Pool Operators - PLEASE BAN & BLOCK GPUMAX getwork/proxy access to your pool

[Graet]

I guess some people missed the bit where I explained how easy it was for miners to mine on Ozcoin direct and switch to GPUMAX when a lease started? Making time and effort taken to block GPUMAX wasted anyway.

Actually, I did miss that bit. How is it easy to only switch to GPUMAX when a lease starts? From what I can tell, GPUMAX requires you to back every worker you create with a valid, functioning worker login on a pool that GPUMAX obtains work from when no-one's leasing shares - and yes, it does check that the pool configuration you gave it works. There's no way to tell GPUMAX to only send you leased work even though a lot of people have demanded one, and there doesn't seem to be any way for mining software to tell whether the work is from your own pool account or leased either.

miners leave one rig on GPUMAX usually with a slightly low price and move other rigs to mine direct on their backup pool,
when the rig on gpumax stops mining on the passthrough pool it must be leasing
when gpumax rig is leasing other rigs are set to failover to gpumax ie: start leasing.
most rigs mine direct on backup pool avoiding a higher stale rate for most of the time

I have never had an account on gpumax, the information I have is from the gpumax irc chanel and the rather active #ozcoin chanel on freenode

[1715238799]

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[DeathAndTaxes]

Funny how everyone is blasting Graet because he is the only pool operator to actually take a stance

While I don't think I blasted Graet as I pointed out if he simply said "no or sorry it isn't worth the effort" that would be fine.  His pool (private property), his rights, his choice. 

The thing drawing the ire is the dubious counterarguments.  Acting like he needs legal action to choose who he lets connect to his pool.   Then pretending that GPUMAX is only loosely associated with Pirate.  That people are jumping on it as a result of guilt by association or some kind of mob justice.

The absurdity of those rebutalls is well .. annoying. I am done but I will leave this:
http://www.corporationwiki.com/Unknown/Unknown/gpumax-technologies-llc/101278778.aspx

Priate (aka Tredon Shavers) is one of three direct owners of GPUMAX.  It is insulting to pretend otherwise.

[Graet]

Funny how everyone is blasting Graet because he is the only pool operator to actually take a stance

While I don't think I blasted Graet as I pointed out if he simply said "no or sorry it isn't worth the effort" that would be fine.  His pool (private property), his rights, his choice. 

The thing drawing the ire is the dubious counterarguments.  Acting like he needs legal action to choose who he lets connect to his pool.   Then pretending that GPUMAX is only loosely associated with Pirate.  That people are jumping on it as a result of guilt by association or some kind of mob justice.

The absurdity of those rebutalls is well .. annoying. I am done but I will leave this:
http://www.corporationwiki.com/Unknown/Unknown/gpumax-technologies-llc/101278778.aspx

Priate (aka Tredon Shavers) is one of three direct owners of GPUMAX.  It is insulting to pretend otherwise.

pretending what?
one of 3? interesting I thought he was 1 of 2...
so he has less control than I thought.
and zuxor does most of the work including running leases and doing payouts. but we can just ignore that....
Obviously the board of gpumax should be voting him off if they want to continue operation.Companies have had scammers on their boards and continued operation after they have been removed. Well I don't know US law but that's my understanding of how it works in my country.
has anyone contacted the govt mob in charge of regulating companies in USA? Surely this would be the strongest lead on pirate? Surely more effective than attacking pools.
In Australia it would be ASIC (no not mining hardware )

I love the backward thinking in this forum....
anyone is allowed to connect to my pool, actually often I have said all miners are welcome at my pool. Please show me where I said "needs legal action to choose who he lets connect to his pool".
to ban miners from my pool because of a lynch mob is unreasonable and will only hurt miners, remember miners - they are the people I set Ozcoin up for, not gpumax or any of the other mobs.
to ban miners when asked by law enforcement is required
you know, companies, legal obligations....stuff a lot of Bitcoiners think do not apply because "like its Bitcoin..."


I'm a bit over it too, should have just ignored the thread from the start like the other pool ops.
but I'm sure someone will want to go round the mulberry bush one more time

I particularly enjoyed bitlanes schoolyard threat - not seen one of them for nigh on 40 years "I was going to mine on your pool but...." what a  load of codswallop lmao
my humour was dampened by the outright fabrications that followed..and I imagine will remain there to be taken out of context by people for a long time to come.

have a nice day
Graet

[makomk]

miners leave one rig on GPUMAX usually with a slightly low price and move other rigs to mine direct on their backup pool,
when the rig on gpumax stops mining on the passthrough pool it must be leasing
when gpumax rig is leasing other rigs are set to failover to gpumax ie: start leasing.
most rigs mine direct on backup pool avoiding a higher stale rate for most of the time

I'm not sure I'd call anything that requires custom-written mining farm management software "easy".

[Graet]

miners leave one rig on GPUMAX usually with a slightly low price and move other rigs to mine direct on their backup pool,
when the rig on gpumax stops mining on the passthrough pool it must be leasing
when gpumax rig is leasing other rigs are set to failover to gpumax ie: start leasing.
most rigs mine direct on backup pool avoiding a higher stale rate for most of the time

I'm not sure I'd call anything that requires custom-written mining farm management software "easy".

depends on your skill level I would suppose, people that are experienced at setting up rigs for hopping and moving from pool to pool when pools have issues might find it fairly simple
apparently APIs are awesome
thing I have noticed - miners help and support each other, wanna hop, go ask someone that hops - they will help you get going, I imagine this situation would be no different
I have ever only mined on 3 pools Slushs when I first started, then Ozcoin and 1 rig on RFC pool for a few hours when they were having a "hell block"
I might not find it easy, but then I have no need or desire.

[amgomez]

so
let me get this straight
a bunch of people invested money they couldn't afford to lose in a "too good to be true scheme" - against the advice of many of the smarter "community" members
the scheme went bad
people lost money (unexpected???)
Now without any legal justification you are asking pool operators to block a Bitcoin business that has done nothing wrong apart from paying miners a few days late a couple of times and being associated with this Pirate fellow.
Some interesting allegations/conspiracy theories don't make fact.


"Help miners reclaim their power"
Sorry? I help miners reclaim their power by blocking them from my pool? - how about miners are adults and can make their own choices? they have the power to choose, how is forcing a choice on them..huh what???
many miners have already used the power they have and moved from GPUMAX, just as they do with any pool or other mining operation they don't feel comfortable with.

Are you saying any pool operators that don't block gpumax are untrusted? if so by who? you?

Pools are not the "Bitcoin police"

I am truly sorry that people have lost money in Pirates venture, I really don't see blocking GPUMAX will help fix that.
best wishes
Graet

+1

Thanks for putting things clear!

As a miner I do not have to pay for your lack of common sense

[the_thing]

Please, stop trying to move the fault for your losses on other people. Graet is not responsible for your losses. It's you and Pirate.
Also it is strange that you're not grilling Goat this hard.

(I'm not a miner, but I couldn't read this thread without expressing support to Graet.)

[abracadabra]

"load of codswallop"

I'll have to google that 

You aussies sure do talk funny

[ChrisKoss]

I'm pretty taken aback by how Graet is being treated in this thread. I found his explanations to be very patient and thoughtful.  Ozcoin is "our competitor" but I feel like some are trying to unfairly turn him into a scapegoat for the BTCST collapse, for which he is not responsible.

The OP of this thread seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how GPUMAX works.  There is intermittent >100%PPS public work, and then private work.  Ozcoin is only getting private work, which means he is effectively running as a failover server.  When Ozcoin gets your mining power through GPUMAX's proxy, that is when GPUMAX is NOT making money (unless GPUMAX is siphoning shares from miners when they are working privately, but that the miner's problem and pool operators couldn't detect if they wanted to).  When GPUMAX is sending shares to Ozcoin they are sent to the miner's own personal account on Ozcoin.  The getworks flow through GPUMAX, but the mined coins flow directly from the pool to the miner. GPUMAX never touches these coins, and gets no financial gain from them.

If a pool operator wants to block GPUMAX they have to:
1. Find someone with a GPUMAX account
2. Get that person to send shares to your pool through GPUMAX (while making sure they send no shares from their own IP, which would give false positives)
3. Inspect which IPs these shares are being submitted from.
4. Block these IPs

This process could take multiple hours to find someone to cooperate and carry out the test.  To get around it, GPUMAX just needs to get a new IP address, which, depending on their ISP, could be as easy as reseting their router. Any method of blocking GPUMAX proxy work could be circumvented in a small fraction of the amount of time needed to figure out which IPs to block. And then you'd have to repeat the whole tedious process all over again.

TL;DR - There is no effective way for a pool operator to block GPUMAX.  GPUMAX could get around any attempt to block them in minutes.

Do I support GPUMAX?  Would I trust that they will forward all my shares? Would I trust they are paying out accurately?  Personally, no.  But these questions should really be addressed to the miners: they are the only ones with the power to stop GPUMAX from profiting from them.  

The only effective way to stop GPUMAX is to convince miners not to use it.  I don't care either way whether anyone chooses to continue using GPUMAX or not: freedom of choice, none of my business.

I completely understand why there is so much anger towards Pirateat40 for stealing so much from the Bitcoin community. However, taking it out on innocent, productive members of the community won't help - it will only fragment us more.  I don't know Graet personally, but from what I have seen of him through the forums, it seems like he's been a rational, benevolent force in the community. He doesn't deserve being made the target of a witch-hunt for explaining why the premise in the OP is flawed.

[AndrewBUD]

GPUmax seemed like a scam to me from day 1. I made my normal amount for my hashing power I was not taking a chance using a service like GPUmax.





Boycott GPUMAX

[Jack1Rip1BurnIt]

I will continue my 2.8 Gh/s on OZCOIN because it is an awesome pool.
To Graet...Keep doin' what your doin'
To the ones that are giving Graet grief...Why aren't you giving Pirate grief? Oh thats right because you can't! That's why you have redirected your anger towards an innocent pool operator that has never had any association with that Trendon fuck. Hell why aren't you all just mad at yourselves for just giving the scam artist more and more bitcoins to bail out with that much faster?

Here's a proposed thread for you to start:
Damn dude why did you have to give him all that shit so fast?!
OP "Leroy" first post- "Shit Johnny I told you not to give him 15,000 bitcoins that fast man! It's all your fault he bailed this soon!!! I'm gonna fuck you up!!!!"
"Johnny" second post - "Hell nah fuck you Leroy! It was the last batch of 10,000 bitcoins you invested that sent him over the edge and made him close up shop! If anyone is gonna get fucked up it's you bitch!"
"Leroy" - "Don't trust Johnny! His fault!!!"
"Johnny" - "Don't trust Leroy! His fault!!!"

To the guy who said he can't believe how people are treating Graet in this thread... forgive me but I have to ask the you a question. Are you really asking that question about a Bitcoin Forum thread?  

[cuz0882]

You guys need to get over it, and take responsibility for your own actions. It was clear to everyone that pirate may have been running a ponzi scheme.

[AndrewBUD]

now that it's known why would people continue to use his service? To fill a scammers pockets some more?



This is supposed to be a community,,, Stop using his stupid GPUMAX... stay on OZcoin or BTCGuild....MTred whatever.. just don't use anything that has PIrate's name attached to it.

[CJGoodings]

Shits hilarious, people are defending BFL the same way they would when somebody called out "scam" back when pirate was still paying out on a regular basis.

Its just part of the cycle of the btc community. Not exactly the brightest bunch, but we still call them family.

[Bit LC Inc.]

Funny, we've banned them just days after their beta-launch.

[AndrewBUD]

Funny, we've banned them just days after their beta-launch.

Banned ? Gpumax ?

[Bit LC Inc.]

I can write the short version of the story:

* I detected a huge increase in hashrate on our pool, and traced it back to GPUMAX (nothing strange there, so far, I've had heard about the service before)
* I checked which account it was mining against (and found that it was a private account by pirate40 (or who ever was/is behind GPUMAX))
* All mining-activity related to that account came directly from the same IP-addresses as GPUMAX used at the time.
* I spoke with pirate40 (I guess?) a year ago or so, in their official IRC channel regarding what was going on, and why he was using his "own" account to mine at our pool, with GPUMAX resources
* He pretty much asked me to fuck off and mind my own business, as he said he didn't do anything "wrong", it was some "load balancing between multiple pools"-feature he said.
* ... which still didn't explain why he was using his own account, and sending the earned funds directly to him self (Or well, his "personal" wallet, i think the IP was showing up on blockchain.info) - Not to anything related to GPUMAX as far as i could see.
* He wrote a few lines privately to me on IRC "trying" to explain "again", but at this time i was so suspicious that i doubted every word he said.
* I asked him a day later, again on exactly what was going on, and he mentioned the same thing about it was a load-balancing between pools - but i didn't really get how exactly his account and his IP became involved in everything - i asked why he was using his "own" account for it - but never got any response.
* I suspected, back then, that he was taking a bit of "extra" hashrate and mined (pool-hopped) to compensate for the 105% earnings (or whatever it was) and to earn some for himself. (Which i honestly still think)
* I issued a firewall ban against all EC2 nodes i could find, associated with GPUMAX, and disabled all related accounts.

Those bans maybe not be effective anymore, things might have changed during the past years, but i know that he disabled https://www.bitlc.net (Bitcoins.lc) on GPUMAX and posted an announcement of it here on the forums.

I never heard from him again.

--
Regards, Jim
Bit LC Inc.
https://www.bitlc.net

[Puppet]

I can write the short version of the story:

* I detected a huge increase in hashrate on our pool, and traced it back to GPUMAX (nothing strange there, so far, I've had heard about the service before)
* I checked which account it was mining against (and found that it was a private account by pirate40 (or who ever was/is behind GPUMAX))
* All mining-activity related to that account came directly from the same IP-addresses as GPUMAX used at the time.
* I spoke with pirate40 (I guess?) a year ago or so, in their official IRC channel regarding what was going on, and why he was using his "own" account to mine at our pool, with GPUMAX resources
* He pretty much asked me to fuck off and mind my own business, as he said he didn't do anything "wrong", it was some "load balancing between multiple pools"-feature he said.
* ... which still didn't explain why he was using his own account, and sending the earned funds directly to him self (Or well, his "personal" wallet, i think the IP was showing up on blockchain.info) - Not to anything related to GPUMAX as far as i could see.
* He wrote a few lines privately to me on IRC "trying" to explain "again", but at this time i was so suspicious that i doubted every word he said.
* I asked him a day later, again on exactly what was going on, and he mentioned the same thing about it was a load-balancing between pools - but i didn't really get how exactly his account and his IP became involved in everything - i asked why he was using his "own" account for it - but never got any response.
* I suspected, back then, that he was taking a bit of "extra" hashrate and mined (pool-hopped) to compensate for the 105% earnings (or whatever it was) and to earn some for himself. (Which i honestly still think)
* I issued a firewall ban against all EC2 nodes i could find, associated with GPUMAX, and disabled all related accounts.

Those bans maybe not be effective anymore, things might have changed during the past years, but i know that he disabled https://www.bitlc.net (Bitcoins.lc) on GPUMAX and posted an announcement of it here on the forums.

I never heard from him again.

--
Regards, Jim
Bit LC Inc.
https://www.bitlc.net

Hmm.. interesting. Was he hopping with it, or just mining nonstop? Either way, it strongly supports my theory that gpumax' biggest customer was pirate himself.

[muyuu]

That's my guess to, but i have to ask.

It was our hopper-detection that found the user, as he begin mining at the start of a round.
So it has to be intentional, either from his or from pirateat40's side.

Update:

We have added the following pool to the non-supported list.

• Bitlc.net - Doesn't Like The HEAT!

[Bit LC Inc.]

As confirmed above, it was GPUMAX (or pirate40, to be precise - even tho I have no real proof for that) that was pool-hopping us, using his own account (registered with a fake e-mail of course).