ghash.io is becoming SHOCKINGLY AGGRESSIVE NOW, closing in 45%

[klondike_bar]

You could ask btcguild to set their fees to near 0%   since he puts up fees when its too popular, now might be a good time to do the opposite.

Or any pool could offer to do that, might help some

eligius is 0% fees. BTCGuild is still large enough that going there is not a solution to this problem.

I wish slush's pool would drop fees to 1% or 0% - its a great pool and i would happily hop back over to it if there were no fees

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[dbitcoin]

You could ask btcguild to set their fees to near 0%   since he puts up fees when its too popular, now might be a good time to do the opposite.

Or any pool could offer to do that, might help some

eligius is 0% fees. BTCGuild is still large enough that going there is not a solution to this problem.

I wish slush's pool would drop fees to 1% or 0% - its a great pool and i would happily hop back over to it if there were no fees

Sure. Pool op's must pay all maintenance, development, support and other costs from own pocket and working for free! Stay away from pools with fee!

[mb300sd]

You could ask btcguild to set their fees to near 0%   since he puts up fees when its too popular, now might be a good time to do the opposite.

Or any pool could offer to do that, might help some

eligius is 0% fees. BTCGuild is still large enough that going there is not a solution to this problem.

I wish slush's pool would drop fees to 1% or 0% - its a great pool and i would happily hop back over to it if there were no fees

Sure. Pool op's must pay all maintenance, development, support and other costs from own pocket and working for free! Stay away from pools with fee!

Half your fees, double your hashpower, same income. With vardiff, server load may not increase that much.

[klondike_bar]

You could ask btcguild to set their fees to near 0%   since he puts up fees when its too popular, now might be a good time to do the opposite.

Or any pool could offer to do that, might help some

eligius is 0% fees. BTCGuild is still large enough that going there is not a solution to this problem.

I wish slush's pool would drop fees to 1% or 0% - its a great pool and i would happily hop back over to it if there were no fees

Sure. Pool op's must pay all maintenance, development, support and other costs from own pocket and working for free! Stay away from pools with fee!

Half your fees, double your hashpower, same income. With vardiff, server load may not increase that much.

this. At 2% fees i am reluctant to move to slush's pool - thats a LOT of income hes getting for basic server hosting. 0.5% is more then enough IMO

[minerva]

I think the most rational fee system is to have all the bitcoins go to a pot, and the manager of the pool subtracts .1 bitcoins per day and takes 0.5%.

[Luke-Jr]

I think the most rational fee system is to have all the bitcoins go to a pot, and the manager of the pool subtracts .1 bitcoins per day and takes 0.5%.

Eligius had something like that originally.
Except it was like 0.000864 BTC per day and 0.00005%...

[OleOle]

I think the most rational fee system is to have all the bitcoins go to a pot, and the manager of the pool subtracts .1 bitcoins per day and takes 0.5%.

Comments about pool fees are largely irrelevant as miners will choose to mine on whichever pools they choose for their own particular reasons. Fees are only one consideration to be taken into account. It's up to competing pools to present their case to attract miners based on product or service differentiators and generic comments about "rational fee systems" doesn't address the complexity of the supply or demand side of the market.

I mine on pools which charge a fee and I also mine on pools which are ostensibly free. Price is the not a motivating factor for me, continuity of service, availability of support and other considerations are more important to me than price.

Everyone is different of course, but its worth resisting a thought-bubble of 'one size fits all' as it rarely works, however well-meaning or rational they allegedly appear to their proposers.

[Trongersoll]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

[quone17]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

True dat, what is the reason given for a zero fee pool?  What is the owner getting out of it?

[Luke-Jr]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

True dat, what is the reason given for a zero fee pool?  What is the owner getting out of it?

A fee-free pool to mine on themselves.

[Minor Miner]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

True dat, what is the reason given for a zero fee pool?  What is the owner getting out of it?

A fee-free pool to mine on themselves.

So, the only benefit to the pool owner (vs. solo mining) of having tons of people to answer to (or ignore as the case may be) and opening yourself up to potential DDoS, is reducing your variability?
Does not seem like enough of an incentive to me.

[Luke-Jr]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

True dat, what is the reason given for a zero fee pool?  What is the owner getting out of it?

A fee-free pool to mine on themselves.

So, the only benefit to the pool owner (vs. solo mining) of having tons of people to answer to (or ignore as the case may be) and opening yourself up to potential DDoS, is reducing your variability?
Does not seem like enough of an incentive to me.

That's the whole purpose of pools in general.

[OleOle]

I think in retrospect looking back and reading over this thread it's been rather interesting as at first I was dismissive of the notion that Ghash were approaching 51% as we tended to hear a lot of doom and gloomers say similar things with regard to my main pool BTC Guild last year.

However, on closer examination, there's far more transparency with BTC Guild than there is with Ghash and there's no nagging doubts with any conduct of BTC Guild but there certainly is with Ghash regarding how they 'feed in' the GHS for sale on their cloud site and also why or how running a zero fee pool makes commercial sense as in my opinion they do not operate as a community-driven or not-for-profit pool. Given also the visibility of the pool operator from BTC Guild and their availability to answer any and all questions regarding the pool, in contrast with the rather ham-fisted PR-driven 'support' offered by CEX, there's just not, for me, the same level of transparency or comfort around the visibility or accountability of Ghash as there is with BTC Guild.

This statement below may satisfy some people, but in my opinion, this PR release regarding the 51% issue generates more questions than it answers:

https://ghash.io/ghashio_press_release.pdf

One interesting point on the release is the claim that 55% of their pool is "independent miners", so if a reasonable percentage of those miners were to move their hashing elsewhere, whilst it might not entirely alleviate all concerns, it would go some way to mitigating some of the 51% risk. Previously I had somehow suspected that the 'independent miner' percentage was much lower and that there wasn't a great deal that could be done by the mining community as after all, if one party is growing a mining farm faster than rabbits procreate, the vast majority of miners even if they increase their hashing, aren't going to be able to compete. However, if 55% of the Ghash pool is independent miners, then communications like this thread can go some of the way to inform people and maybe even change where they point their hashing at.

I'm only a small miner but I'm conscious that in the well-worn phrase, "you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem," I'm not entirely happy doing nothing, especially as I have about 20% of my rig pointed at the Ghash pool and a lesser amount mining via their Bitfury CEX cloud service.

So what I have decided to do, is to support a genuine, non-corporatised, community-driven, transparent pool which I have read and learned more about purely as a result of deliberating the implications of this thread, that is, I'll be shifting my miners from Ghash to Eligius so my only exposure to the Ghash pool will be from my virtual cloud miners on CEX and none of my physical hardware will point to Ghash.

Although I had looked at Eligius before, I hadn't actually examined it in any great detail and I have to say now that I have looked at it far more closely, I'm very pleased to have taken the time to look at it and can now appreciate why it's the third largest pool.

Of course, it's entirely up to each individual independent miner where they mine and how they react to the changing mining landscape, but if you're like me and doing nothing doesn't seem to be the right thing to do, take some time to research other pools as there's some really great looking pools, some with quite interesting features that I thought I'd looked at critically before, but it always pays to take a second look and mitigating against the possible risk of a 51% attack is something that all miners should be conscious of.

For what it's worth, the new breakdown of my pools will be:

BTC Guild                     65%  (no change)
Eligius                         18%   (+18%)
Ghash (via CEX only)     14%   (-18%)
Others                          3%   (no change)

Given that the Bitfury CEX mining component is apparently only 45% of the Ghash pool, I don't perceive any need to completely eliminate that exposure and as far as I know, there's not a similar straightforward cloud service to substitute to.

Anyway, at the beginning of this thread, I didn't really imagine myself changing my opinion or changing pools, but I'd like to thank everyone who has commented on this thread as I think sitting on your hands and doing nothing isn't going to help and I also think that saying to yourself that there isn't any problem undervalues the power that independent miners have to keep the bitcoin network operating efficiently and safely.

Thanks again for all your comments and observations.




   

[NewLiberty]

who pays the expenses of a zero fee pool, and why? Nothing is free, where is the money coming from?

True dat, what is the reason given for a zero fee pool?  What is the owner getting out of it?

A fee-free pool to mine on themselves.

So, the only benefit to the pool owner (vs. solo mining) of having tons of people to answer to (or ignore as the case may be) and opening yourself up to potential DDoS, is reducing your variability?
Does not seem like enough of an incentive to me.

That's the whole purpose of pools in general.

There is also the fractional coins left in the pool that folks forget about when they move on.
Like change in a wishing well pond.

[Gator-hex]

Do you guys know CEX.io contact address is on Threadneedle Street?

You know what else is on Threadneedle Street, The Bank of England! It came to power as a central bank by buying all the Kings currency out of circulation (royal tally sticks).

Must watch video to educate yourself about the City of London not being London!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc

Even the Queen of England has to get their permission before she can visit that's how powerful they are!

You don't know the power of the dark side!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onhFH7jpq2c

[krampus]

You guys do understand CEX.io contact address is Threadneedle Street don't you?

32 Threadneedle just so happens to be the address of a "virtual office" service.

From their website:

The home of the Bank of the England and one of the most recognisable businesses address in the World. If you are connected to the banking or finance industry this is Virtual Address can give you access to the globe’s major organisations.

THREADNEEDLE STREET VIRTUAL OFFICE FEATURES
Prime Business Address to use on your marketing material and website
Professional call answering from a trained receptionist
A dedicated telephone number exclusively for your business
Calls transfered to the destination of your choice (or to your voicemail)
Mail handling & forwarding
Voicemail that can be accessed remotely
Meeting & Conference Rooms at your centre should you wish to meet clients at your business address (extra fee)

My guess is that the cex.io operator has never so much as set foot on Threadneedle.

[NewLiberty]

As hash power aggregates toward mining pools, the pool owners bear the risk of being coerced. 
The pool owner may be entirely honorable, but may not be able to withstand coercion by TPTB.  Princess Leia watcher her homeworld be obliterated rather than give up the rebel plans. 

Any large pool owner that is not concerned about this, maybe just already has been coerced.

If there is one thing "they" are good at, its the protection racket.  When you own all the guns, jails, courts, and money, you can get away with just about anything.

The ghash.io PR piece does not read to me to be sufficiently concerned with the problem they have created for themselves to keep me from being concerned about them.  I wish them safety, and wish they were more concerned about it themselves.  As it is, they are presenting their pool as being the single largest threat to the existence of bitcoin today. 

I am less worried about ghash.io being the assassin against bitcoin, than them being the gun used by others that just can find where and how to leverage the trigger.  Keep your children safe, team ghash, for all our sake.

[adnx2h]

A good pool option is triplemining, i created a mini pool you are welcome to joinhttp://MinerosMexico.triplemining.com, the good thing here is the weekly jackpot.

[FlyForFun]

https://blockchain.info/pools

did btcguild users jumped over to ghash?

or did ghash keep buying machines?

Can't imagine what is going to happen if they keep increasing their hashing power at this rate......

I think ghash keep buying machines, they also have their cex.io to sell overpriced GH/s

[ericisback]

If you follow:

https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=24hrs

BTC Guild just overtook GHash.IO as the largest pool.