Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys,

I am hoping to get some technical or at least a bit better understanding with mining pool. Slushpool is allowing miners to donate their hashrate to a country that is in need of help. I am trying to understand if by donating your hashrate to the address that Slushpool has provided, how anonymous is this whole process?

My understanding is that if you're not configured with VPN then you're not truly mining anonymously. But since you're not sending your BTC directly, the transaction is not recorded in the blockchain either correct? Since you're donating your hashrate to a dedicated pool provided by Slushpool, is there anyway, other than from Slushpool themselves, for anyone to actually see that your particular Antminer is being used to donate to that cause?

Thanks.

Your ISP as well. Your ISP will know that you're establishing a connection to the pool and by association you're mining for the pool.

In addition, whoever is peeping into your traffic (if you're using a VPN, then the VPN operator) or any adversary will be able to see the traffic in plaintext if you're using stratum+TCP. Stratum+ssl will only reveal the connection destination (slushpool, etc).

It's not easy to track you, but you are not 100% safe, and here is why, once you establish a connection with the pool, your ISP might perform an Eavesdrop attack on you, the worker/account name will be in those packets which you exchange with the pool, it's not like the Stratum protocol will send all these info in plain text, but there is no guarantee that nobody can see what's happening.

These kinds of attacks are not so easy to perform, and chances are, they will usually be targeted to actually work, but I don't know how much effort and money your ISP is spending to look at things like that.

I think it's a lot safer if you just mine to your own address or use a new address which you own, withdraw the coins to a solid mixer, use the mixed tokens to directly donate to that "country that is in need of help".

Residential IP or your ISP has its own IP and recorded if you are mining on Slushpool according to their privacy policy "Our aim is and always will be to ensure your personal data are as anonymous as possible and unavailable to all third parties."

But the problem is they don't promise that users who mine on their pool are anonymous.

Source: https://help.slushpool.com/en/support/solutions/articles/77000433468-slush-pool-privacy-policy

So if you want to mine on slushpool anonymously better use VPN or use broadband with a sim card because it doesn't have permanent IP compared to home internet.

Using VPN could be somehow a safer option, but that does not increase anonymity by much, he says he wants to donate to a "country", anyone who follows the news knows that it's Ukraine, and the fact that he wants to keep anonymity at high level suggests that he probably from Russia!! and if he is caught doing so, the consequences can be deadly, I surely won't trust a VPN with my life for that matter. ::)