[Resolved] A1BitcoinPool Complaint

[DeathAndTaxes]

...
2) The current protocol is limited to 1 share = 1 address.  However a sub-p2pool (or conventional pool wanted to provide transparency) would want 1 share split among multiple users.  So the protocol would need to understand 1 share = n addresses.  This change is latent so could happen at any time.

Don't forget the block coinbase micro payments that p2pool represents.
The block-chain bloat, if everyone was using p2pool, would be enormous.
Again, the little guy.
Standard pools resolve that well.

Standard pools do serve a purpose (they can also provide alternative payment methods).  Standard pools with a p2pool backend and transparent accounting could allow miners to verify that their work isn't being diverted for malicious purposes.  There are alternative methods to accomplish this but other than about the 4 or 5 top pools most pools would benefit from the reduced variance of p2pool as a backend which makes smaller independent "conventional" pools more viable.

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[legolouman]

Hi all, I'm finalizing info for payment. If anyone was not paid, and is not on the list, let me know.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66387.0

[DeathAndTaxes]

@ Maged and DandT,

I think in the long run it would be nice to have an extra p2p system because there are weaknesses in the p2pool. One known is that the payments could potentially not be sent out to the miners. If that was hijacked p2pool dies...

What?  There is nothing to hijack and there is no way to avoid payments.  Payments are part of the coinbase of the block and made directly to each miner.  At all times all miners in p2pool are hashing a block header based on this payment list which is updated in realtime.  Anyone hashing something different will have their shares rejected by p2pool.

You can't avoid getting a payment for valid shares at the time a block is found and nobody could prevent them from going out.

For example if a block was found right now the payments would be:
http://p2pool.info/ (click on current payouts)

Here is a recent block
http://blockchain.info/block-index/185171/0000000000000b35c36cf56dc586df8f3756a566c0258b5190534492adece9bb

Notice the coinbase.  It has payment directly to every miner based on the # of shares they submitted in the prior 24 hours.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I could have been misinformed but I thought there was the potential that someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out. I read that somewhere however it could have been FUD. I will try to find more information about it.

It is FUD.  Unlike a conventional pool where coinbase has the pool's reward address and thus generated coins go there to be divided up among miners in p2pool the coinbase has the reward split.  If you have 10% of p2pool hashing power then (subject to variance) you will have submitted 10% of shares in last 24 hours thus have 10% of shares in the share chain thus whatever miner finds the block will have 5 BTC reward (10% of block) going directly to your payment address.

[terrytibbs]

I could have been misinformed but I thought there was the potential that someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out. I read that somewhere however it could have been FUD. I will try to find more information about it.

It is FUD.  Unlike a conventional pool where coinbase has the pool's reward address and thus generated coins go there to be divided up among miners in p2pool the coinbase has the reward split.  If you have 10% of p2pool hashing power then (subject to variance) you will have submitted 10% of shares in last 24 hours thus have 10% of shares in the share chain thus whatever miner finds the block will have 5 BTC reward (10% of block) going directly to your payment address.

Oh, I think it was the miner who solved the block could have just kept the info making it so no one got the payment. Sorry, I was a bit off on that. My mistake.

This is true. D&T is incorrect.

[kano]

@ Maged and DandT,

I think in the long run it would be nice to have an extra p2p system because there are weaknesses in the p2pool. One known is that the payments could potentially not be sent out to the miners. If that was hijacked p2pool dies...

Also there might be weaknesses that are unknown. I do not think we need a second p2p option right away but I would like to have one ready because p2p will only make us stronger.

p2pool is great and I love it, just think in 3 or 4 years there will be at least 3 p2p options. I might be wrong, time will tell.

I will firstly correct what I guess people might think I have clearly shown as my ideals on the P2Pool issue

No I do not think the P2Pool concept is bad.

The concept is very good and definitely is in line with the ideal of a distributed transaction system.

It has problems and they will hopefully be overcome ...

However, it is missing some VERY important things that Bitcoin itself obviously has.
Design, technical documentation ... and understanding.

When I first heard about p2pool as an actual pool worth considering
(no doubt I had heard of it before that but had dismissed it due to not knowing anything about it)
I asked forrestv about documentation and some issues I thought up with it straight away.

His answers were far from satisfactory and the web site documentation at that stage was below beginner level in technical content.
So I decided I'd need to read the code to get anywhere near to being happy with using it ...
To get a technical understanding of how P2Pool works at the moment seems to be to read reams of regularly changing python code.
... I've still not done that ... too much effort ...

My issue is simple, you can't hack something onto Bitcoin and expect people to be happy with it without providing some good technical details about how the important parts of it work.

Thus when I see the few zealots calling all pools bad and that everyone must move to P2Pool since it is safer and better ... I but laugh at their ignorance ... their ignorance being how little they know about the technical details of P2Pool itself (which I certainly do not know a lot about either)
P2Pool is definitely not up to the 'Sotoshi' standard for Bitcoin and definitely needs to be there well before it becomes any sort of standard for Bitcoin mining.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I could have been misinformed but I thought there was the potential that someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out. I read that somewhere however it could have been FUD. I will try to find more information about it.

It is FUD.  Unlike a conventional pool where coinbase has the pool's reward address and thus generated coins go there to be divided up among miners in p2pool the coinbase has the reward split.  If you have 10% of p2pool hashing power then (subject to variance) you will have submitted 10% of shares in last 24 hours thus have 10% of shares in the share chain thus whatever miner finds the block will have 5 BTC reward (10% of block) going directly to your payment address.

Oh, I think it was the miner who solved the block could have just kept the info making it so no one got the payment. Sorry, I was a bit off on that. My mistake.

Which is no different than any other pool.  p2pool give a finders bonus/fee so the finder would be reducing their own income and giving up finders fee. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

I could have been misinformed but I thought there was the potential that someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out. I read that somewhere however it could have been FUD. I will try to find more information about it.

It is FUD.  Unlike a conventional pool where coinbase has the pool's reward address and thus generated coins go there to be divided up among miners in p2pool the coinbase has the reward split.  If you have 10% of p2pool hashing power then (subject to variance) you will have submitted 10% of shares in last 24 hours thus have 10% of shares in the share chain thus whatever miner finds the block will have 5 BTC reward (10% of block) going directly to your payment address.

Oh, I think it was the miner who solved the block could have just kept the info making it so no one got the payment. Sorry, I was a bit off on that. My mistake.

This is true AND D&T is correct.

FTFY

He stated someone could hijack payments.  That is impossible.

Sure any miner on any pool (including p2pool) can withhold a block.  p2pool is no different than Deepbit in this respect.  p2pool does give a bonus to the miner who solves the block so a miner would be losing his fair share plus finder fee by withholding the block.

[terrytibbs]

This is true AND D&T is correct.

FTFY

He stated someone could hijack payments.  That is impossible.

Sure any miner on any pool (including p2pool) can withhold a block.  p2pool is no different than Deepbit in this respect.  p2pool does give a bonus to the miner who solves the block so a miner would be losing his fair share plus finder fee by withholding the block.

Really, D&T? Hijack payments = "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out"?

[DeathAndTaxes]

This is true AND D&T is correct.

FTFY

He stated someone could hijack payments.  That is impossible.

Sure any miner on any pool (including p2pool) can withhold a block.  p2pool is no different than Deepbit in this respect.  p2pool does give a bonus to the miner who solves the block so a miner would be losing his fair share plus finder fee by withholding the block.

Really, D&T? Hijack payments = "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out"?

Hijack implies the attacker gains something.  In this case the attacker loses just as much as everyone else in the pool (actually more because attacker also loses block finder reward).    Even in a block witholding the attacker can only withold his blocks.  He can't disrupt share-chain, or prevent other blocks from being sent to the network.  The share chain will remain valid and everyone will be paid on the next block.  p2pool now has >270GH/s.  Attacker would need 2.7 GH/s to reduce payment by 1%. 

Once again exactly like every single pool since pooled mining began.  pps pools are far more vulnerable to share witholding due to the fact that attacker can attack for free.

[terrytibbs]

This is true AND D&T is correct.

FTFY

He stated someone could hijack payments.  That is impossible.

Sure any miner on any pool (including p2pool) can withhold a block.  p2pool is no different than Deepbit in this respect.  p2pool does give a bonus to the miner who solves the block so a miner would be losing his fair share plus finder fee by withholding the block.

Really, D&T? Hijack payments = "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out"?

Hijack implies the attacker gains something.  In this case the attacker loses just as much as everyone else in the pool (actually more because attacker also loses block finder reward).    Even in a block witholding the attacker can only withold his blocks.  He can't disrupt share-chain, or prevent other blocks from being sent to the network.  The share chain will remain valid and everyone will be paid on the next block.  p2pool now has >270GH/s.  Attacker would need 2.7 GH/s to reduce payment by 1%. 

Once again exactly like every single pool since pooled mining began.  pps pools are far more vulnerable to share witholding due to the fact that attacker can attack for free.

I completely agree. You're the one who used the phrase "hijack". Goat said "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out."

[DeathAndTaxes]

This is true AND D&T is correct.

FTFY

He stated someone could hijack payments.  That is impossible.

Sure any miner on any pool (including p2pool) can withhold a block.  p2pool is no different than Deepbit in this respect.  p2pool does give a bonus to the miner who solves the block so a miner would be losing his fair share plus finder fee by withholding the block.

Really, D&T? Hijack payments = "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out"?

Hijack implies the attacker gains something.  In this case the attacker loses just as much as everyone else in the pool (actually more because attacker also loses block finder reward).    Even in a block witholding the attacker can only withold his blocks.  He can't disrupt share-chain, or prevent other blocks from being sent to the network.  The share chain will remain valid and everyone will be paid on the next block.  p2pool now has >270GH/s.  Attacker would need 2.7 GH/s to reduce payment by 1%. 

Once again exactly like every single pool since pooled mining began.  pps pools are far more vulnerable to share witholding due to the fact that attacker can attack for free.

I completely agree. You're the one who used the phrase "hijack". Goat said "someone had the ability to make it so the BTC was not paid out."

I stand humbled. 

Maybe I was overzealous.

To avoid any FUD:
a) a miner can withhold a block solving share in p2pool.
b) this will reduce all miner's average reward (including attacker) by the % of hash power the "bad miner" has relative to p2pool.
c) this same vulnerability ("share withholding attack") exists and has existed in every single pool since the dawn of pooled mining.

[Raize]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't intend for this thread to turn into a P2Pool evangelism thread. I just prefer P2Pool, and I think it is easy enough to set up that even newbies can do it. Especially with CGMiner being what it is, you can set a backup to another pool. There's really no reason to mine on scam pools, especially with non-established pool operators. I spent about $200 to make this point, so I want to reiterate that it is about improving Bitcoin mining strategy and use in general, not about trying to force P2Pool on people, sorry if it came off that way.

The only other thing I will say is "ditto what Death and Taxes said on this point specifically:

c) this same vulnerability ("share withholding attack") exists and has existed in every single pool since the dawn of pooled mining.

It *is* a reason not to mine on P2Pool, but when you consider that this same problem has pretty much existed since the start of pooled mining, you'll realize there's not many ways in the immediate future that this can be taken advantage of.

[martychubbs]

he never paid, did he?  Wow...

[someone703]

Think it was stated by a mod a few days ago that he said he wasn't intending to pay.

Someone else stepped forward on his behalf (sort of) and offered a chunk of BTC to cover it.

[legolouman]

he never paid, did he?  Wow...

Marty, I need your address if you want me to send your money.

Thanks.

[Raize]

Yeah, guys, please contact legolouman for your payment.

If A1Bitcoin wants to remove his scammer tag he could do so by resolving matters with me.

[martychubbs]

Thanks everyone, getting paid was a blessing and we have helped BTC's image...awesome mining community... with one less jerk!

Thanks Rz, Llm, B, M and all the rest!  Sorry for promoting the pool and the pushing the api cfg's...  

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —GWB

p2p FTW!

[Raize]

UPDATE: This situation has been resolved and A1BitcoinPool has paid in full:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66387.msg891378#msg891378