Question: distributed mining with BOINC

[Alcoholocaust]

Recently, I stumbled upon BOINC, which is an open source distributed computation solution.

I am no coder, but a question crept into my mind: can BOINC give distributed bitcoin mining something that current pooling solutions lack, such as, for instance, lack of dependency upon server's honesty in terms of reward distribution?

Or perhaps more resilience to malicious clients?

Discuss.

[adv]

I think BOINC be too slow for this. You may just use slush's pool as same think.

[slush]

I'm involved in BOINC for many years, so I can compare. The biggest problem with Bitcoin@BOINC is that boinc is not realtime. You need actual data to work on block (in the absolutely worst case new job every minute), but BOINC is designed for long running, offline computations (clients ask for new job after many hours).

[ronaldmaustin]

My thought on cheating is that there is very little incentive to cheat with the current level of Bitcon activity.  As a practical matter, what could anyone siphon off per day without anyone noticing?  A few buck a day?  And with the skill level on here as to computer programming, probability and statistics, no one would get away with cheating for long, I think.  With regard to slush's server, I have paid very close attention and everything appears on the up and up to me with regard to the expected values I get on my own vs. the pooled mining server.  I think the only way the current pooled mining sites out there could cheat is to have fake people mining, or fake mining stats representing over the amount of hash's being pooled.  Otherwise, I know the rate at which I'm sending hash's per hour and I know the rate the mining server reports it is receiving hash's per hour in total.  Unless the amount received is falsely reported, how could one cheat?  To address that issue, I think there has been a recent change which will log and report to all what users receive what.  Unless they are false users, which would easily be identified over time,  I don't think the possibility exists to cheat.

[ronaldmaustin]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

[Local]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

Don't put in a 33 cent offer to sell when there is a 35 cent offer to buy.

If both parties get what they offered or better it doesn't matter anyway.

[ronaldmaustin]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

Don't put in a 33 cent offer to sell when there is a 35 cent offer to buy.

If both parties get what they offered or better it doesn't matter anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the mtgox.com trading site people put in their buy and sell offers.  The data I have at my disposal from the site is only the current price, the high price of the day and the low price of the day.  If there is a current price of 32 cents and I put in a sell offer at 33 cents, how do I know when I come back later in the day that my shares weren't sold for 35 cents and I was credited only 33 cents?  If all I see is HIGH 36 LOW 32 CURRENT 34 when I come back, the owner could sell them for anything and simply "cook the books".  Not suggesting at all that mtgox or anyone else does this.  But someone who knows he has a buyer at one price and a seller at a much lower price, could simply buy at the lower price and resell at the higher price, keeping the difference for himself.  How would I know?

[wb3]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

Don't put in a 33 cent offer to sell when there is a 35 cent offer to buy.

If both parties get what they offered or better it doesn't matter anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the mtgox.com trading site people put in their buy and sell offers.  The data I have at my disposal from the site is only the current price, the high price of the day and the low price of the day.  If there is a current price of 32 cents and I put in a sell offer at 33 cents, how do I know when I come back later in the day that my shares weren't sold for 35 cents and I was credited only 33 cents?  If all I see is HIGH 36 LOW 32 CURRENT 34 when I come back, the owner could sell them for anything and simply "cook the books".  Not suggesting at all that mtgox or anyone else does this.  But someone who knows he has a buyer at one price and a seller at a much lower price, could simply buy at the lower price and resell at the higher price, keeping the difference for himself.  How would I know?

You wouldn't and this is how Wall Street became Wall Street.  With competition and speed this will become less of an issue but never go away.

Every wonder why Wall Street so hard against the decimal system?  They used to sell stock for let say: 15 5/12  every wonder what happened to the fractional cents over millions of transactions a day.  No one ever seemed to noticed. But those darn decimals came along and 0.416666666666667 just became 42 cents.

With fast trading systems though you can make money when there is a big difference between BID and ASK prices. But usually they are within .01 of each other for good stocks.

[0x6763]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

Don't put in a 33 cent offer to sell when there is a 35 cent offer to buy.

If both parties get what they offered or better it doesn't matter anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the mtgox.com trading site people put in their buy and sell offers.  The data I have at my disposal from the site is only the current price, the high price of the day and the low price of the day.  If there is a current price of 32 cents and I put in a sell offer at 33 cents, how do I know when I come back later in the day that my shares weren't sold for 35 cents and I was credited only 33 cents?  If all I see is HIGH 36 LOW 32 CURRENT 34 when I come back, the owner could sell them for anything and simply "cook the books".  Not suggesting at all that mtgox or anyone else does this.  But someone who knows he has a buyer at one price and a seller at a much lower price, could simply buy at the lower price and resell at the higher price, keeping the difference for himself.  How would I know?

mtgox.com has a page for market data, as well as an api, so you can access much more information than just the high, low, and last trade price.

http://mtgox.com/trade/history

http://mtgox.com/support/tradeAPI

Also see: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html

[Sukrim]

I'm involved in BOINC for many years, so I can compare. The biggest problem with Bitcoin@BOINC is that boinc is not realtime. You need actual data to work on block (in the absolutely worst case new job every minute), but BOINC is designed for long running, offline computations (clients ask for new job after many hours).

Couldn't this easily be overcome via preferences?
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Preferences

Time between network connections
Approximate time between network connections. When your computer asks a server for work, it will try to get enough work to last for this long. 0 means constant connection.

Th biggest advantage would be for pool operators to be able to let people download a miner (or even package different miners) and ppl can just fire up their BOINC client, enter an account number and crush away.

The discussion here went a bit off-topic btw...

[no_alone]

This would be great and I think can advance btcoin

[ene]

Every wonder why Wall Street so hard against the decimal system?  They used to sell stock for let say: 15 5/12  every wonder what happened to the fractional cents over millions of transactions a day.  No one ever seemed to noticed. But those darn decimals came along and 0.416666666666667 just became 42 cents.

Source please? This sounds more like Office Space than real life.

[skate2him]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

Don't put in a 33 cent offer to sell when there is a 35 cent offer to buy.

If both parties get what they offered or better it doesn't matter anyway.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the mtgox.com trading site people put in their buy and sell offers.  The data I have at my disposal from the site is only the current price, the high price of the day and the low price of the day.  If there is a current price of 32 cents and I put in a sell offer at 33 cents, how do I know when I come back later in the day that my shares weren't sold for 35 cents and I was credited only 33 cents?  If all I see is HIGH 36 LOW 32 CURRENT 34 when I come back, the owner could sell them for anything and simply "cook the books".  Not suggesting at all that mtgox or anyone else does this.  But someone who knows he has a buyer at one price and a seller at a much lower price, could simply buy at the lower price and resell at the higher price, keeping the difference for himself.  How would I know?

I dunno what all the fuss is about. You are essentially describing a Market Maker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_maker

[mrpetem]

On the other hand, I have thought there exists a potential for cheating when it comes to the bitcoin exchanges.  You place your buy orders and someone places the sell orders.  Suppose I place a 1000 coin buy order for 35 cents and someone else places a sell order for 33 cents?  My order could say "filled" at 35 cents, the seller's order could say "filled" at 33 cents and the brokerage keeps the stated percentage for the service plus makes twenty bucks on the transaction.  Then the days prices could just reflect a trading HIGH of 35 cents and a LOW of 33 cents and no one is the wiser.  Or am I wrong?

broker makes commission between the bid and ask price, its a part of every tradable market.
Of course brokers can manipulate the price to their favour however as said before reputation is key to success and most brokers are regulated.