DON'T mine to Antpool -- KYC imposed.

[mikeywith]

So it's been a while since I visited my antpool page, and I found a bold warning saying "You have to KYC to use the mining pool", I tried to do some research on when all of this took place but found nothing on google, but it seems that this took place around July according to their telegram group.

Also according to their support on telegram they clearly stated

"Users need to pass the KYC before they can start mining."

Here is an image of that for future reference




Obviously, the above is a lie, because I just pointed a few miners to Antpool and I can see earnings accumulating, so they do allow me to mine there without KYC, the question now is, will they let me withdraw my BTC? I got some dust on the pool so it will take only a few hours to get to the minimum payout, there is a good chance I never get the payout but I want to test this so I can give you the answer with some evidence.


Meanwhile, if you are using Antpool, do yourself a favor and stop NOW.

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[philipma1957]

Nice find. Makes sense they would do it. Yeah I am all about kyc as I am in the states and we are subject to taxes.

[paid2]

Thanks for this interesting topic mikeywith, I don't like Antpool and haven't mined with them for a long time, so I wasn't even aware of this  . I think I have some dust too, I will do the same test on my side.

I don't understand why they're getting into this? Why would they?
They don't need to be regulated on most markets as a mining pool, so why take the initiative of making it mandatory only for them?
Are the dollars of our personal data the reason?

[Synchronice]

There is no official statement about KYC requirement but even if that was not the case, why should one joint Antpool?

• It's already the biggest network, so, for decentralization purposes, it's better to join other pools.
• Bitmain is a company that's against Bitcoin and they tried to promote their own fork, called Bitcoin Cash and were regularly misinforming everyone.
• It doesn't share the collected mining fees to miners, so, all mining reward goes in their wallets

Aren't these reasons enough?

Nice find. Makes sense they would do it. Yeah I am all about kyc as I am in the states and we are subject to taxes.

Do you wanna stay in the states or haven't you thought about moving in other countries where life is cheap, crime is low and electricity is super cheap for bitcoin miners? If you are a big miner, I think you can do that. One of my friend successfully did that.

[Luke BookBear]

KYC for hardware mining... that's cRAzY!!!

I like the BTC,com Pool and ViaBTC,com pool.   I've mined on others too and even a Hathor merged mining pool called Zulupool (which is not bad when there's other hashrate on there aside from your own).

[Bitcoin_Arena]

What?
The madness that started off in exchanges is now getting to mining pools as well? 
Imagine the day when they start asking for one's source of income that was used to buy the miners blah blah blah...
I think the community needs to act in solidarity and abandon any mining pool that requests for KYC, otherwise if people just make it normal then more pools will also start doing the same.

[mikeywith]

I think I have some dust too, I will do the same test on my side.

I suggest that you don't, you will just risk more BTC doing that, as I said, I will do this and report back, there won't be any difference between your experience and mine, I did get to the payout limit and it's now 8 AM (UTC+8), their payout happens anywhere between 8:00-17:00 (UTC+8), so 9 hours left, if I get my payout it means the KYC is just there for legal show and isn't actually imposed, if I don't -- then they are serious about it.

[paid2]

I suggest that you don't, you will just risk more BTC doing that, as I said, I will do this and report back, there won't be any difference between your experience and mine, I did get to the payout limit and it's now 8 AM (UTC+8), their payout happens anywhere between 8:00-17:00 (UTC+8), so 9 hours left, if I get my payout it means the KYC is just there for legal show and isn't actually imposed, if I don't -- then they are serious about it.

Fair enough, I just checked my account, I am far from being able to withdraw my dust. I over-estimated the quantity of dust I own on the pool.

I would be very curious to know who is their KYC processor, which third party is involved. If they work with Jumio or IDnow for the EU users, they have to respect EU's GDPR, and I imagine that they won't..

Will try to investigate a little bit

[mikeywith]

I got my pool payout a few hours ago, but the KYC promt keeps showing everytime I login, this could be due to one of two:

1- The dust has been there before they starting imposing their stupid KYC so they allowed me to withdraw
2- They are not serious about it "YET".

I think they have been forced to follow some U.S stupid shit such as banning countries that are sanctioned by the UN aka the U.S such as Iran, Syria and all the none US friends, this pool has turned out worse than centralized exchanges, my guess, at one point they would start taking shit seriously and you won't be able to withdraw anything without KYCing yourself.

So if you have a considerable amount of dust, you might want to hurry up to hit the 0.005 BTC threshold and leave antpool, if the dust you got is not worth it, you should just leave the pool now.

I would also urge users who have Antpool as their second or third pool to switch to another pool, your funds on Antpool will very likely be locked unless you fully expose your identity and address to Shitmain.

[philipma1957]

I got my pool payout a few hours ago, but the KYC promt keeps showing everytime I login, this could be due to one of two:

1- The dust has been there before they starting imposing their stupid KYC so they allowed me to withdraw
2- They are not serious about it "YET".

I think they have been forced to follow some U.S stupid shit such as banning countries that are sanctioned by the UN aka the U.S such as Iran, Syria and all the none US friends, this pool has turned out worse than centralized exchanges, my guess, at one point they would start taking shit seriously and you won't be able to withdraw anything without KYCing yourself.

So if you have a considerable amount of dust, you might want to hurry up to hit the 0.005 BTC threshold and leave antpool, if the dust you got is not worth it, you should just leave the pool now.

I would also urge users who have Antpool as their second or third pool to switch to another pool, your funds on Antpool will very likely be locked unless you fully expose your identity and address to Shitmain.

And it will get worse due to Israel vs Palestine conflict during into a declared war.
So the USA will to supply Ukraine with arms was slipping.
and new conflict new reason to deal arms.

What is new China vs Taiwan?

[stompix]

So if you have a considerable amount of dust, you might want to hurry up to hit the 0.005 BTC threshold and leave antpool, if the dust you got is not worth it, you should just leave the pool now.

Hobby miners with just a gear will probably just have to leave that there, if you're at half you need two extra weeks of mining, and you might not get a thing. But I doubt they will enforce it at levels of no KYC no money, probably they will just try and get rid of the small players that don't want to pass it pay them, and then simply tell them to stop mining, I don't think they are that interested in guys with under 1ph even if they would provide all the documents!

Now, if they go next level, how does proof of funds work with a mining pool? 
They will ask you where you got your ASICs, how much did you pay for it and show them the import papers?
This will be funny! /s

I think they have been forced to follow some U.S stupid shit such as banning countries that are sanctioned by the UN aka the U.S such as Iran, Syria and all the none US friends, this pool has turned out worse than centralized exchanges, my guess, at one point they would start taking shit seriously and you won't be able to withdraw anything without KYCing yourself.

It was going to happen sooner or later, what will be really funny is when I'll see the first mixer imposing KYC, that's when I will probably choke myself laughing with a piece of fudge!
Antpool is done for, Foundry was never an option, I assume Binance is already full KYC since you need an account with them in the first place, Mara is private(?), Luxor is US based also, SBI is owned by former SoftBank, SBI Holdings so .....via and f2? Solo mining at ck?

[kano]

Nope, just do PPLNS mining at the pool that is best for bitcoin KanoPool
No transaction bias, no empty blocks, and the fastest block distribution of all pools

[mikeywith]

Antpool is done for, Foundry was never an option, I assume Binance is already full KYC since you need an account with them in the first place, Mara is private(?), Luxor is US based also, SBI is owned by former SoftBank, SBI Holdings so .....via and f2? Solo mining at ck?

Yup, we are running out of options, that's a whole brand new fudge we got there.

Probably the time to make a community-owned PPS pool will come soon, I always thought it would be to fight decentralization but it seems to be now needed to protect privacy, an anonymous PPS pool would be an interesting idea, something like the old p2pool with a smart contract of users funds that acts as a pool fund to distribute rewards to miners where the people who provide liquidity get paid some %.

Nope, just do PPLNS mining at the pool that is best for bitcoin KanoPool

You are based in Australia as far as I know, what are the chances that you will be forced to implement the KYC b.s to your pool?

[paid2]

Probably the time to make a community-owned PPS pool will come soon, I always thought it would be to fight decentralization but it seems to be now needed to protect privacy, an anonymous PPS pool would be an interesting idea, something like the old p2pool with a smart contract of users funds that acts as a pool fund to distribute rewards to miners where the people who provide liquidity get paid some %.

Couldn't pools in less restrictive locations just take over? Do we really have the risk of them all becoming KYC mandatory?

It's conceivable that some medium-ranking pools like EMCD for example could benefit from an influx of miners deserting the KYC-pools. I imagine that there must be people somewhere taking advantage of convenient local regulations, t least I hope that'll still be possible in a few years' time...

In any case, I agree with your idea of a p2pool with a smart contract guarantor, I think we're running out of privacy-friendly solutions. The same goes for hashrate renting, I think it would be a good idea to develop a P2P hashrate rental service with a price per share submitted.

[mikeywith]

Couldn't pools in less restrictive locations just take over? Do we really have the risk of them all becoming KYC mandatory?

All of them becoming KYCed is probably not possible, but then if only 1-2 large pools end up not being KYCed -- that won't be good for decentralization, however, I think the world will somehow reshape itself at one point in the near future, as it stands right now, the main country that makes the universal rules is the U.S, if the U.S bans or imposes something, all of its followers (mainly west and center EU and the other countries that you all know) will have to follow the footsteps, with the current war in Ukraine, the BRICS, possible takeover of Taiwan, the war in Palestine, all of these things happening at the same time and as sad and devastating they are, it looks to me as a huge change is coming, the world will be less decentralized and enforcing monetary policies won't be as easy as it once was.

I expect some large BTC mining operations will take place in Russia, and some large Russian mining pools will emerge at one point as well.

With that said, I personally don't trust any government, whether it's the U.S., Russia, or my own government, and thus, a decentralized pool of some sort will be a must at one point.

[ABCbits]

In any case, I agree with your idea of a p2pool with a smart contract guarantor, I think we're running out of privacy-friendly solutions. The same goes for hashrate renting, I think it would be a good idea to develop a P2P hashrate rental service with a price per share submitted.

I also agree with idea of P2Pool (which is decentralized pool). While i expect it'll never be very popular due to full/prune node requirement and creating many small UTXO, P2Pool on Bitcoin should able to reach few percentage of total hashrate when P2Pool for Monero could have ~4.8% total hashrate.

[1] https://p2pool.observer/

[kano]

...

Nope, just do PPLNS mining at the pool that is best for bitcoin KanoPool

You are based in Australia as far as I know, what are the chances that you will be forced to implement the KYC b.s to your pool?

I'm not based anywhere.
The domain is Iceland, the servers are all over the world
Zero chance of me requiring KYC.

P2pool died because of design issues and the poor code implementation.

[mikeywith]

I also agree with idea of P2Pool (which is decentralized pool). While i expect it'll never be very popular due to full/prune node requirement and creating many small UTXO, P2Pool on Bitcoin should able to reach few percentage of total hashrate when P2Pool for Monero could have ~4.8% total hashrate.

[1] https://p2pool.observer/

Oh that will most likely fail, I probably picked the wrong example to describe the pool idea I had in mind, the pool is to be decentralized by ownership not the operation itself, an open-source project funded by a smart contract built on bitcoin blockchain or LN where the depositors of the pool get the pool fee distributed by them and they get to chose what does the pool look like and what code it runs.

Having to do anything tech related on the end user side will be deemed a project failure, it needs to function just like any other "normal pool" to have any chance of success.

[mikeywith]

But are there any mining pool which works like that out there? If yes, can you share any example.

There are none which is why it's just an "idea" or a proposal you may call it.

But on other hand, people or group who can setup many ASIC should able to setup P2Pool. Rechecking http://p2pool.in/, they just need one computer (to run both Bitcoin Core and P2Pool software) and point their ASIC to that computer's IP address.

Those who setup many ASICs are either:

1- Large enough to mine their own pool.
2- They don't care about KYCing themselves since you can't have a large mining business without KYCing yourself anyway.

The targeted users for such an idea are the average folks like us, people with a few THs/PHs worth of hashrate, which collectively have a good share of the total hashrate, we need to analyze what do these folks look for in today's mining world.

1- Most prefer no KYC.
2- Most want PPS pool (one of the reasons why P2pool failed).
3- No tech-related requirements, extra PCs, complicated setup (one of the main reasons why P2pool failed).

This makes the likes of Viabtc pool the most favorable, Viabtc is PPS based, and no individual setup is required.

However, given that Viabtc is a centralized and known entity, at some point they might have to impose the KYC shit as well, so what I propose is a pool that covers these 3 points, initially, I proposed to theymos that forum funds (which essentially are his anyway), the other similar idea is to have a community pool with decentralization ownership.

Now let's pretend that we want to create a mining pool with a 1% chance of going bankrupt and 4% fees (the current average PPS fees)

(6.25  *ln 100) / (2*0.04) = 360 BTC

So here, we need a fund pool of at least 360 BTC, but obviously, the smaller the fund the more risk + more rewards for the "investors" and vice versa, but let's for the sake of simplicity pretend that 360 people each with 1 BTC, everyone will get 1/360  of the 4% fee that the pool generates, 1000 people each deposit 1 BTC then each gets 1/1000 and so on.

Now comes the real challenge which is, who owns the piece of the software, or where does it run? who owns the server that runs it, this would require a similar implementation of the original Bitcoin nodes, where pool nodes will run on different servers owned by different people but the software is similar, and thus the work they send to the miners, the payout structure and everything else is the same, so it becomes like a large centralized pool with dozen nodes around the globe.

some of that 4% fee could be allocated to those who run the pool node or, as one might expect, given that people run full nodes for no direct financial gain, the same people would be willing to do the same thing with these pool nodes, especially that these nodes will not be anywhere as large compared to the full nodes.

Could something like this be easily implemented? certainly not, but will it become a necessity at some point in the future? probably.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The US is taking it seriously. First, a bill that enforces using bitcoin only through KYC-only CEX. Now, this. The Bitcoin community needs to take advantage of the network being censorship resistant, and where information is "hard to stifle", as one had once said.

Now comes the real challenge which is, who owns the piece of the software, or where does it run?

Getting rid of the middleman is what's all about your proposal. If there needs to be a supernode for the network to operate, it can be regulated. I have no experience on mining, but can't there be a decentralized autonomous organization, as in Bisq? With Pay-per-share included using investors' funds at first.

[mikeywith]

Getting rid of the middleman is what's all about your proposal.

Yes, and

this would require a similar implementation of the original Bitcoin nodes, where pool nodes will run on different servers owned by different people but the software is similar

I have no experience on mining

But you do understand how BTC works judging by your posts' quality, but to make a long story short of how the current PPS pool work; your miner connects to the pool using stratum protocol where a username is required, the user name is usually obtained from the pool portal but it could very well be your bitcoin address, so the pool knows that miner x whose bitcoin address is bc1... is connected to it, the pool would then send work task to the miner and set a pool difficulty based on the miner's hashrate, let's assume the share difficulty is 10k for miner x, now every share that miner x submits with a difficulty of =>10k is going to be recorded in the pool database.

By the end of the day (usually every 24 hours ) regardless of how many blocks the pool finds, the pool would use a theoretical figure of how many blocks it "was" supposed to find in the past 24 hours should their luck be 100%, and then it's a simple math which tells them how much every BTC address is going to receive for the work they did. [more below]

If there needs to be a supernode for the network to operate, it can be regulated.

There is no need for a supernode as far as mining is concerned, however, mining is location-sensitive, unlike with Bisq latency needs to be pretty low, so pool nodes need to be located across the globe for this to work effectively.

The topology is as follows:

Miner > pool node > bitcoin node
bitcoin node > pool node > miner

Since we have bitcoin nodes all over the globe it would be pretty easy to connect to them to create the block templates, so anyone running a pool node can connect to his own node or nodes near him to get a list of pending transactions/current block and etc.

The miner would need to connect to a pool node nearby if the latency to the nearest pool node is >200s the miner will need to run their own pool node if this is a simple and easy-to-install executable file with 3-4 next -- problem solved.

Now with the "accounting", using BTC scripting language I think we should be able to design a contract that owns the funds, so any BTC transferred to that contract is now owned by the contract and that includes the block rewards, and then we have to configure the contract to distribute the incoming BTC between the different miners based on the number of shares they submitted - 4% which goes to all the address that deposited funds to the smart contract.

The challenging part, however, is counting the valid shares, since we can't have a centralized database to store all the share counts from thousands of miners, we also can't count on a single pool node to tell us how many valid shares were submitted by every individual miner, to solve this, we could use sharechain which is a similar concept to P2pool.


P2pool was a perfect example of how decentralized mining is doable, it was also a great example of how a decentralized project can die when the requirements to run it is beyond the average Joe, having to run your own local node, install Python and the P2pool software was too much work to many small miners, and then it was a PPLNS pool which judging by the fact that the vast majority of miners now want PPS wasn't favoirble.

The difference here will be, no requirement to run a full node, but rather a pool node that would be lighter and easier to install, and the payout will be PPS-based with funds that are not owned by anyone. I can already see a dozen potential issues in this proposal, I don't think anything of this nature will come into extinct for the next 10-20 years, but ya, this could be a good starting point for further discussion on how a decentralized mining pool that works could be implemented.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Since we have bitcoin nodes all over the globe it would be pretty easy to connect to them to create the block templates, so anyone running a pool node can connect to his own node or nodes near him to get a list of pending transactions/current block and etc.

Every pool owner should be running their own node and not rely on anyone. Otherwise, it is a recipe for disaster. I believe you know that.

There is no need for a supernode as far as mining is concerned, however, mining is location-sensitive, unlike with Bisq latency needs to be pretty low, so pool nodes need to be located across the globe for this to work effectively.

Bisq was an example of a DAO that works in practice. You can remove mandatory Tor from the equation, use location-based algorithms and you have improved latency significantly.

I don't know if we're envisioning the same thing. The point of this DAO would be to elect representatives which will be responsible for broadcasting the block headers to the miners. As far as I understand, by design, PPS requires miners to agree on a single block header. That can't happen if the network is completely peer-to-peer; there needs to be an entity which will broadcast the unique block header, and the rest of the miners will only have to verify it comes from that entity. Representatives will be the main operators, as pool owners are currently in centralized pools. Governance proposals can be later on made by any stakeholder.

In this way, regular miners will not need to run full nodes. It can be as simple as an upgrade to their current software.

[mikeywith]

Every pool owner should be running their own node and not rely on anyone. Otherwise, it is a recipe for disaster. I believe you know that.

Yes "pool owner" but what I was describing is "pool node" which acts something like an SPV client where it would only need to acquire certain pieces of information and doesn't need to hold the complete blockchain, if every miner needs their own node then the project will fail right out of the box.

Bisq was an example of a DAO that works in practice. You can remove mandatory Tor from the equation, use location-based algorithms and you have improved latency significantly.

An interesting idea, I know about Bisq, but I don't understand how it technically works, I will have to read about it.

I don't know if we're envisioning the same thing. The point of this DAO would be to elect representatives which will be responsible for broadcasting the block headers to the miners. As far as I understand, by design, PPS requires miners to agree on a single block header. That can't happen if the network is completely peer-to-peer; there needs to be an entity which will broadcast the unique block header, and the rest of the miners will only have to verify it comes from that entity.

PPS is just a "payment structure" it doesn't have any unique aspect in regards to how blocks are constructed or handled, also, miners don't need to have to agree on a single block header, in fact, every miner hashes unique block header due to the fact that each nonce is different, the only thing that needs to match across all miners would be the coinbase transaction, it's how centralized pools know which share is "worth paying for" and which share isn't.

Representatives will be the main operators, as pool owners are currently in centralized pools. Governance proposals can be later on made by any stakeholder.
In this way, regular miners will not need to run full nodes. It can be as simple as an upgrade to their current software.

That sounds like a good idea, the "representatives" would need to vote/decide which share is valid since any unfair player can submit shares to the pool which contain a coinbase transaction that pays to their own address and thus would receive rewards for the work which was never intended to benefit the pool.

[BlackHatCoiner]

PPS is just a "payment structure" it doesn't have any unique aspect in regards to how blocks are constructed or handled

No, but it does matter for the DAO structure. Miners need to be paid regardless of whether they mine a block or not. That means their source of income is the coins at stake.

also, miners don't need to have to agree on a single block header, in fact, every miner hashes unique block header due to the fact that each nonce is different, the only thing that needs to match across all miners would be the coinbase transaction, it's how centralized pools know which share is "worth paying for" and which share isn't.

The pool must be giving a unique block header to each individual miner as well, otherwise there will be instances of miners hashing the same things (providing the same work multiple times). Nonce is a field they change later. Is the merkle root different to each miner, or is there an extraNonce field which could be their pool ID e.g.?

That sounds like a good idea, the "representatives" would need to vote/decide which share is valid since any unfair player can submit shares to the pool which contain a coinbase transaction that pays to their own address and thus would receive rewards for the work which was never intended to benefit the pool.

That's correct. The only disadvantage of this whole business, is that there have to be colored coins issued; at least that's how voting process works in Bisq.

[mikeywith]

The pool must be giving a unique block header to each individual miner as well, otherwise there will be instances of miners hashing the same things (providing the same work multiple times). Nonce is a field they change later. Is the merkle root different to each miner, or is there an extraNonce field which could be their pool ID e.g.?

Yes, there is an extraNonce in the coinbase transaction, Stratum V2 even allows the modification of the included transactions and thus a completely different Merkle root, a pool like Cksolo would have both the pool address + the miner's address in the coinbase transaction which also means a unique Merkle root for everyone, P2pool also puts the miner's bitcoin address in the coinbase transaction for 0.5% payment (done to discourage block withholding) but also serves the purpose we are discussing, there are a dozen of other methods in place to ensure that all miners have different block candidate, so this certainly shouldn't be an issue.

That's correct. The only disadvantage of this whole business, is that there have to be colored coins issued; at least that's how voting process works in Bisq.

I think the most challenging part would be the validation of shares, the other aspects are pretty simple to deal with, it's only this part and the risks associated to it, P2pool solves this issue by using "chain of shares" which could be used in a decentralized PPS as well, of course, with some modification given that the end result or the final coinbase transaction will be different for a PPS pool as all payments should go to the same "address".