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.

[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...