Help, I keep trying to find the answer to this.  Why cant someone send in a huge amount of work that they have already submitted to another pool.  How does GHash.io what (Non-block find work) I have submitted to bitminter and vice versa?  Whats to stop some clever coder from submitting non-block finding work simultaneously to multiple pools?  

I've used Multipool's services for ALT coins and it seemed to be on the up and up. Blocks were solved and payments made. The above concern regarding BTC was my main concern and that's why I mentioned it. I specifically asked how many blocks they solved at other pools and it was mentioned that they didn't know because the other pools didn't report that information.

I don't think their users' gear is bad or that they are intentionally withholding blocks. It may be most likely with their proxying of hash power. It we take a look at that for a minute, is it possible that a block could be solved, but due to timing of sending the result to the network, it was being preempted by another pool solving the block? Or would we simple see an increase in orphaned or invalid blocks?

Some time ago, I thought someone mentioned that by solo mining, if you didn't have a priority connection to relay found blocks, even though you might find blocks, you'd have a better chance getting them accepted as valid by the network by mining with a larger pool.

Any clarity on the above is appreciated.

Problem is that this was not particularly bad luck. You can't call it consistent either, because they mined for a very short time.

Complaints started when their mining was at a CDF of about 70% which is just silly.

Even at 95% CDF you may think this is really rare, but it's not. If you crashed your car 1 out of 20 times you drove, would you still say that's so rare you would never expect it to happen?

I'd suggest we finally do the hardfork on bitcoin that has been suggested long ago, which would make block withholding impossible.

Bitcoin mining *is* statistics. If you don't understand them, you don't understand mining.

I'll have to take your word for it - I don't have any more recent data.



That depends very much on the industry, and repeated measures have different measures of confidence.


I mentioned before that, in the days of 50 btc per block rewards, I solved one block, but did 3 blocks worth of work. On most pools I solved no blocks at all. Did I cheat those pools out of $50 000? Are you also 95% certain that the 5% of pool members that have had similarly bad luck are also cheating this pool?

So, anyone who experiences negative variance will be accused of being witches block withholders? I see that working well. Given recent history, about 8% of the pool would be so accused. If you keep kicking off the lowest performing 8% of the pool it wont be long until you have just one miner left.

Gee thanks to the morons for chasing off all that hashrate.  Lets see if we can chase off all of our biggest hashers.  That should work out great.

Maybe that's why he left. Here's another possibility:

"Jun 20 3:29 AM I've made the decision to move us off bitminter so that I could scam them and say it was bad luck without them ever being able to prove it."

I suspect we'll never know which is the real reason for multipool's departure.

Personally I wish that he wasn't verbally attacked by members of this forum, but I also wish that his pool pulled its weight while a part of Bitminter. Both are out of my control, so I'm not getting worked up about either.

If DrH was to freeze funds for every miner that ever had reached the point where they had submitted 2.5*D shares and only solved one block, nearly everyone who has solved more than one block would be very pissed off.

I can almost guarantee you that at some point you will have submitted 2.5D shares for one block.

Wait you're not even mining here?  Your motives just became even more questionable.

Using the difficulties for each day and the sum of work difficulties, I get  submitted/expected= 2.493172.

This has an upper tail probability of 0.08264739, meaning that once out of every 12 reruns of those eleven days you'd see multipool have this level of luck. Not very unlucky.

2.5*diff shares per round happens multiple times per day for many different pools (well, those that solve multiple blocks per day, anyway), so it shouldn't surprise us when a particular miner submits work equivalent to 2.5*network difficulty and only solves on block.

Sorry, Entropy-uc, I'm not seeing a problem here. There might be a problem but statistically there's nothing unusual going on. If submitted/expected reach 7.0 (one in a thousand) or 8.0 (one in three thousand), I'd start to worry.

Sure, I don't have a huge investment mining investment, and I can understand how worried you might be about not making a return on that investment. But when you have that much cash on the line, the last thing you want is to be forced into an action without being certain that it's the right action.

Here's what I'd do if I had that much of an investment:
1. Mine at multiple pools, and not just some of the larger ones. It will reduce your variance further, and if you mine at multiple small pools you'll be helping the network (at the cost of extra accounting, I guess).
2. Get good at calculating statistics and making decisions based on those stats. I'm be happy to help you with that, it's not hard once you get some basic ideas.

I hope this doesn't come off as smart-assery, it's not. I just hate to see people make decisions that are not based on facts. I'll help you calculate the results that should inform the facts if you like.

Don't be.


I don't think anyone mining on Multipool would have any idea how to with-hold a block. the idea that hundreds of miners would do it in concert from one proxy is just silly.



If flound1129 posts the daily totals of d1 equivalent shares sent to Bitminter, I'll work it out for you.

I can't speak anything to compensation obviously but what can he really do to recover ?

I mean, lets say I steal money from a bank. I hide it really well, sure I go to jail buy unless some dumb ass stumbles upon my stash which doesn't apply to this situation, the money will always remain un-recovered. Point being there's nothing he can really do to reover anything.

This isn't meant to be a negative but people don't generally invest more time or money in to something that what they feel isn't required until something like everyone leaving happens which in this case never will because some people just accept stuff for what it is when it isn't which with shit like luck is easily argued away with luck being what it is by nature.

Stupid ass analogy but...

Here's a paper bag for your groceries, we could have opted for plastic which is generally stronger but we wanted to save the store som money. Just be careful with the paper and it shouldn't rip thus dropping your groceries all over the ground.

I clicked back in the thread to 05-10-14 (3 months back from 8-10-14) and didn't see any mentioned to the withholding attack.  Is there a separate thread detailing this discovery?

Ah ok, no problem then. I will take care of that ASAP. Then I guess it goes to "Tracy Hope Davis  UNITED STATES TRUSTEE"

I'll fax AND mail him proof.

Damn you hashfast for screwing us _and_ inconveniencing us by forgetting to add some of us to your creditor matrix.

This kind of statement is typically pejorative - and its not been just you.

Who knows for sure if this was an attack (as in the sense of it being willful).

Block withholding due to a bug in mining code that has now been fixed is one thing, an intentional block withholding attack is another.

Brucexie does not appear to deny the former - the extant narrative/claims suggests that there was a cgminer bug in their kit which got fixed - the time line on this is still a little unclear and it would be helpful if this was clarified.

So far as I can tell there is no evidence (that any one has seen presented so far on this forum) to support that this was willful.

Surely one needs this evidence in order to assess it; otherwise one is guessing.

We had some good luck and then some even luck. We haven't been having bad luck for some time. Look at the reward graphs at https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards

The slightly bad luck I was talking about was Multipool alone. With their mining alone it is slightly bad luck that they haven't found a block yet. Which is completely normal.

The pool as a whole is currently having even luck, though, because others are finding blocks. Some miners in the pool are having good luck while others have bad luck. The pool is evening this out. This is one of the nice things that pools do.

The reward model at Bitminter does not punish you for coming and going. You can mine part time at the pool and the pay is still fair. Mining more does not change the pay you are going to get for the mining you already did. Like Blackjack, the hands you already played are done, there is no way to influence the winnings any more for those hands. But unlike Blackjack, the winnings have not been revealed yet. If you mine 12 hours per day at Bitminter, then you will on average make 50% of what you would get for mining 24/7. I say on average because the luck during the 50% you mine may not be the same as the 50% you don't mine. But over time that will even out.

Bitminter is not vulnerable to pool hopping. That's a technique where you hop between pools, timing it so that you get paid more than your fair share. The reward model at Bitminter was chosen specifically to make this impossible. Whether you earn more or less at Bitminter when you jump in and out of the pool is completely random. There is no way to predict whether mining pay at Bitminter in the next few hours will be higher or lower than other pools. Pool hopping was a way that some miners earned a lot more bitcoins at vulnerable pools, at the cost of the miners who were not pool hopping. I believe there are still a couple pools that are vulnerable to pool hopping. But the art/scam of pool hopping seems to be forgotten - I don't think any miners are doing it anymore.

You could try to switch between pools based on religious or superstitious beliefs. Maybe you believe luck is not random but related to karma or sin. Or maybe you believe that past luck influences future luck (this is called Gambler's Fallacy, you can read about it on Wikipedia). Maybe you belong to a Cargo Cult (also on Wikipedia) - you saw someone restart his miner and then he found a block. Now you believe restarting the miner increases the chance of finding blocks. All those beliefs go against all logic and science. I have never heard of anyone who is able to earn more bitcoins this way. But if you want to try it, you can. Bitminter won't punish your earnings for mining part time in the pool.