Hmm ... didn't know pools work like that (=the miner has to provide solutions against a lower difficulty as proof of work.) but I think I remember having read that checking actually found blocks also was used in pools.

Anyway so if a miner has to proof work he can either waste time on tampered data resulting in a block creation maybe but that is called solo mining or he can try to find solutions for the pools data and eventually find solutions to the lower difficulty allowing him to proof work.

Makes sense but old timestamps would rise suspicion. Also it's not true that the block chain only contains strictly growing time stamps. I've seen examples where this was not the case.

withhold the winning blocks??? what does that mean? i'm not a native english speaker but according to my dictionary "withhold" can mean "keep for them self" which is not possible as pool mining means the pool dictates the block (txs that get in, timestamp and addresses for the 50BTC reward) and the miner only finds a salt so the hash fits. Changing the data will make him fail on test data and get him kicked out of that pool.

"withhold" also means "hold back" which would not make sense neither as it would simply delay the next block from being found.

I read that (some) pools trial the miners with payload they know contains a hit just to verify they actually do work. If that is the case as I assume and if changing the timestamp would change the result of such test, the pool *must* dictate the timestamp and thus can do unpublished blocks in advance.

signing should be possible based on the wallet file.
Guess adding it to the client would be confusing to many but why not have a second application that uses the wallet (as long as it's not encrypted anyway

What attack could there possibly be? My hash only works for the exact block and modifying details doesn't work. I would only have two options: report the block to be found or not. How would the latter possibly be an attack? What am I missing?


Well ... If the promotion of found blocks is to the discretion of the pool, only, it can pile up some blocks ahead of time to release them if the pool risks to lose the race for the longest chain but hold it back to leave the rest compute for the wrong chain.

How does the proof of work work if the miner chooses the timestamp. It must be part of the hashed data.

Nah I meant rather if pools watch for dropped blocks as this would be a sign of cartel activity.

With 50% to get a block per month I claim people should be patient and rely on maths. With your projection I more or less get the picture. BTC becomes gambling more and more.

#7 @ MtGox but only 24 posts here??? Or did you just change your name for a prank?

the list is definitely interesting to read ...


well ... i know companies that don't give sequential numbers starting at 1 just to hide real numbers.

also i never really cared but now seeing i'm a first-25%-early-adopter while i thought i had been late to the train is quite impressive.

also i would be interested in other stats like mail adresses that indicate certain origins, quota of male vs. female names, list of actual passwords ...

if you use the same nick here and there, you got little to loose by posting whole lines
i realized that my password was the password that i got assigned the first day in university 14 years ago. finally a good reason to finally bury it
stupid me thought it is not a problem as i never had money on mtGox but i also restarted using that pw for my mail account half a year ago.

actually i like it how bitcoin teaches us to not only theoretically know how to deal with security

Yes. Agree. Spread the word.
My concern are pools, hence the text in my signature

Why not MilkyWay.com?

blocking transactions and taking 100% of the coins minted does not qualify as cheating?

*lulz*

i'm happy you took that step. looking forward to see reviews

i have no time to review now, nor do i need the app, but i wanted to look into appcelerator for a long time so it's on my list

did you code mtgoxlive.com? it's really cool. just some remarks:
interpolating points may look nice but misrepresents the actual market depth. i would optionally change that for rectangular lines.
also the green line jumps between sellers and buyers a lot. i would offer an optional split into two lines - a seller line and a buyer line.
the traded volume is not visible in the graph. bars on the left and right edge of the screen underneath the rest maybe?

you start bitcoin to get the work
you strat the miner to connect to bitcoin
you enter above command to a console to change the clocks of your video card

those are 3 different things. maybe in the catalyst you also can clock your card and monitor heat?

down clocking is definitely the way to go. not pausing the process!! urgs ... al the megahashes you would loose ...

aticonfig --adapter=0,1,2,3 --od-setclocks=550,900
is how I would down clock all 4 cards but don't copy this line if you have a differendt video card. use getclocks to find valid values first.

my favorite link for the best smartphones is:
http://www.androidhandys.com/android-handy-vergleich/

the page is german but the comparison is not much talking i guess.

as i've been wet to the pants worrying about my phone twice already i think about buying the motorola defy.

urgs ... according to my estimations, the top 20-50 would be able to hash faster than the bitcoin network but i only looked at #1's and at #22's hardware specs with rough estimates based on the limited infos they put online.

pools are evil. at least that's my conclusion.

as long as nobody bothers to debunk my concerns in the other thread, i will stick with this conclusion.

if the profit/year when using a pool is:
* more, they are evil to the bitcoin system.
* less, they are evil to their contributors.

in any case they might or might not be part of cartels and be evil to both on the long run.

If this is true, the pool gives you 20% more profit? How can that be without cheating? Have you been inaccurate with your numbers or did the pool actually cash out 20% more than solo mining?


The pool could increase the reward but that would be way to obvious for other clients. My client would (hopefully) not accept a block with a 51BTC reward so the block chain would split and stay split, wouldn't it?

Still by owning more than 50% the cartel of pools (no pool has more than 50% right now) would be able to just ignore the rest of the net's blocks, bring down the difficulty and double the pools drop rate by just taking the full share rather than the 51% it deserves. Or it just goes with +20% (see RyNinDaCleM's post) drop rate instead of +100% by not rejecting all but only some blocks of the rest. Less greedy. Less obvious.

Is there seriously nobody able or willing to debunk my accusations as stupid and paranoid?

If not, why is all the world still promoting to use pools? What's the big benefit of having a cash out every day over having one every month or two if the sum is the same taken you support fuzzy constructs that promise a profit where there should actually not be a profit if the system itself was not flawed.

Any way to deliver an additional profit should be considered cheating in a system that has as one of its most basic ideas to empower everybody to run part of the infrastructure and be rewarded for it at equal chance.

For exactly this reason I asked it elsewhere but didn't get an answer: how do i define the address(es) the miner should attribute the reward to?? Best would be to share it among all the guys that have shares in my mining rigs.