Bitcoin Mining Council

[stompix]

I was thinking of opening this is mining but overall it's less about mining and more about some companies and persons

Now, a bit of introduction, and more info in those topics:
Marathon Invests $150 Million In Bitcoin
The new mining pool, Marathon miners censoring Bitcoin transactions;


Marathon Digital Holdings formerly Marathon Patent Group, traded as MARA is a company that had some really interesting plans, from managing to grab a contract for close to 100 000 miners from Bitmain to establishing a pool that would censor "illegal" transactions. All that raised a bit of drama, but everything seems to be back on track with them signaling for taproot and the press release

“Marathon is committed to the core tenets of the Bitcoin community, including decentralization, inclusion, and no censorship,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s CEO.

Fast forward, reading the tweets from Salvador's president I stumbled upon this:

I was on the call last night. Congratulations. My company is one of the largest publicly traded US bitcoin miners (NASDAQ:MARA) and founding member of the Bitcoin Mining Council. I am very interested in speaking with your team re mining using geothermal energy in El Salvador.

And from that to this:
Bitcoinminingcouncil.com

The Bitcoin Mining Council is a voluntary and open forum of Bitcoin miners committed to the network and its core principles. We promote transparency, share best practices, and educate the public on the benefits of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining

The interesting part is that one of the founding members is Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy so why would he join in with Marathon and why this so-called council in the first place, and don't tell me he converted them over a cup of coffee to become pioneers of decentralization.
Did Marathon really turn 180 degrees out of the blue or this just a move to get more influence till they start again with their agenda?

What's your take on this one?
Reading the replies on Twitter makes me feel that if I'm paranoid at least I'm not alone. 

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[dansus021]

Whoops lot going on in crypto mining industry 

but my question is, it is possible to censor illegal transaction

where they get the data when the transaction is legal or illegal, after all when 1 company try to block the transaction the other retail miner will do the confirmation right?

[mocacinno]

Whoops lot going on in crypto mining industry  

but my question is, it is possible to censor illegal transaction

where they get the data when the transaction is legal or illegal, after all when 1 company try to block the transaction the other retail miner will do the confirmation right?

Outright censor, no... But they could potentially delay "illegal" transactions.... Especially if most miners would start censoring.
Let's imagine company's like this one one day hold 90% of the hashrate... This would mean about ~90% of the blocks would be found by them.
This would mean the average time between uncensored blocks would drop from ~10 minutes to ~100 minutes. And, those 10% uncensoring miners would indiscriminately pick between all transactions (censored AND uncensored), so the censored transactions would still have to outbid the uncensored ones.

In this dystopian future, the 90% censoring miners could even go as far as rejecting blocks containing censored transactions, making sure those uncensoring miners would always be mining an orphaned chain... Soon even those uncensoring miners would probably fall in line and start censoring for the fear of having their blocks rejected and their income forfeited, or we'd have a chain split (BitcoinCensored and BitcoinUncensored). I guess this is a 51% attack, since this scenario would be possible as soon as 51% of the miners would censor transactions AND actively reject any block that contains a censored transaction.

If this would ever happen, it would be the end of real decentralisation, or it would split our community in parts once again. Let's hope it never comes to that.

[BlackHatCoiner]

What's your take on this one?

I'm actually afraid of Saylor and any billionaire who has invested around half of his fortune to bitcoins. They become obsessed by it and they may contribute to projects that ruin Bitcoin's purpose like this one. Even if illegal transactions shouldn't be made, Bitcoin is considered to offer some privacy. The whitepaper yells “cash!”, but here's a difference. Despite that, the tainted bitcoins may increase overtime. What will than mean? Will they continue to reject those transactions?

The fact that a 51% attack may become a possibility and that there are pools that will reject my mixed coins for better privacy make me want to move to Monero.

In this dystopian future, the 90% censoring miners could even go as far as rejecting blocks containing censored transactions, making sure those uncensoring miners would always be mining an orphaned chain...

Excuse me from asking, but isn't the censoring decided by one entity? For example, the pool may reject some tainted bitcoins, but if they don't reveal what transactions they call “illegal”, the other miners can't censor the same ones for sure.

[mocacinno]

--snip--

In this dystopian future, the 90% censoring miners could even go as far as rejecting blocks containing censored transactions, making sure those uncensoring miners would always be mining an orphaned chain...

Excuse me from asking, but isn't the censoring decided by one entity? For example, the pool may reject some tainted bitcoins, but if they don't reveal what transactions they call “illegal”, the other miners can't censor the same ones for sure.

True... If it's 5 mining pools with 15% of the total hasrate per pool, and each pool has it's own "blacklist" of unspent outputs that cannot be spent, there wouldn't be a major problem, just a small confirmation delay (on average) for those that are in one or more of those blacklists.

I was talking more in the sense that if a couple of pools that represent >51% of the total hashrate decide to form an alliance and use a centralised blacklist, and on top of this decide to actively reject any other blocks relayed to them that contain transactions spending blacklisted unspent outputs, it would either mean the end of decentralisation (by forcing most of the non-alliance miners to also adopt their blacklist or risk having their blocks orphaned) or a major chain split (into a censored chain with the biggest hashrate and an uncensored chain with the smallest hashrate... Since the premise was that the censor camp has >51% to begin with). At least, that's how i imagine such a scenario to pan out...

But yeah, at this moment, this is just paranoia... It's a dystopian future, or an allmost-worst-case scenario... We're defenately not there (yet).

[NeuroticFish]

Did Marathon really turn 180 degrees out of the blue or this just a move to get more influence till they start again with their agenda?

There are 2 possible explanations:
1. As you said, maybe MARA is trying to become a strong voice, and for that it needs to stay calm for a while and gather friends.
2. The censoring of transactions was meant to be a commercial gimmick, just to attract some attention on them.

I don't know which is more likely, we clearly need to keep our eyes open. The history has shown that, with or without MARA, the big mining pools plotting working together may result in possible bad actions (see SegWit2x proposal).

[stompix]

I was talking more in the sense that if a couple of pools that represent >51% of the total hashrate decide to form an alliance and use a centralised blacklist, and on top of this decide to actively reject any other blocks relayed to them that contain transactions spending blacklisted unspent outputs

But yeah, at this moment, this is just paranoia... It's a dystopian future, or an allmost-worst-case scenario... We're defenately not there (yet).

My dystopia is even worse, I am pretty sure the blacklist would fail as there a lot of ways to avoid it, what worries me would be the creation of a whitelist, when addresses are turned to verified bank accounts and only those are allowed to spend. Let's not even mention they could invoke god knows what and limit everything.

But I still have some faith that we're not heading towards that, especially if those morons are stopped early in their tracks.

I'm actually afraid of Saylor and any billionaire who has invested around half of his fortune to bitcoins. They become obsessed by it and they may contribute to projects that ruin Bitcoin's purpose like this one.

Sometimes I think I'm paranoid, overthinking stuff and just two days later I'm reading my posts and I wonder why I was that bearish or scared of something but I don't know, the frequency of good news turning to bite you in the ass, the latest example being the guy that was mentioned a way too many times lately, really makes me think first what's the worse that could happen not the best outcome. It might be the fact that I remember only the bad part things that happened when so-called businessmen got involved and try to make bitcoin great but I can't bring myself to trust anyone who is obviously financially motivated in a really big way.

Maybe this council will be nothing like the bitcoin foundation, cause that's the first thing I thought when hearing about it and it might end up doing only positives, but no way I can bring myself to really think that, I simply can't!

[Lucius]

The interesting part is that one of the founding members is Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy so why would he join in with Marathon and why this so-called council in the first place, and don't tell me he converted them over a cup of coffee to become pioneers of decentralization.
Did Marathon really turn 180 degrees out of the blue or this just a move to get more influence till they start again with their agenda?

Through the very short history that Bitcoin has, it has been shown that some of the biggest supporters have become its biggest enemies and for the sake of profit have completely gone the wrong way. It is possible that Saylor has some hidden agendas, and that he is not exactly what he is trying to present to the public - and when it comes to an investment of over $2 billion, then nothing will stand in his way to protect it.

American investors are very critical of China's influence on BTC mining, no doubt trying to change something about it - so I'm not at all surprised that Saylor has his fingers in the Marathon and probably in some other things that are still unknown to us. When you look at the whole situation in the US regarding cryptocurrencies, it's hard to shake off the impression that they are not trying to do something that would give them much more control and reduce decentralization.

[Ucy]

Well, I think you can't create a mining council with powers over part of Bitcoin Network without the consent of all/most Bitcoin "stakeholders"/participants, otherwise Bitcoin would easily be attacked and conquered through the backdoor. I think they should derive whatever power they need from the majority of Bitcoin citizens and "stakeholders"... by citizens I mean people who strongly believe in its ideals/principles and uphold them.

[mocacinno]

Well, I think you can't create a mining council with powers over part of Bitcoin Network without the consent of all/most Bitcoin "stakeholders"/participants, otherwise Bitcoin would easily be attacked and conquered through the backdoor. I think they should derive whatever power they need from the majority of Bitcoin citizens and "stakeholders"... by citizens I mean people who strongly believe in its ideals/principles and uphold it them.

Technically, however, nothing is holding them back.

Would they destroy bitcoin's decentralisation? Yes
Would they decrease trust in our ecosystem? Probably, Yes
Would it be fair? No
..
Would it be technically possible to create a council with most of the biggest miners and unilaterally decide what they'll mine and what not? Yup...

Now, when i said "technically, nothing is holding them back", i do mean TECHNICALLY... What should hold them back is the fact that by doing this, they'll probably cause a massive dump in the price, a massive dip in trust, a big fight in the ecosystem, and they have little to gain from this (at least, at this point, and from the point of view of commercial mining farms.....).

One last point, when you say (and i quote) "otherwise Bitcoin would easily be attacked and conquered through the backdoor", you have to realise that it's not a back door... It's a heavily fortified gate, with a big waterway and a drawbridge, and heavily armed guards in the watchtower.... There is no "easy" backdoor... It's not like you and me could come together, form a council and disrupt our ecosystem... Your "ticket" to the council would have to be a decent share in the current hashrate... I mean, in order to pull this off, you'd need a combined mining farm that equals or exceeds 51% of the current mining capacity... It would be a billion dollar operation just to get a say in a council like this (unless you're running a pool, and you're using your pool participant's hashrate as a bargaining chip, in which case i hope 99% of your pool participants leave your pool for good).
We're not talking about home miners, not even about guys that run a couple dozen ASIC's... We're talking about huge companies that invested tens and tens of millions of dollars into ASIC's, and pool operators that have hundreds and hundreds of miners... If they want to, they do have the power to disrupt things, and they don't need our permission to do so i'm afraid.

[Welsh]

We're not talking about home miners, not even about guys that run a couple dozen ASIC's... We're talking about huge companies that invested tens and tens of millions of dollars into ASIC's, and pool operators that have hundreds and hundreds of miners... If they want to, they do have the power to disrupt things, and they don't need our permission to do so i'm afraid.

Which is very similar to the current market share in more traditional currencies; they are run by the rich, and as we know, a mining council would effectively remove the decentralization aspect of Bitcoin, and would likely making it easier for the rich to send transactions, and make it cumbersome, and hard for the rest of us.

Plus, the only way we could actually combat this is via owning a significant portion of the hash rate, and that requires significant investment. Usually, those that are mining with a significant portion like you stated are companies with huge mining operations, which are going to be more inclined in making it easier for themselves, and removing the competition.

The only thing we do have; its unlikely that all pool operators, and companies will agree, and this council would likely fall on its arse. If I've learned anything in life, its that when you get a lot of people together, even with similar goals they aren't likely to agree or be willing to share the power that they could have.