Bitcoin Decentralization Initiative

[toast]

The Bitcoin Decentralization Initiative and Decentralization Fund

Everybody who has any investment into the bitcoin ecosystem should be interested in mitigating the existential risk presented by 51% and 26% attacks against the network.

I'm done hearing people talk about how nothing can be done about Bitcoin's centralization concerns and how "it's a free market! you can't do anything!". We *are part of* the free market. We as a community can help incentive structures in a way that encourages mining power to become more decentralized.

I am making the collection and allocation of resources towards promoting network health and reducing the amount of centralization we currently see in the Bitcoin network an explicit goal of mine. Naysayers need not waste their breath.


Actionable Plans
* Put a bounty on bitfury asic integration for p2pool
* Put a bounty on creating a "bitcoin network health" infographic. Some important points:
    - An attacker does not actually need >50% hashrate to successfully double spend.
    - 26% attack exists.
    - "A pool with >50% wouldn't attack because they would destroy their own business model" doesn't really matter: What matters is how many people someone interested in *destroying bitcoin* would have to coerce.


Short-term goals:
* Establish credibility for the Fund by gathering a team of knowledgeable and trustworthy community members to guide and manage the allocation of resources.
* Foster discussion for the purpose of creating concrete and actionable plans for the Fund for both the short- and long-term future.
* Solicit donations from large BTC stakeholders who are interested in hedging against catastrophic loss of value

Medium-term goals:
* Fund the development of p2pool, particularly features that promote ease-of-use and profitability.
* Jumpstart p2pool adoptation by subsidizing p2pool miners (adding 1% to block rewards for p2pool payouts for a week, for example)
* Help smaller mining pools implement features which make their pools more competitive against the current largest pools.
* Educate the community about bitcoin network health

Long-term goals:
* Create a balance of mining pool control across jurisdictions. Most mining pools currently operate inside the US.
* Work with the core development team to make changes to the reference client to help support decentralization (for example, direct p2pool integration into bitcoind).

[1715534726]

1715534726

[1715534726]

1715534726

[Isokivi]

I'd like to suggest adding a small subgoal:
P2pool compatible mining software for bitfury asics. I dont know how large a portion of the network bitfury-based devices make up. But I'd like to argue that as they still are the best available hardware to date, that is is a large %. Not having the option of mining on p2pool on them is a huge threshold. I myself have mined on p2pool on three generations of hardware, but have been unable to accomplish this on bitfury H-cards.

[toast]

Noted.
More generally, we need input from people who are familiar with p2pool to help decide which are the most cost-effective incentives to tackle.

[jonanon]

Think it's pretty cool what you're trying to achieve here, keep us posted with progress!

 

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

Looks like something we'd consider donating Bitcoin outreach funds to in the future, resources depending.

[jbreher]

Hey all you chicken littles running around screaming about the falling sky - take a lesson from toast. Rather than incessant whingeing, he is putting effort behind actually doing something about the situation.

Kudos, toast. I don't know if I have anything to offer - other than perhaps some cash when concrete plans emerge.

The suggestion of p2pool compatibility for bitfury sounds like low-hanging fruit.

[Holliday]

* Jumpstart p2pool adoptation by subsidizing p2pool miners (adding 1% to block rewards for p2pool payouts, if this is technically possible)

This is quite easy. We used to do this back in the "olden days of mining" when P2Pool was just created. There is a method to donate to all the P2Pool miners according to the amount of hashing power they submit (as you said, basically an additional subsidy to the block reward).

Here was the method we used (I don't know if it still functions or not).

./bitcoind sendmany "" "$(wget -O- http://forre.st:9332/patron_sendmany?total=1.5)"

1.5 would be the total amount of bitcoins donated.

[gortonc]

Question: We hear a lot about trojans generating botfarms to mine bitcoins. I can't afford a dedicated miner, and don't care about making money (not that I wouldn't love to) but could commit my desktop to running something in the background if it would help.  Would it? Is this what p2pool is about? Could we have an intentional volunteer botfarm to compete with Ghash.io?

[FandangledGizmo]

* Jumpstart p2pool adoptation by subsidizing p2pool miners (adding 1% to block rewards for p2pool payouts, if this is technically possible)

This is a great idea. I don't have much but I believe in the idea of Bitcoin & would support something along these lines that could help address the issue.

[KonstantinosM]

A 26% attack is a faulty scenario. 50+% is what we need to be worried about.

[toast]

Made a few small changes to the OP.

* Renamed this to "Bitcoin Decentralization Initiative", which happens to have a Fund. There is plenty to be done that doesn't involve money, and "fund" scares people off and lowers credibility.
* Started drafting "actionable plans" section.

[gambitx]

this is pointless not required, waste of money and resources

[toast]

this is pointless not required, waste of money and resources

Why? Because every time there's been a threat so far, the pools have been benevolent?

- "A pool with >50% wouldn't attack because they would destroy their own business model" doesn't really matter: What matters is how many people someone interested in *destroying bitcoin* would have to coerce.

That number is currently 2.

[Patel]

Good luck with this Toast, I support what you're doing here.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Its a good goal. I would donate when i see more in the future.

The litecoin devs are working on similar things. Maybe you could contact warren from the dev-team.

[whtchocla7e]

In other words, you want pool regulation.

I don't think that's possible.

The more restrictions you put in place, the more people will leave the network. You can't artificially control growth and people want to grow. We are well past the stage where there are only hobbyist miners in the game.

[RodeoX]

Hey all you chicken littles running around screaming about the falling sky - take a lesson from toast. Rather than incessant whingeing, he is putting effort behind actually doing something about the situation.
...

+1 I "naysay" when all I see is complaining. This is action, totally different in my mind.

[FandangledGizmo]

I support this.  I like that you've changed fund to 'initiative' but personally I'd like to see you remove the donation address for the time being.

If you/we the community have a specific credible plan to improve decentralisation, only then should a funding address be listed and even then it may be better if it was administered by someone else. (Example maybe BitPay shows an interest in assisting a decentralised mining fund. Any donated funds would be miniscule vs. their turnover and so people could confidently donate knowing the funds will be fully put towards their stated purpose.)

I have emailed Bitpay today actually on this issue, I have quoted the content below, hopefully I will receive a response, or if they could respond in this thread that would be great too.

To: Info@Bitpay.com

As you may be aware Ghash.io recently gained up to as much as 45% of Bitcoin Hashing power.

I know Bitpay is the leading Bitcoin Payment network in the world. I know you have a great team there
that get's paid some of their salary in Bitcoin and I know you are constantly developing great new
Bitcoin related services.

I was wondering if Bitpay has recognised/considered the threat posed by mining pools getting too big and the effect
a 51% attack would have on Bitcoin and therefore Bitpay's business?  

Have you considered developing or helping with something that could encourage P2Pool mining?

I know you are busy but any response to this would be greatly appreciated thank you!  

Edit: I realise Bitpay are in a way an example of centralisation themselves.
But I think most of us agree that it is mining pools getting too big & the risk of a 51% attack that is the biggest threat to the security and trust in Bitcoin. Hopefully the current big players, (Exchanges, merchants, Bitcoin service providers) recognise this as a threat to their business too and we can work together to address it.
  

[FandangledGizmo]

Charles Stevens (BitPay)

Jan 16 05:50 PM

Hi,

We are aware of the recent scare of a 51% attack and of course realize the importance of preventing that from happening. We have no current plans in place to encourage P2Pool mining, but I will certainly pass your comments along to our team to see if that's something we may decide to look into. Thanks for reaching out.

Sincerely,

Charles Stevens
Client Support Engineer
BitPay, Inc.

I'm glad they took the time to reply so quickly, thank you! 

It seems they realise the importance of preventing it from happening, so you never know, maybe this will spark them to think about if there's some small things that they can do from their side to assist with the network security of Bitcoin.
If some senior or more technical members here came up with a credible strategy, that BitPay could assist with in some small way, I'm sure they'd at least give it some reasonable consideration.

[toast]

In other words, you want pool regulation.

I don't think that's possible.

The more restrictions you put in place, the more people will leave the network. You can't artificially control growth and people want to grow. We are well past the stage where there are only hobbyist miners in the game.

It's not really regulation, we're just voluntarily helping out some people who have some easy-to-fix competitive disadvantage to promote network health in the long run