It seems too many people might be taking this thread too seriously (although Eligius actually had a
surge of miners join not long after it was posted...), so I'm "forced" to respond. In short, there is no technical problem with the prayers, and they do not involve Eligius miners any differently than solo miners-- the only reason I can speculate Graet posted this (since he won't give a rational reason) is to grab more miners to his pool or some kind of subtle anti-Catholic agenda (he denies both).
Personally i believe freedom of religion is anyones choice, unfortunate that it was prayers that caused this to start, really it could have been anything put in the blockheader by any pool owner that caused this discussion.
Yeah right. Nevermind the fact that it was
actually started with political propaganda in the Genesys block by Satoshi himself, setting a clear and undeniable precedent.
Thanks again to those that take time to think AND are concerned for Bitcoins future
Anyone who can think knows this is at the very least
neutral, and at best
positive.
I thought coinbase and transaction spam was an issue the whole community needed to be aware of.
Coinbases and transaction spam are two
entirely different things. Transaction spam serves no purpose, destroys coins, and can
never be purged from the block chain. Coinbases can contain text messages
by design, and can be purged
immediately from your block chain.
I propably chose the wrong topic for this thread, but at the time just wanted to knw if luke-jr has informed miners on Eligius, so that those of other faiths could know what was happening on the blocks they were contributing to and have a choice to participate or not.
Miners do not participate at Eligius any more than they do at other pools or solo mining. Miners hash the prayers
indirectly through multiple layers of SHA256
whether they are mining on Eligius or not. Furthermore, I have not been at all secretive about either the Catholic theme of
St. Eligius, nor the fact that I have been including prayers rather than pure random data in the coinbase.
Graet is quick to deflect his "argument" to
real block chain spam, and claim I am at fault for that. However, it doesn't take much thinking to realize this is the same as arguing that a rape victim is responsible for being raped. "Oh, you were putting prayers, so you're at fault for a troll
really spamming the block chain with slander." "Oh, you were acting so good, so you're at fault for a rapist wanting to take away your innocence." This blame-the-victim attitude is IMO disgusting.
Also: Could this impact security of the blockchain somehow? If it is supposed to be random data there (whereever these prayers are) but this data isn't as random as it could be, this might not be "a good thing (TM)".
It's supposed to be
random enough that miners aren't working on the same hashes. In practice, this only requires a few bytes of unique data, which Eligius guarantees by putting the usual extranonce at the start of the coinbase (the prayers are at the end, after the extranonce + "Eligius"). As noted, Satoshi himself endorsed putting text content in the coinbase with the Genesys block, so it would be silly to argue it creates any real problems.
If it bothers you than don't use his pool. For fuck sake its named st eligius after the patron saint of goldsmiths. I am catholic as well and as far as I know other religions are recognized. I went to catholic school for 12 years. This thread is retarded, hey guys I'm going to pray for all of you, and if you don't like it well fuck you, your going to heaven anyways.
St. Eligius actually is also the patron saint of miners, coin collectors, and minters. Great, that you are Catholic, but I would recommend studying your religion a bit more-- especially the
Syllabus of Errors condemned by Pope Pius IX, and the dogma of
Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus ("Outside the Church there is no salvation").
