New mining pool imposes KYC and censorship

[Wind_FURY]

Does anyone know the IP address of the node(s) they use? It would be nice to add this to the default banlist in bitcoin core.

https://twitter.com/dmgblockchain/status/1327037069340774400

That's the most practical simplest solution! Hahaha.

All full nodes BLOCK Blockseer for ALL transactions. Let bad-actors bow to the network, and work with it.

[stompix]

~

Great scenario, but let us stop here. The compliant pools won't be mining any blocks; they will be wasting a lot of energy and money for nothing. Honest miners, which in our case means "non-compliant" miners, will know that the previous block was mined by a "compliant" pool and they may well decide to ignore that block and instead build a chain upon a "non-compliant, censorship-resistant block." How many blocks should they decline and ignore to drive out dishonest miners?

You realize you're just opening another can of worms with this, right?
So from miners that do not accept unknown transactions we're creating a cartel that will censor miners that censor..
What will be the obvious outcome? Once you have a cartel emerging that denies blocks from the other miners you will have also ignore blocks from the competition, accusing them of using uranium enriched mining gear or some other "shady" stuff and killing their business.

Things that have been done for the greater good have managed a lot of times to become the greatest pain in the ass two steps further down the road..

[aesma]

I don't understand the logic here, are they going to entice miners to use the pool, by rewarding them somehow (maybe include in the blocks transactions with crazy fees ?).

[jademaxxiss012]

Does this means that cryptocurrency will going to undergo modification like being mixed up with centralization? Well, there is a good result when two system will be mixed up. There is no really effective system if it is an absolute centralization or absolute decentralization. But if this two system will mixed up then definitely we can see a good and effective system not only to cryptocurrency but I guess to other platform too.

[witcher_sense]

You realize you're just opening another can of worms with this, right?
So from miners that do not accept unknown transactions we're creating a cartel that will censor miners that censor..

I prefer to call it differently: resistance to censorship and self-defense against an act of aggression. After all, bitcoin was built on libertarian principles, so why not follow them when it comes to aggressors against bitcoin's network? Bitcoin is your private property, and some malicious actors want to restrain you from interacting with your money; they want to prevent you from transacting freely. They are aggressors against honest miners and all users, so miners/users should have a right to fight back, to defend their rights and property.

What will be the obvious outcome? Once you have a cartel emerging that denies blocks from the other miners you will have also ignore blocks from the competition, accusing them of using uranium enriched mining gear or some other "shady" stuff and killing their business.

Things that have been done for the greater good have managed a lot of times to become the greatest pain in the ass two steps further down the road..

Why do you think evil miners haven't still conspired, created a cartel and started to drive out other miners?

[Wind_FURY]

You realize you're just opening another can of worms with this, right?
So from miners that do not accept unknown transactions we're creating a cartel that will censor miners that censor..

I prefer to call it differently: resistance to censorship and self-defense against an act of aggression. After all, bitcoin was built on libertarian principles, so why not follow them when it comes to aggressors against bitcoin's network? Bitcoin is your private property, and some malicious actors want to restrain you from interacting with your money; they want to prevent you from transacting freely. They are aggressors against honest miners and all users, so miners/users should have a right to fight back, to defend their rights and property.

What will be the obvious outcome? Once you have a cartel emerging that denies blocks from the other miners you will have also ignore blocks from the competition, accusing them of using uranium enriched mining gear or some other "shady" stuff and killing their business.

Things that have been done for the greater good have managed a lot of times to become the greatest pain in the ass two steps further down the road..

Why do you think evil miners haven't still conspired, created a cartel and started to drive out other miners?

It's also against the Bitcoin ethos, and its social contract to fight censorship. Plus what user would be stupid enough to accept this obviously hostile act.

But I'm only a pleb. gmax? Your opinion?

[stompix]

~
I prefer to call it differently: resistance to censorship and self-defense against an act of aggression. After all, bitcoin was built on libertarian principles, so why not follow them when it comes to aggressors against bitcoin's network?

Playing the devil's advocate here, based on the same libertarian principles they are allowed to deny service to you, isn't it?
This is the kind of bias that I find funny sometimes when it comes to our own interests blacklisting services is good, censorship is good, blocking transactions to certain addresses (like coinbase did with those Twitter scams ) is good, blocking satoshidice transactions as they spammed the network is good, but god forbid if the same would apply to something that hits close home.  

This is the problem with the free system, everyone is free to do anything, of course, you are also free to take action against someone but as pessimistic as I am about this just imagine them filling lawsuits left and right against other pools and winning them, a can of worms will sound like a delicacy compared to what will happen.

Why do you think evil miners haven't still conspired, created a cartel and started to drive out other miners?

Oh, but they have and they have already managed to do so with a lot of them.

The whole drama of mining with asicboost, f2pool mining empty blocks, pools not confirming transactions with lower fees even if the block was half empty, the whole saga of bitmain mining with their newer gear in their own pols and when finally selling to the public coming with better gear gaming one whole batch of gear obsolete and never able to ROI, and so many more and so many more to come.
And...nobody did anything, because, there is not much the users can do, and no matter how bad this sounds is the reality.

It's also against the Bitcoin ethos, and its social contract to fight censorship. Plus what user would be stupid enough to accept this obviously hostile act.

Repeat after me:
One million bitcoins, or lets call them "be your own bank coins" held by coinbase.
And from there you can imagine the services who will be delighted by such a whitelist.
Should I mention the binance vs wasabi event?  

[dificanovi]

these rules are great for preventing fraud, theft and money laundering. if a crime occurs, it will be filtered and through transaction filtering, the bitcoin wallet used by criminals will be blocked, I think with this regulation the crime in the crypto world will decrease.

[witcher_sense]

Playing the devil's advocate here, based on the same libertarian principles they are allowed to deny service to you, isn't it?
This is the kind of bias that I find funny sometimes when it comes to our own interests blacklisting services is good, censorship is good, blocking transactions to certain addresses (like coinbase did with those Twitter scams ) is good, blocking satoshidice transactions as they spammed the network is good, but god forbid if the same would apply to something that hits close home.  

As far as I'm concerned, I have always been consistent. Since my introduction to cryptocurrencies, I have always been an outspoken advocate for the "censorship-resistant side" of bitcoin. It is arguably the most crucial advantage of bitcoin. If bitcoin were to be deprived of that ability to resist censorship, I would immediately sell it for good and never regret it. You unwittingly made me search for my old post regarding scammers and Coinbase:

Coinbase and some other exchanges did a great work in preventing their customers from transacting where they wanted to. What if I want to send my money to scammers, I understand risks and this is my conscious decision? I can't really, because this money is not mine, this money belongs to exchange. They decide for me what I can spend "my" bitcoin on. Actually, this situation is very dangerous for bitcoin adoption, people become used to some third party organizations holding and controlling customer's bitcoin. At some point, bitcoin can repeat the history of gold, that part when gold became centralized and forcibly exchanged for paper money.

As you can see, I don't respect censorship of any kind, even if its goal is to prevent people from losing their money.


Another shower thought about Blockseer pool. According to libertarian doctrine, if "compliant" pools pay for electricity, do some work, and prove that the work was done (in case of bitcoin mining), in other words, "mix their labor with soil", they have every right to include whatever transactions they wish, they have a right to censor them, to ignore them. They are rightful owners of the block; they first managed to find it, they made an effort to create it.

Why don't they do all these things silently? Why would they announce that will filter transactions in bitcoin?

[stompix]

As far as I'm concerned, I have always been consistent. Since my introduction to cryptocurrencies, I have always been an outspoken advocate for the "censorship-resistant side" of bitcoin. It is arguably the most crucial advantage of bitcoin. If bitcoin were to be deprived of that ability to resist censorship, I would immediately sell it for good and never regret it. As you can see, I don't respect censorship of any kind, even if its goal is to prevent people from losing their money.

Don't take it personally, it was rather directed at the entire user mass not pointing exactly at your person, and that quote from the Coinbase discussion (in which I also have a post) is quite proof that a lot of people like this censoring if it helps them. The same is going to be applied here, which brings us to your question:

Why don't they do all these things silently? Why would they announce that will filter transactions in bitcoin?

Because they have a product, and when you have a product to sell you might want to try to make some real money from it by marketing it to the right persons. You know people pay some extra % to get freshly minted coins with no history, don't you think some investors and even some individual citizens would like to have another letter of guarantee when it comes to their coins that those have been filtered by a system and that what they have received is clean money not involved in anything "bad"?
You're going to be amazed by how many would show interest in such a thing 

Bottom line, I'm not a fan of fighting fire with fire when you are not sure if you're going to win the battle, rather than trying to block them for contributing to the chain which will turn into a whole mess as you not only need the whole other front to be united but also to identify their blocks every single time, which is worse than a whack a mole game. Rather than trying to censor them, it's way better to find a way that their censorship would be rendered useless. 

[witcher_sense]

~
Because they have a product, and when you have a product to sell you might want to try to make some real money from it by marketing it to the right persons. You know people pay some extra % to get freshly minted coins with no history, don't you think some investors and even some individual citizens would like to have another letter of guarantee when it comes to their coins that those have been filtered by a system and that what they have received is clean money not involved in anything "bad"?
You're going to be amazed by how many would show interest in such a thing  
~

I am somewhat of the same opinion that they have chosen their own, a relatively new, and, to a certain extent effective approach, to advertising their product. Their motives are understandable and unquestionable: they are trying to offer unique services, they want to take market share, they want to feed their children and pay their bills. Their motives are no different from those of other people. However, the methods they employed to achieve their goal are questionable.