Bitcoin - we have a problem.

[Etlase2]

Greedy bastard by our culture, not nature.. a change in our personal value must occur.. 

Clearly the solution is to distribute currency in a pyramid-like fashion to achieve this goal.

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[Luciddd]

I think the OP and most people here do not understand how pools work and how they can work to create 100% uptime.

Coming from experience in the web hosting industry, there is something we call "cloud hosting" where instead of being hosted on one server, you are actually on a network of servers, therefor if even 50% of the servers were to say, shut off, you are still online.

Also think about how Google and Facebook operate, they use similar networking methods.

The answer to what you believe is a problem is simple---to use cloud web hosting/computing that basically guarantees 100% uptime..

The pools could also have server backup after server backup meaning possibly one server goes down/breaks a new one takes over.. You have so many methods of creating pools that would never go down.

5-10 years ago this would be a problem, but not today. -- we haz da technology! 

If you are still having issues understanding cloud hosting..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1269145

/endthread

[AliceWonder]

Would people running these asic miners as lone miners help, even if they never profit?

How much would it cost for me to get a basic miner I can plug into my router and just let it sit there, for no other purpose than to help in the event a pool goes down? Or is that just not needed?

[rovchris]

Would people running these asic miners as lone miners help, even if they never profit?

How much would it cost for me to get a basic miner I can plug into my router and just let it sit there, for no other purpose than to help in the event a pool goes down? Or is that just not needed?

It would only help if you had enough hashing power to actually solve a block, otherwise you would have to join a mining pool and then we don't actually solve the problem it just makes it worse.

Bitcoin by its very design is causing centralisation.

I realise there are people that will blindly accept the Bitcoin is the greatest thing ever but this is a fundamental flaw.

Fast forward 1 year when the difficulty could be near a billion then what is going to happen?

Simple truth is this - if you counted the number of mining pools that were around 1 year ago and compare that number today there are probably less than half. Its not difficult to draw a graph and extrapolate how many mining pools will be around in 1 years time.

At the moment Bitcoins are not too centralised but 1 year - 2 years its going to be a mess.

[Luciddd]

Would people running these asic miners as lone miners help, even if they never profit?

How much would it cost for me to get a basic miner I can plug into my router and just let it sit there, for no other purpose than to help in the event a pool goes down? Or is that just not needed?

It would only help if you had enough hashing power to actually solve a block, otherwise you would have to join a mining pool and then we don't actually solve the problem it just makes it worse.

Bitcoin by its very design is causing centralisation.

I realise there are people that will blindly accept the Bitcoin is the greatest thing ever but this is a fundamental flaw.

Fast forward 1 year when the difficulty could be near a billion then what is going to happen?

Simple truth is this - if you counted the number of mining pools that were around 1 year ago and compare that number today there are probably less than half. Its not difficult to draw a graph and extrapolate how many mining pools will be around in 1 years time.

At the moment Bitcoins are not too centralised but 1 year - 2 years its going to be a mess.

Good god, read what I said above. You are so wrong it isn't even funny.

[Room101]

interesting discussion. From what i understand, the mining rigs are already distributed, only the pools, which essentially are just software, are centralised. So if a pool goes down, surely they can just switch servers? What am i not getting?

[hashman]

I don't understand when they developed it why they did not make the difficulty fixed and vary the reward to maintain the steady creation of coins. This way you can mine solo.

Nice idea.  The problem is that then the block creation rate would increase out of control, you'd have way too much orphaning and block chain bloat.  Take a closer look at Liquidcoin experiment.

And to the OP, there are a couple solutions.  One, is that miners have a bit more control over which pools they mine for than say, citizenry can decide which country to live in.  If a pool does get out of control and start messing with fee structures and TX insertion, people can move without totally abandoning their life.  Two, is that centralized massive pools still won't be able to keep the money supply hidden and create new coins like the central banks have done.  That will be for the next payment layer on top of bitcoin    

[jdbtracker]

the fee structure would kick in if any of those catastrophic disaster scenarios happened, drive the fee price up offsets the loss in hash power. The ASICs right now are an issue, driving the difficulty up that high and dropping it all of a sudden would increase the time for a block by 100%. If it is known immediately, the fee structure can be implemented to saturate the blocks in the 20 minute period that will occur for 3 weeks; doubling the transaction per block would increase the fees within a day drawing reserve power from hibernating miners the moment they heard the news.

[rovchris]

I don't understand when they developed it why they did not make the difficulty fixed and vary the reward to maintain the steady creation of coins. This way you can mine solo.

Nice idea.  The problem is that then the block creation rate would increase out of control, you'd have way too much orphaning and block chain bloat.  Take a closer look at Liquidcoin experiment.

And to the OP, there are a couple solutions.  One, is that miners have a bit more control over which pools they mine for than say, citizenry can decide which country to live in.  If a pool does get out of control and start messing with fee structures and TX insertion, people can move without totally abandoning their life.  Two, is that centralized massive pools still won't be able to keep the money supply hidden and create new coins like the central banks have done.  That will be for the next payment layer on top of bitcoin    

Thank you for explaining the difficulty / coin value issue - it is like trying to get blood out of a stone round here for informative information

[aigeezer]

I don't understand when they developed it why they did not make the difficulty fixed and vary the reward to maintain the steady creation of coins. This way you can mine solo.

Nice idea.  The problem is that then the block creation rate would increase out of control, you'd have way too much orphaning and block chain bloat.  Take a closer look at Liquidcoin experiment.

And to the OP, there are a couple solutions.  One, is that miners have a bit more control over which pools they mine for than say, citizenry can decide which country to live in.  If a pool does get out of control and start messing with fee structures and TX insertion, people can move without totally abandoning their life.  Two, is that centralized massive pools still won't be able to keep the money supply hidden and create new coins like the central banks have done.  That will be for the next payment layer on top of bitcoin    

Thank you for explaining the difficulty / coin value issue - it is like trying to get blood out of a stone round here for informative information

I followed this thread with great interest and I was glad you kept coming back to the question. Does hashman's answer resolve it? If so, that's great and it leaves a useful trail. If not... it's better to hammer this stuff out by discussing hypotheticals than to have it appear unexpectedly in the wild.
 

[Bitcoin Oz]

It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees

You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.

[wolverine.ks]

what about mining insurance company?

you have X mining capacity, and a company buys all of your capacity in return they pay you a steady rate of bitcoin minus some fees.

that would allow solo mining right?

[rovchris]

It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees

You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.

Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.

You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work

[AliceWonder]

It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees

You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.

Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.

You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work

There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.

[rovchris]

It takes days for a wire transfer or a check to clear with massive fees

You really need to look at what bitcoin is equivalent to.

Wire transfers are almost instant now - and cheques are being phased out.

You need quick confirmation times otherwise you will never be able to purchase items in shops - if someone is trying to pay at the checkout and they have to wait a few hours before they can take their goods - it is not going to work

There are green addresses that can alleviate some of that, though I personally don't care if bitcoin ever makes it into the local walk-in market. I just want to use it in the digital world.

You might not personally care - but for Bitcoin to be a success issues like this need to be resolved.

Your response sums up quite nicely how most of the bitcoin community behaves. I am ok Jack but screw the rest of you.

The more time I spend on this forum the greater my concerns are about the long term viability of this project.

There may as well never have been a whitepaper because so few people understand why Bitcoins were created.

[ktttn]

Everyone who can should run a USB ASIC miner (or more) that would help a little with decentralising.   It's a shame they're priced a bit high though.

Just because it's an ASIC doesn't mean it's more efficient than a GPU. Those will have to be a lot cheaper before they really make any difference.

Agreed, but it does open it up mining to a wider group of people with, e.g. a notebook, or a MAC, etc. that aren't running GPUs.

I know it's not brilliant, but it's a step in the right direction.  And I see a new pool being setup which is also needed - diversity in equipment and pools.

I'd love to get a 28nm ASIC setup but realistically can't expect a large percentage of users to buy these.  So the centralization looks set to continue...

And that is the problem man - nothing will stop centralisation at this rate. When the difficulty reaches 1 billion there will only be a few pools with enough hashing power to solve anything.

It will be so far out of reach of the ordinary man they might as well be a central bank

Sounds like a job for plain old fashioned redistribution of wealth through abolition of state protection structures.

[jagallout]

Can anyone talk about the feasibility of creating a "Pool" whos sole purpose is to equally distribute its hashing power among existing actual pools?  This could be just some sort of accounting method where you create an account, even perhaps choose a list of requested pools, then receive payments based on your contribution.  The "middle" pool structure could then be responsible for automatically adjusting if/when one or more of the actual pools "go down".

I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues.  Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.

Thoughts?

[rovchris]

Can anyone talk about the feasibility of creating a "Pool" whos sole purpose is to equally distribute its hashing power among existing actual pools?  This could be just some sort of accounting method where you create an account, even perhaps choose a list of requested pools, then receive payments based on your contribution.  The "middle" pool structure could then be responsible for automatically adjusting if/when one or more of the actual pools "go down".

I feel that this could *HELP* resolve some of the panic mode responses to pool issues.  Not sure if it would actually help bitcoin in the long run.

Thoughts?

That is a nice idea - but the pool responsible for distributing the hashing would then be the point of centralisation.

Someone else mentioned the P2P pool  - I read the link but I will be honest it made little sense.

[hashman]

I don't understand when they developed it why they did not make the difficulty fixed and vary the reward to maintain the steady creation of coins. This way you can mine solo.

Nice idea.  The problem is that then the block creation rate would increase out of control, you'd have way too much orphaning and block chain bloat.  Take a closer look at Liquidcoin experiment.

And to the OP, there are a couple solutions.  One, is that miners have a bit more control over which pools they mine for than say, citizenry can decide which country to live in.  If a pool does get out of control and start messing with fee structures and TX insertion, people can move without totally abandoning their life.  Two, is that centralized massive pools still won't be able to keep the money supply hidden and create new coins like the central banks have done.  That will be for the next payment layer on top of bitcoin    

Thank you for explaining the difficulty / coin value issue - it is like trying to get blood out of a stone round here for informative information

Lol, I hear you there.  Extensive filtering, skimming skills required around here after the huge increase in posts over the last 6 months.  Unfortunately a lot of the really knowledgeable posters are harder to find these days, which is why you have to settle for my answer  
 

[Luciddd]

This thread is full of uneducated people.