ask a reputable large mini-pool to include a transaction in block

[citb0in]

Assuming you want to make a transaction without the public key being known in the mempool. What options are there if you do not own any mining hardware? Which large, well-known, trustworthy miners could you ask for support with a completed transaction? I imagine that it would have to be a really large mining pool that regularly mines blocks successfully. Have any of you ever done something like this and can share experiences? Do you send an email inquiry to Antpool or ViaBTC and simply ask them for such a favor? I hardly think they care, don't they? Should you suggest an attractive amount as a "donation" so that they carry out the favor?

Who has ever done something like this and can report back? I'm curious and look forward to your answers.

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[EL MOHA]

I don’t think there is any way to actually hide your bitcoin public key because it is needed by nodes to verify your bitcoin transactions, this details aren’t known only to the mining pool including your transactions into their block but to all mining nodes for verification. Even if you think you had atually hide the public key I think it will still be easily derived from the transaction signature. So there is absolutely nothing wrong in revealing the public key.

As for looking to have mining pool specifically including your transaction into their block then it is possible you can visit there site as they have paid services but for this particular work you want them to do I don’t think they can

[odolvlobo]

Assuming you want to make a transaction without the public key being known in the mempool.

What does that mean? A transaction must be valid in order to be included in a block, regardless of who mines the block. There are miners who will include "non-standard" transactions in their blocks, if that is what you mean.

I understand now. You want to submit a transaction directly to a miner without going through the bitcoin network. That seems possible. Perhaps there is info in the Mining forum.

[citb0in]

There is the following valid reason:

someone who successfully finds the private key of one of the low-range puzzles from the well-known Bitcoin puzzle (currently the 66bit puzzle is being hunted) encounters the following problem: as soon as the lucky winner would put a transaction in the mempool to pay out the prize money to his bitcoin address, he runs the very great risk that someone else will cheat him and grab his prize money.

As soon as the public key is known, the private key can be calculated within a few seconds, we are talking about a 66bit range here and this is possible very quickly with the given hardware and resources. Once Mallory knows the private key, (s)he can create a new transaction with higher fees and change the recipient address to his own. Since RBF is only a policy but not a consensus and each full node is free to decide for itself how to deal with RBF, there is no protection mechanism against this attack. The only possibility is to keep the pubkey hidden from the public as long as the block has been mined and made public. A single transaction would suffice. This is not a fictitious scenario, but a real one.

For this reason, my initial question is whether a large mini-pool could be commissioned with the "direct" and thus hidden insertion of the transaction into the block. This would mean that the transaction would never appear in the mempool and nobody would see the pubkey. Only after the block has been mined and made public would the whole world know the pubkey. Of course, a villain could also act trickily in the large mininpool. But there would be mitigation measures for this and the risk for this type of attack could be kept very low.

[Cricktor]

As soon as the public key is known, the private key can be calculated within a few seconds, we are talking about a 66bit range here and this is possible very quickly with the given hardware and resources.

At first I was thinking, what's the problem to reveal the public key, you still don't have the private key? And you can't easily compute a private key from it's derived public key, can you?. (I only occasionally observe what going on with the Bitcoin puzzles and have no ressources to join them.)

I must say, I have no idea how quick one could find such a "low bit range" private key. I've seen that many of the puzzle transactions that revealed the public key have already been solved and this also with considerably higher bit ranges than where current search stagnates around the 66bit range puzzle.

For this reason, my initial question is whether a large mini-pool could be commissioned with the "direct" and thus hidden insertion of the transaction into the block. This would mean that the transaction would never appear in the mempool and nobody would see the pubkey. Only after the block has been mined and made public would the whole world know the pubkey. Of course, a villain could also act trickily in the large mininpool. But there would be mitigation measures for this and the risk for this type of attack could be kept very low.

This should be possible in theory but to my knowledge pools don't seem to have openly communicated channels for this, but I could be wrong as I never had the need for such side channel approach to pools or miners.

You still have a trust issue. Nothing prevents a pool from abusing your transaction's details to gain advantage of the solved puzzle transaction, except that wouldn't make good crypto press for them. To bash such a malicious pool you'd still need proof that you and only you did find the solution first and your trust was exploited. Interesting dilemma...

[philipma1957]

There is the following valid reason:

someone who successfully finds the private key of one of the low-range puzzles from the well-known Bitcoin puzzle (currently the 66bit puzzle is being hunted) encounters the following problem: as soon as the lucky winner would put a transaction in the mempool to pay out the prize money to his bitcoin address, he runs the very great risk that someone else will cheat him and grab his prize money.

As soon as the public key is known, the private key can be calculated within a few seconds, we are talking about a 66bit range here and this is possible very quickly with the given hardware and resources. Once Mallory knows the private key, (s)he can create a new transaction with higher fees and change the recipient address to his own. Since RBF is only a policy but not a consensus and each full node is free to decide for itself how to deal with RBF, there is no protection mechanism against this attack. The only possibility is to keep the pubkey hidden from the public as long as the block has been mined and made public. A single transaction would suffice. This is not a fictitious scenario, but a real one.

For this reason, my initial question is whether a large mini-pool could be commissioned with the "direct" and thus hidden insertion of the transaction into the block. This would mean that the transaction would never appear in the mempool and nobody would see the pubkey. Only after the block has been mined and made public would the whole world know the pubkey. Of course, a villain could also act trickily in the large mininpool. But there would be mitigation measures for this and the risk for this type of attack could be kept very low.

I would trust ck solo pool but it could take a long time for him hit one.

[citb0in]

You still have a trust issue. Nothing prevents a pool from abusing your transaction's details to gain advantage of the solved puzzle transaction, except that wouldn't make good crypto press for them. To bash such a malicious pool you'd still need proof that you and only you did find the solution first and your trust was exploited. Interesting dilemma...

Exactly! This is very easy: simply create a hash of the private key and post it publicly (e.g. here). Then contact the Mininpool and the message could also be posted here in the forum for reference purposes. This ensures that the person first knew the private key. If the Mininpool wants to play a bad joke and comes up with the stupid idea of paying itself off by collecting the prize money in its own name, this would make a big wave and damage its reputation. Such a grotesque action is not necessary for a large mining pool, it would destroy its reputation to such an extent that it would not be worth it. I therefore think that this risk remains very small.

I would trust ck solo pool but it could take a long time for him hit one.

Me too. However this won't work ... Unfortunately, this mining pool does not fulfill one of the most important requirements: it does not mine regularly

[LoyceV]

For this reason, my initial question is whether a large mini-pool could be commissioned with the "direct" and thus hidden insertion of the transaction into the block. This would mean that the transaction would never appear in the mempool and nobody would see the pubkey. Only after the block has been mined and made public would the whole world know the pubkey. Of course, a villain could also act trickily in the large mininpool. But there would be mitigation measures for this and the risk for this type of attack could be kept very low.

At some point I expect miners to attempt to replace a confirmed block for this. When someone paid 83 BTC in transaction fees, a pool with 25% hash rate could have gambled on mining 2 blocks in a row, thereby creating a new longer chain. In the future, when block rewards are smaller and transaction fees make up a larger share of the total reward, this might become a reality if there's 6 Bitcoin to be gained from a puzzle transaction.

[hugeblack]

I remember a while ago that one of the mining pools manually added a non-standard transaction to the block, about a year after it was broadcast. I do not remember the details of the story and I did not find the topic (if anyone remembers it).

In general, it is possible to add your transaction manually. You need to contact whoever has access to transaction selector in the mining pool, or you can wait until the interval between one block and another is more than 30 minutes, and broadcast your transaction with a high fee, and then there is a possibility that it will be confirmed soon and not sent from that address.

[digaran]

Oh good you forgot about your challenge with my alt. Lol
It would mean trouble for the pool unless some of the largest pools open a secure communication channel to submit only puzzle transactions for a reasonable fee, then any puzzle hunter who'd submit the transaction first, would receive the loots later on by providing the cryptography secured solution to the pool, or they could just check the time of submission. Then anyone solving the low bit range puzzles could securely send a receiving address along with the raw TX.
And I say this because they might wanna check the TX before including it. They might also want to take their fee off the pool itself, meaning not wanting to share the fee with their miners etc.

Not to mention all the legal BS they need to go through, the pool has to be big, otherwise if the transaction is rebroadcast with a really lucrative fee, another big pool could try to orphan the first block and grab the fee.

As I posted a meme on the other thread [insert 5 guys and a girl meme here] 😂

Btw, if before I ever mention this possibility, only a handful of people were on the look out with their bots, now there is going to be hundreds of them trying to score a free loot. Lol

[BlackHatCoiner]

This is the dumb part of these puzzles. They were created to incentivize collision findings etc., but nobody thought of the disincentive of broadcasting the solution to the public.

I would trust ck solo pool but it could take a long time for him hit one.

To mitigate the risk of working out the private key, you should choose a pool which takes the least time to mine a block. But, on the other hand, -ck is considered very trustworthy, and is running it since 2011.

[citb0in]

This is the dumb part of these puzzles. They were created to incentivize collision findings etc., but nobody thought of the disincentive of broadcasting the solution to the public.

I would trust ck solo pool but it could take a long time for him hit one.

To mitigate the risk of working out the private key, you should choose a pool which takes the least time to mine a block. But, on the other hand, -ck is considered very trustworthy, and is running it since 2011.

absolutely agree. But unfortunately -ck 's pool does not mine block regularly which doesn't fit into the mentioned objective. It should not only be a trustworthy miner, but in any case also someone who would mine the next block very regularly and with a high probability.