GHash.IO and double-spending against BetCoin Dice

[itod]

If bitcoin can't survive this, and we also can't fix it, it's fundamentally broken. If it's fundamentally broken, it's better that we find that out sooner rather than later.

Bitcoin is not fundamentally broken, the system just assumes people are not idiots and will not work against their own interest. That assumption is obviously wrong. Majority simply doesn't want to think, it is too painful. It's just much easier to be in a heard. Being in heard is so comfortable, that way somebody else is guilty when shit happens.

You can't successfully, long term, defend any system from the inside. If you are saying that Bitcoin is broken because people depending on a system don't give a shit about the system, then - yes, it is broken. Also is any system who's insiders behave like that.

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[edmundedgar]

If bitcoin can't survive this, and we also can't fix it, it's fundamentally broken. If it's fundamentally broken, it's better that we find that out sooner rather than later.

Bitcoin is not fundamentally broken, the system just assumes people are not idiots and will not work against their own interest. That assumption is obviously wrong. Majority simply doesn't want to think, it is too painful. It's just much easier to be in a heard. Being in heard is so comfortable, that way somebody else is guilty when shit happens.

I guess this comes down to semantics, but "broken if used by the actual humans who will be using it" sounds to me like "broken". Still, I suppose maybe some future AI civilization will be smarter than us monkeys...

[NewLiberty]

its the same 50,01% that 99%

why the fukers ghash are playing with this?split the fu}[;'ng coounts NOW

There's no point in getting mad at GHash. They're doing what they think is in their economic interests. Sooner or later someone is going to do that, whether it's GHash or not.

If bitcoin can't survive this, and we also can't fix it, it's fundamentally broken. If it's fundamentally broken, it's better that we find that out sooner rather than later.

I reserve the right to get mad at GHash.io.
It is irresponsible.  It is also unwise.  Those combinations can be maddening.

Imagine that there might be some folks that want Bitcoin to fail.
Imagine that they care more than a little about that goal.
Imagine that those folks might do things, perhaps involving violence.  Maybe things like starting wars and such.
Might something simple like coercion be used to do things with bitcoin mining that we would prefer not happen?


So if any of that imagined stuff is true, then ghash.io is unwise in that they are setting themselves up for such coercion.  In the movies the bad guy would put a knife to the throat of a loved one, but it could take just about any form.

They would be wise to scale back and DECENTRALIZE.

[onemorebtc]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

[edmundedgar]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

Right, or they could charge other miners to accept their blocks...

[Azlan]

If bitcoin can't survive this, and we also can't fix it, it's fundamentally broken. If it's fundamentally broken, it's better that we find that out sooner rather than later.

Bitcoin is not fundamentally broken, the system just assumes people are not idiots and will not work against their own interest. That assumption is obviously wrong. Majority simply doesn't want to think, it is too painful. It's just much easier to be in a heard. Being in heard is so comfortable, that way somebody else is guilty when shit happens.

You can't successfully, long term, defend any system from the inside. If you are saying that Bitcoin is broken because people depending on a system don't give a shit about the system, then - yes, it is broken. Also is any system who's insiders behave like that.

Its not broken, it just suffers from a classic common resource problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
"... individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one's self-interest, behave contrary to the whole group's long-term best interests by depleting some common resource."

Historically, only 2 viable solutions exist:
1) An authority to regulate (% in this case)
2) Privatization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Modern_solutions

Pick your poison..... but be quick about it.


Ref: "The Tragedy of the Commons". Science 162 (3859): 1243–1248. 1968. doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

They would not earn more in terms of fiat. If they were to attempt this kind of attack then the price of bitcoin would decrease substantially and what they mined on their own chain would be worthless.

[onemorebtc]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

They would not earn more in terms of fiat. If they were to attempt this kind of attack then the price of bitcoin would decrease substantially and what they mined on their own chain would be worthless.

i am not sure about this.
it was definatly true in the beginning: but now? too much investors...

[itod]

Imagine that those folks might do things, perhaps involving violence.  Maybe things like starting wars and such.

There's no need for violence or a war, for failure of gigantic proportions, one hacker attack is enough. We've put ourselves in a position that we have a single point of failure, and if somebody gets hold of GHash.IO resources he can break the blockchain.

Historically, only 2 viable solutions exist:
1) An authority to regulate (% in this case)
2) Privatization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Modern_solutions

Pick your poison..... but be quick about it.

Both solutions are unacceptable, I'd rather see Bitcoin fail than degrade it like that. Fortunately, we have some other options that were not there in the history. We have the source code, remember. Consensus can be reached to change it in  a way to remove this threat. Core developers have to quickly reach consensus what to do.

[crazyearner]

Imagine that those folks might do things, perhaps involving violence.  Maybe things like starting wars and such.

There's no need for violence or a war, for failure of gigantic proportions, one hacker attack is enough. We've put ourselves in a position that we have a single point of failure, and if somebody gets hold of GHash.IO resources he can break the blockchain.

Historically, only 2 viable solutions exist:
1) An authority to regulate (% in this case)
2) Privatization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Modern_solutions

Pick your poison..... but be quick about it.

Both solutions are unacceptable, I'd rather see Bitcoin fail than degrade it like that. Fortunately, we have some other options that were not there in the history. We have the source code, remember. Consensus can be reached to change it in  a way to remove this threat. Core developers have to quickly reach consensus what to do.

If you would rather it fail then degrade then why are you even bothering with BTC Yes their was some double spends and GH are closing in on the 51% hash rate again maybe see it happen again and they make claims that they have nothing to do with it. I have since moved well away from their pool due to the fact that when you mine with own equipment I get nothing but stale dupes and rejected for about 40% of my work yet anywhere else is flawless. Rented hash their is fine tho so I don't get how the hell own hardware gets many rejected stale when all other pools I mine on are perfectly fine. Tried to contact support several times asked me to do may things. In the end I gave up and went elsewhere. Bitcoin will always some how get degraded no matter what that's fact.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

They would not earn more in terms of fiat. If they were to attempt this kind of attack then the price of bitcoin would decrease substantially and what they mined on their own chain would be worthless.

i am not sure about this.
it was definatly true in the beginning: but now? too much investors...

This is even more true now.

Ghash makes a lot of money off of selling their GH/s on cex, if they were executing a 51% attack why would anyone want to deal with them again once the network recovers.

[edmundedgar]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

They would not earn more in terms of fiat. If they were to attempt this kind of attack then the price of bitcoin would decrease substantially and what they mined on their own chain would be worthless.

i am not sure about this.
it was definatly true in the beginning: but now? too much investors...

This is even more true now.

Ghash makes a lot of money off of selling their GH/s on cex, if they were executing a 51% attack why would anyone want to deal with them again once the network recovers.

The hitch is that what individual human decision-makers do can be quite far removed from what you'd think would be in the rational best interests of the conpany. For instance, if you're a manager who has promised $x in revenue for this quarter and you think you'll lose your job if you don't make it, you'll be motivated to do whatever it takes to make that number, even if you secretly think it harms the company long-term.

Also they may be coerced into doing things they don't want to. Conceivably the moment they hit 51% they became legally obliged to do all kinds of AML-related censorship that they don't really want to do. Like somebody said about Google, it's all very well having the motto "Don't be evil", but if you accrue too much power, evil will find you...

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

ghash could earn more by ignoring all other pool blocks and just extending on its own chain.
diff would even decrease and they could earn more

They would not earn more in terms of fiat. If they were to attempt this kind of attack then the price of bitcoin would decrease substantially and what they mined on their own chain would be worthless.

i am not sure about this.
it was definatly true in the beginning: but now? too much investors...

This is even more true now.

Ghash makes a lot of money off of selling their GH/s on cex, if they were executing a 51% attack why would anyone want to deal with them again once the network recovers.

The hitch is that what individual human decision-makers do can be quite far removed from what you'd think would be in the rational best interests of the conpany. For instance, if you're a manager who has promised $x in revenue for this quarter and you think you'll lose your job if you don't make it, you'll be motivated to do whatever it takes to make that number, even if you secretly think it harms the company long-term.

Also they may be coerced into doing things they don't want to. Conceivably the moment they hit 51% they became legally obliged to do all kinds of AML-related censorship that they don't really want to do. Like somebody said about Google, it's all very well having the motto "Don't be evil", but if you accrue too much power, evil will find you...

This may be true about the manager wanting to get x amount of revenue for the company for a pool that earns revenue from pool fees, but ghash does not. As far as I know the only source of revenue that ghash makes is from selling it's equipment via cloud mining.

[Harley997]

Historically, only 2 viable solutions exist:
1) An authority to regulate (% in this case)
2) Privatization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Modern_solutions

Pick your poison..... but be quick about it.

Both solutions are unacceptable, I'd rather see Bitcoin fail than degrade it like that. Fortunately, we have some other options that were not there in the history. We have the source code, remember. Consensus can be reached to change it in  a way to remove this threat. Core developers have to quickly reach consensus what to do.

One solution would be to provide more incentives to pools as long as they are under a certain threshold.

One way this could be achieved wold be to change the Bitcoin code so that if a pool had found more then x% of blocks in the last 24 hours then they only get 98% of the block reward, and pools that have found less then x% of the blocks in the last 24 hours would receive the 2% that the other pools did not earn the previous day.

For example on day 0 PoolA finds 60 blocks out of 144 blocks found that day, this is above the threshold of x% of blocks found. On day 1 PoolA finds 59 blocks out of 144 blocks found that day. They receive 24.5 BTC per block for a total block reward of 1445.50 across 59 blocks. They received 29.5 BTC less then if they had received a block reward of 25 BTC. Starting on day 2 any pool that mines a block that does not have hashpower above x would earn ~25.415 BTC (plus TX fees) per block found until the 29.5 "lost" block reward is used up.

[domob]

We need a usable p2pool software so that everyone starts mining. It's the only way, we need decentralized mining. We need it easy to install & configure, clean and with intuitive gui.

This.  However, the last time I looked at P2Pool myself (I was just a small miner mostly for fun, now I've even switched off completely), the "problem" I noticed most was that with my hash rate, I wouldn't even be able to consistently get returns out of P2Pool.  I don't know how many of the current GHash.io miners have such a low hash rate, though.

[redhawk979]

Clearly the free market has dictated that GHash can grow to its size. Stop trying to fight the invisible hand by DDOSing GHash. You dont like it? Start up a competitor.

This place is the worst, everyone cries about FREE MARKET and BAD GOVT REGULATION but suddenly when they aren't at the top of the food chain it turns into "DDOS THEM TO DEATH", "WE NEED REGULATIONS!", "HARDFORK THE PROTOCOL!"

[bluefirecorp]

Start up a competitor.

Working on it. Project launch will be probably less than two months.

[bananas]

Clearly the free market has dictated that GHash can grow to its size. Stop trying to fight the invisible hand by DDOSing GHash. You dont like it? Start up a competitor.

This place is the worst, everyone cries about FREE MARKET and BAD GOVT REGULATION but suddenly when they aren't at the top of the food chain it turns into "DDOS THEM TO DEATH", "WE NEED REGULATIONS!", "HARDFORK THE PROTOCOL!"

The DDOS is a market circumstance, only the best pools will survive, those who are able to competitively deal with all adversities.

[Harley997]

We need a usable p2pool software so that everyone starts mining. It's the only way, we need decentralized mining. We need it easy to install & configure, clean and with intuitive gui.

This.  However, the last time I looked at P2Pool myself (I was just a small miner mostly for fun, now I've even switched off completely), the "problem" I noticed most was that with my hash rate, I wouldn't even be able to consistently get returns out of P2Pool.  I don't know how many of the current GHash.io miners have such a low hash rate, though.

P2P miners do not control enough hashpower to really make them viable as they rely too much on luck.

While P2P is a noble idea, traditional pools are here to stay, at least IMO

[gigalew]

If CEX can double spend, or 51% attack or whathave you......the problem seems to be with bitcoin itself, not any one user. CEX seem to be good guys, what happens if bad guys develop the same power.