Is there a way to determine the number of entities that have solved blocks?

[Chrithu]

As the title says:

Is there any way to find out how many different pools/solo miners have solved blocks during a set amount of time?

Is someone already montoring it? And is this number declining or rising?

[philipma1957]

yeah you can read blockchian



https://blockchain.info/ 


but it has errors.

[Coef]

yeah you can read blockchian



https://blockchain.info/ 


but it has errors.

organofcorti's weekly stat is much better than bc.i
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77000.new

[Chrithu]

Thanks for the links.

This "unknown" group: Is it the collection of all solo miners or some pool that isn't known yet?

Also: If this is accurate I don't really know if this is a good state for the network to be in in regards to the decentralization aspect. I mean 90% of blocks and thus transactions are handled by just 17 different nodes, that isn't a whole lot. And it is a number so small that with a little coordination between a few of the pools a lot of different manipulation could be possible.

Although I am aware the network would adapt quickly to such things as people can always choose to pull out their hashing power from the "bad" pools, but still a well timed and quickly performed move could still do some severe damage.

And with the upward spiral of difficulty and needed hashing power the number of nodes that handle the major portion of transactions will decline rather than rise.

[philipma1957]

Thanks for the links.

This "unknown" group: Is it the collection of all solo miners or some pool that isn't known yet?

Also: If this is accurate I don't really know if this is a good state for the network to be in in regards to the decentralization aspect. I mean 90% of blocks and thus transactions are handled by just 17 different nodes, that isn't a whole lot. And it is a number so small that with a little coordination between a few of the pools a lot of different manipulation could be possible.

Although I am aware the network would adapt quickly to such things as people can always choose to pull out their hashing power from the "bad" pools, but still a well timed and quickly performed move could still do some severe damage.

And with the upward spiral of difficulty and needed hashing power the number of nodes that handle the major portion of transactions will decline rather than rise.

I have thought long and hard about these problems.  I do believe back in may of 2013 this would happen.  Asic Miner had close to 40% of the network. They hashed privately.  They could not be  a ddos victim . On 3 diff jumps  there were ddos attacks on  the second third and fourth place pools.  All happened with 10-12 hours left before the jump.  The network was no longer 60% non Asic mine 40% Asic miner.  For those 10-12 hour time periods it was closer to 70% Asic miner it does not show up other then if you look at the blocks they would win in the time of the DDOS attacks .  They would double ther block collection.


Since they paid out most of that money/coin in dividends   there was a boost … 

Any large share holder of Asic Miner would have a real benefit.  So anyone may have done those DDOS attacks.


I no longer believe in this danger.  I do not think anyone can get a 40% share and boost it with DDOS attacks on the next 3 or 4 pools. Why do I think this because  the only way for this to work is that top pool must be fully private.

Right now the top pools are all accessible to miners.  You can have auto switching in case of major DDos attacks. You can use solo mining as a last resort. So your danger to a timed ddos attack can be safely handled.

Now if someone invents a new chip for mining that is soooo good   300x better then an asic chip

and builds a massive private pool the problem will happen again.

[Chrithu]

Well my worries aren't just about DDoSing other big entities to boost the share of yours. Pools could start to dictate the fee by changing the threshold needed for a transaction to be accepted by them, just for example. With some effort they could even start blocking addresses.

The thing is: When you talk about decentralized you talk about thousands of nodes (by the way that is what most long term members here tell to newbies: The bitcoin network is decentralized and consists of thousands of nodes) and NOT 17. While 17 nodes still kinda counts as decentralized technically speaking it is an awfully small number. I mean if you look at it closer: 90% of transactions handled by the 17 active, known pools, 60% (roughly) handled by the top 3 pools. And if I understand all the tech correctly that is just 17 or 3 nodes respectively, because all the work done by miners of the pool is known to the pool.

I don't think that this what the makers had in mind with their design. And the way things develop currently the network is driven to consist of less and less nodes. In my view there should be made changes to incentivize solo mining even without costly huge mining farms.

[PeterReid]

As the title says:

Is there any way to find out how many different pools/solo miners have solved blocks during a set amount of time?

Is someone already montoring it? And is this number declining or rising?

Where there is a will, There is a way.

You must follow the path set out by Yoda!