Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Mining => Topic started by: scouzi on April 21, 2013, 07:11:13 PM



Title: Mining operators
Post by: scouzi on April 21, 2013, 07:11:13 PM
Pardon my noob question.

I have a question on mining operators. How do we know they are declaring 100% of the found blocks to the pool? Couldn't they simply skim a few blocks to an unknown entity once in a while?

Is this 100% based on trust?


Title: Re: Mining operators
Post by: crazyates on April 21, 2013, 08:07:43 PM
Most blocks can publically be tracked to which pool mined them. If that public record doesn't correspond with what the pool is reporting, then we have a problem.


Title: Re: Mining operators
Post by: eleuthria on April 22, 2013, 05:24:56 AM
Pools using Stratum and GBT have a fully exposed coinbase transaction which shows miners where the block will be paid.  Watching that address would reveal all blocks the pool finds.


Title: Re: Mining operators
Post by: mitty on April 23, 2013, 12:09:20 PM
Pardon my noob question.

I have a question on mining operators. How do we know they are declaring 100% of the found blocks to the pool? Couldn't they simply skim a few blocks to an unknown entity once in a while?

Is this 100% based on trust?
A pool sends work in the form of a block header with a coinbase address to its miners.  Solving this block pays the pool which in turn pays the miners according to that pool's payout algorithm.  Miners also submit "shares" which are valid blocks with a lower difficulty than the current network value to the pool; the pool can determine how fast each miner is mining based on the frequency and difficulty of submitted shares. (Virtually every payout algorithm is based on valid submitted shares)

In order to solve a block that pays someone else, a mimer needs to mine a block with a coinbase address specifying where the block reward should go.  This would mean solving a block different than the pool gave you, and would not count as a valid share on the pool, decreasing your hashrate on that pool. Therefore this is equivalent to splitting your hashrate between multiple pools. (Or partially solo mining)