[ANN][KARM] Karma / ₭ / X11

[AGcrypto]

Attention all miners!!!! We have been made aware of a possible attempted 51% attack which possibly affected Mintpal earlier today. Countermeasures have been put in place by Mintpal  to reduce the chances of any further attacks but we as a community need to come together to make sure these types of attacks can not continue to happen. The Karma Team is asking that all miners please switch to a p2pool of your choice to help spread the hash power of all our rigs making it more difficult for any one pool to perform any further attacks. Again we are not 100% sure a attack did happen, but something had to have been attempted to caused mintpal to take anti 51% attack  measures. We would like to ask our community to take immediate action to help us better secure our net hash rate allowing us time to investigate exactly what did or did not happen and to take further measures to ensure nothing like this can happen in the future.

proof?

All i can tell you is we were contacted my mintpal and was told a possible attack happened. So we are not taking any chances and doing what we can right now until we can see what did or did not happen. So if you want to sit there and wait for some sort of proof thats up to you. But as for me I am not going to chance it, and switching to a p2pool. Switching will not have any negative effect on me anyway so i rather be safe than sorry until we get to the bottom of this.

[1713447478]

1713447478

[bitwho]

Mintpal saw possible sign of double spend. it could have been naturally. having seen such a huge jump maybe some mid size multipool jumped on board. mine us. created a tangent fork. sent coin to mintpal. probably on the way to the exchange they lost the confirmations. well i guess they might have switched to an other coin and lost the fork.

we are still trying to figure out if it was an accident or an attack on purpose. this has passed now.

everything should be back to normal.Mintpal and now cryptsy (we alerted them) have raised the confirmation a bit. this should warrant off any one from wasting hash to cause %51 attacks.

We should learn from this and start working together. p2p pools are the answers. we should start to educate our miners to use them.

i am sorry other pool owners. but he have to be tougher. outsiders don't care about our coin and will mine it to get some LTC at any cost to us.



Let us learn from bitcoin. Lets learn from their current problems now. They wished they promoted p2p pools more! we are still young. we can do this. lets us only support p2p pools!  

[Alphi]

we are still trying to figure out if it was an accident or an attack on purpose. this has passed now.

at this point it doesn't matter... forking is dangerous regardless..
any pool that has too much power that claims "we wont hurt karma" doesn't realise that they already are hurting karma.

it may have even been just a test to see how reactive the exchanges and community are.
the exchanges seem to have reacted well but mining community needs to get over to P2Pool pools asap.
if you are a miner and you do not use a P2Pool implementation then you are contributing directly to the increased likely hood of next attack.

the community needs also to seriously consider having some reserve hashing power to bring online in case of emergency.

and possibly the dev team could look into developing a way to easily ban the nodes of bad actors through community effort. I might look into this as part of a project I am working on. This would not stop such attacks from happening but could in theory slow down their ability to propagate transactions through the network making it harder for them to pull off.

[bitwho]

we are still trying to figure out if it was an accident or an attack on purpose. this has passed now.

at this point it doesn't matter... forking is dangerous regardless..
any pool that has too much power that claims "we wont hurt karma" doesn't realise that they already are hurting karma.

it may have even been just a test to see how reactive the exchanges and community are.
the exchanges seem to have reacted well but mining community needs to get over to P2Pool pools asap.
if you are a miner and you do not use a P2Pool implementation then you are contributing directly to the increased likely hood of next attack.

the community needs also to seriously consider having some reserve hashing power to bring online in case of emergency.

and possibly the dev team could look into developing a way to easily ban the nodes of bad actors through community effort. I might look into this as part of a project I am working on. This would not stop such attacks from happening but could in theory slow down their confirmations making it harder for them to pull off.

well be looking forward to your ideas/whitepaper on this

[Alphi]

well be looking forward to your ideas/whitepaper on this

it wont be that technical.. each wallet client has a whole bunch of apis that anyone can use.. they just aren't easy to use because there is no GUI. I was just thinking of either updating the wallet code GUI with more functionality or more likely making a companion program that could do it.

[bitwho]

learning from other communities and especially from Bitcoin we can see that the cheapest and remidiate answer to future %51 is p2p pools

Let be the coin that fully implements this! 

Lets be the coin that has all their miners in p2p pools



so lets brainstorm on how to get everyone on p2p pool. I am already in the talks with http://karma.p2pool.altcoin.dk/

we have come up with block reward bonuses and no fees until we are safe

acg. please post your donation wallet so we can help collect bounties for this push


everyone else. do you have any ideas how to help miners move to p2p pools?

[bitwho]

well be looking forward to your ideas/whitepaper on this

it wont be that technical.. each wallet client has a whole bunch of apis that anyone can use.. they just aren't easy to use because there is no GUI. I was just thinking of either updating the wallet code GUI with more functionality or more likely making a companion program that could do it.

everything starts with an idead. looking forward to what ever you will come up with brother

[p4r4m0un7]

....or switch to PoS.

[bitwho]

....or switch to PoS.

all POW in p2p pool > POS

[bitwho]

learning from other communities and especially from Bitcoin we can see that the cheapest and remidiate answer to future %51 is p2p pools

Let be the coin that fully implements this! 

Lets be the coin that has all their miners in p2p pools



so lets brainstorm on how to get everyone on p2p pool. I am already in the talks with http://karma.p2pool.altcoin.dk/

we have come up with block reward bonuses and no fees until we are safe

acg. please post your donation wallet so we can help collect bounties for this push


everyone else. do you have any ideas how to help miners move to p2p pools?

http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaTeam/comments/28fy33/important_calling_out_all_miners_must_read/

[bcd]

how is the performance of asic miners (general opinion/experience about reject & accept) in P2P pools?

[bitwho]

....or switch to PoS.

all POW in p2p pool > POS

BTW Not sure what the ASIC miners will bring to Karma in future , but up until now there has not been a better way to distribute the coins in a decentralized way.

also with POW one can mine or buy coins . wilth POS one can only buy coins

Why loose tons of potential customers by removing POW?

[bitwho]

how is the performance of asic miners (general opinion/experience about reject & accept) in P2P pools?

This is a good questions and i do not have the answer. What i can tell you is that more effort will be focused on the p2p pool to be as efficient as they can
be.

"Karma will be different. POW's %51 attacks will never hurt us if we succeed to move to full P2P pools!!" -bitwho

[Alphi]

....or switch to PoS.

all POW in p2p pool > POS

BTW Not sure what the ASIC miners will bring to Karma in future , but up until now there has not been a better way to distribute the coins in a decentralized way.

also with POW one can mine or buy coins . wilth POS one can only buy coins

Why loose tons of potential customers by removing POW?

I agree with you about PoS losing users... just look at MINT as a good example of a PoS coin that is not competing very well against other PoS coins.

another thing people do not realize about ASICs.. is that they can only mine one type of coin. unlike GPUs which are free to move on to the latest PoW algo... X11, X13 and so and so on until X200

this has a number of positive benefits as well as down sides.

Negatives:

* if someone gets their hands on a very powerful ASIC rig then they have a small window of opportunity to temporarily take control of mining for one the smaller coins (ie direct 51% attack)
* centralization of mining power. (less of a problem for coins that have fast block halving)
* people with GPUs are essentially locked out of mining.

Pros:

* cheaper more power efficient entry into mining. (eg a gridseed is about the same price as a midrange GPU and and uses 1/10th the electricity)
* the risk of being raided or attacked by multipools is greatly reduced. (eg because you cannot use Scrypt ASICS to raid X11 coins, and you cannot use Sha256 ASICs to raid Scrypt coin)
* people who buy ASICs are forced to keep on mining that kind of coin to get a ROI they cannot simply "switch" to another algo coin when they feel like chasing that pot of gold.
   (this means that when ASICs become mainstream Scrypt coins are only competing for hash against other Scrypt coins and not against every other coin. i.e. Less competition is always a positive)
* the risk of being attacked or raided by a botnets is also greatly reduced.


I agree that the jury is still well and truly out as to how ASICs will affect Scrypt coins in the long run.
people cannot point to Litecoin and say that its current low price is a sure sign that Scrypt has failed or that ASICs are a bad thing.

A temporary drop in price is exactly what one would expect to see when cheaper produced coins (via ASICS) suddenly begin to flood the market.. this is what happened with Bitcoin right before its value exploded.

ASICs are infrastructure for a Crypto Coin network just like routers are infrastructure for the internet and roads are infrastructure for a transit system.
people don't go out and spend vast amounts of real money on infrastructure unless they are in it for the long haul and believe there is significant growth potential in the future.

[Alphi]

for the life of this coin there has been constant argument about ASICs and PoW vs PoS.

to put things into perspective with a simple analogy.

* GPU miners are workers with shovels and picks.
* ASIC miners are workers with mining machinery.
* PoS advocates are the land owners.

if you own a shovel and pick you will say "my way is the best"
if you own some machinery you will say "my way is the best"
if you own the land you will say "my way is the best"

I just find is a amusing that this endless debate is happening across almost every coin that is struggling to keep its value.  
I can just imagine people back in the 1800s gold fields having the same arguments

[p4r4m0un7]

for the life of this coin there has been constant argument about ASICs and PoW vs PoS.

to put things into perspective with a simple analogy.

* GPU miners are workers with shovels and picks.
* ASIC miners are workers with mining machinery.
* PoS advocates are the land owners.

if you own a shovel and pick you will say "my way is the best"
if you own some machinery you will say "my way is the best"
if you own the land you will say "my way is the best"

I just find is a amusing that this endless debate is happening across almost every coin that is struggling to keep its value.  
I can just imagine people back in the 1800s gold fields having the same arguments

No one is talking about value, price, projects, etc. It is a matter of security. This is my 6-th post about that. Let`s discuss how security can be achieved. Actually I am not sure that we can make miners to go and dig in p2p.

[Chargin]

for the life of this coin there has been constant argument about ASICs and PoW vs PoS.

to put things into perspective with a simple analogy.

* GPU miners are workers with shovels and picks.
* ASIC miners are workers with mining machinery.
* PoS advocates are the land owners.

if you own a shovel and pick you will say "my way is the best"
if you own some machinery you will say "my way is the best"
if you own the land you will say "my way is the best"

I just find is a amusing that this endless debate is happening across almost every coin that is struggling to keep its value.  
I can just imagine people back in the 1800s gold fields having the same arguments

Lol I like that. It isn't correct though.

I disagree with people that say miners can't get Karma under pure PoS. Most PoS coins have systems in place so people can mine other coins and automatically have them converted into Karma.

PoS is better however I can't see any evidence of a sustained attack on http://www.coinwarz.com/network-hashrate-charts/karma-network-hashrate-chart. But that only appears to poll every hour so it isn't the best guide.

[CatKiwi]

I would like to hear what Kosmost and Shaun have to say on the matter. So far there has been no official word from either of them about this here.

The announcement of this 'maybe/may not be' attack caused a significant dumping of coins while it was trending up again. That is not acceptable. The threat should have been proven beyond reasonable doubt before making a public announcement (on both here and reddit I see) and it should have been accompanied by proof for all to verify.

By all accounts it would appear that the threat had already abated before the members posted their announcement - all the more reason to privately inform Kosmost of the concern and let him handle it.

There are ways of dealing with things like this professionally, and although I'm sure the members who posted had no ill intention - it was not professional.

[ShawnLeary]

I would like to hear what Kosmost and Shaun have to say on the matter. So far there has been no official word from either of them about this here.

The announcement of this 'maybe/may not be' attack caused a significant dumping of coins while it was trending up again. That is not acceptable. The threat should have been proven beyond reasonable doubt before making a public announcement (on both here and reddit I see) and it should have been accompanied by proof for all to verify.

By all accounts it would appear that the threat had already abated before the members posted their announcement - all the more reason to privately inform Kosmost of the concern and let him handle it.

There are ways of dealing with things like this professionally, and although I'm sure the members who posted had no ill intention - it was not professional.

“good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
― Plato

Where there is value, there will be persons attempting to maximize their take, even potentially leading to outright fraud.  Mintpal had some issues, they took corrective action by upping their confirmations to 200.  Cryptsy did not have any problems and confirmations required is still at 3.  This action taken by mintpal was done on their own, Kosmost was notified via email concerning the situation.
 
Personally, I do not believe this was an intentional attack as bitwho hypothesized as a possible scenario a few post back.  To spend the money/power/resources to earn a few extra million Karma doesn't add up, IMHO. A double spend attack is essentially sending blocks they wrongfully mined on their own fork to an exchange.  They use their own blockchain to confirm with the exchange that the Karms are good.  Then eventually the real fork takes over and those blocks that were sent to the exchange become orphaned and are worthless.  This is a known issue with the PoW system.  Its not perfect but still is the best one out there ATM.

This could have been unintentional as the pools jump from coin to coin quickly.
This could have been to create a slow down at Mintpal and help another exchange.
This could have been part of a master plot to bring down Karma.
This could have been done to spend millions of Karma and gain LTC.

All of these are possible motivations.  A large pool will want to return to Karma at some point and keep mining to make money, devaluing Karma doesn't make sense.  We are one of the most profitable, if not THE most profitable, coins to mine right now and have been for sometime.  Could this be a sinister supporter of Cryptsy trying to move business their way?  Doubt it, but possible.  Is this just a weak attempt to discredit Karma in general?  Perhaps, but not going to work.  Maybe it was someone trying to make a quick buck and exploiting a known vulnerability of PoW.  

As we move up the coinmarketcap.com list, I expect we will see more of this.  This is still the Wild West and there are people with vested interests competing with our baby.  We need to keep all of our options open, potentially doing an algo tweak toward merged mining or other security fixes.  

As the wise Norwegian Venture Capitalist, Olav Bergheim, said, "There are no bumps in the road, this is the road."

[learminer]

In the words of the great Encyclopedia Galactica: DON'T PANIC

Did the "possible 51% attack" originate form a regular mining pool? I somehow doubt that. Prematurely blaming regular pools is IMO a bad move and definitely not good Karma. Isn't it much more likely that the attack was coming from an external actor, rather than the existing Karma mining community? What if it is related to the 1.5+ GH/s Nethash that were unaccounted for last week? Was it even an attack on the regular network or rather aimed at Mintpal directly? I'd like to see some facts before we rush to conclusions and point fingers.

If it was indeed a 51% attack, it is pretty much the scenario I and others were warning about in April. Because of the new ASICs several GH/s of mining power are suddenly at the whim of a few select people. Moving our existing hashrate to P2Pools doesn't protect from that. P2Pool is a tiny piece in the puzzle of securing the network at best.

Another piece would be if the community and/or LLC joined the game and secured the network by aquiring additional mining power, either through renting rigs or purchasing ASICs. This was already suggested as an idea on the Karmashares forums IIRC.

In the interest of not getting this whole mining/algo/PoS discussion started again, I'll just shut up now. The team will work it out, I trust them to do whatever is best for Karma.