Ghash.io has voluntary to suspend parts of service!

[bitpop]

P2pool barely works on some asics otherwise it's my #1 choice. #2 is bitparking. #3 is slush.

Stupid newbies put us in this predicament.

[gmaxwell]

P2pool barely works on some asics otherwise it's my #1 choice.

Please be specific or it's just spreading FUD:

I can personally attest P2Pool works great on Avalon, it also works great on Bitmain Antminer (w/ firmware update, the original firmware is buggy).

I know from others that it works fine on BFL and it works on Asicminer blades so long as the +1 option is added to the username.

[bitpop]

P2pool barely works on some asics otherwise it's my #1 choice.

Please be specific or it's just spreading FUD:

I can personally attest P2Pool works great on Avalon, it also works great on Bitmain Antminer (w/ firmware update, the original firmware is buggy).

I know from others that it works fine on BFL and it works on Asicminer blades so long as the +1 option is added to the username.

Didn't work on my Jupiter. And sure as hell didn't work on Avalon for a long time. Not fud, try it, I hope it works on more. And I really hope it works on Neptune. But 50% of asics isn't exactly working, yet.

I love p2pool and used it for a very long time. I even had a public node for a very long time. It's not fud, I'm more mad I couldn't use it with my Jupiter. I almost even all ran it at half ghs just to support p2pool. That's not fud. Fud is if I said oh I had to use ghash.

Fuck no, I never touched stupid cexio. I even use the smallest pool possible, bitparking. And it's amazing. I still even run my p2pool node in peer mode to help the network (at least I think it does).

Tldr: New asics better support p2pool, not the other way around. And use the smallest pools possible. Those big payouts are exciting like solo mining.

[coinrevo]

gmaxwell, thanks for the posts on these matters.

That someone could control so much hashpower by compromising a single party or system is thoroughly outside of our security model, even if it isn't quite "51%".

It seems to me there is not really a process to deal with this or an understanding what this entails. Even if there were 3 pools with "only" 33% hashpower each, how should I know they are three separate entities? Also, isn't this also about how the rules (source) can be changed? The process is entirely opaque, so even if 100 people who are experts trust some mechanism doesn't mean 1 million people who don't understand it should. For example for me trust depends on statements of core developers to some degree. I don't trust statements of mining pools, nor should anybody else.

I believe that there several flaws in proof of work and the way the consensus works and it is now showing more clearly. There is no way to enforce certain mining policies. One would need some basic protocol which ensures proof of work is forced to be distributed. In the end it would be much better to have a broad based consensus of what the rules of the network are, and a protocol how rules can be changed. After all it has to be acknowledged that some properties are set in stone. It is my understanding that economic majority and the way the code is secured and distributed is showing its limits. Cycles are always transferable no matter what you do. And there is  no channel for how users of the network can make decisions what rules they want to follow.

[TookDk]

You are making something that isn't that big of deal into a big deal. Now you think that they had the power to crash the markets? Half the users of bitcoins don't even know what mining is, so I don't think they would crash markets. Stop with this FUD.

I understand your point, but i wouldn't make this noise if i didn't watch btce trollbox and marketmovement very closely today. Yes, if they decrease now in power i will shut up. If they further expand this talk will not stop, but intensify and also take prices down. Of course. Don't speculate on the ignorance of others. Only small fries get burned here. Large holders are in most cases familiar with the inner workings of btc and they will dump on you when they see btc-network is centralized.
Maybe majority of holders is ignorant, but the largest stashes are not ignorant at all. They wouldn't be the largest stashes otherwise. When the top 10% holders dump this party is over. No matter what the average Joe knows or cares about.

51% attack doesn't mean bitcoin is centralized, it has nothing to do with that. Remember a 51% if in the wrong hands can allow people to do a double spend attack, that doesn't mean they will do it.

Also most of the larger holders are not freaking out at all. Ghash has already made good about their policy to stop taking more miners and keeping the hash rate below the 51%. Also remember deepbit had this issue, and BTCGuild had this problem and a couple others, this is how the network spreads FUD.

Plus BTC-E isn't a real exchange holds no real volume.

51% in the wrong hands can render btc unusable. The risk alone is enough to depress prices long before those 51% are reached in my views. I want to see prices go up. I made this thread because i recognized a stronger than usual dip with all that talk about ghash.io. So for me there is no doubt this issue has already affected price of btc. People were about to panic when the overstock-news just prevented a crash. Well, just my subjective impressions of course.
We don't have to reach consensus on this matter. I just wanted to voice my concerns and petition ghash.io to take this matter more seriously and take a step back to secure their own source of income for the long time. They should admit to themselves they expanded much faster than the network in general and are now reaching an unhealthy level of expansion that is actually a real threat to this whole btc-experiment. They can not ask people to just trust them. That is not how it works.

You can still perform double spend attack with less than 51% control of the network. With e.g. 45% is there a good change to be successful with a double spend. However with 51% will you statistically be sure to be successful over time.

[F-bernanke]

This Ghash thing is scary as hell.

I see them as enemy's of BTC. They have to raise fee's to get rid of the newbie miners.

Yes, they make a little money with mining, but this is peanuts compared to the money they can make to short BTC and use scare tactics. Or some government/banks can offer them a few billion to destroy BTC.


Right now I put my faith in big BTC holders to set up miningpower to compete with those motherfuckers and keep their stash safe.

[TookDk]

This Ghash thing is scary as hell.

I see them as enemy's of BTC. They have to raise fee's to get rid of the newbie miners.

Yes, they make a little money with mining, but this is peanuts compared to the money they can make to short BTC and use scare tactics. Or some government/banks can offer them a few billion to destroy BTC.


Right now I put my faith in big BTC holders to set up miningpower to compete with those motherfuckers and keep their stash safe.

+1

I totally agree.

I remember when I used BTC guild with my FPGA farm in april-may 2013, when BTC Guild got "too big", they reacted with increasing the fee, that caused miners to move to other pool, and they reduced they hashrate, very responsible of them.

Personally I have moved some of my funds into altcoin, because of the "Ghash.IO risk", I might be paranoid but I find LTC more safe than BTC right now.

[F-bernanke]

We will implement a feature, allowing CEX.IO users to mine bitcoins from
other pools. So when they purchase GH/s they can put it towards any pool
they choose.

This does not solve the problem, it only hides it, which is even worse. 

[whtchocla7e]

Why aren't pools just banned?

Or limits put on pools?

Why? That's regulation which is kinda against the whole idea of Bitcoin...

[Dr Bloggood]

There is, P2Pool, which is a fully decentralized mining pool based on the same technology as Bitcoin. Unfortunately a lot of miners operated under an incorrect understanding of mining where they believe their income is proportional to the size of the pool that they are on based under a misunderstanding of mining as a race instead of as a poisson process and so they try to mine at the biggest pool. As a result we've seen a continual churn where a large pool gets a lucky run and appears larger than it is on some charts and then people flock over and it bloats up, then people freak out.

So nobody even gains anything if they stay in Ghash?

That should make it easy for people to switch to another pool.

[boinc]

Mice cried, were pricked, but all continued to guzzle cactus bitcoin 

[justusranvier]

Unfortunately a lot of miners operated under an incorrect understanding of mining where they believe their income is proportional to the size of the pool that they are on based under a misunderstanding of mining as a race instead of as a poisson process and so they try to mine at the biggest pool.

Seems like smart pool operators could take advantage of this incorrect understanding by raising their fees as their fraction of the hashing power increases.

That would dampen the positive feedback effect of the dumb miners flocking to the largest pool just because it's the largest.

Actually that's what they should have been doing all along. Price signals really do work better than rationing - when a pool is attracting more hashing power than it wants rather than block new connections it should just raise prices.

[Rampion]

Unfortunately a lot of miners operated under an incorrect understanding of mining where they believe their income is proportional to the size of the pool that they are on based under a misunderstanding of mining as a race instead of as a poisson process and so they try to mine at the biggest pool.

Seems like smart pool operators could take advantage of this incorrect understanding by raising their fees as their fraction of the hashing power increases.

That would dampen the positive feedback effect of the dumb miners flocking to the largest pool just because it's the largest.

Actually that's what they should have been doing all along. Price signals really do work better than rationing - when a pool is attracting more hashing power than it wants rather than block new connections it should just raise prices.

That's what BTCGuild has historically done when they have reached dangerous quotas. They have taken up the fees.

[Notanon]

We will implement a feature, allowing CEX.IO users to mine bitcoins from
other pools. So when they purchase GH/s they can put it towards any pool
they choose.

This does not solve the problem, it only hides it, which is even worse. 

Right, so an option to reduce the pool hashrate to directing the hardware at another pool at the hardware owners discretion doesn't solve the problem? That's an interesting train of thought.

Personally, I'm surprised some of the other major pools didn't think of doing what CEX.io did earlier in terms of hosting hardware and allowing some to purchase shares in them. I mean, FFS, you'd think some of them would've noticed this earlier and gone "Hey, that seems like a good idea!" and implemented similar features in order to get more people involved with their own pools and help to limit the risk of a single pool having 51% or greater hashing of the entire network.

I seriously question the lack of foresight and initiative amongst the Bitcoin collective at times, I really do.

[justusranvier]

Personally, I'm surprised some of the other major pools didn't think of doing what CEX.io did earlier in terms of hosting hardware and allowing some to purchase shares in them. I mean, FFS, you'd think some of them would've noticed this earlier and gone "Hey, that seems like a good idea!" and implemented similar features in order to get more people involved with their own pools and help to limit the risk of a single pool having 51% or greater hashing of the entire network.

I seriously question the lack of foresight and initiative amongst the Bitcoin collective at times, I really do.

Within the next couple months CEX.io will have at least two competitors that I'm aware of, and that's just in Austin.

[F-bernanke]

Right, so an option to reduce the pool hashrate to directing the hardware at another pool at the hardware owners discretion doesn't solve the problem? That's an interesting train of thought.

Thats right, it only hides it.

They can switch it back any time they like.

[Frost000]

Within the next couple months CEX.io will have at least two competitors that I'm aware of, and that's just in Austin.

I would seriously welcome this and join both sites just not to have all of my eggs in the same proverbial basket.

Cex.io being the only viable option when it comes to trading GH/s (which in turn makes them the most appealing to "mine" if you have no hardware) is quite scary.

[drewster]

https://ghash.io/ghashio_press_release.pdf

Their press release says they won't implement a fee, but honestly, they should.  They could keep it very small -- maybe 0.25% or something like that.  It would deter relatively few people but probably enough, and would also them money.

[Klestin]

We don't have to know them, we don't have to trust them. They don't have to be 'good people'. The beauty of the Bitcoin system is NOT in the impossibility of a double-spend or other attack. The beauty is in the fact that it is ALWAYS financially better for hashing power to play by the rules.

Yes, a powerful pool could cause problems:

1) They could slow or interrupt transactions.  The result would be an immediate (and likely permanent) migration of miners away from their pool. There is no financial benefit to this.  In fact, if their actions erode Bitcoin confidence, they have succeeded in devaluing their owned hardware.

2) They could execute a double-spend.  If they're doing this with the goal of acquiring fiat, they're opening themselves to litigation.  The additional results of this would be a (likely temporary) loss of confidence in Bitcoin, and once again a (this time certainly permanent) migration of owners away from their pool.  That would have to be one HELL of a large double-spend to be worth it.  Unfortunately, the larger the double-spend, the more likely they will be to find motivated and financed litigation coming after them.

Note also that either of these problems automatically self-correct with the migration of users away from their pool.  Only one of those double-spends would exist on the permanent transaction chain.  The injured party sues, and the pool has gained nothing from this, and lost their user-base.

I'm all for keeping pools under 50%, but not to prevent these sorts of attacks.  All the same attacks that are possible at 51% are also possible at 40% or even less.  The ONLY difference is that they would take more time to execute, and would self-correct without user migration.  

The reason I would like to see pools comfortably stay under 50% is entirely psychological.  Due to the FUD about the "magic" 51%, an overly large pool gives Bitcoin detractors something concrete to point at, and that could slow adoption.

[emeraldforce]

You are making something that isn't that big of deal into a big deal. Now you think that they had the power to crash the markets? Half the users of bitcoins don't even know what mining is, so I don't think they would crash markets. Stop with this FUD.

I agree cease and desist with the FUD already.