Unknown miner growing rapidly in mining % share

[spiral_mind]

See: http://blockchain.info/pools

The "Unknown" miner had 9% last week, 11% a couple days ago, and 13% now. Even just 1% of the network is a huuuuge jump in hashrate.

To give a comparison, ASICminer has 19% of the share of the network and they actually are a corporation that reinvests their profits into making their own miners (a sure formula for insane growth).

Could this be a government attempting to destroy Bitcoin by dumping a few million into making their own ASICs? Or possibly a private actor trying to gain total control over BTC?

The rapid growth of this unknown miner is very concerning.

[1715562351]

1715562351

[1715562351]

1715562351

[nameface]

Could this be a government attempting to destroy Bitcoin by dumping a few million into making their own ASICs? Or possibly a private actor trying to gain total control over BTC?

I highly doubt it.

Despite having zero information, I suspect private enterprise in China.

[Stunna]

If the government was interested in destroying bitcoins they wouldn't be mining them or attempting a 51% attack. They'd simply send bitcoins underground and block all transactions to coinbase/mtgox etc.

I am curious to see who this is though.

[Fidgets]

See: http://blockchain.info/pools

The "Unknown" miner had 9% last week, 11% a couple days ago, and 13% now. Even just 1% of the network is a huuuuge jump in hashrate.

To give a comparison, ASICminer has 19% of the share of the network and they actually are a corporation that reinvests their profits into making their own miners (a sure formula for insane growth).

Could this be a government attempting to destroy Bitcoin by dumping a few million into making their own ASICs? Or possibly a private actor trying to gain total control over BTC?

The rapid growth of this unknown miner is very concerning.

That is a bit disturbing.  I'm fairly new to Bitcoin but from what I understand, there is currently no real network protection against a 51% takeover.  While I realize that 13% is a long way from 51% it does raise questions.  What has the community discussed about the vulnerability?  I'm not a techie so I have zero advice, but this strikes me as an impetus to seriously look at the infrastructure.  Thanks for posting, BTW.

[spiral_mind]

If the government was interested in destroying bitcoins they wouldn't be mining them or attempting a 51% attack. They'd simply send bitcoins underground and block all transactions to coinbase/mtgox etc.

I am curious to see who this is though.

Pirating using Bittorrent is already illegal and pirating stuff carries huge fines but the government is totally unable to stop it. I think if they made Bitcoin illegal it would be the same story all over again.

Maybe they are aware of this, read Satoshi's whitepaper where he identifies the 51% attack, and said "hey it would only cost us about 50 million to take over the network right now if we hire a private firm to pump out a billion GH/s in ASICS". 50 million is a drop in the bucket for a big government and a massive amount even to a small company like Avalon and BFL.

Avalon, Asicminer, and BFl are using 110 and 62 nanometer technology for their ASICS that is far bigger and less efficient than the state of the art for other electronic components in mass production.
The 51% attack seems to be one of the only known ways to actually destroy Bitcoin.
The longer they wait the more expensive such an attack would be, and way more so once ASICS are really being pumped out and sold to miners.

[BitHost]

I think 51% can be done quite easy for the U.S. government: they need special squads/agents to take over of 2 or 3 biggest mining pools. This can be done even if pools are operated outside of the U.S., and even can be done remotely. But i guess, to have more confidence they would need to send special people to pool operators (-; Hell, at the moment we cannot be sure that some of the pools are already in control of governments....

[jag2k2]

Forgive my ignorance here but how do you know this is one miner.  The right hand column of your link says "unknown blocks" and almost all of them are single recipient IP addresses.  I just assumed this bucket made up the 15% of the network that didn't join a mining pool.

[2weiX]

Inbefore AVALON / BFL Conspiracy.

[FiatKiller]

It's probably BFL "testing" units in production.

[spiral_mind]

Forgive my ignorance here but how do you know this is one miner.  The right hand column of your link says "unknown blocks" and almost all of them are single recipient IP addresses.  I just assumed this bucket made up the 15% of the network that didn't join a mining pool.

You're right they are going to different IPs, but IPs don't actually identify users, it's very easy to clone them and use proxies.

I have heard that solo mining is useless unless you have a ton of network power. That makes it seem likely the unknown section is not made up of a ton of individuals but is like a private mining pool from just a few locations.

[Birdy]

I have heard that solo mining is useless unless you have a ton of network power. That makes it seem likely the unknown section is not made up of a ton of individuals but is like a private mining pool from just a few locations.

This isn't true, solo mining is just more random. So you will receive big chunks every now and then instead of a steady income.
Solo mining is useless, if you need to sell some of this income to cover electricity costs, because you might not find a block til your next bill.
It's quite possible that there are a lot of people solo mining.

[nimda]

Or, it could just be variance. The hashing percentage is calculated by percent of blocks, and block creation is an inherently random process.

[Tomatocage]

If I had to pin it on a single person, I'd bet money it's ArtForz.

[BitAddict]

If I had to pin it on a single person, I'd bet money it's ArtForz.

Any news or something we can read about ArtForz, because he didn't post since one year and a half.

[nameface]

Or, it could just be variance. The hashing percentage is calculated by percent of blocks, and block creation is an inherently random process.

You're saying the pool of unknown miners are just getting exceedingly lucky? I highly doubt it's statistically possible to be that lucky, but I can't back that up.

Can anyone back up what is going on with any relevant numbers of any sort?

[Trongersoll]

I would guess that, yes there is one or more unidentified pools in unknown. hence the term "unknown" Is it a concern? i don't think so.

[niko]

See: http://blockchain.info/pools

The "Unknown" miner had 9% last week, 11% a couple days ago, and 13% now. Even just 1% of the network is a huuuuge jump in hashrate.

To give a comparison, ASICminer has 19% of the share of the network and they actually are a corporation that reinvests their profits into making their own miners (a sure formula for insane growth).

Could this be a government attempting to destroy Bitcoin by dumping a few million into making their own ASICs? Or possibly a private actor trying to gain total control over BTC?

The rapid growth of this unknown miner is very concerning.

Please make this stop. Do you even know how numbers you are referring to are obtained?  It's a rhetorical question. Please find out the answer, then come back here with something valuable to discuss.

[grue]

oh look it's the "mystery miner" thread again.

[b!z]

MysteryMiner 2.0 obviously.

[dwdoc]

It may be the Chinese government. You think they can keep their hands off all those Chinese manufactured chips?
They are looking for any alternatives to the USD they can find.  May explain why they are permitting all those positive news stories about bitcoin in China...

[Crypt_Current]

Lisa: I don't know. Maybe they're all reverse vampires and they have to get home before dark.
Everyone: Aah! Reverse vampires! Reverse vampires!
Bart: So finally, we're all in agreement about what's going on with the adults. Milhouse?
Milhouse: Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people --
Bart: Thank you.
Milhouse: under the supervision of the reverse vampires --
Lisa: [sighs]
Milhouse: are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.

WE'RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS HERE, PEOPLE...

[donjonson]

Hey guys you re not seeing the obvious.

The unknown player is just that a pool named "unknown"... And they are now laughing at us.

Joke aside didnt the protcol been changed so validations would take place at the miner level not the pool level just to prevent the 51?

[spiral_mind]

Now its at 16%. Guess this is either new Avalon owners solo mining or Avalon testing new units.

I love how smug and certain so many of you are though. Lets just hope it's not really a malicious actor.

[zvs]

Unknown Blocks.
Relayed By   count
199.48.164.36   5
122.128.109.61   3
126.79.45.236   2

this 199.48.164.36 address, is owned by Goodluck Jonathan

[odolvlobo]

According to blockchain.info:

A large portion of Unknown blocks does not mean an attack on the network, it simply means we have been unable to determine the origin.

[STT]

Avalon, Asicminer, and BFl are using 110 and 62 nanometer technology for their ASICS

That would make Intel or Samsung? the greatest threat then.   They seem to be quite happy making billions from new mobile chips on 26nm,  taking time out to destroy the utterly inconsequential BTC empire (to them) has probably not registered in their brains.

I think it'd be funny if they included BTC relevant instructions on their integrated gpu part of their cpu, they should do it but unfortunately I doubt it.   Surely AMD should have refined this all ages ago, they must have commented about it

The gov in this matter is reliant on private industry, forcing protocols, laws yea but without seizure mass production they do not have


As with most conspiracies this quote covers it:

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence

Only BTC can destroy itself is my take, not sure how but fraud is the most obvious.  Some kind of short circuit where asic process developments make it too easy for difficulty to compensate but that seems unlikely to be true currently

[cp1]

There could be several pools contributing to the unknown -- it's likely not just one pool.

[spiral_mind]

The unknown % has suddenly dropped down to 6% immediately after it was revealed that Avalon has been mining using customers' units.

See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=236348.0.

 One issue with linking the huge changes in unkown miners to Avalon is that in this post he knew Avalon was mining with his units because of stored pool information (indicates they were not solo mining with these particular units).  Perhaps Avalon was scared off of mining with customers units since they were discovered and abandoned a sizable solo hashing operation as well.
My bet is on Avalon having a stockpile of many thousands of BTC from solo mining and that this particular miner's Avalon units are just the tip of the iceberg.

[cp1]

The units in those posts were mining on known pools, so they wouldn't have reported as unknown.

[spiral_mind]

The units in those posts were mining on known pools, so they wouldn't have reported as unknown.

One issue with linking the huge changes in unkown miners to Avalon is that in this post he knew Avalon was mining with his units because of stored pool information (indicates they were not solo mining with these particular units).  Perhaps Avalon was scared off of mining with customers units since they were discovered and abandoned a sizable solo hashing operation as well.
My bet is on Avalon having a stockpile of many thousands of BTC from solo mining and that this particular miner's Avalon units are just the tip of the iceberg.

[mberg2007]

I think 51% can be done quite easy for the U.S. government: they need special squads/agents to take over of 2 or 3 biggest mining pools. This can be done even if pools are operated outside of the U.S., and even can be done remotely. But i guess, to have more confidence they would need to send special people to pool operators (-; Hell, at the moment we cannot be sure that some of the pools are already in control of governments....

This would only work for as long as the pool miners continued to run their workers. As soon as word of the takeover got around, miners would stop using these pools and Bitcoin could get back to normal operations.

But the US does have some serious supercomputing hardware at its disposal. I wouldn't be surprised if they could take over Bitcoin quite easily at any moment.

-Michael

[Trillium]

I think 51% can be done quite easy for the U.S. government: they need special squads/agents to take over of 2 or 3 biggest mining pools. This can be done even if pools are operated outside of the U.S., and even can be done remotely. But i guess, to have more confidence they would need to send special people to pool operators (-; Hell, at the moment we cannot be sure that some of the pools are already in control of governments....

This would only work for as long as the pool miners continued to run their workers. As soon as word of the takeover got around, miners would stop using these pools and Bitcoin could get back to normal operations.

But the US does have some serious supercomputing hardware at its disposal. I wouldn't be surprised if they could take over Bitcoin quite easily at any moment.

-Michael

necro

The sum total hashing power of every supercomputer in the world is much less than the total hashrate of bitcoin. Supercomputer almost always run computations that are rely heavily on CPU, memory, and I/O resources, but these are not suitable or optimal for mining bitcoins at all. Not only was this case true just with GPU miners contributing to the bitcoin network hashrate, but now that we have ASICs...

Most supercomputers are built for performing general computing tasks that require huge resources because of their inherent complexity. The processors must be able to perform a extremely wide range of operations. But in bitcoin this is completely not the case... we need high speed hashing of SHA-256 algorithm... ie. the same few operations over and over as fast as possible and running in parallel as many times as the hardware allows for. The hardware in each case are almost like polar opposites.

[Trongersoll]

you don't need supercomputers. anyone with too much money and the desire to do so could easily get over 51%. The easiest way would be to steal one of the current asic designs, have your own boards built for your own use and mine away. It might be neat to see people's reactions when hashing power doubled or tripled from one second to the next. Could be fun.

[candoo]

There are some "private" mining pools for members with at least 200 ghash/s or more. That may answer your questions about unknown.

[mberg2007]

Most supercomputers are built for performing general computing tasks that require huge resources because of their inherent complexity. The processors must be able to perform a extremely wide range of operations. But in bitcoin this is completely not the case... we need high speed hashing of SHA-256 algorithm... ie. the same few operations over and over as fast as possible and running in parallel as many times as the hardware allows for. The hardware in each case are almost like polar opposites.

I have to disagree with this. Most supercomputers are built for massively parallel operations, and the really quick ones use -- you guessed it, graphics cards from common vendors like nVidia to achieve this.

Simulating a nuclear detonation or parts of the human thought process is of course more complex than SHA-256, but that does not preclude such systems from having a lot of hashing power either.

The Cray Titan uses AMD Opteron cpu's combined with nVidia Tesla GPU cards. It has 18688 of each, and it is rated at a theoretical peak of 27 peta flops. How many flops for 1 hash? I don't honestly know. If it is 1000, then it could hash at 10^6 Mhash/s, which is pretty good (1000 THash/s) - plenty for a 51% attach if my finger math is correct.

Anyway, I'm not talking about the supercomputers we know about. I'm talking about stuff that is hidden away, things we don't know about. One reason the US government isn't doing very much to stop Bitcoin might be because it knows that it can stop it anytime it wants to, by the flick of a switch.

-Michael

[odolvlobo]

The Cray Titan uses AMD Opteron cpu's combined with nVidia Tesla GPU cards. It has 18688 of each...

You are right that supercomputers are designed to do parallel computations and are not general purpose computers. They are great for bitcoin mining, but they are still far too weak to present a threat.

We don't have to try to convert petaflops to hash rates. Let's assume best case here. nVidia GPUs are not suitable for mining bitcoins but what if the GPUs were AMD 7970's instead? Then, 18688 AMD 7970's would have a total hash rate of about 18688*650 Mh/s or about 12 Th/s.

The total network is about 180 Th/s, so this super computer with only 12 Th/s is still not nearly enough to mount a 51% attack.

[greaterninja]

my bad brehs