WARNING: Potential 51% attack on Litecoin by GHash

[muhhkuh]

Mined there for some hours and didn't recieve the 2x reward at all... 

[jazarja]

They double the reward for LTC block, usually is 50 but they reward is 100.

[comeonalready]

I think you all might have missed the marketing garbage Ghash.IO posted over on litecointalk:

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GHash.IO prevents 51% accumulation of the #Litecoin hashing power

March 13, 2014, GHash.IO mining pool launched an offer, according to which users get doubled rewards for #mining Litecoins. In one day GHash.IO became Litecoin mining pool #1. Unfortunately, we didn’t expect such a rush of Litecoin miners and are now forced to adjust the offer’s rules to prevent getting 51% of the Litecoin network.

Thus, from now on, the reward multiplier depends on the overall Litecoin pool speed at GHash.IO. If the speed varies between 0 and 40 GH/s, all Litecoin rewards will be doubled, as stated at the beginning of the offer. At the 40-60 Gh/s pool speed, the reward multiplier decreases to 1.25. Finally, if the pool reaches 60+ GH/s, GHash.IO will need to close the offer, since this rate is too critical for the double spending threat and the Litecoin currency in general.

We do our best to be a trustworthy pool and are not willing to destroy any cryptocurrency. Our actions coincide respectively.
Thank you for understanding!

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I called them out on their crap, and they had the thread renamed and content removed, including my posts quoting theirs!  Which was:

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Very sleazy.  Reduce/retract the bonus offer and paint yourself in a bright light for being a defender of the litecoin network.  You could have kept to your promise by suspending new miner registrations to prevent 51%, but instead you chose not to honor your offer.  Not good for future business in my opinion, but it is your own reputation at risk. 

Actions like this are engraved invitations to governments to interfere/intervene in virtual currencies.

[Blazed]

Bait and switch.. They just did this to grab miners for their pool.  Shocking they back out of 2x rewards..

[VirosaGITS]

There's also a 0.001btc fee for withdraws. Minimum 0.01 btc withdrawal.

[tuner]

i also posted in their support forum, not deleted yet, but i'm sure they will remove this:

 tuner:

Dear ghash crew, you are nothing but scammers, if you promised 2x rewards for a week you should keep your word, it's not excuse about 51% attack. If you are so afraid of 51% attack its just what you need to do is not let new miners join in and thats all

[VirosaGITS]

i also posted in their support forum, not deleted yet, but i'm sure they will remove this:

 tuner:

Dear ghash crew, you are nothing but scammers, if you promised 2x rewards for a week you should keep your word, it's not excuse about 51% attack. If you are so afraid of 51% attack its just what you need to do is not let new miners join in and thats all

lol sound like fun, you should give a link later, me i think they did the right thing. Wether it was planned or not.

[Trestle]

They just changed the numbers again.

Pool fee is 0% ! Doubled rewards for LiteCoin mining ends in [5 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes, and 32 seconds]
To prevent getting 51% of the Litecoin network, the reward multiplier will be adjusted according to the pool speed. Current multiplier: x1.25.

Pool Speed   Reward multiplier
0 – 25 GH/s   x2
25 – 60 GH/s   x1.25
60+ GH/s   x1

[VirosaGITS]

They just changed the numbers again.

Pool fee is 0% ! Doubled rewards for LiteCoin mining ends in [5 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes, and 32 seconds]
To prevent getting 51% of the Litecoin network, the reward multiplier will be adjusted according to the pool speed. Current multiplier: x1.25.

Pool Speed   Reward multiplier
0 – 25 GH/s   x2
25 – 60 GH/s   x1.25
60+ GH/s   x1

Now i totally agree.

[GBattaglia]

Wow.  You know, I don't quite understand the point in this promotion, especially if they keep changing the terms.  I think they'll just piss off more people than they'll actually gain honestly.

[paul09]

Wow.  You know, I don't quite understand the point in this promotion, especially if they keep changing the terms.  I think they'll just piss off more people than they'll actually gain honestly.

Yep, I signed up to their pool because of the promotion and would have likely continued mining with them sometimes when multipools weren't doing well, now I probably won't since this is beginning to smell quite bad.

[JaxonBTC]

Wow.  You know, I don't quite understand the point in this promotion, especially if they keep changing the terms.  I think they'll just piss off more people than they'll actually gain honestly.

Totally agree.  Seems illegal for any other company in a more regulated industry to do this.  Straight up misadvertising/bait and switch.

Actions like this are engraved invitations to governments to interfere/intervene in virtual currencies.

I am against government intervention/interference/controlling Crypto Currencies at all in principle, but with this kind of BS shenanigans it wouldn't be the worst if someone could hold them to their advertised word at least (can't believe GHashes actions have me thinking this way. Really shady GHash, really shady)

[VirosaGITS]

Wow.  You know, I don't quite understand the point in this promotion, especially if they keep changing the terms.  I think they'll just piss off more people than they'll actually gain honestly.

Totally agree.  Seems illegal for any other company in a more regulated industry to do this.  Straight up misadvertising/bait and switch.

Actions like this are engraved invitations to governments to interfere/intervene in virtual currencies.

I am against government intervention/interference/controlling Crypto Currencies at all in principle, but with this kind of BS shenanigans it wouldn't be the worst if someone could hold them to their advertised word at least (can't believe GHashes actions have me thinking this way. Really shady GHash, really shady)

The first modification was legit imo. It could have passed as legitimate. If it reach 51% LTC would apparently die. So stopping the pool at 40gh, which is about 1/3rd of the total LTC hash power was good. At 60gh the bonus would become 0, so no further incentive to mine there, which would have been close but still under 50%.

They might have hoped that the growth would continue, but slowly past 40gh, as 125% is still worthwhile right now.

Instead, the big miners just limited themselves to leave it at 39gh, so they and everyone else would still get 2x.

Paying double on 39gh is expensive so they found a way to drop it back to 125%, maybe.

Of course now its dropping back so low that its 2x again, but whats going to happen, now?

[JaxonBTC]

The first modification was legit imo. It could have passed as legitimate. If it reach 51% LTC would apparently die. So stopping the pool at 40gh, which is about 1/3rd of the total LTC hash power was good. At 60gh the bonus would become 0, so no further incentive to mine there, which would have been close but still under 50%.

  You know, I agree in the first modification as being necessary even to ensure that they weren't intentionally trying to break LTC, but the tiered system of bonuses should've been made clear beforehand, not one day in.

Paying double on 39gh is expensive so they found a way to drop it back to 125%, maybe.

Of course now its dropping back so low that its 2x again, but whats going to happen, now?

Too bad!  That's the promotion they ran, that's their cost of doing business.  They should honor their word and not try to weasel out because it's too expensive.  If they move the 25GH threshold again it will just prove that they don't care at all about their reputation in the mining community.  They can't just keep lowering the bar (but I think they might...).

[GBattaglia]

The first modification was legit imo. It could have passed as legitimate. If it reach 51% LTC would apparently die. So stopping the pool at 40gh, which is about 1/3rd of the total LTC hash power was good. At 60gh the bonus would become 0, so no further incentive to mine there, which would have been close but still under 50%.

  You know, I agree in the first modification as being necessary even to ensure that they weren't intentionally trying to break LTC, but the tiered system of bonuses should've been made clear beforehand, not one day in.

Paying double on 39gh is expensive so they found a way to drop it back to 125%, maybe.

Of course now its dropping back so low that its 2x again, but whats going to happen, now?

Too bad!  That's the promotion they ran, that's their cost of doing business.  They should honor their word and not try to weasel out because it's too expensive.  If they move the 25GH threshold again it will just prove that they don't care at all about their reputation in the mining community.  They can't just keep lowering the bar (but I think they might...).

Second all of this. 

[VirosaGITS]

I dont think they can afford to.

But if they do, that'd be nice of them so it would clear any doubt we may or not have.

[Number6]

Further warning if you signed up just for the promo, I accumulated a small number of litecoins and tried to withdrawal to make sure everything checks out, and I get the following warning:

Code:

New accounts are not allowed to withdraw funds in the first 48h

[gamefixer]

So, dumb question. Whats a 51% attack and why would it kill a coin? I've heard about such things a few times but I really dont get it.

Thanks!

[Defender666]

If one pool controls more then 50% of the network it can fake transaction because more then the half of the miners would validate the fake transaction. They could create any balance on there account they want. And the real value of the coin would drop to 0.

[Trestle]

Meh we were going along well riding the line now someone added another .5G and it's down to 1.25 again.