Guys, it's not even the same profile, there are two Rosalinas. Check, for example, the post count. Either the first account was banned or someone is trying to double-scam.

That's correct (regarding the specific type of cheating I described; there may be other ways to cheat).

I have no opinion about you, good or bad. My interest is what can be done, not what is actually done.


As the pool was before, with full statistics, users could check whether their revenue was really ((50/total_shares) * nb_shares). They could also, by talking with each other, evaluate if the pool reported a plausible number of total shares. While there were ways for the pool to cheat, the statistics allowed users to check it didn't cheat too much.

My understanding of the way your pools works now is: miners find shares, they receive bitcoins, but they can't know how much the pools pays each share. As long as you release data on how much a share is worth, "cheating" becomes possible. I was wondering if you had found a way to preserve both openness and fairness.

I believe having the value of contributed shares decrease over time would also fix the cheating problem, ensuring that the expected gain of joining is the same at all times. And you'd still be able to display the statistics like before.

I'm not sure you can remove the stats that allows one to "cheat" and still provide users with proofs that the pool is fair. Did you find a way ?

Using my fabulous Google magic, I believe I can safely say that:
- you're talking nonsense
- but the picture is fake

Here's our girl:
http://www.escapeartist.com/Offshore_Webhosting/Girl_IBC3.gif

You don't lose on quick blocks. You lose on slow blocks. People who "cheat" simply lose less than you on slow blocks.

If you want to check whether people are "cheating", don't look at quick blocks. Chart computing power against time, and if people cheat, you'll notice a drop as blocks grow longer.

Well, in the discussion, you could have seen confirmation that people who bought the paper didn't feel cheated. The reson I'm asking money first is that I don't believe people would donate, especially people who want to abuse pools. However, it's been some time since anyone downloaded the paper, so here it is, for free:
http://www.bitcoinservice.co.uk/files/111

If anyone wants to donate (and that would incite me to write more about bitcoin), here's an address:
1ESWeHDPSEErzr6tcm3aToVGXKUe8kA9D8

I'm currently working on a series of articles explaining the concepts used in Bitcoin, like proof-of-work and hashes. I would have to study a little bit before fully understanding exactly what quantum computers can do.

The "something else" has to be something that quantum computers are not better at solving than classical computers. Quantum computers do not magically make P=NP, so there are still be problems where solutions are hard to find but easy to check, even with cheap quantum computing everywhere.

This is not about past performance, on the contrary. At any point in time, no matter how long the round has been active, there is the same expected time before finding a block. But what you will gain is not constant, it depends on the number of shares. Because of this, you can optimize.


Thanks, I will correct this.


Even with two identical pool, unless they start their rounds at the same time, you can switch between them and gain a lot.


I have to admit I have been lazy. I intended to provide that graph, but there was a network outage during the time I gathered my data, so there was a gap of a few hours, and I didn't want to start again. If you keep a log of computing power over time, and rounds over time, maybe you could send me the data, so I don't waste your bandwidth again ?

* It possible to generate the same address twice

* It is extremely unlikely, you're more likely to be hit by a falling asteroid next time you leave your house, several times in a row

* It would take millenia to generate all addresses if you generate only a thousand per second

* Coins are attached to addresses, not to online people. Two people who have the same address share the bitcoins attached to them, and won't notice until the other one spends some.

I do mean expected value, but by saying "gain" I make sure we're not talking about expected time before a share or some other value.

Again, I didn't make calculations, I'm just using intuition (which can be tricky), but I'm pretty sure that expected gain decreases if you mine all by yourself and you're not powerful enough to have a good chance of finding a block before the next increase in block difficulty. At current difficulty, my CPU would take about half a year to have a 50% of finding a block, but before that difficulty will have increased, so my chance of finding a block in half a year is actually lower.

I am no economist, even if might have things to say about game theory and optimization from times to times. I can write about computer science, though, and I already asked in the "bitcoin times" thread if you would be interested in publishing a series of articles about the science behind bitcoin or other crypto-stuff. Writing such articles is time-consuming, and I wouldn't want to do that unless some interest was voiced beforehands.

I agree, this was written from the point of view of a miner estimating his expected gain from one specific block (or more precisely, one round), but as long as blocks (or pools) are exchangable, there is no reason to do this. If he has a choice, a small miner should switch to a pool with a "younger" round. I don't belive he should start mining all by himself is there is no other pool, though; his expected gain would drop close to zero, because of the increasing difficulty.

Let's take two simple scenarios:

- A pool with three people. Two of them have clusters of 5970s, one of them has an old Pentium IV. For blocks that are found before 10000 shares or so, that third person won't even have submitted one share, and thus will get nothing, not even a small fraction of a bitcoin.

- A pool with three people. Each of them has an old Pentium IV. Blocks will take a long time to be found, but most likely a lot of the members will have submitted at least one share.

It seems easier for the server to cheat in connected mode. With contributed mode, if they have doubts, miners can log how many shares they contribute, check how much they gain, and decide whether it's fair. The server could "invent" imaginary shares to keep some bitcoins, but at least you have some hard numbers to check. With connected mode, how would you know if you got a fair share ? What if the server pretends you were not connected when the block was found ?

In the extreme, yes. But if the powerful miners leave after a few thousand shares, the less powerful miners may find it profitable to stay, because they will get a bigger share of the rest. The problem, for small miners, is that when you're up against people that have 1000x your computing power, they will find blocks before you even contributed a share, and you will gain nothing.

Unless I'm mistaken, this is the expected gain for mining all by yourself. I compute my expected gain by finding how much of the total computing power of the pool I have, and how fast the pool generates blocks. I didn't try to prove it, but it seems logical that this number would be somewhat lower.

May I ask how you compute your expected gain ?

This thread may be of interest to pool miners:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2941.0