/16/omni-state-of-the-layer/ (https://blog.omni.foundation/2019/07/16/omni-state-of-the-layer/)
3. Storing IPFS hash. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/81449 (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/81449)

And some other usage which i don't bother to mention.