Mining hash rate distribution

[alfredaino]

If you have better sources I will gladly read them. They may be out of date, however the data collected shows the history of bitcoin mining has been.

I shared but you did not read.

Extra information about Bitcoin Mining History

I have read all your links without finding answers to my questions.

There are some researches and reports that show in the past, there are some dominating mining pools, which can have combined hash rate big enough to attack Bitcoin network. Unfortunately, they did not do that and I believe they see no good benefit by attacking the network.

Visual Analytics of Bitcoin Mining Pool Evolution: On the Road Toward Stability?
https://i.ibb.co/dtJPxF1/petra1.png

The evolution of mining pools and miners’ behaviors inthe Bitcoin blockchain
https://i.ibb.co/Ldz3bWz/hal2.png https://i.ibb.co/FYm4ZcV/hal3.png

These two articles are interesting, but show nothing new.
Beware attacking the network for malicious purposes is one thing, controlling the production of a blockchain for one's own favourable interests another.
Relying only on the past to predict the future is misleading, see the inductivist turkey example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_illusion

[1714466584]

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[stompix]

According to both articles, some miners, about 50-60 or <=20 per pool, control more than 50% of the network hashing power, thus controlling the PoW consensus. Who do you think own these miners?

Go to every single company listed onto the stock exchange and you're going to see the shareholders and you get pretty much 30% of the hashrate!
Btw, if you think they are some illuminati that can control everything and down in money , why don't you buy shares in them too?

Thanks for the explanation. As you pointed out, mining is a random process and the probability of being the first to mine a block is proportional to the hash power, i.e. if you have x% of the total hash power, in the long run you will mine x% of the blocks on average. Thus, miners who have at least 51% of the hash power on average control the PoW consensus and are rewarded by the network.

Stop with the POW consensus!!!!
Miners that mine 70% receive 70% of the reward, they can't change the "consensus" , they can fork the chain and keep mining there  by their rules but that can be done even by a guy with 5%, see BCH and BSV! If a 51% attacker would try to mine blocks that don't follow the rules they will be rejected by nodes, this is not a democracy where the guys having 51% of the vote can pass every single rule and the rest are forced to obey them!

If you have better sources I will gladly read them. They may be out of date, however the data collected shows the history of bitcoin mining has been.

There is none and there will never be!
As long as a company mines in two countries and points the hashrate at a private pool you have zero chances of knowing how much is there owned by who and where it resides, and this is just a simple example!
I mined over various pools, sent my money to both cold wallets and different exchanges, so there is no way one could allocate my hashrate (of course minuscule in the great scheme) to any location with precision, that unless they have access to all the logs of all mining pools in this world!

[alfredaino]

According to both articles, some miners, about 50-60 or <=20 per pool, control more than 50% of the network hashing power, thus controlling the PoW consensus. Who do you think own these miners?

Go to every single company listed onto the stock exchange and you're going to see the shareholders and you get pretty much 30% of the hashrate!
Btw, if you think they are some illuminati that can control everything and down in money , why don't you buy shares in them too?

I am not at all interested in investments. I am here for the technology.

Thanks for the explanation. As you pointed out, mining is a random process and the probability of being the first to mine a block is proportional to the hash power, i.e. if you have x% of the total hash power, in the long run you will mine x% of the blocks on average. Thus, miners who have at least 51% of the hash power on average control the PoW consensus and are rewarded by the network.

Stop with the POW consensus!!!!
Miners that mine 70% receive 70% of the reward, they can't change the "consensus" , they can fork the chain and keep mining there  by their rules but that can be done even by a guy with 5%, see BCH and BSV! If a 51% attacker would try to mine blocks that don't follow the rules they will be rejected by nodes, this is not a democracy where the guys having 51% of the vote can pass every single rule and the rest are forced to obey them!

According to the whitepaper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf:
The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes.

So whoever controls most of the hash power controls the PoW consensus. According to the two searches in my first post, 50-60 miners control it.

If you have better sources I will gladly read them. They may be out of date, however the data collected shows the history of bitcoin mining has been.

There is none and there will never be!
As long as a company mines in two countries and points the hashrate at a private pool you have zero chances of knowing how much is there owned by who and where it resides, and this is just a simple example!
I mined over various pools, sent my money to both cold wallets and different exchanges, so there is no way one could allocate my hashrate (of course minuscule in the great scheme) to any location with precision, that unless they have access to all the logs of all mining pools in this world!

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify. How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

[ranochigo]

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify. How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

That's a valid point but there is no provable ways to accurately tell where the hashrates are, what the hashrate is or the distribution of it. Bitcoin is designed to be transparent, but unfortunately the pseudonymous nature also means that it is difficult to ascertain certain things beyond a reasonable degree. I don't think it is easy to do so, or if you have a feasible idea to do it, then we can hear from you as well. If not, then I believe that should be the end of that discussion.

POW or basically any mechanism favours those with the most resources, because it functions by game theory and the assumption that you stand to lose the most if you are dishonest. I have no doubt that financial institutions or governments have a hand in mining. But, what can they do? Attack the chain? That would probably achieve nothing, beyond a minor inconvenience while costing them tens of millions of dollars, and even more in terms of opportunity cost. I don't foresee any governments being willing to attack Bitcoin for practically no benefits.

[stompix]

According to the whitepaper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf:

The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes.

So whoever controls most of the hash power controls the PoW consensus. According to the two searches in my first post, 50-60 miners control it.

NO! Again this is not about control!
The longer chain will take over ONLY if it follows the rules, that's it!
Imagine if that wouldn't have been the case, it would mean every miner with 1TH/s could create his own blockchain, how would that work if you would have to follow whatever chain there is?
The 51% attacker doesn't change the rules, he just present a chain with VALID transactions, VALID blocks that follows the rules but it has more work behind it!

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify.

Then I think we should introduce mandatory KYC data in the blockchain since right now:
- you trust mining nodes by verifying the blocks just as you verify a transactions coming from someone
- your NEEDS demand that you know the identity of the miner creating a valid block, then obviously you need the IDENTITY of a guy sending you coins, right?  

How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

What part of permissionless did you skip?  

[BlackHatCoiner]

So whoever controls most of the hash power controls the PoW consensus. According to the two searches in my first post, 50-60 miners control it.

He will control the ordering of the transactions. And sure, if he controls it ad infinitum, then he can choose to never mine any transaction.

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify. How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

You can verify the source code, the signatures of the transactions, the Proof-of-Work, the amount of chain work that is accurately estimated to have happened. But no; you cannot be certain about the distribution of the hash rate. You can only rely on statistics.

The 51% attacker doesn't change the rules, he just present a chain with VALID transactions, VALID blocks that follows the rules but it has more work behind it!

I like how handily you insert that "just". 

[stompix]

The 51% attacker doesn't change the rules, he just present a chain with VALID transactions, VALID blocks that follows the rules but it has more work behind it!

I like how handily you insert that "just".  

Yeah, handily, you mean tossing around words and realizing what I've said with two hours of pondering even after someone pointing it out
just...
You might not believe it but it really made me thinking a lot, would you have a case against such a miner in court if you sustain financial loss? It might sound like  solid case but I wonder if they could go clean with just negligence blaming on not receiving and sending the blocks via a faulty node configuration.
3-4 blocks might not be much but 6-12 hours will wreak havoc on chain for a good while.
But on the other hand, all transactions are visible in the chain and any such thing would require first a settlement between the two parties in the transactions before the miners, weird one.

Oh, and something to add about the distribution and identifying hashrate location, we had a 4% drop mainly because of Texas shutting down, (officiality acknowledge by large farms), all those farms are making the bulk of Foundry, yet Foundry didn't lose significant market share, nor it is gaining right now with hashrate up 6%, so applying tinfoil hat (quadruple layers) on as I said in mining speculation, they might have well over the 30% just mining over other pools undercover!

[alfredaino]

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify. How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

That's a valid point but there is no provable ways to accurately tell where the hashrates are, what the hashrate is or the distribution of it. Bitcoin is designed to be transparent, but unfortunately the pseudonymous nature also means that it is difficult to ascertain certain things beyond a reasonable degree. I don't think it is easy to do so, or if you have a feasible idea to do it, then we can hear from you as well. If not, then I believe that should be the end of that discussion.

POW or basically any mechanism favours those with the most resources, because it functions by game theory and the assumption that you stand to lose the most if you are dishonest. I have no doubt that financial institutions or governments have a hand in mining. But, what can they do? Attack the chain? That would probably achieve nothing, beyond a minor inconvenience while costing them tens of millions of dollars, and even more in terms of opportunity cost. I don't foresee any governments being willing to attack Bitcoin for practically no benefits.

I basically agree, unfortunately one has to trust without being able to verify.

[alfredaino]

According to the whitepaper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf:

The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes.

So whoever controls most of the hash power controls the PoW consensus. According to the two searches in my first post, 50-60 miners control it.

NO! Again this is not about control!
The longer chain will take over ONLY if it follows the rules, that's it!
Imagine if that wouldn't have been the case, it would mean every miner with 1TH/s could create his own blockchain, how would that work if you would have to follow whatever chain there is?
The 51% attacker doesn't change the rules, he just present a chain with VALID transactions, VALID blocks that follows the rules but it has more work behind it!

PoW works like this. The rule of the longest chain plus 51% hash power is written in the whitepaper.

From my point of view, this is a serious lack. Knowledge of the distribution of the hash rate is crucial. This invalidates one of the principles of blockchain: don't trust, verify.

Then I think we should introduce mandatory KYC data in the blockchain since right now:
- you trust mining nodes by verifying the blocks just as you verify a transactions coming from someone
- your NEEDS demand that you know the identity of the miner creating a valid block, then obviously you need the IDENTITY of a guy sending you coins, right?  

The reality is that one has to trust the various actors, without being able to verify their actions. This invalidates one of the basic principles of blockchain.

How is it possible to know whether mining is controlled by finance or government?

What part of permissionless did you skip?  

So we have to trust, Bitcoin could be controlled by the government or finance. A tool that was born to fight the banks has become part of them. So sad https://imgur.com/a/PreVIYz

[ranochigo]

The reality is that one has to trust the various actors, without being able to verify their actions. This invalidates one of the basic principles of blockchain.

So we have to trust, Bitcoin could be controlled by the government or finance. A tool that was born to fight the banks has become part of them. So sad https://imgur.com/a/PreVIYz

Fundamentally, Bitcoin is built on the principle of transparency, at least to the extent where feasible. It would be incorrect to say that the principles that Bitcoin was built on is compromised solely because there are limitations to what we can do as far as decentralization, transparency, etc can go. Make no mistake, there are no perfect systems in the world and compromises has to be made in every of them.

For example, if you want something to be completely decentralized, then you would have to do it at the expense of something else, which can be transparency or any other property that Bitcoin has. The assertion that Bitcoin is compromised just because of what is postulated in this thread would be wrong. There are limitations to what an adversary can do with a good proportion of the hashrate, and as mentioned, it wouldn't make sense for adversaries to do so.

[Cricktor]

PoW works like this. The rule of the longest chain plus 51% hash power is written in the whitepaper.

Bullshit, the part what you write as "plus 51% hash power". It's certainly some time ago when I read the Whitepaper last, but I can't remember something in it to support your claim.

You do realize that Bitcoin evolves, don't you? The "longest chain" has changed to the "chain with most accumulated work" wins, for obvious reasons. There's no point in clinging to the wording of the whitepaper. It's not the Bible or the Ten Commandments.

The reality is that one has to trust the various actors, without being able to verify their actions. This invalidates one of the basic principles of blockchain.

I disagree and I seriously can't follow you how you come to this conclusion. While it is somewhat problematic that certain mining pools aggregate quite some percentage of hashrate, I still don't see what kind of an issue it is as long as their percentage doesn't approach substantially more than 35-45%. We had in former times a pool that got to about or slightly over 50% and concerns and "shitstorm" were loud. To my knowledge that didn't happen again.

Where's the problem? Pinpoint it, please! What benefit should a party have which made enormous investments required to approach 50% of the global hashrate. Do funky stuff then and send Bitcoin into unseen turmoil? That would be economic suicide, very certain! I'd say, no government would dare to burn an investment like this to the ground, even if they hate Bitcoin. It wouldn't make any sense, economically.

So we have to trust, Bitcoin could be controlled by the government or finance. A tool that was born to fight the banks has become part of them. So sad

Still can't follow you, but if you want to believe this, well, you do yours. Maybe I'm just too tired now or you've already made up your mind and cling to it.

[mikeywith]

After reading the OP, I concluded that there might be an issue in the study. It seems unlikely for these students from the London School of Economics to arrive at such a conclusion unless they lack a proper understanding of how mining pools operate. As a result, I spent/wasted half an hour delving into the research paper to uncover the nuances, and here it is.

This figure documents the concentration capacity of miners based on Coinbase rewards that miners receive from pools. Each month, we sort active miners
by the amount of Coinbase rewards they receive and calculate the percentage of total mining capacity controlled by different quantiles of the miner distribution.

Obviously, I do not doubt that their figures are accurate, and this conclusion

The top 10% of miners control 90% and just 0.1% (about 50 miners) control close to 50% of mining capacity

Could have been guessed by anyone who has been mining long enough, but where did they go wrong?

These individuals seem to be entrenched in the early era of Bitcoin mining. In today's world, Coinbase transactions hold little significance in such research. To simplify, the vast majority of mining pools allocate Coinbase transactions to their own addresses and subsequently distribute rewards from there. Moreover, many mining pools operate on a Pay-Per-Share (PPS) model, meaning they pay out rewards before actually receiving them (or sometimes after). This results in payments originating from a different set of coins than those visible in the coinbase transactions.

Given that almost 90% of all blocks are solved by approximately only 10 pools, it may seem as though these 10 miners control 90% of the blocks. Mining pools typically don't attempt to conceal their rewards, otherwise, they could assign a new address for each coinbase transaction. If this were the case, the entire interpretation of the study would shift drastically. Therefore, while the presented figures may be accurate, the interpretation is fundamentally flawed.

Reading the paper further, I found another critical error in their approach which is linking the origin of exchanges to the location or nationality of miners. Their assumption, based on the use of a Chinese-owned exchange implying the miner is Chinese, or the use of a US or EU exchange indicating nationality, is flawed. Common sense dictates that this inference is far from accurate. Unless exchanges reveal miners' information to these researchers, which is highly unlikely, their methodology only exposes the identity of mining pools rather than individual miners.

In essence, this research may suffice for academic purposes in obtaining a master's or bachelor's degree, using it for anything else -- is a mistake.

[mullick]

Given that almost 90% of all blocks are solved by approximately only 10 pools, it may seem as though these 10 miners control 90% of the blocks.

Dont get me wrong, I believe OP's research has some flaws if it came to that conclusion, I just havent had time to read it.

My issue with this specific argument is how long would it take word to spread of a pool acting maliciously? How long would it then take word to spread far enough to significantly impact their hashrate? Lastly, how long would it take someone with 51% hashrate to do damage to Bitcoins reputation or worse?

If the former is > latter, effectively they do control the hashrate.

It only takes a short time of a few pools having "bad luck" to build up a longer chain.

[Cricktor]

My issue with this specific argument is how long would it take word to spread of a pool acting maliciously? How long would it then take word to spread far enough to significantly impact their hashrate? Lastly, how long would it take someone with 51% hashrate to do damage to Bitcoins reputation or worse?

My issue with mostly the whole argument is what benefit would a malicious actor have? What kind of a bogeyman is being painted on the wall here?

To gather at least 51% of the global hashrate means an investment of billions of $$$ or convincing a huge amount of individual miners to join your pool. Attractive conditions for external miners don't come for free.

What can you do with your hashrate majority? Well, you can double spend your own transactions, you can censor foreign transactions and in essence you will disrupt the coin ecosystem. Particularly the latter won't be for your own benefit, on the contrary! Game theory is against a malicious actor who wants to exploit his hashrate majority. So, what's the fuss about it, unless a malicious actor doesn't care to burn billions of $$$.

I believe this scenario is highly unlikely and an economic suicide, thus the probability of such a malicious investment is neglectable, even for state level actors. Bitcoin is seen as a threat to government money control and the traditional finance system, but not enough to justify to burn billions of $$$ to disrupt Bitcoin.

Systematic double spends won't go unrecognized, nor would an increase in chain forks due to block races go unnoticed. https://fork.observer/ is a thing...

[mikeywith]

Dont get me wrong, I believe OP's research has some flaws if it came to that conclusion, I just havent had time to read it.

It's on-chain data, and there are no flaws in the math, in reality, it's even worse today, looking at the last 7 days, blocks were found are distributed as follows:


Foundry USA 30.3%
AntPool 27.7%
F2Pool 12.5%
ViaBTC10.4%

4 pools mined >80% of all blocks

Take this address as an example

Code:

38XnPvu9PmonFU9WouPXUjYbW91wa5MerL

Antpool blocks pay to this address, it has received 139,652 BTC so far, the research paper considers this address as a single person/miner, which is why the interpretation is wrong, but the math is right.

My issue with this specific argument is how long would it take word to spread of a pool acting maliciously?

People treat hashrate distribution centralization as something new to BTC, but it's not, it has always been the case, it's always a few pools that control the majority of the hashrate, in fact, it has been worse at times, not too long ago I pulled the hashrate distribution history of 2018 or so, it was nearly 50% Bitmain, Antpool and the other pools they owned, even worse, the majority of mining gears physical location was in 2-3 Chinese provinces, so it's nothing new, these guys make a lot of money by playing honest, makes no sense to rekt billion of dollars of investment to double spend some transactions or attempt to fork the blockchain or anything stupid.

[mullick]

My issue with mostly the whole argument is what benefit would a malicious actor have? What kind of a bogeyman is being painted on the wall here?

What benefit would a malicious attacker have? They would have control of a Trillion dollar network. You pointed out some of their abilities further down your post but most importantly, They could double spend. I dont think you understand the trust that would be lost in the system if a large double spend was successful.

What can you do with your hashrate majority? Well, you can double spend your own transactions, you can censor foreign transactions and in essence you will disrupt the coin ecosystem. Particularly the latter won't be for your own benefit, on the contrary! Game theory is against a malicious actor who wants to exploit his hashrate majority. So, what's the fuss about it, unless a malicious actor doesn't care to burn billions of $$$.

Im not talking about game theory. I simply pointed out that the operator of a pool could use their users hashrate maliciously before anyone had a chance to move their hashrate off the pool. Effectively when looking at short term attacks like double spends they do control the hash, not the individual miners. Their incentive to do so is completely irrelevant to my statement. Your fork tracker is useless when a longer chain is being built in secret. Sure the pool might have a few hours of bad luck, but so will the whole network if 51% of the hashrate drops.

I believe this scenario is highly unlikely and an economic suicide, thus the probability of such a malicious investment is neglectable, even for state level actors. Bitcoin is seen as a threat to government money control and the traditional finance system, but not enough to justify to burn billions of $$$ to disrupt Bitcoin.

Really?  Money means nothing to the government. They can print it as they please. Never underestimate what they will do to keep their backdoor inflation tool as the global reserve currency.

Do you think someone like Arion Kurtaj would have cared about economic suicide if he got access to a few pools instead of nvidia, uber and the others?

I think there are a lot of scenarios , although highly unlikely where game theory doesnt apply. I dont think people put enough stock in those.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You do realize that Bitcoin evolves, don't you? The "longest chain" has changed to the "chain with most accumulated work" wins, for obvious reasons.

That's actually a noteworthy fact of the Bitcoin history. The whitepaper does include the phrase "longest chain", and while most people believe he meant "longest difficulty-wise chain", he actually didn't. The "longest chain" in the whitepaper is meant literally; the chain with the highest block.

If you search for "chainwork" in the v0.1, you will find no results. On the other hand, let's see the only part of the source code where "longest chain" and "longest branch" appear.

Code: (main.h, line 1000)

//
// The block chain is a tree shaped structure starting with the
// genesis block at the root, with each block potentially having multiple
// candidates to be the next block.  pprev and pnext link a path through the
// main/longest chain.  A blockindex may have multiple pprev pointing back
// to it, but pnext will only point forward to the longest branch, or will
// be null if the block is not part of the longest chain.
//
class CBlockIndex
{
<defines the BlockIndex class>

If you read the function Reorganize, you can notice yourself it doesn't check for most-worked chain at all; instead, it relies on the highest block number:

Code: (main.cpp, line 974)

bool Reorganize(CTxDB& txdb, CBlockIndex* pindexNew)
{
    printf("*** REORGANIZE ***\n");

    // Find the fork
    CBlockIndex* pfork = pindexBest;
    CBlockIndex* plonger = pindexNew;
    while (pfork != plonger)
    {
        if (!(pfork = pfork->pprev))
            return error("Reorganize() : pfork->pprev is null");
        while (plonger->nHeight > pfork->nHeight)
            if (!(plonger = plonger->pprev))
                return error("Reorganize() : plonger->pprev is null");
    }

    // List of what to disconnect
    vector<CBlockIndex*> vDisconnect;
    for (CBlockIndex* pindex = pindexBest; pindex != pfork; pindex = pindex->pprev)
        vDisconnect.push_back(pindex);

    // List of what to connect
    vector<CBlockIndex*> vConnect;
    for (CBlockIndex* pindex = pindexNew; pindex != pfork; pindex = pindex->pprev)
        vConnect.push_back(pindex);
    reverse(vConnect.begin(), vConnect.end());

    // Disconnect shorter branch
    vector<CTransaction> vResurrect;
    foreach(CBlockIndex* pindex, vDisconnect)
    {
        CBlock block;
        if (!block.ReadFromDisk(pindex->nFile, pindex->nBlockPos, true))
            return error("Reorganize() : ReadFromDisk for disconnect failed");
        if (!block.DisconnectBlock(txdb, pindex))
            return error("Reorganize() : DisconnectBlock failed");

        // Queue memory transactions to resurrect
        foreach(const CTransaction& tx, block.vtx)
            if (!tx.IsCoinBase())
                vResurrect.push_back(tx);
    }

    // Connect longer branch
    vector<CTransaction> vDelete;
    for (int i = 0; i < vConnect.size(); i++)
    {
        CBlockIndex* pindex = vConnect[i];
        CBlock block;
        if (!block.ReadFromDisk(pindex->nFile, pindex->nBlockPos, true))
            return error("Reorganize() : ReadFromDisk for connect failed");
        if (!block.ConnectBlock(txdb, pindex))
        {
            // Invalid block, delete the rest of this branch
            txdb.TxnAbort();
            for (int j = i; j < vConnect.size(); j++)
            {
                CBlockIndex* pindex = vConnect[j];
                pindex->EraseBlockFromDisk();
                txdb.EraseBlockIndex(pindex->GetBlockHash());
                mapBlockIndex.erase(pindex->GetBlockHash());
                delete pindex;
            }
            return error("Reorganize() : ConnectBlock failed");
        }

        // Queue memory transactions to delete
        foreach(const CTransaction& tx, block.vtx)
            vDelete.push_back(tx);
    }
    if (!txdb.WriteHashBestChain(pindexNew->GetBlockHash()))
        return error("Reorganize() : WriteHashBestChain failed");

    // Commit now because resurrecting could take some time
    txdb.TxnCommit();

    // Disconnect shorter branch
    foreach(CBlockIndex* pindex, vDisconnect)
        if (pindex->pprev)
            pindex->pprev->pnext = NULL;

    // Connect longer branch
    foreach(CBlockIndex* pindex, vConnect)
        if (pindex->pprev)
            pindex->pprev->pnext = pindex;

    // Resurrect memory transactions that were in the disconnected branch
    foreach(CTransaction& tx, vResurrect)
        tx.AcceptTransaction(txdb, false);

    // Delete redundant memory transactions that are in the connected branch
    foreach(CTransaction& tx, vDelete)
        tx.RemoveFromMemoryPool();

    return true;
}

Satoshi made other mistakes too, like the value overflow incident. It is reasonable though; no human is infallible.

[Cricktor]

I'm surprised how you interpret my post. I'm still not entirely sure if I should reply... Anyway!

They would have control of a Trillion dollar network.

I think you overestimate the amount of control and what's at stake for such a potential malicious actor. To gain control over a majority of hashrate you will have to have a lot of skin in the game. Seriously, tell me, who would want to risk that many skin? You make funky actions with your majority of hashrate, the market would very very likely go crazy and go down the hill.

That's what I already wrote before, maybe in less words.

I dont think you understand the trust that would be lost in the system if a large double spend was successful.

Interesting, how do you come to such a conclusion? Of course I'm aware and pretty sure that a lot of trust in Bitcoin would be lost, if substantial double spends were observed. Loss of trust would certainly lead to loss of value. This pretty much inevitable breakdown of value of Bitcoin wouldn't go well for the malicious actor as his required investment would go "poof!", too.
Doesn't make any sense for the bad adversary, does it!?


Your next paragraph also doesn't make much sense to me, but that could be entirely me. I may sound like a broken record, but in the end a malicious actor simply doesn't benefit from his disruptive actions. Too much skin in the game, too much to loose by himself.

What the heck has Arion Kurtaj to do in this discussion, c'mon, be serious. 

[mullick]

I'm surprised how you interpret my post. I'm still not entirely sure if I should reply... Anyway!

Your next paragraph also doesn't make much sense to me, but that could be entirely me. I may sound like a broken record, but in the end a malicious actor simply doesn't benefit from his disruptive actions. Too much skin in the game, too much to loose by himself.

What the heck has Arion Kurtaj to do in this discussion, c'mon, be serious. 

Im simply trying to point out you are assuming the person in control of those pools has any skin in the game and that they are mentally stable enough to make sensible decisions.

Pools can be taken over by attackers and people have mental breakdowns. Seal team 6 could come in and hold slush hostage until he builds a side chain. There are endless possibilities your defenses dont account for. You are just being Naïve. Perhaps intentionally.

These are the simple facts. 2 or fewer actors need to be compromised in order to gain enough hashrate to significantly harm Bitcoin and your only defense is blah blah game theory blah blah economic suicide.

Arion Kurtaj is completely relevant example. It doesnt matter how lucky he was to find the exploits he did the fact is he compromised multiple major players in an industry and was reckless with their data instead of thinking it through. Neither game theory or the thought of economic suicide would have stopped someone of his mindset

You can continue to be ignorant to these threats but dont expect to not be called out on them.

[stompix]

These individuals seem to be entrenched in the early era of Bitcoin mining. In today's world, Coinbase transactions hold little significance in such research. To simplify, the vast majority of mining pools allocate Coinbase transactions to their own addresses and subsequently distribute rewards from there. Moreover, many mining pools operate on a Pay-Per-Share (PPS) model, meaning they pay out rewards before actually receiving them (or sometimes after). This results in payments originating from a different set of coins than those visible in the coinbase transactions.

This is the only thing they have done right, they were tracking addresses that received payments from pools, not only coinbase distributions and monitoring the spending habit of them what opportunity they missed here was tracking the evolution of payments amounts, it would have been interesting data.

Reading the paper further, I found another critical error in their approach which is linking the origin of exchanges to the location or nationality of miners. Their assumption, based on the use of a Chinese-owned exchange implying the miner is Chinese, or the use of a US or EU exchange indicating nationality, is flawed.

Exactly my thought, it works only if you split the world with some clearly defined boundaries.
So chinese miners will never use coinbase or bitstamp, us miners will never use binance, russian ones will never use one licensed in the us or europe and so on..
But, wtf you do with Canada? 
How can you say based on the exchange they use that this guy is Canadian and not from California, cause unless they use Quadriga...
What about the whole middle east  and former USSR? Would a guy in Kazakhstan have different preferences from a guy in Turkey or UAE ?
And if that is not messy enough, what do we do with Bitdeer that has a megafarm in the US and uses OKex and many others like them?

It's an interesting approach but it's really flawed!

The only things we can be sure about it's the hashrate from companies that are listed on the stock exchange, there guys need to release that data, that thing is the only reliable thing we had, the rest...is like finding Satoshi!

Pools can be taken over by attackers and people have mental breakdowns. Seal team 6 could come in and hold slush hostage until he builds a side chain. There are endless possibilities your defenses dont account for. You are just being Naïve. Perhaps intentionally.

And at current hashrate we need to stop mining after a block for one and a half day writing for that pool to do two blocks. 

Arion Kurtaj is completely relevant example.

Except that web it comes to mining you have thousands of eyes watching those blocks and what their miners and the pools are doing, the moment farms keep mining blocks that are not broadcasted not validated you will have red light flashing everywhere! Also there is a huge difference between getting data from a server and reconfiguring it.
The ca$$h takeover of hashrate, that one I can believe it, the other not so much.