MARA Pool mined its first 'clean' block today

[dfmb]

https://twitter.com/0xB10C/status/1390194321127772165

https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000003f8cb66fe1ecfb38754abc9c4d4a62b71de45fef8777

What does this even mean ?  This mining pool will only include transactions from addresses that are not blacklisted by OFAC. If more pools start doing this in the future isn't this a big problem if fungibility is not improved  ? 

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[Poker Player]

I am interested in the subject. I would say that there will always be pools that include address transactions that are blacklisted, but let's see if someone with more technical knowledge can enlighten us. There are also exchanges that only accept transactions from these addresses and so far it has not been the end of the world for blacklisted addresses.

Perhaps it would be better to move this thread to the Development and Technical Discussion board.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Yeah, this is concerning. While this pool cannot censor transactions at present since other pools will just pick up these transactions, effectively only delaying them by a block or two, it sets a very bad precedent. Should 51% of the hash rate decide to comply with these OFAC regulations, then bitcoin is essentially dead since it can now be censored by the government. If the government decide you belong on their "suspicious person" list, then the 51% of the hashrate which agrees with them could simply refuse to accept any block containing your transaction.

We need other mining pools to speak out strongly against this and implement Stratum V2. We need more people to trade peer to peer, mix, coinjoin, and otherwise use privacy enhancing techniques to render their chain analysis useless. We need more privacy built in to bitcoin at a protocol level.

[ranochigo]

It is a known limitation with Bitcoin, miners having the say in the kinds of transaction to include would lead to potential problems like this.

OFAC is a US entity which likely has no jurisdiction elsewhere so that isn't really a problem. I'm almost certain that the Chinese pools won't bow down to pressure from US or any other countries. If there comes a point where a good proportion of the pools implement such censorship, those kinds of transaction gets more expensive but miners can still mine them. If it gets included in the block, should the other pools re-org the chain and effectively execute a 51% attack against Bitcoin?

While something like this is dangerous, mining pools do not necessarily have to be regulated by any government. International policies won't be effective as well, if history indicates anything.

[dothebeats]

Imagine a lot of pools following the OFAC blacklist. Bitcoin would be in shambles since this in itself is an effective form of censorship, and would effectively reduce a lot of transactions in the network since a lot of coins, by now, have been tainted one way or another. Then again, there would be a lot of missed opportunities for miners in the long run if they are to follow the blacklist. That's a lot of fees going into the void and I'm sure that there will still be some miners that would ignore such regulations and/or blacklists and just go straight for profits.

[o_e_l_e_o]

OFAC is a US entity which likely has no jurisdiction elsewhere so that isn't really a problem.

That doesn't matter if they manage to get 51% of the hashrate though.

I'm almost certain that the Chinese pools won't bow down to pressure from US or any other countries.

When it comes to personal freedoms and liberty, it's obvious that we've been the bad guys here for a long time (Land of the Free my ass), but I would never have expected us to be relying on China for what little freedoms we do have.

If it gets included in the block, should the other pools re-org the chain and effectively execute a 51% attack against Bitcoin?

Who knows, but I wouldn't put it past them to try. If they refuse to mine a transaction which the government tells them not to, then why are they happy building on top of such transactions and giving them more confirmations?

[Ucy]

Is that a Bitcoin mining pool?
Well, I think the network could come together and penalize mining pools that are not following protocol/rules if this becomes a problem.
I believe Blacklisting transactions should be done without censoring them. And the reason for the blacklisting should be clearly stated with evidence. Wallets/users can then choose to reject such blacklisted coins depending on the reason given or evidence provided. I believe those with serious reasons will be rejected by many users and the blacklisted coins would end up reducing in price/value.


Edit:  Such blacklisting/exclusion  (coins rejected from getting added to the Blockchain) could be allowed on the condition that the OFAC(& similar orgs) is a transparent and public organization where anyone can participate . This is Bitcoin, a Public Network... It should be run publicly and transparently.

[Jet Cash]

Surely all this will do is the lengthen the confirmation time for some transactions. Are miners going to risk losing their block reward by refusing to build on blocks with a black transaction? Will they be prepared to spend the time to check on the last couple of blocks on the chain before they add their own?

[fiulpro]

https://twitter.com/0xB10C/status/1390194321127772165

https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000003f8cb66fe1ecfb38754abc9c4d4a62b71de45fef8777

What does this even mean ?  This mining pool will only include transactions from addresses that are not blacklisted by OFAC. If more pools start doing this in the future isn't this a big problem if fungibility is not improved  ? 

Okay I do think we are overreacting. Let me provide a simple article :-
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.coindesk.com/us-treasury-department-blacklists-20-bitcoin-addresses-tied-to-alleged-north-korean-hackers%3famp=1
Apparently they blacklisted the North Korean Hackers which is actually a + point for us , since at the end of the day making this network more safer is also a priority. I do not think they will blindly black list a lot of people for sure. They are doing it slowly and meticulously.
1. If a person did not do anything wrong I do not think that they should be even worried about these regulations.
2. This is something that was going to happen sooner or later, it's also an important part of Bitcoins getting integrated in the economy.
Government will for sure do things like this since they are protecting Bitcoins under the law.
Despite this there will always be miners willing to take the transaction to completion. Ofc the Government will start controlling that too. Giving some sort of certificate to miners. Are we moving way closer to Centralization than we realize ? Who knows..

[o_e_l_e_o]

Surely all this will do is the lengthen the confirmation time for some transactions.

Provided these pools only have a minority of the hash power, then yes. If they gain a majority, then it becomes a significant problem.

Are miners going to risk losing their block reward by refusing to build on blocks with a black transaction?

That's not what they are proposing at the moment, but rather simply refusing to mine these "tainted" transactions. If they refused to build on a block with a "tainted" transaction, then they couldn't mine at all unless they forked bitcoin.

Apparently they blacklisted the North Korean Hackers which is actually a + point for us , since at the end of the day making this network more safer is also a priority.

Blacklisting an address from compliant exchanges is absolutely not the same as blacklisting addresses from even being able to make transactions. Centralized exchanges are private business and can refuse to serve anyone they please. Preventing certain addresses from even making transactions is an attack against the very fundamentals of bitcoin.

I do not think they will blindly black list a lot of people for sure.

Then you have had zero experience of the US government. They will blindly blacklist anyone and everyone they like. They are very much "Shoot first, maybe ask questions later, maybe not, but even if we do, we'll probably just ignore the answers".

1. If a person did not do anything wrong I do not think that they should be even worried about these regulations.

Absolutely incorrect. The US government spy on millions of people who have done nothing wrong. They arrest people who have done nothing wrong. They kill people who have done nothing wrong. Why would you think they wouldn't also censor people who have done nothing wrong? And even if you think that your addresses won't be affected (although you can never be sure and could easily get caught up in this anyway), this is an attack against the very nature of bitcoin. It should concern all of us.

2. This is something that was going to happen sooner or later, it's also an important part of Bitcoins getting integrated in the economy.
Government will for sure do things like this since they are protecting Bitcoins under the law.

No. Just no. I don't want the government regulating bitcoin, thank you very much. If I wanted money which can be frozen or seized with no evidence and leave me with no recourse, I'll just use fiat.

[odolvlobo]

Apparently they blacklisted the North Korean Hackers which is actually a + point for us , since at the end of the day making this network more safer is also a priority.

Blacklisting addresses does absolutely nothing to make the network more safer.

I do not think they will blindly black list a lot of people for sure.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. There are hundreds of people in the U.S. who are not allowed to fly for political reasons.

1. If a person did not do anything wrong I do not think that they should be even worried about these regulations.

[hatshepsut93]

If mining will get regulated in the future, it's likely that miners would only be allowed to join these compliant pools, so if 51% of hashpower will belong to them, it would be possible to establish censorship. But it seems like even now the regulators are ignorant of this and don't consider such option. Hopefully, by the time they will realize it, we'll already have better privacy on a protocol level, so such things will become useless.

[hugeblack]

The freedom offered by Bitcoin has a price, but I think that such a model may be accepted by governments in an attempt to make Bitcoin more central if the number of mempools that follows international laws increases.
Generally speaking, if you do not like what happened, buy mining equipment. The more decentralized mining pools, the more decentralized the network will be.
Since they do not own 99% of the network, if the person continues to broadcast the transaction, it will end up in one of the blocks and the others will be forced to include it.


I think the reason this MARA Pool is doing this is to attract more attention to it.

[DaveF]

The question that I do not see answered is how far back they go in checking for blacklisted addresses.
Just the last transaction or 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 TXs back.

Going back too far is just going to cause problems and I can see some of the other mining pools forming a group that just ignores all blocks from them and then takes their chances that another friendly pool builds on top of their chain.

Not to be an ass about it but if Antpool, Poolin and F2 all get together and say fuck MARA I really don't think the rest of the world would give them any grief. Just because of what they are doing.

If they said lets do it to slush or btc.com I could see people freaking out about it.

Hell, if MARA wants to be 100% safe all they have to do it just mine empty blocks, no risk of bad coins ever....

-Dave

[Saltius]

The question that I do not see answered is how far back they go in checking for blacklisted addresses.
Just the last transaction or 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 TXs back.

Going back too far is just going to cause problems and I can see some of the other mining pools forming a group that just ignores all blocks from them and then takes their chances that another friendly pool builds on top of their chain.

Not to be an ass about it but if Antpool, Poolin and F2 all get together and say fuck MARA I really don't think the rest of the world would give them any grief. Just because of what they are doing.

If they said lets do it to slush or btc.com I could see people freaking out about it.

Hell, if MARA wants to be 100% safe all they have to do it just mine empty blocks, no risk of bad coins ever....

-Dave

Antpool, Poolin and F2pool will bow down to another Chinese copycat of OFAC.

I have never been so grateful that US and China are rivals and hope they hate each other in the future. Which means China will take US' blacklists as sh*t and vice versa.

[pooya87]

A mining pool that censors transactions is going to shoot itself in the foot. Miners will never connect to such a pool when there are other pools that aren't so "malicious" and aren't attacking bitcoin.
This will always be true since if a pool turns malicious new ones would be created to absorb the migrating mining power.
If you want to see "shooting in the foot" just look at their stock price (Marathon Digital Holdings) that has been dumping over the past month and got dumped about 10% after they mined this block.

[Poker Player]

Bump.

I've seen something interesting in twitter about this:

https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1390423695009669125

[dansus021]

i heard the news about government controlling bitcoin transaction, that using blacklisted address

[pooya87]

This is actually saying "thanks for supporting our reason" not "cause" which makes no sense. Someone used google translate to turn an English phrase to Farsi and pushed it there which is funny
I wonder if the Department of Treasury is going to look into their business or maybe we see a million dollar fine for sanction violations lol. It would be funnier if their business went under because of mining this block and a good lesson for other centralized entities in bitcoin world who bend the knee so easily.

Their stock dropped another $1.25 (3.8%) in the past 24 hours. Maybe bitcoiners should start shorting their stock on NASDAQ to teach them a lesson? Their volume is definitely low enough to be able to crash it from $31 to $0.1 easily in a day or two.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Let's hope the regulation only consider the UTXO from "troll" deemed as dirty while UTXO from mined block itself remain clean

Nah, that's not good enough. If I have an address which has some completely clean coins on it, and also has some coins which some blockchain analysis firm have decided are "tainted", then the whole address is tainted as far as they are concerned. If you have a coinbase transaction and also coins linked to a terrorist group on the same address, then good luck trying to send the coinbase transaction to a centralized exchange like Coinbase without having your account frozen.

Don't see why financial regulators should apply any different criteria here. Marathon's block reward is now tainted and therefore they can't spend it without breaking their own ridiculous rules.