Bitcoin Forum

How is bitcoin a trustless currency when you need to trust mining pools not to attack the system?

Look at this article: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/ (http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/)

Bitcoin could be a trustless currency if there were measured implemented to prevent centralisation of mining power.

We know the current situation is not how Satoshi intended it to be. I think if he didn't go away he would have come up with a solution a long time ago.

Any suggestions how to go about it?

I had some but I was told that they wouldn't work for such and such reason.

We need a working solution that doesn't require making major changes to the way the protocol works.
And from what I gather, that is not possible.

Hehe, there are no solutions even WITH major changes. That's real problem.
There are NO long term solutions any way you turn it around...with changes or without em.
Hard forks are...well...hard, but they are much better solution than having hole in your system that can be used to kill it any time by whoever.
I haven't heard of single proposal that would fix current problem even with hardest fork you can imagine....
It only shows how hard this topic is.

True, and by major I mean changing the way the protocol works.
And that means it's not Bitcoin anymore.

That's why a solution is currently not possible.
At least that's what I think.

Yeah, honestly I have no idea. But I would hope to see at least some community effort towards solving the problem. Even just continuing to acknowledge that it's a huge issue is something. I don't want people to think everything is ok just because Ghash is only reporting their total hashing at 40%.

Yeah, well I tried to throw a few idea (I admit maybe they were premature) and I got hammered.
So, I don't think a solution is going to pop up, and if someone had a solution to this then they would create their own coin which is more secure.
That is the impression I have after the last 2 days of trying to help the situation.

I think Peter Todd had an idea but apparently it's been shut down hard by the devs.

I hope people were polite at least when you offered your ideas. The community should welcome new ideas and debate while being able to maintain civility.

Most of us were quite polite.

S4VV4S on the other hand likes to say things like:

it known the power of DDoS ... on centralised pool.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0Y-W_4Gx3Qs/UoUIbIRVsFI/AAAAAAAAgPw/o3_fbdWiX8U/w1692-h742/headless-browser-ddos-attack-heatmap-hires.gif

i'm not an expert on the bitcoin protocol, but is there any way that we can make it financially feasible without having to be forced into a pool?

Make the whole group of miners one big pool that no one controls? Payout based on shares with no variance at all?

I'm guessing that doesn't work because it's too obvious.

Such a pool exists.  It's called P2Pool.

Unfortunately, most miners are too lazy to learn what their options are.  They hear that GHash is bigges, and so they assume that "biggest" means "best".  Then without doing any additional research, they turn on their equipment and connect to the GHash pool.

Bitcoin is not trustless in the least..You're trust relies on the operators of huge mining pools like Ghash...If the operator was paid off 500million+ etc by a billionaire or government etc, I'd think he'd have No problem whatsoever in doing a 51% attack and destroying bitcoin. It's as Easy as that.

Until these Bitcoin devs make it mandatory to mine on a P2Pool, Bitcoin will never be trustless.

I know about P2Pool but what I mean here is forced P2Pool. Like P2Pool is hardcoded into the protocol and everyone is forced to mine that way.

I assume it's not possible. Seems like a good solution otherwise, no?

do agree OP. trustless means trustless even if the people are to lazy to run a full node with p2pool.

the issue with concentrate mining power is still existent. it has to be solved and not with just an appeal to the miners. it has to be fixed within the code.

The community has to make the push and let the dev team know how important it is to them. A lot of people do care, but I fear that it's not close to enough.

my guess is they won't change anything because this greed driven hash power increasing is usefull for Bitcoin itself. if you have 3 or 4 strong parties which are fighting and add more hash power it seams good for Bitcoin. but the risk for crashing the price is high. but Gavin mentioned for him the price is too high at the moment. so let us wait and see what happens and maybe the price will crash to single digits.

Miners still receive a large portion of their block rewards as block subsidies (the 25 BTC that every found block receives) so as of now the risk of a 51% attack is low.

As the percentage of TX fees of the total block rewards increases the incentive to attempt to launch a 51% attack will increase.

In short, the risk of a 51% attack is low now, but is an issue that must be dealt with as the threat will be real in the future.