Bitcoin Forum

According to blockchain 24hr mining pool distribution chart , ghash has already reached 48% near 51% redline.
Sure , 51% mining portion doesn't mean 51 attack . but  market will be unstable & lose faith if ghash's mining power keep increasing
miners should move their hash power to other smaller pools for both the market and their own interest. ::)

What does a "51 attack" accomplish? Can they use to steal coins or shut down the network ?

its really difficult to tell whats going on here.  Clearly there is a concerted effort to spook this market down in BTC.  why?

-bm

Ghash is still less than 40%

http://organofcorti.blogspot.com.au/search/label/weeklypoolstatistics

ya it's really interesting.  they keep running this lie about GHash.  Also some of the other offbeat blogs making up nonsense about BTC.  Someone is trying to keep the market down.

-bm

 ??? It's not real time chart

https://blockchain.info/zh-cn/pools?timespan=24hrs

Ghash mined out    81 blocks in recent 24hrs reaches 48% portion , unless blockchain's statistics is wrong.

to bluemeanie1 : lol ... I am not trying to keep market down . I just suggest miners should switch to other pools

Does anyone not care about the long-term implications? This will only make other, smaller pools less competitive and less viable, until Ghash slowly takes over more and more share. Sure, 51% attack is a temporary disruption, but what about when they're at 78%?

This is why once POS has matured and shown to be stable we need to move BTC over to it.  I don't think now is the right time, because POS and its variants are not tested.  However down the road BTC really needs to get past the mining/pool crap. 

How many specialized mining hardware manufacturers are there that haven't been scandalous in some regard ?

...

I mentioned this in another thread, that if the miners really care about GHash.IO reaching 50% +, then why don't Slush, Eligius, BTG Guild or Discus Fish make it easy and profitable for cloud-miners to join them?  Easy cash for then to buy more equipment, GHash.IO then becomes less a (51%) threat.

Maybe comment (above) was correct, maybe it does not matter, that no one cares!

***

I have BTC I would like to invest in a cloud mining operation with a track record like the above four.  And I would think there is plenty more BTC if even I am interested...

Make it easy and profitable, guys!  Great customer service.  Then you win.

Donate to P2P pool miners.  Others will see the free coins and join.  Already P2P pool has been more profitable for miners then other pools since the donation tool started:

http://blisterpool.com/p2pdonate

blockchain's statistics for mining pools is always an approximation, because it counts who reported a block. Remember this is a distributed network where nodes communicate via other nodes. So a block found by "A" can be received by blockchain.info from "C" (because it went A->B->C->blockchain.info) So this 48% for ghash is ghash reporting more blocks than it finds because it is well connected in the network and receives some blocks before blockchain.info does.

Also, spikes over 40% are possible for ghash because of variance (luck) in block solving. Any pool with 38% will occasionally see 40+% for short periods.

kinlo has a site which is more accurate because he examines mining pool websites for reported blocks:
http://blockorigin.pfoe.be/chart.php

organofcorti's blog is most accurate because he uses all clues such as payment addresses. He also reports 1 week periods which would highlight a sudden increase more quickly.


Absolutely. It's better if p2pool is more attractive to miners for profits, and has improved software, which has a fund for donations too (see my sig).

I don't care.

Coz you are f*cking greedy newbie.

Meanwhile...

http://s30.postimg.org/en5qu08gx/image.png

I care, in fact I think 51% problems and mining pool centralisation is one of the biggest and most important obstacles to Bitcoin's continued success.

I hope Ghash does get to 51% and starts doublespending like crazy, as someone with a significant stake in Bitcoin, because then we'll find out if this problem has a solution or not.

If it does, let's implement it, if not, better to know now than before Bitcoin gets bigger.

Sometimes it really does take a crisis before people take action.

BINGO!

Welcome to the centralized payment network "Bitcoin", owned and operated by GHash Inc.

http://s30.postimg.org/gwjph18i9/image.png

Shorting bitcoin maybe?

A society or program can not function well for long if it relies on its participants to behave as angels. Bitcoin is inherently flawed in this regard, and must be either fixed or transitioned out.

 Do people not realize 51 is an expression and all you theoretically need is 50.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%?

 They already have attack capable status.

Seems to explain the price drop.  Can you guys knock it down to around $10 a coin for an hour or two?  Preferably within the next few days...

Edit: I doubt Ghash is looking to put themselves out of business.

To $10? In 2 years for sure.

down goes the price  ???

I'm willing to take your bets for a $10 BTC, if you dare. Otherwise stop spreading FUD, bitcoin is fine, but the mining thing isn't. We a proper competitor to ghash and we need one now.

http://geek-news.mtv.com//wp-content/uploads/geek/2012/11/picard-facepalm2.jpg

- How is my health, doctor?
- You are fine, but your brain, heart and circulatory system aren't.

Why facepalm? Is bitcoin broken? Transactions seem to be going through.. I just received one. What's the problem?

I said mining isn't because long-term this is not good. It's not like everything explodes when they get to 51

coz you are stupid, man.

No, I don't care about Ghash. I don't see why so many people do? What happens, happens. It's gotten Bitcoin this far. Don't fret about the future. Chill out.


You just said Bitcoin is okay. Then mining is bad. Mining is a aspect of Bitcoin, and many other cryptos.  ::)

I meant right NOW it's okay as in it's not crashing or the network is stalled - it's just at risk, and the risk comes from mining. I was considering bitcoin as the network and usage of it, not "everything to do with bitcoin"

Put another way, in 5 months when Ghash is at 100%, we can still have bitcoin, and it can still be working fine as a cryptocurrency. Granted, a lot of the decentralized-or-nothing folk would probably have left by then.

I care enough to mine in a smaller pool.

Whatever happened to AsicMiner? What are their share prices now days? How did Ghas get so big? Havent been mining for a long while now so im kinda out of the loop.

No, it can't.

It would work in the technical sense, but not in the currency one. Money is a funny thing. To become a currency, something commonly accepted as having monetary value, requires confidence. This is true of any currency, but is especially of something like fiat paper, only backed by government decree, in contrast to gold which has been valued globally for thousands of years. Bitcoin, which isn't physical or backed by decree, is especially quirky in regards to confidence.

If people perceive the integrity of [bit]coins held as subject to too much risk of losing day to day value, due to double spend risk etc., they will not desire to hold them for longer periods of time, or eventually at all, meaning confidence could be lost in the currency completely.

I suspect people are not so concerned with the GHash situation because they appear to be on 'our side', and disrupting the network would run counter to their self-interest. However, there can be a limit to that threshold of trust.

I also believe people recognize there is a viable fallback in Litecoin, for example, if some short-term issue affects Bitcoin, because it's an entirely separate system. That's something I preached a lot about in the past. I would feel more nervous if there was only Bitcoin in which the community placed all its eggs.

Ghash doing a possible 51% attack is not the only trouble, but all the ignorant idiots newbies who dont give a fuck, as well as dont have a fucking clue.

Seriously fr33d0miz3r, stop bitching. Some aspiring Captain of Industry will certainly come by with a better competitor to GHash, the free market will save us because everyone is a completely rational actor.

Good point. So you're assuming the value of bitcoin has a partial variation with the amount of decentralization in the mining network then. Probably correct, but it would still have value even with a centralized network; just much less. (ie; merchant acceptance and infrastructure developments)

umm...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0

When do we have PPC as our new savior :) ?

How do we know that one entity (e.g. ghash.io) is in fact still below 50% ?

Maybe the ghash.io guys own or control additional pools or miners. In that case they might be way above 50%.

it just happened.

https://blockchain.info/de/double-spends

They just went from 50% to 49%.

This is good for bitcoin because

Who said it's good? This is awful.

Dont worry Parazyd, I have seen lately a lot of ignorants who dont have a clue about BTC and also dont give a fuck.

blockchain.info/de/double-spends

Bitcoin is facing a serious threat.

I'm seeing 3 double-spends out of 500,000 recent transactions, and all 3 are < 1 bitcoin.
Ghash is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Why would it put that at risk for a couple of bitcoin in a double-spend?

Yes, you are one of them.

Any private key holder could create double spend attampts. It has nothing to do with mining

Proof of them being able to do it... I dunno.

Gbozo works in bank and earns millions. He sees some small change on his boss's desk and grabs it. Why? Maybe so he could prove he could do it. Genius!

Whatever, point is they have 50% and they aren't doing anything about it. They should split to 3-4 different pools.

ghash.io currently down to 44%.  We are heading in the right direction fellas! :)

Yes. I agree maybe they should. The thing is that Bitcoin has to work without people being nice. It has to work that way or sooner or later someone will come along and not be nice, and break it. That is the way the world is unfortunately.

I know that, I have 3 in conflict transactions :) The problem is that I cant make em valid unless I control most of the network power.

Still at 49%, where did you see 44?

That's why I say you don't have a clue about BTC. Even if you control 100% of the mining power, you can't make them valid at the same time

This gives some comfort: https://twitter.com/jeff_smith01/status/476652314221367297

It's all empty talk here. Those who care can't do anything about it, and those who can don't want to, because they are mining more coins.

I do not think double spending is a problem now, but it may become a more serious issue when ghash pass the 60% or 70% mark. Can the devs do something about it, incase it continues to grow?

Comfort? This is a joke.

Even if there is no problem this time, this will be more and more of a problem in the future.  It is sad to see something that was meant to be "decentralized" become so close to be centralized. 

I wonder if other methods other than PoW can and will be truly decentralized??

To me it is all about incentive.  Miners are being reward for becoming centralized and not processing transactions that are small.  That isn't a very well designed system for the future of money.

+1, a sad, evil joke.

You mean can the community do something about it in case it continues to grow. Software can do pretty much anything. That's not a problem. For example, it's possible to detect and reject blocks from certain sources if enough people run such software. The challenge is getting people to run various types of software.

The community for the most part would never run software which changed the coin limit, for example. However, it might be acceptable to ban parties with proven intent to defraud on the network.

Can easily have this work if the other pools competed better with Ghash. Think about it this way, if we had a SECOND Ghash.io, that would be a good thing. But instead, we have Slush, Eligius, etc. (not that they're baaadddd, just that they could be better).

How can this be possible!  :o

50% now!

Moar! https://blockchain.info/en/double-spends

 ;D :D :D

Panic! Panic! Panic! SELL SELL SELL

You do realize that THAT happens all the time.

Yeah, but now they started paying attention.

bitcoin is doomed.

I already sold mine, and eposited into Australian bank where it will be safe for next few years....oh wait....

SELL SELL SELL (I need cheap bitcoin)

Sorry, that boat sailed away i'm afraid....wait for next FBI BTC movement..it will happen again and ppl will be running like crazy again.

Well at least I can say that I have never mined on Ghash, BECAUSE they have always been the biggest pool. Since I care for bitcoin I haven't even looked at the incentives for mining there, and always mined on a smaller pool. At least for my part I am not responsible for this weak link or flaw in the bitcoin system.
So yeah I care.

It's okay now. GHash seems to have temp-fixed it. Stuck at 49% now. So far so good, but they should still split it all into smaller independent pools because this is just too much.

Why people keep saying this doenS't matter :facepalm.
They can get crazy, be bribed, or be hacked by someone that hates bitcoin, and everything will ruin. We should make effords to the point where no one could harm the network, no matter how this would be against their own interest. You know, sometimes people just goes nut, or get relaxed with digital security, and you know...



If they wanted to harm the network, they could buy lots of computers, let them off the net for a while, them connect all and start an atack. For me this is far from being "good".


Well, some mentally ill people do it, its called Kleptomania. And what if some bad guys from some black ops intelligence agency  demanded you to take the "small change", or they would kill you and all your familly?

NO

Not always... one and half year ago was BTCguild the biggest - at least they did something actively to reduce their size, I have much respect for that.

Since double spend affect only transactions, merchant could require more confirmation (like one business day) to make double spend almost impossible

For hodlers, they could wait until P2Pool occupies more than 50% of hash power. In the following years, every bitcoin miner should switch to run P2Pool to make it stronger than 60% of the network hashing power and permanently dismiss this threat

The biggest problem for running P2Pool is its dedicated node requirement and not so user-friendly setup. But I think the migration will be the major improvement for bitcoin for the coming years

Also this:
"Double spends on this page may be unintentional. In the event that a double spend is maliciously crafted being listed on this page is no indication that it was successful or any merchant or user lost money as a result. "

All the merchants using bitcoin payment processors are already protected. I think that a double spend attack could only affect someone small that deals with a probably volume of transactions. Everyone with a large volume of transactions towards them has gone through the proccess to protect their payments againsts 0 confirmation transactions. ANd besides that, it's not that of an easy proccess to do a double spending attack.

That is BINGO:

http://puu.sh/9rEgO/0c2a6fb696.png

I care, mostly because this was inevitable but any attempt to discuss it was shouted down or ignored until now because that meant admitting true decentralisation is nonsense. I can only think of two options and both amount to centralisation.

1) Admitting the natural equilibrium of mining concentration is greater than 50% because greed beats sensibilities. Which means trusting that central entity.
2) Technicalities are changed by a small group to prevent the above. Which loops back to mean the same.

I’d like to know what other options there are?

I am amazed by the numer of ignorant greedy newbs who say that they don't give a shit.
Please google "bitcoin 51% threat", learn about something before you start using it.

ghash is a colossal threat .. the community should NEVER allow a mining pool this kind of power.  News of a 51% attack would DESTROY Bitcoin by undermining our confidence in it. 

Agreed

Satoshi warned about this.

Now you see why having only 1 bloackchain will not be acceptable. Having a backup suck as Litecoin or Peercoin are here for these very reasons and why they will continue to grow and gain marketshare

We know the 51% magic number..  But what about the coins ?

How easy would such an attack be to carry out if you had 200,000 BTC to compliment the hashpower ?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=650311.0

Time will tell.

It was sooooooo weak that a hardware manufacture had to resolve this instead of the pool itself.  It really makes me have a lot less faith in bitcoin.  The pool should have just made a very small fee instead of charging 0.  That would have naturally reduced the share.  Instead the pool operators just kept on going.  Soooooo sad.

MORE p2pools and less idiots buying mining contracts that do not pay off.

Satoshi didn't plan the birth of pool when he projected bitcoin with the 51% attack possibility.

i think he thought about it, but he couldn't find a good solution

Ghas.IO working on "mining decentralization solution"

http://imgur.com/3IInTSR


but in the long run we have to find a solution that this is impossible do to or at least much much harder.

So now ghash.io control 50% of the network, but they've turned off/hidden some of it so it looks better on a graph?

This doesn't inspire confidence.

I think we should at least consider the fact that perhaps the large number of 'ignorant greedy newbs' might actually be a significant smaller group, with a nefarious agenda.

/paranoia off.

BitFury actually pulled several PH/s of their mining capacity from Ghash and directed it towards other pools.

Their support doesn't even sound like native english speakers - which is fine actually, but anyway it's not reassuring, I don't think they CAN 'decentralize' it without losing control of their miners lol.. Pointing their hardware at a different pool doesn't change the fact they have CONTROL at any time to do a 51% attack.... =\

We just need a better mining model tbh..

Something like, oh I dont know, proof of stake, or vertcoin? This problem isnt new, and it isnt going away. I think its not just an issue, it is THE issue...

Herein lies the catch 22 with ASIC mining:

Initially, ASIC mining makes the network exponentially more secure. But in the end, ASIC mining will make the network MUCH LESS secure.

He properly assumed that the miners would use their brains when selecting their pool.

i sold 51% of my bitcoins, not kidding

WTF, why are miners so clueless?

This is a flaw in bitcoin itself. CEX.IO today.........China, Russia, USA tomorrow.

Why everybody talk about 51 %? 50.00001 % is not enough?

The term 51% is "hype" word, actually 40% would be enough to make serious trouble.

You mean 40% is enough to get past some confirmations with a decent success rate?
51% is like doomsday for bitcoin though.

And really all of these stated numbers should be 20% lower given that aprox 20% of the share is unknown.
If Ghash has 31% we should still be worried

The lower 30s aren't that bad. It would still be better that it was lower, I agree, but it's not such a serious threat as 51%, or even 40%.

I totally agree.

I remember that BTCguild took action when they got over 35%, they raised the pool share fee, and made sure miners would go to other pools, very responsible of them, I respect that very much.
I have absolutely no respect for GHash.IO, they should have add a fee long time ago.

This! It's protocol problem that should be blamed on protocol, not on ghash, and should be fiexd on protocol level. Ex lead dev said he has code in place to fix it if it evers becomes reality. Ok, maybe that code is not perfect, but still, can't they work on it, and than deploy it BEFORE it happens? What kind of protocol keepers are they if they will let it get hit before they act on it...tha'ts just not smart.

That's one of the main reasons people choose GHash.IO. That and merged mining of three more altcoins.
Eligius offers merged mining of NMC and also has 0% fees. People should switch there at least.


It's the code for a hard fork. We're better off not having to use it. But unfortunately, if a 51% attack happens, we'll have to hard fork the chain.

Stop the panic already...they have 30% currently.
Source: https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs

So basicly, it's better to let shit happen, than to act on it before it happens? Shit that can kill or cripple BTC?
Wouldn't it be better to prepair everyone in advance? Make some dead line, update clients months ahead etc, and than execute hard fork?

I cant see how doing it that way could be wors than attack happening and than changing protocol in rush....what can go wrong with that i wonder...

Oh, they moved a share of their pool to Unkown... then must everything be ok now  :D

"Unknown" got bigger... But yeah, this looks great now. Much better than 50% :)
I wish more people move to smaller pools like Eligius or Slush.


The devs have been working on this issue for a long time. It's not just a line of code in C.
The protocol is complicated and requires hard work. Gavin's (I think) code is just a last resort.

I'm not sure why miners don't watch that statistic and equally distribute among 3-4 pools?
This is bad news for Bitcoin, even though nothing bad might happen. I'd rather no risk it.

as above, if they  pull smth, they will be finished forever :)

No it's not. Stop spreading this fear.

Doomsday would mean the attacker could do this things;

Reverse other people's transactions
Prevent transactions from being sent at all (they'll show as 0/unconfirmed)
Change the number of coins generated per block
Create coins out of thin air
Send coins that never belonged to him

Bitcoin is an experiment in using "proof-of-work" to secure a public transaction ledger. You can not work around the 51% attack at the protocol level without killing the currency.

With 40% or with 48% an attacker could still launch a double spend attack, just with less of a 100% success rate.

An attacker could technically reverse other people's transactions as they could start an attack prior to when a specific transaction was confirmed but the subject transaction was confirmed by the "orphaned" chain

Looks like its stabilized around 1/3 of the network
Good news for the community
https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs

See that big brown chunk of 28% unknown hashrate?

Wanna bet what that is? ;)

Even with infinite hash-power, you can not create coins out of thin air, change the number of coins generated per block (in the upward direction), or send coins that do not belong to them. Full nodes would reject those transactions and resulting blocks as invalid.

What the 51% attack does is let you reliably re-write history. You will occasionally be able to temporary reverse 1-3 blocks with only about 40% of the hash-power, but not reliably.


If that really is Ghash.io, that may actually be good news. During an attack, the attacker's hash-power will go "dark" as they work on a competing chain in secret. That is one problem with relying on those graphs: a well-funded attacker will never show up until they have an alternate chain thousands of blocks deep.

Edit: I don't think the pools are authenticated in any way for that graph. An attacker can probably pretend to be the 5 top pools.

What a funny coincident that Ghash jumped down from 40% to 30% and "unknown" jumped up from 15% to 25% at the same time...

for example: top ip of unknow belongs to ghash.io :))))

88.150.205.243

-> http://totalhash.com/network/ip:88.150.205.243

so much op =D