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.pdfOne 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.
