How do I reward a miner who made a block I like?

[dscotese]

I asked this question on StackExchange, but in the interest of helping people vote with their bitcoin, I figured I'd reach out to bitcointalk.org too.  Feel free to discuss in either place.

[philipma1957]

I asked this question on StackExchange, but in the interest of helping people vote with their bitcoin, I figured I'd reach out to bitcointalk.org too.  Feel free to discuss in either place.

I don't understand the question.

If a miner hit a block he gets 25 coins why does he need a reward?

My guess is the miner is in a pool .

So he could get .25 btc  as a bonus

[dscotese]

I asked this question on StackExchange, but in the interest of helping people vote with their bitcoin, I figured I'd reach out to bitcointalk.org too.  Feel free to discuss in either place.

I don't understand the question.

If a miner hit a block he gets 25 coins why does he need a reward?

My guess is the miner is in a pool .

So he could get .25 btc  as a bonus

Right, I could just send some coin to the receiving address in the coinbase transaction, but usually, that address is for a large group of people. Since the extra BTC is intended for only the one who made the decision, sending to the coinbase address doesn't work.  How do I find the person who made the decisions that make that block have the qualities I'm looking for?

[jonnybravo0311]

Your question:

Some decisions miners make are reflected in the blocks they solve. Is it possible to send those miners some extra BTC without knowing who they are? It seems obvious that you could just send some coin to the receiving address in the coinbase transaction, but usually, that address is for a large group of people. Since the extra BTC is intended for only the one who made the decision, sending to the coinbase address doesn't work.

A friend of mine said something to me like this: When you're in a mining pool, if yours is the machine that finds the solution to a block, then you get a much larger reward than everyone else. If this is true, then I would expect that the receiving address that gets the largest piece of a transaction that spends the total reward for a particular block is the address to which this "Thanks for mining the way you mine" reward would go. Can anyone confirm that this is the case, or identify cases in which it isn't true?

I would very much like a tool people could use to thank miners for particular decisions. I could write it myself or pay someone else to do it. I'll promise right now to send one bitcoin to anyone who provides such a tool.

If the miner was mining solo, then your suggestion of using the coinbase transaction works.  However, as you correctly observe, the coinbase transaction of the majority of solved blocks either belongs to the pool on which the miner is mining, or in the case of Eligius and p2pool, every miner that will get a share of the block reward.

Your friend is incorrect.  There are very few pools that reward the miner who finds the block.  P2Pool does.  The miner who finds the block gets 1/200 of the block reward in addition to any shares he currently has on the chain.  Other pools, like mine, might give the miner who finds the block a bonus during certain promotions, but on my pool, that bonus comes from my own pocket.

Some pools do, however, provide statistics on who solved the block.  For example, if you take a look at my pool, you can see who has recently solved blocks: http://www.bravo-mining.com/index.php?page=statistics&action=pool.  I know kano also provides this information (but you have to be registered and logged in), as does Eligius.  Other pools you'd have to check.  Now, just because you can see who solved the block, that doesn't necessarily give you the person's address to which you could send coins.  I don't provide that correlation on my pool.  Obviously I have access to that data as the pool operator, but it isn't public.

[dscotese]

There are very few pools that reward the miner who finds the block.  P2Pool does.  The miner who finds the block gets 1/200 of the block reward in addition to any shares he currently has on the chain.  Other pools, like mine, might give the miner who finds the block a bonus during certain promotions, but on my pool, that bonus comes from my own pocket.

Some pools do, however, provide statistics on who solved the block.  For example, if you take a look at my pool, you can see who has recently solved blocks: http://www.bravo-mining.com/index.php?page=statistics&action=pool.  I know kano also provides this information (but you have to be registered and logged in), as does Eligius.  Other pools you'd have to check.  Now, just because you can see who solved the block, that doesn't necessarily give you the person's address to which you could send coins.  I don't provide that correlation on my pool.  Obviously I have access to that data as the pool operator, but it isn't public.

Excellent info, Thanks!

Ok, so it's not public info on your site, but does your site provide a method the miner can use to prove that s/he solved the block?

Is it possible for a miner to place a fingerprint (lets say 8 bytes) into the data of a block so that he can later prove that s/he solved it (by providing a phrase like "my bitcoin address is 1..." the Sha256 hash of which ends with those 8 bytes)?

[kano]

There are very few pools that reward the miner who finds the block.  P2Pool does.  The miner who finds the block gets 1/200 of the block reward in addition to any shares he currently has on the chain.  Other pools, like mine, might give the miner who finds the block a bonus during certain promotions, but on my pool, that bonus comes from my own pocket.

Some pools do, however, provide statistics on who solved the block.  For example, if you take a look at my pool, you can see who has recently solved blocks: http://www.bravo-mining.com/index.php?page=statistics&action=pool.  I know kano also provides this information (but you have to be registered and logged in), as does Eligius.  Other pools you'd have to check.  Now, just because you can see who solved the block, that doesn't necessarily give you the person's address to which you could send coins.  I don't provide that correlation on my pool.  Obviously I have access to that data as the pool operator, but it isn't public.

Excellent info, Thanks!

Ok, so it's not public info on your site, but does your site provide a method the miner can use to prove that s/he solved the block?

Is it possible for a miner to place a fingerprint (lets say 8 bytes) into the data of a block so that he can later prove that s/he solved it (by providing a phrase like "my bitcoin address is 1..." the Sha256 hash of which ends with those 8 bytes)?

In pooled mining it doesn't matter who solved the block.

You're on a team. Everyone works with their available effort. Someone finds a block. Everyone on the team is rewarded according to their effort.
Rewarding the device that found the block, relatively more, only increases reward variance for everyone. There's no logical reason to do that.
That extra reward won't make them find more blocks per the amount of work they do.

In fact the person who found the block has no control over it either.
It was only one single hash they did that found the block, out of the 8.6 * 10^16 hashes they do every day per 1THs they have.
Yeah a 1PH miner does almost 10^20 hashes a day.
Currently, it is expected on average that 1 single random hash in almost 10^21 will find a block.

--

It's probably more relevant to look at it terms of a comparison:
Someone sent my neighbour a letter. I want to find out who did, so I can reward them for doing that.
No, that's called invasion of privacy, or being a stalker, and frowned upon for good reason.

[dscotese]

In fact the person who found the block has no control over it either.
It was only one single hash they did that found the block, out of the 8.6 * 10^16 hashes they do every day per 1THs they have.
Yeah a 1PH miner does almost 10^20 hashes a day.
Currently, it is expected on average that 1 single random hash in almost 10^21 will find a block.

--

It's probably more relevant to look at it terms of a comparison:
Someone sent my neighbour a letter. I want to find out who did, so I can reward them for doing that.
No, that's called invasion of privacy, or being a stalker, and frowned upon for good reason.

I bet you didn't read this part of my post:
Some decisions miners make are reflected in the blocks they solve.
Or perhaps you don't believe that's true.  However, Slush mined both https://blockchain.info/block-height/414056 and https://blockchain.info/block-height/414072 which have different version numbers.  The difference in version numbers is a result of the owners of the machines having made some decisions which differ.  If I have $1,000,000 that I want to use to encourage people to use one of those versions instead of the other, then I DO need to know who solved the block.  I could rely on the pool operator to tell me, but in the spirit of bitcoin, I'd like to do it in a way that I can verify.

I understand that the creeps who want more control over others frown upon the person-to-person communications that support bitcoin as well as widespread sharing of occulted information, both of which are slowly destroying the oppression on which those parasites live, but that only makes such behavior more attractive to me.

I trust that you now understand me better, so perhaps you can help me improve my writing.  Is there something in my initial post that I could have written to make what you didn't understand any clearer?

Thanks!

[-ck]

I bet you didn't read this part of my post:
Some decisions miners make are reflected in the blocks they solve.
Or perhaps you don't believe that's true.  However, Slush mined both https://blockchain.info/block-height/414056 and https://blockchain.info/block-height/414072 which have different version numbers.  The difference in version numbers is a result of the owners of the machines having made some decisions which differ.  If I have $1,000,000 that I want to use to encourage people to use one of those versions instead of the other, then I DO need to know who solved the block.  I could rely on the pool operator to tell me, but in the spirit of bitcoin, I'd like to do it in a way that I can verify.

I understand that the creeps who want more control over others frown upon the person-to-person communications that support bitcoin as well as widespread sharing of occulted information, both of which are slowly destroying the oppression on which those parasites live, but that only makes such behavior more attractive to me.

I trust that you now understand me better, so perhaps you can help me improve my writing.  Is there something in my initial post that I could have written to make what you didn't understand any clearer?

Thanks!

It seems you don't really understand pooled mining. That decision is STILL done at the pool level. The miner only chooses which port to mine at with the pool if they want to make a decision. The mining hardware and miners are completely and utterly controlled in what they mine by the pool they choose to mine at. The only time there is choice is with solo mining which hardly anyone has enough hardware to afford doing by themselves any more. p2pool mining offers a tiny bit of control but it's still mostly done by the overall pool design.

[kano]

...
Thanks!

Pool's aready know who found a block.
cgminer knows when it finds a block (unless you are using that piece of shit bitmain version modified by morons)

Rather than trying to tell everyone that they MUST tell you every block they've found, you simply need to ask people to tell you and pay them for doing it.
Those who DON'T want to tell you will ignore you. Those who can be bought easily will tell you.

If you have some strange financial situation where you NEED to know every person who found every block, then you need to change your business.
That business design is a failure.

[dscotese]

It seems you don't really understand pooled mining. That decision is STILL done at the pool level. The miner only chooses which port to mine at with the pool if they want to make a decision. The mining hardware and miners are completely and utterly controlled in what they mine by the pool they choose to mine at. The only time there is choice is with solo mining which hardly anyone has enough hardware to afford doing by themselves any more. p2pool mining offers a tiny bit of control but it's still mostly done by the overall pool design.

That's absolutely true, I don't really understand it.

So when a miner chooses which port to mine at with the pool because they want to make a decision, can that decision affect which version number a block uses?  It sounds like the answer is NO, their only decision is which port they use, and everything about the block will be the same no matter who solves it.

This, I could believe, if blocks 414056 and 414072 had the same version number (since they were both made by the same pool, Slush).  However, since those two blocks, made by the same pool, have different version numbers, I'm looking for an explanation.  Do you think the Slush pool operator is randomly choosing what version numbers to put on the blocks it solves?  I don't.

So I'm left thinking that the reason those two blocks have different version numbers is because of decisions made by two different people, each of whom wanted a different version number on the block. If that's true, is there a way they can prove that they are the person who made that choice, give then block that has the version number they wanted? 

[-ck]

This, I could believe, if blocks 414056 and 414072 had the same version number (since they were both made by the same pool, Slush).  However, since those two blocks, made by the same pool, have different version numbers, I'm looking for an explanation.  Do you think the Slush pool operator is randomly choosing what version numbers to put on the blocks it solves?  I don't.

Slush runs two separate pools effectively, each connected to a different version bitcoin daemon. You choose to mine on one or the other pool. It is all done on a pool level.

[dscotese]

Rather than trying to tell everyone that they MUST tell you every block they've found, you simply need to ask people to tell you and pay them for doing it.
Those who DON'T want to tell you will ignore you. Those who can be bought easily will tell you.

Excellent! Is there a way they can prove that they found it?  If so, does it require cooperation from the pool operator, or is it possible to make such a proof against the pool operator's wishes?

Slush runs two separate pools effectively, each connected to a different version bitcoin daemon. You choose to mine on one or the other pool. It is all done on a pool level.

Perfect example then.  When a miner chooses the Slush pool for one version, any blocks found using their hashpower will have that version.  I assume that Slush pays people in both "effective" pools from rewards earned by each pool (so everything is shared).  So in order to reward a Slush pool participant for choosing one of the versions, I would have to find some way to get a bitcoin address for that participant.  Kano's idea of asking is great, but can't anyone claim to be the person who mined a block?  How would such a claim be verified?

Thanks again!

[-ck]

Perfect example then.  When a miner chooses the Slush pool for one version, any blocks found using their hashpower will have that version.  I assume that Slush pays people in both "effective" pools from rewards earned by each pool (so everything is shared).  So in order to reward a Slush pool participant for choosing one of the versions, I would have to find some way to get a bitcoin address for that participant.  Kano's idea of asking is great, but can't anyone claim to be the person who mined a block?  How would such a claim be verified?

An acclaim board is often used to tell you who mined the block by many pools like kano.is though the pool is under zero obligation to tell anyone any details whatsoever. The pool owner is the ONLY one who has ALL the details beyond a shadow of a doubt.