Eligius pool is back under the new name Ocean

[stompix]

~
Scnerio there[/b]: People have started to actually use Bitcoin, there are roughly 2 billion credit card transactions per day (no counting every other payment method on planet Earth), 1% of that would be 20,000,000, or 20M transactions, compare that to the current transactions of BTC which are roughly 0.5M transactions, that's 3900% more transactions, even with the assumption that all of these will be "normal transactions" with a single input and two outputs, the fee floor for such volume with probably be the 1k sat/ Vbye range, which is a lot worse than all these Ordis can do.

What is going to be the argument then? what is average Joe going to complain about in scnerio 3? You want adoption -- there you go, but now you have to compete with the rest of the world, so your 2 sat/ Vbyte transactions are something from the past, how are you going to solve it? what are you going to censor?

Well, there is a solution for that, LN!
But, we have a problem, for everyone to use that we have to wait till 2040 till everyone in the world will be able to get some coins and open their LN channel, cause, you still need block space to do that, and once we multiply that by even 1 billion it starts being funny!
Which brings us back to the current capacity!

If BTC becomes a store of value (like gold), then there is no need for big blocks.

I think we have gone past the "if" speculation with BTC, it is indeed a store of value, the percentage of people who use it it for other purposes rounded to the nearest whole number is exactly ZERO, and yes, as it stands right now -- there is no need for big blocks, in fact, big blocks are never going to solve the fundamental issues, they would just reduce the size of the problem, of course, while creating other potential issues.

But if we go for the gold scenario, why do we even need 1MB blocks, we should reduce that to 10kb ones so noes could be easily hosted on a Nokia 3310, for the sake of decentralization! That would show those big blockers how things are done!!!

You also don't understand that IPv6 provides more (address) space to accommodate more users, just like BSV provides more (block) space to accommodate more users, so no, it's not apples vs oranges.

Yeah it's apple and oranges!
Now tell me , do you still have a 56 kbit/s modem?

One thing is the number of users that can usa a thing, like IPv4 which is still sufficient as we speak but won't be if we reach 20 billion on this planet and 99% internet adoption, and the other thing is capacity! If the guys in the last century would have thought like some of you they would have never developed speeds over 1kbs since the internet was supposed to be for data, not for sending pictures!
So, apple and oranges, taxi licenses and car manufacturing!

Try to use a p2p app (Bitcoin node, BitTorrent) and see if you can upload anything to anyone... maybe then you'll understand.

Done!

Btw , this is anime, not porn! Trust me!

Now, what Luke is doing with OCEAN as a pool, is to merely offer miners a choise on what transactions they confirm.

And miners have the choice of mining wherever they want, right?
What are they doing right now?

[1714515064]

1714515064

[cryptosize]

One thing is the number of users that can usa a thing, like IPv4 which is still sufficient as we speak but won't be if we reach 20 billion on this planet and 99% internet adoption

We don't need 20 billion people and 99% internet adoption to reach IPv4's limits.

Currently there are 15 billion connected devices (each one needs an IP address), but only 4 billion IPv4 addresses. By 2030 we will have 30 billion devices. How come the ancient IPv4 is still sufficient?

SegWit is the equivalent of NAT (RFC 1918) in the Bitcoin space. A soft fork that respects backwards compatibility

BSV is the equivalent of IPv6 in the Bitcoin space. A hard fork that doesn't respect backwards compatibility.

Don't believe me?

Then listen to IPv6 proponents/big blockers (Craig Wright himself):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdXHA-WBvbU (hell, I would expect HmmMAA to post this, but maybe he's not very savvy in IPv4/IPv6 IIRC)...

https://www.bsvblockchain.org/news/dr-craig-wright-explains-how-bsv-blockchain-and-ipv6-will-change-the-internet

It's not apples to oranges, UNLESS you're uneducated in computer networking protocols.

Would you agree if Bitcoin Core not only increased the block size limit, but also ditched IPv4 support and became IPv6-only? If not, why?

Try to use a p2p app (Bitcoin node, BitTorrent) and see if you can upload anything to anyone... maybe then you'll understand.

Done!

Btw , this is anime, not porn! Trust me!

Do you know what CGNAT is? And why it hinders p2p apps?

[Artemis3]

BTW

no one has solved

scrypt 12 blocks  LTC+Doge
sha 256 1 block   BTC


basically it is unsolvable.

best thin BTC can do for now is ban all BTC sends under 0.0001 for 1 having and see if that works.

It should act to flood scrypt with smaller sends and allow LN to be correctly setup in BTC as a subset of core wallet

Or segwit seamlessly between Bitcoin and Litecoin and essentially use Litecoin as a sidechain instead of LN? Opening channels in LN is its Achilles heel, not only you have to fight against the spam you are also arbitrarily limited to the amount you put upfront, and/or surrender your privacy and trusting others.

Clearly we had a different Bitcoin before and after this year spam in the blockchain. A little string of text in the blockchain or 4mb images? I think there is a huge difference. This tweet (and the bus vs train meme a bit below) portraits it well. It may be technically a transaction, but is it bitcoin? it isn't.



Remember the difference between Bitcoin (project, network) and bitcoin (electronic p2p cash).

And no, i don't buy the fallacy that the spam is needed to "secure" the network, its not the spam that makes mining profitable, but the actual bitcoin price, remember this. The success (adoption) of bitcoin (as currency) is what would naturally drive the tx prices up, but when you allow saboteurs to make this less and less viable...

[philipma1957]

BTW

no one has solved

scrypt 12 blocks  LTC+Doge
sha 256 1 block   BTC


basically it is unsolvable.

best thin BTC can do for now is ban all BTC sends under 0.0001 for 1 having and see if that works.

It should act to flood scrypt with smaller sends and allow LN to be correctly setup in BTC as a subset of core wallet

Or segwit seamlessly between Bitcoin and Litecoin and essentially use Litecoin as a sidechain instead of LN? Opening channels in LN is its Achilles heel, not only you have to fight against the spam you are also arbitrarily limited to the amount you put upfront, and/or surrender your privacy and trusting others.

Clearly we had a different Bitcoin before and after this year spam in the blockchain. A little string of text in the blockchain or 4mb images? I think there is a huge difference. This tweet (and the bus vs train meme a bit below) portraits it well. It may be technically a transaction, but is it bitcoin? it isn't.



Remember the difference between Bitcoin (project, network) and bitcoin (electronic p2p cash).

And no, i don't buy the fallacy that the spam is needed to "secure" the network, its not the spam that makes mining profitable, but the actual bitcoin price, remember this. The success (adoption) of bitcoin (as currency) is what would naturally drive the tx prices up, but when you allow saboteurs to make this less and less viable...

Nice idea.

see right in front of us we have scrypt.

and scrypt can do 12x the volume that sha 256 can do

I have an accounting back ground and I have worked with pcs and main frames from 1975.

I see this as a value and economic problem.

Details of how  are for programmers and developers.

But to fight the scrypt structure rather than adapt is  dumb.

Lukes pool is not the way to do it.

I am a nobody in mining.

6/450,000 is my share of sha 256:hashrate.

but I see what is being done and unless a better scaling method is placed in btc is in trouble.

if we blend  in scypt we increase from 1x to 13x every ten minutes.

if we make btc sends under 0.0001 route via scrypt  automatically large fees drop.

we could  make the cutoff float if btc fees get too low.

seems to me the two algos need to create a shunting move.


and I would think the fallout to miners would be buy more scrypt gear.

time will tell 2024 and 2028 ½ ings should be different.


think about a 1.5625 block in 2028 getting 3 btc in fees.

that would be a 6.25 block in 2023 getting 18.75 in fees

I think right now big miners can do the 2028 case with ease.

thus they plan to do it.


this is new territory plain and simple.

[HmmMAA]

Interesting , food for thought https://twitter.com/derekm00r3/status/1733686055105069105 .

Now that Luke has pave the way to filter transactions , what happens if his pool mine an OFAC banned transaction ? Can he say that it's not his decision which transactions can be added to a block ? If mined , as a US citizen , can he face jail time ?

[mikeywith]

what happens if his pool mine an OFAC banned transaction ? Can he say that it's not his decision which transactions can be added to a block ? If mined , as a US citizen , can he face jail time ?

This is where user-generated block templates can be useful, the the pool operator proves that they have no say on what goes into the block templates, and they would have a better legal position, although not perfectly protected but at least something valuable you can use to defend yourself.

I really think someone with the skill set that Luke has would have served BTC better if they built something decentralized that actually works, an enhanced version of P2pool where miners bear the entire responsibility of the transactions they mine, this would be a lot harder for the state to stop or impose any sort restrictions on, think of it as torrent, do we really think that governments don't want to ban it altogether? they probably want -- they just can't.

Compare that to a centralized server that hosts "illegal" content and sits on U.S soil, as I said before, a 2 line letter and the law enforcement will shut it down.

More pools aren't the solution to censorship resistance, even worse is when those pools are centralized and owned by a known figure like Luke, it makes taking it down a piece of cake.

[jseparovic]

Does luck generally average out over time with smaller pools? Ocean found 2 blocks pretty fast, but looks like the third one is averaging out. Sitting at 2.57 times expected currently. Generally what would be a worse case between blocks? I’m pretty new to mining just wondering how bad could it get? It’s difficult hanging around when you have the electric bill to pay.

[mikeywith]

Does luck generally average out over time with smaller pools? Ocean found 2 blocks pretty fast, but looks like the third one is averaging out. Sitting at 2.57 times expected currently. Generally what would be a worse case between blocks? I’m pretty new to mining just wondering how bad could it get?

Things average out almost perfectly when measured against infinity, any thing short of infinity is unlikely to get you at 100%, I could throw some random numbers like every 7.4 blocks a block would take double the time, i.e 200%, and then again 1000% in 20k blocks or something, ya, and half the time every 1.6 blocks or so, but these are random figures and only start to average out over a very long period of time when the sample size is large enough.

It’s difficult hanging around when you have the electric bill to pay.

Indeed, which is why I have been always under the impression that eventually, only PPS pools would survive, not because they pay more "actually they pay less due to fees", but because not everyone can handle the variance, I don't want to give you the bad news, but given the size of the pool, it won't be out of the ordinary if you had to wait for a few more months, it could hit 2 blocks tomorrow, you just can't tell.

This may be a personal question or slightly off-topic, but I would love to know the reason why you decided to use Ocean pool.
 

[jseparovic]

The main reason I decided to try Ocean Pool was because I liked the idea of transparency with payouts (i.e getting paid directly when each block is found).
Also the 0% fee and promotional payout helped too. I didn't start until just before the first block on the 1st. I think it was like a few hours before too. And I had to stop on the 14th so I could mine enough to pay my electric bill. I'll still get paid something on the next block, but that obviously is diluting as the more days pass. I will probably end up losing maybe a few days to a week of income, hard to tell at this point. But yeh, I'm running a business here, so I probably should have stayed with one of the bigger pools.

[stompix]

Indeed, which is why I have been always under the impression that eventually, only PPS pools would survive, not because they pay more "actually they pay less due to fees", but because not everyone can handle the variance, I don't want to give you the bad news, but given the size of the pool, it won't be out of the ordinary if you had to wait for a few more months, it could hit 2 blocks tomorrow, you just can't tell.

This is quite a thing, didn't seem pretty important at first as obviously in the end, 10 years from now ocean is going to mine close to the numbers of blocks it is supposed to do but, even ignoring the payout scheme adn going for the straight model of reward plus tx fee minus pool fees, isn't there high chance nowadays for Ocean miners to get really screwed?
We know there were blocks these days with fees exceeding the reward, of course not all pools mined one but with a ten in one chance you at least get one of those, now with a small pool, you might end with a block that was mined exactly at low tide..lols, in some Sunday morning or x-mas days, and bag only half a bitcoin in fees at most. Of course, they could also hit a big block with 500sat/vb but excluding ordinals they are already taking a chuck out so..

Why would a miner looking for $ and not for the beliefs behind the movement risk this?
You're looking at missing out on that and taking even a 40% hit, not really the brightest thing, right?

[DaveF]

Indeed, which is why I have been always under the impression that eventually, only PPS pools would survive, not because they pay more "actually they pay less due to fees", but because not everyone can handle the variance, I don't want to give you the bad news, but given the size of the pool, it won't be out of the ordinary if you had to wait for a few more months, it could hit 2 blocks tomorrow, you just can't tell.

This is quite a thing, didn't seem pretty important at first as obviously in the end, 10 years from now ocean is going to mine close to the numbers of blocks it is supposed to do but, even ignoring the payout scheme adn going for the straight model of reward plus tx fee minus pool fees, isn't there high chance nowadays for Ocean miners to get really screwed?
We know there were blocks these days with fees exceeding the reward, of course not all pools mined one but with a ten in one chance you at least get one of those, now with a small pool, you might end with a block that was mined exactly at low tide..lols, in some Sunday morning or x-mas days, and bag only half a bitcoin in fees at most. Of course, they could also hit a big block with 500sat/vb but excluding ordinals they are already taking a chuck out so..

Why would a miner looking for $ and not for the beliefs behind the movement risk this?
You're looking at missing out on that and taking even a 40% hit, not really the brightest thing, right?

I have said it before but it's also the opportunity cost of money. Even if you are earning less with a FPPPS pool then with PPLNS or whatever. Getting regular payments allows you to have cash flow (Bitcon Flow?) which allows you to do other things which may allow you to make more money. Be it buy another miner sooner, move to a cheaper place to host sine you you can generally figure out expenses vs costs, whatever.

And now it's even worse with block 840000 approaching. Imagine being in a small PPLNS pool that mines a block just after the 2024 1/2ing it's going to take a while to make up that loss. *Although with fees where they are it's going to hurt less.  If fees get back to normal them ouch....

-Dave

[mikeywith]

The main reason I decided to try Ocean Pool was because I liked the idea of transparency with payouts (i.e getting paid directly when each block is found).

So you did this to avoid custody, which is great, I mine on PPS pool that keeps my money for 24 hours before paying me, Ocean now has your money (dust and in form of hashpower) for a few weeks, probably for a lot longer, so the custody aspect is even worse.

Also for the 0 fee thing, they censor ordinal transactions, which means if they find a block now, instead of getting say 9.25 btc they would get about 7.75, so in other words, you would lose 15% of your potential profit, the highest PPS fee is 4% so you are paying 11% extra for the time being at least given that ordinals are still a thing.

Thank you for answering my question, I wish you the best of luck.

[VentMine]

what happens if his pool mine an OFAC banned transaction ? Can he say that it's not his decision which transactions can be added to a block ? If mined , as a US citizen , can he face jail time ?

This is where user-generated block templates can be useful, the the pool operator proves that they have no say on what goes into the block templates, and they would have a better legal position, although not perfectly protected but at least something valuable you can use to defend yourself.

I really think someone with the skill set that Luke has would have served BTC better if they built something decentralized that actually works, an enhanced version of P2pool where miners bear the entire responsibility of the transactions they mine, this would be a lot harder for the state to stop or impose any sort restrictions on, think of it as torrent, do we really think that governments don't want to ban it altogether? they probably want -- they just can't.

Compare that to a centralized server that hosts "illegal" content and sits on U.S soil, as I said before, a 2 line letter and the law enforcement will shut it down.

More pools aren't the solution to censorship resistance, even worse is when those pools are centralized and owned by a known figure like Luke, it makes taking it down a piece of cake.

A regulator isn't going to let the pool operator off the hook just because they let their clients create block templates. The operator still disburses payments to the clients creating the block templates. Regulators do not care if you didn't generate illicit content, they care that you are serving it to your clients. A pool operator who serves the public will be regulated, as all public service providers are. They would probably be better off going private, and approving all client connections, if they are worried about getting regulated.

[mikeywith]

A regulator isn't going to let the pool operator off the hook just because they let their clients create block templates.

That would be somewhat similar to regulating P2P nodes, is it not? If your node receives and relay a banned transaction, they take you to jail?

When the pool no longer operates in a centralized manner they become just a pooling service, just like a bus driver, if someone carries something illegal with them on the bus -- the bus driver can't be held responsible in the same manner as if they found those illegal stuff in his pocket.

So I run a pool service which I have no control over, how can I be responsible for what happens inside? Similar to the bus driver analogy, the worst would be shutting down the bus service or the pool.

But when you are the owner, and the operator of the pool, you are at a greater risk, because now, not only that you facilitate illegal transaction a byproduct, you intentionally do so.

It is a lot easier to regulate a pool that create their own blocks vs pools who work as a medium between miners, it's also easier to regulate centralized exchanges and force them to ban or even seize funds of certain addresses, but it is nowhere near easy to regulate bitcoin nodes.

Obviously, it's not impossible, it just a lot harder.

[kano]

Alas you are missing a rather important point.
The pool would be allowing the transaction - they specifically receive it from the miner.
You cant distribute a block if you don't know the full details of all the transactions in it. Just the block header isn't enough.

[HmmMAA]

I think that both miners and pools will face legal problems in case of sanctioned funds move . Not to mention core devs . But what do i know .
It's time to understand that this space isn't a place where you only have rights , but also obligations . And by coding or hashing or creating templates you're not not outside the law . The "it's decentralised so we can do anything we want" mentality starts to fall apart .

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/29137

'With this Issue being posted to the official repository for Bitcoin and with this Issue being closed/dismissed by an official representative of Bitcoin Core, sanctions violations on Bitcoin have now moved from "negligent" to "culpable mental state greater than negligence." Thank you for your service.'

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.6.htm

Sec. 6.03.  DEFINITIONS OF CULPABLE MENTAL STATES.  (a)  A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.

(b)  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to circumstances surrounding his conduct when he is aware of the nature of his conduct or that the circumstances exist.  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct is reasonably certain to cause the result.

(c)  A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.

(d)  A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.



 

[cryptosize]

I think that both miners and pools will face legal problems in case of sanctioned funds move . Not to mention core devs . But what do i know .
It's time to understand that this space isn't a place where you only have rights , but also obligations . And by coding or hashing or creating templates you're not not outside the law . The "it's decentralised so we can do anything we want" mentality starts to fall apart .

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/29137

'With this Issue being posted to the official repository for Bitcoin and with this Issue being closed/dismissed by an official representative of Bitcoin Core, sanctions violations on Bitcoin have now moved from "negligent" to "culpable mental state greater than negligence." Thank you for your service.'

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.6.htm

Sec. 6.03.  DEFINITIONS OF CULPABLE MENTAL STATES.  (a)  A person acts intentionally, or with intent, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to a result of his conduct when it is his conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result.

(b)  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to the nature of his conduct or to circumstances surrounding his conduct when he is aware of the nature of his conduct or that the circumstances exist.  A person acts knowingly, or with knowledge, with respect to a result of his conduct when he is aware that his conduct is reasonably certain to cause the result.

(c)  A person acts recklessly, or is reckless, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he is aware of but consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that its disregard constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.

(d)  A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur.  The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.

"Bitcoiners" who succumb to state demands, may as well migrate to CBDC and do us a favor by selling their BTC for cheap...

[jseparovic]

So you did this to avoid custody, which is great, I mine on PPS pool that keeps my money for 24 hours before paying me, Ocean now has your money (dust and in form of hashpower) for a few weeks, probably for a lot longer, so the custody aspect is even worse.

Also for the 0 fee thing, they censor ordinal transactions, which means if they find a block now, instead of getting say 9.25 btc they would get about 7.75, so in other words, you would lose 15% of your potential profit, the highest PPS fee is 4% so you are paying 11% extra for the time being at least given that ordinals are still a thing.

Thank you for answering my question, I wish you the best of luck.

Cheers. I had already applied to Foundry while mining on Ocean, so I switched to them mid month. Getting paid every 24 hours is the definitely way to go for me.

[DaveF]

Mined their 3rd block after 24 days.
From what others are saying it is BTC 0.15 to 0.16 less than a block mined with a block template with everything in it that could be in it.
Standard block? Normal block? Don't know what term to use.

Guess that's $6000 that people that mine there don't need.
If you don't need $6000 I can send you a BTC address to send funds too.

-Dave

[mikeywith]

Mined their 3rd block after 24 days.
From what others are saying it is BTC 0.15 to 0.16 less than a block mined with a block template with everything in it that could be in it.

Here is an example of a transaction that was sitting in the mempool for long enough but was not picked by Ocean, it was paying 321 sat/Vbyte, here is a transaction they did include to replace some of those taproot transactions paying 83 sat/Vbyte


mempool rates this block at 85%, which is a very terrible rate, the calculation is rather simple

How is it calculated? Let sexpected be the set of all transactions in Mempool's expected block and let sactual be the set of all transactions in the actual block. Then let n be the number of all transactions in both sexpected and sactual.

Furthermore, let r be the number of transactions Mempool deduces were intentionally excluded from sactual.

Block health is calculated as n / ( n + r ).

The total fees that were available to extract on that block were 1.306BTC, the actual fee after the censorship turned out to be 1.162 btc, which is roughly 11% loss on fees, or 0.144 btc to be exact, that would be pretty similar to your calculation above.

Of course, this could have been a lot worse if there was a whole BTC of Ordinal fees sitting in the mempool like there was a few days ago, I think it's for their best interest that they did not hit a block when fees were skyhigh.

The pool would be allowing the transaction - they specifically receive it from the miner.
You cant distribute a block if you don't know the full details of all the transactions in it. Just the block header isn't enough.

Of course, it's not, which is why I made the compassion with full nodes, every time a node receives a transaction it becomes fully aware of what the transaction has in it, the same concept would apply to a pool.

If the pool creates the blocktemplete they would include
Transaction A > legal
Transaction B > legal
Transaction C > Illegal

This means the pool has purposely included the transaction.

If the pool does nothing but broadcast a block found by miners, and the block is

Transaction A > legal
Transaction B > legal
Transaction C > Illegal

The pool can't just remove transaction C as that will invalidate the block, and given that the pool has no control over what the miner includes, legally speaking, it would be at least a bit more complicated to regulate this scenario compared to the first one. 

I understand it's possible for regulators to state that "As a pool you must not broadcast a block that includes a sanctioned transactions", but I assume it's easier to state "As a pool you must not include any sanction transaction in the blocktemplets you send to miners".

I also understand it's perfectly possible for regulators to impose these laws on every node, not only miners' node, something like "Anyone running a BTC node must blacklist the following addresses".

I could be wrong, but i would assume something like that would be a lot more difficult.