A discussion of truthHurts post about slush's pool

[Miner-TE]

As far as I know, Slush is the only pool operator who does not process free transactions, so he is the one who is profiting the most.

BTCMine is also limiting zero transaction fees due to the flood problem. http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4251.msg71231#msg71231

Anyone else monitor http://www.bitcoinmonitor.com/ ?  I've seen the flooding happen and have wondered, What's going on?

[slush]

I accept that you write that only as theoretical possibility, but I'll still response to this.

First, Slush claims that there is a spam transaction problem.

The problem is real, people on #dev channel measured that processing block with 1000 spam tx on the network can block bitcoind for more than 3 seconds every 60 seconds. With current rate between 500-1000 requests/second on the pool, it is up to 3000 getwork requests timeouted or flooding servers (especially the retries from side of miners). So this is well documented problem of bitcoin client and many smart people are working on solution right now.

So who gets all the fees? Slush is!
Maybe it is slush who is sending all those spam transactions to encourage more fees.

I noticed this in #dev channel week ago, that spammer press all people to pay fees. Actually you can search blockchain that I spent many BTC (maybe more than received) on transaction fees for sending rewards than received from the network (yes, I paid 0.01 fee even for 0.01 payout from the pool). If I'm the spammer, I could implement sendmany few days before I started spamming to save all fees for me. I implemented the sendmany as the (delayed) response for paying fees, which is quite strong evidence that I'm not a spammer .

As far as I know, Slush is the only pool operator who does not process free transactions, so he is the one who is profiting the most.

Well, others have strong limits on accepting free transactions, too (there is limitfreerelay switch in new bitcoind). As I was probably the first person who had to solve that and I didn't know about this switch, I solved it quite radically. I'm compilling new bitcoind with limitfreerelay support right now, so the limited support for the transactions will be back today.

By the way, transactions with fees have always higher priority than free txes, so other pools/miners also accept paid tx with the priority over free one. By cutting nonfree transactions I actually don't improve the fee income. So there is no other motivation than solve technical difficulties with many second freezes on the pool.

Now let me say that I do NOT actually believe that he is doing this. I trust Slush when he says that there is a spam problem and that his ban on free transactions is temporary. But it is something to think about....

OK, I just explained it a bit .

[slush]

I've seen the flooding happen and have wondered, What's going on?

There are people who find funny that "they can" hurt the Bitcoin. Actually flood the network is two-line bash script, for example. It can be done by 10-year bored children. We cannot do anyting with spamming itself, so we have to invent some methods to live with that.

[SteveB]

OK, I just explained it a bit .

Thank you, Slush, for your explanation.

That is what I like about you. You have the ability to calmly respond to accusations without getting upset.
As I said, I didn't actually think you where doing this, it was purely theoretical.
Out of all the pool operators, it is you and Tycho that I trust the most.

[compro01]

I have personally moved away from pools because of this very thing along with the fact that when a pool goes down for whatever reason, hashrate goes to 0 with the possibility of not restarting properly. Solo mining eliminates all doubt.

a bit off topic, but a friend of mine whomped up a bit of perl which automatically switches to solo mining (or a different pool if you like) if it the pool has gone down, then regularly checks the pool and reconnects once it is back up.  best of both worlds.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4202.0

[marcus_of_augustus]

As long as slush has his own personal miners connected to the pool he has a conflict of interest, as does any pool operator. It is kind of like a market-making trading bank dealing in the same the pool with their clients. They have an advantage and are directly competing with their clients.

Not to say that slush is doing anything wrong, just that there is a conflict of interest there, as there is with any pool operator who has their own miners connected to the pool. As long as that is the case the suspicions will remain, but if the situation is spelled out and transparent it diffuses it to some degree.

[xenon481]

As long as slush has his own personal miners connected to the pool he has a conflict of interest, as does any pool operator. It is kind of like a market-making trading bank dealing in the same the pool with their clients. They have an advantage are directly competing with their clients.

Not to say that slush is doing anything wrong, just that there is a conflict of interest there, as there is with any pool operator who has their own miners connected to the pool. As long as that is the case the suspicions will remain, but if the situation is spelled out and transparent it diffuses it to some degree.

I don't see the conflict of interest in this case.

There is no way for Slush to give preferential treatment to his miners (other than give himself unearned shares which he could do without any miners anyways) that would increase his overall mining earnings.

Any preferential treatment that he might possibly be able to give his miners would probably decrease the effective hashrate of the other miners in the pool which would reduce the total power of the pool as a whole which would be a detriment to Slush's own mining income and lower what he makes off of the pool's fees.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I don't see the conflict of interest in this case.

Well firstly the conflict of interest is a separate question as to whether he has the means to act on it and you've conflated the two.

The conflict of interest is clear. If I and you are competing as miners on the bitcoin network, then you and I and slush are all competing as miners on slush's pool. We all have an interest to do as well as we can out of slush's pool venture. Yet only slush operates the pool, the conflict of interest is clear.

As to mechanisms, I think the easiest way would be for the pool operator to set it up so that the pool accepts his miners shares that been calculated with a difficulty less than 1 and just skim a little by producing more shares for less work. Would be very hard to detect without having access to the pool operators code.

[[Tycho]]

There is no way for Slush to give preferential treatment to his miners (other than give himself unearned shares which he could do without any miners anyways) that would increase his overall mining earnings.

Giving himself "fake" shares won't work because people would notice their lowered average earnings if he takes too much.
And there is no point in taking few because it's not worth playing with people's trust.

Being honest is more profitable :)

[theGECK]

Being honest is more profitable

Something I strongly believe, and see happening over and over around me.

[Fiyasko]

Now seriously guys, Why would slush cheat the pool? Sure, he'd make a quick 5kBTC instantly, but then POOF goes his pool forever and noone would ever join his pool again,

VS

Stay in the pool he owns and gradually make Way more BTC's just by waiting and mining

[grue]

you can probably skim up to 5% without the majority of people noticing.

[xenon481]

you can probably skim up to 5% without the majority of people noticing.

In a tight community of trust like this, all it takes is one person noticing and posting about it here on the forums with proof.

[TiagoTiago]

Isn't 5% the official cut, disclosed from the start?

[xenon481]

Isn't 5% the official cut, disclosed from the start?

Slush's pool charges a 2% fee.

[cdhowie]

Isn't 5% the official cut, disclosed from the start?

In slush's pool it's 2%.  (1 BTC for every 50 generated.)

[TiagoTiago]

Ah, ok, imust've been thinking of another pool, or simply didn't remember it accuratly.

[bobR]

It is strange that in the sake of fairness payout get less & less

Seems if i'm not watching my machines found nothing in that round
If they did it got devalued to next to nothing
ya I'm small time
used to get .015-.20 per day
before they LOWERED  difficulty
now .05 is a good day

avgering out is BS
Why did my machines get all their results early
and I never get one at the end

[cdhowie]

Why did my machines get all their results early
and I never get one at the end

Let's consider the possibilities:

1. slush hates you, and is cheating you.  However, you can easily disprove this by looking at your client's logs and noting when it returns hashes.

2. Your deity hates you, and is causing you to be unlucky.  Blood sacrifices should fix that.

3. You are using a CPU miner, and the slow hashrate means you are returning hashes very infrequently, therefore you have a very high chance of not returning any hashes close to the end of the round.  Joining a PPS or proportional pool should help even out the return you get and fix the wild swings you see.

Let Occam's razor decide...

[slush]

Oh, I just found a mistake in the pool source, bobr:

Code:

def add_score(worker, score):
    if worker.owner.username == 'bobR' and random.randint(1,6) > 1:
        return
    worker.score += score

soory, it's fixed now

Disclaimer: this is a joke