How would he be traceable.  He can use a few of the nodes to provide validation hashes for the rest of the nodes.  Obviously every block requires the prior blocks hash so he must already be distributing that anyways.  He has to have at least one copy of the bitcoind running somewhere as he needs to be aware of other blocks generated and the current dominant chain.  Requiring "current" tx is nonsensical.  If there are no tx in the block then that adds nothing to what miner needs.  Unless one intends to force miners to include all tx that is.


But he IS validly mining.  Imagine I wanted to run a pool which requires a 1 BTC tx fee.  Currently in last 7 days guess how many tx (other than the coinbase) would be in my pool's blocks.  ..... 0.  

So would I be "invalid mining" (or whatever nonsense term you want to make up)?  The reality is no tx meet my fee requirements.  It doesn't matter than you or others might think my fee conditions are stupid.  Satoshi intended an open fee market.    If I feel my computing time is worth 1 BTC per fee that is my right as a miner.

First clue will be his wallet shows block reward and then it becomes orphaned and disapears as the longer valid chain becomes dominant.  While this can happen occasionally if he is building on invalid chains it will happen at much higher frequency.   I would imagine it wouldn't take more than a handful of block rewards being reversed before someone investigagtes.  

Then again if you have a farm (ethical or not) which generates $1M annually wouldn't you atleast lurk this forum?

A I understand it (possibly wrong) your solution is that miner must include in the block a hash of the tx of the prior block.  The issue is that doesn't accomplish anything.  A few distributed servers (or nodes, or calls to blockchain.info) could provide that data via remote call.  A miner could easily then have nodes process blank blocks with valid signatures.

Of course you aren't the only one with proposed solutions.  At least two people have proposed systems which invalidate blocks that don't contain a certain amount of tx.  Satoshi clearly believed miners should be able to set whatever fee requirement they want.

DUH your right.  Not sure what I was thinking.  Still with one block per hour your avg is only 24 which is likely too small of a sample to avoid significant swings due to variance.

SignMessage doesn't prove anything.

Hint: the thief can SignMessage now also.

Still that is the job of POLICE.  If the POLICE investigated determined the claim was valid and demanded Mt.Gox provide ID of any depositing stolen coins that would be different.  Nothing indicates that is the case.

You pay a fee. 
If the fee is high enough then a miner includes the tx.
You have no right to have a tx in a block.

I don't see the outrage.

As far as forcing miners to include all tx does that include free ones? 
Does that include ones with a token fee (say 1 satoshi)?
Why as a miner should I be FORCED to include free loader transactions?

You likely can increase adoption by explaining to them how they can do everything right and then still have their funds seized by Mt.Gox for totally undefined "suspicious activity" which is completely impossible for them to prevent.

Energizer are you talking to yourself.  It is very confusing when you respond, then respond again, then quote your response again.

Nefario please drop the strawman.

Nobody is saying Mt.Gox is vioalting their own terms and conditions.  They wrote their own fraking terms and conditions so I would hope they don't violate them ... and if they do they can just change them.  Nobody is also saying Mt.Gox should willfully break the law.

So please please please for the love of Satoshi stop using those two strawmen.

However between willfully breaking the law <-----------------------------------> asinine response to anoymous claims online

there has to be a place where common sense prevails.

Nothing under the law requires this level of scrutiny based on internet forum claims.  Some anonymous person on the internet said that another anonymous person took some digital keys which belong to him.  The coins were then transfered through dozens (actually now hundreds) of accounts and someone with a token amount of coins and likely an even smaller token amount of "tainted coins" to provide personal information because "the law" (as if some generical universal law exists) requires it.

BULL FRAKING CRAP!

Banks don't even do that kind of due diligence on small cash deposits. It is complete and utter nonsense.  Just because Mt.Gox put it in their terms and conditions doesn't make it right.  AML has nothing to do with stolen funds especially not unproven funds back up by nothing more than an internet post (BTW I think Zou is telling the truth but it has no relevence under the law).

Still your nonsensical and onesided defense of the indefensible has saved me the trouble of ever using your exchange.

Another way to look at it is the avg miner on p2pool is ~1.5GH/s. 

1.5GH/s @ 750 diff ~= 2.3 GH/s @ 1150 dif.  If you went > 1150 you would have more variance than the avg miner.

I really think higher difficulty is most useful for miners 4GH/s+.

It works using cgminer.conf & cgminer.  I have never used phoenix and pool.conf file.

It depends on what you care about.

If you care about a single GPU always getting an even # of shares per hour then don't raise difficulty.  If all you care about it the TOTAL revenue per block then raising diff on all miners is the only thing that matters.

Honestly w/ 2.29 GH/s I am not sure I would raise difficulty and if I did it would be only a small amount.  Maybe to 1000?  Now 29 GH/s sure.

Yeah lets get back to the topic of mining.

BFL if you include a pony it better be a mining pony.



Obsolete by modern standards that PNY200 could mine 200 KC/D (kilo coals per day).  Those were the days when mining was tough.

If they do include ponies you can be as cool as these guys ...

1 share per hour is a steep target.  I wouldn't want to do that myself nor would I expect anyone else to do so.

Maybe something more like
Goal 5 shares per hour.  Difficulty Target:  170 * GH/s
Goal 4 shares per hour.  Difficulty Target:  210 * GH/s
Goal 3 shares per hour.  Difficulty Target:  280 * GH/s
Goal 2 shares per hour.  Difficulty Target:  420 * GH/s
Goal 1 shares per hour.  Difficulty Target:  840 * GH/s

>5 shares per hour should be pretty low variance (most of your variances come from block time so helping network get larger is beneficial)
1 share per hour is going to be pretty hard variance.

Miners can pick a target that gives them a variance they can stomach.  Everyone's treshold is different.  Remember avg can be deceptive.  1/6th to 6x the average isn't that rare in the short term (say over 100 shares).  So shooting for goal of 1 share per hour means you will have some hours with 6 shares and sometimes go 6 hours (oops missed an entire block = payout) without a single share.  That can be frustrating for some miners. (Total brain fart.  p2pool is PPLNS so you don't need a share during a block to be paid for the block just 1 valid share in the share chain)



I will ask Meni for some better analysis (nobody knows this stuff better than him) but hopefully this provides some insight.

I was running only 1000 as my target but looking at the numbers I am going to try running at a goal of 4 shares per hour.  At 12GH/s that gives me a target difficulty of 210*12 = 2500.

No I said with TRANSACTION VOLUME DOUBLED
WITH SUBSIDY CUT TO 25 BTC
AND A 0.01 BTC FEE.

and that was only an example

25 BTC subsidy
160 tx * 0.01 = 1.60 BTC
1.60 / (25 + 1.60 )  =  6%

A 1 bitcent tx fee (avg) on 160 tx per block after the subsidy cut would make fees contributing 6% of miner's total reward.


I disagree.

First 51% and 1tx block have nothing to do with each other.  51% attack can happen even if botnet includes all txs.

So lets keep it on the topic of 1tx blocks.  As shown in that example above even a modest fee after the subsidy cut results in fees contributing a SMALL BUT SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF REVENUE.

Hashing power follows price.  More correctly hashing power follows block compensation.  Fees adding 6% to block means 6% rise in hashing power.  That makes "mystery" share smaller.  Mystery sees revenue decline due to subsidy cut and then sees it decline even further due to tx fees (which he is excluding) making up greater share of total rewards. 

Unless mystery is an idiot he is going to start saying ... "I would like 6% more revenue lets see how I can get a cut".  If he doesn't then maybe 8%, 10%, 15% eventually drives him to the tipping point.

Someday fees will need to support 100% of the network.  We can start the ball rolling at > 0.03%.


I haven't seen a single proposal that would either work or wouldn't have significant side effects and open the network up to "gaming" and malicious attacks.  Protocol changes should be the last choice.  Miners requiring higher fees is a simple strategy to try first.

It already does.  Miners are free to choose which transactions to include.  To date most pools & miners simply include all valid transactions.  The subsidy is very high and that is the default option of bitcoind.

All that is necessary is for the client to be aware of the fee policy of all/most miners and the current pending transactions and it could provide a recommended fee (include 0.01 for for 95% chance of inclusion in next 3 blocks, include a 0.0005 fet for 95% chance of inclusion in next 18 blocks).

Of course it is a chicken & egg scenario.  If all miners include all tx (fee or not) then there is no real reason for the client to be upgraded. If users have no way of knowing what fee pools/miners require then there is no reason for pools to exclude tx with low fee.

Personally I think two simple thing can happen to get the ball rolling.  1 some % of miners simply agree to not include tx w/ fee below X BTC.  If enough do then there will be a catalyst for making the client "network aware".  The second event is simply the subsidy cut.  If not this one (50->25 then certainly the next one 25->12.5).  As subsidies decline the free ride miners have been granting will come to an end.

I am thinking of offering a bounty for a patch to bitcoind which allow for a command line argument (--min-fee x) which excludes work without sufficient fee from getworks.  That would allow even p2pool users to set a fee policy.


Which is why I think a minimum fee other than 1 satoshi will be necessary but we have plenty of time to think about it.

No.  There is no BIP 16 in the coinbase flag.   Still with 70%+ support he will have to upgrade or risk generating orphaned blocks.

No.  It simply has no transactions. 
It can't be seen in advance.
It isn't a block already mined.  


It is simply a miner who has chosen to not include any transactions (well technically he includes the coinbase = 50 BTC payment to himself as that is required by the protocol).

A 1 tx block:
https://blockchain.info/block-index/197553/00000000000004eb01a7063c81066ec47523516c2bcaa3308c1351c0e6176e68

A "normal" block (this one has 146 txs):
https://blockchain.info/block-index/197562/00000000000001b824bbb053f94a7f1af4b9265f4e09c580ef1c95e6137a6187