Is Bitcoin not decentralized anymore?

[ljudotina]

I guess the more power that is out there the stronger the network becomes, but still...

That is not case i'm afraid.

As we could all witnessed few days ago, network is not safer with ASIC's than it was before them. If ASIC's were never made, we would have 1000x more active miners than we have now.
It would be same investment (or maybe even bigger) for someone to produce enough GPU's to attack that network as it is now (to produce enough ASIC's to attack network).

And history has shown, that, to attack network, you don't need to build 1 single chip (gpu or ASIC). All you need is high quality pool that makes money out of that network anyway, and you can control network like it's yours. Ain't that just silly situation?

Makes you head spin when you think about it.

"How to attack Bitcoin network" DIY guide:
1) Create mining pool
2) Remove mining fee's, but offer secondary product related to mining on which you will make insane amount of money
3) Keep making money and attracting miners
4) Once you have enough hash power, execute attack

That way you 1) Make shitload of money and 2) Attack BTC network
And naive ppl are counting how much $$$ attacker would have to spend on "new hardware".  

[opticalcarrier]

The question should be:  is bitcoin decentralized enough?  The fact is when a new block is mined, that miner or pool has  limited control over what transactions get included in that block and subsequent blocks they mine.  Once another miner or pool mines another block, then the previous miner no longer has that limited control.  Also, once a block is mined, it is up to the rest of the network to agree to that broadcast block as the longest chain.  If other nodes on the network find a major problem with a block, then they will likely not accept that as the longest chain.  According to this site:  https://getaddr.bitnodes.io, bitcoin has 7859 nodes in 99 countries.  Nearly all have to agree on the longest chain.  I would call that decentralized enough. 

tldr; Each new block mined is subject to limited attack by the miner who mined it and subsequent blocks that same miner is able to mine.  However, with 7859 nodes in 99 countries, most of whom have to agree on the longest chain, bitcoin is decentralized enough.

just because its distributed doesnt mean that it is also decentralized.  I still cant figure out what took GH so long to back things off.  Why did they not start backing down once they reached 45%

[phillipsjk]

This is a hard fork that is required.

What happens next time we get 51% ?
Move your miners again?

Yes! that is exactly what hashers (distinct from miners) should do. My advice is simple: if a pool has more than 30% of the network hash-power, point your hashers at a different one.

If you get tired of switching pools, you can join P2Pool (or something like it): it is a decentralized pool.

If a hard-fork happens, I will have to re-evaluate my interest in Bitcoin. A pool (Deepbit) controlled more than half the hash-power before. No hard-forks were used to correct that: people simply moved away from the pool. I fail to understand why that is not a viable option every time a pool gets too large.

[S4VV4S]

This is a hard fork that is required.

What happens next time we get 51% ?
Move your miners again?

Yes! that is exactly what hashers (distinct from miners) should do. My advice is simple: if a pool has more than 30% of the network hash-power, point your hashers at a different one.

If you get tired of switching pools, you can join P2Pool (or something like it): it is a decentralized pool.

If a hard-fork happens, I will have to re-evaluate my interest in Bitcoin. A pool (Deepbit) controlled more than half the hash-power before. No hard-forks were used to correct that: people simply moved away from the pool. I fail to understand why that is not a viable option every time a pool gets too large.

Because BTC will never become mainstream if this weakness remains.
And you cannot expect miners to keep an eye and keep changing pools instead of just fixing the problem once and for all.
And to be honest I do not want to lose faith on  BTC.
I am working on a couple of projects regarding BTC and it makes me wonder if my time and investment is safe.
The way things are (with all the bad news) it's kind of scary.

PS: Why would you have to re-evaluate if a hard fork was made as to ensure that the network is safe?

[phelix]

Y U no use https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate

[toknormal]

Because BTC will never become mainstream if this weakness remains.
And you cannot expect miners to keep an eye and keep changing pools instead of just fixing the problem once and for all.

It's not a weakness, it's a strength.

All you people calling for a hard fork don't realise you're asking for a disaster.

Right now, no mining pool can take their mining power past 50% because it will break their business model. That's why GHash are calling for this - so that they can take their "monopoly" past 50% without devaluing the bit coin economy.

We need to let this scenario play itself out and NOT pander to mining monopolists. Over time, mining businesses will start to naturally decentralise through their inability to grow limitlessly.

On the other hand, if we implement a hard fork, the happiest of all concerned will be the pools who will now safely be able to grow their monopoly to 75% or even 90% without the prospect of an inhibitory devaluation at 50.

That's what people are asking for here with this hard fork nonsense - 90% mining monopolies. That prospect is far more daunting that a pool hitting 50% where the worst they can do is double spend the next block the odd time.

[S4VV4S]

Because BTC will never become mainstream if this weakness remains.
And you cannot expect miners to keep an eye and keep changing pools instead of just fixing the problem once and for all.

It's not a weakness, it's a strength.

All you people calling for a hard fork don't realise you're asking for a disaster.

Right now, no mining pool can take their mining power past 50% because it will break their business model. That's why GHash are calling for this - so that they can take their "monopoly" past 50% without devaluing the bit coin economy.

We need to let this scenario play itself out and NOT pander to mining monopolists. Over time, mining businesses will start to naturally decentralise through their inability to grow limitlessly.

On the other hand, if we implement a hard fork, the happiest of all concerned will be the pools who will now safely be able to grow their monopoly to 75% or even 90% without the prospect of an inhibitory devaluation at 50.

That's what people are asking for here with this hard fork nonsense - 90% mining monopolies. That prospect is far more daunting that a pool hitting 50% where the worst they can do is double spend the next block the odd time.

Erm, what?
The protocol needs to change as to allow NO-ONE to grow past 10-15% max.

That's what I want.

[toknormal]

Erm, what?
The protocol needs to change as to allow NO-ONE to grow past 10-15% max.

That's what I want.

LoL. How exactly do you expect them to do that ?

Through some system of centralised control ?

[Lauda]

Erm, what?
The protocol needs to change as to allow NO-ONE to grow past 10-15% max.

That's what I want.

LoL. How exactly do you expect them to do that ?

Through some system of centralised control ?

Disable pool mining altogether in some way, problem solved. Or https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/P2Pool only.

[ljudotina]

This is a hard fork that is required.

What happens next time we get 51% ?
Move your miners again?

Yes! that is exactly what hashers (distinct from miners) should do. My advice is simple: if a pool has more than 30% of the network hash-power, point your hashers at a different one.

If you get tired of switching pools, you can join P2Pool (or something like it): it is a decentralized pool.

If a hard-fork happens, I will have to re-evaluate my interest in Bitcoin. A pool (Deepbit) controlled more than half the hash-power before. No hard-forks were used to correct that: people simply moved away from the pool. I fail to understand why that is not a viable option every time a pool gets too large.

Because people in general, are greedy bastards. As we could see few days ago, ppl DID NOT move their miners away from pool that HAD 51%!! That pool had to move it's own hash power!! So relaying on "people" is as bad as it gets. Hard fork is needed very very much. "People" are really bad at making decisions that go against their own profit (moving to other pool for example where they will earn little bit less).

[S4VV4S]

Erm, what?
The protocol needs to change as to allow NO-ONE to grow past 10-15% max.

That's what I want.

LoL. How exactly do you expect them to do that ?

Through some system of centralised control ?

Nope, if the protocol was to be changed as to not allow a node to submit x number of blocks within x time, and all nodes agree to this, it would be a start.

Hashing power is measured by how many blocks are solved by one pool or miner at the day right?

If you can limit that then problem solved.

Innit?

[toknormal]

Innit?

Yer. Irriz.

[Velkro]

They are most likely rumors , nothing do to with the price no worry .

as above, not very smart people thinking about insane stupid solutions
thats sad

[gtraah]

Honestly, I don't care he's still mining there. He's a small fish, he admits that.

Yes its down to 41% but the fact is that not that his a small fish , its the fact that 1000 small fishes act the same way , then it is a problem and this is whats happening.

Every small fish keeps saying I am a small fish bla bla bla... Small fish + 1000 Small fishes = Alot of fucken fishes!

And I am surprised this was not seen in the original protocol, it was even said in early posts by satoshi that large organisations will be mining with powerful machines or something like this, how could someone as smart as Satoshi and CO not see this coming.

[S4VV4S]

Honestly, I don't care he's still mining there. He's a small fish, he admits that.

Yes its down to 41% but the fact is that not that his a small fish , its the fact that 1000 small fishes act the same way , then it is a problem and this is whats happening.

Every small fish keeps saying I am a small fish bla bla bla... Small fish + 1000 Small fishes = Alot of fucken fishes!

And I am surprised this was not seen in the original protocol, it was even said in early posts that large organisations will be mining, how couldn't someone as smart as Satoshi and CO see this coming.

I have made a suggestion here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=655572.0   
(and a couple of posts above yours)

[DannyHamilton]

Nope, if the protocol was to be changed as to not allow a node to submit x number of blocks within x time, and all nodes agree to this, it would be a start.

How are you going to determine how many blocks a node has submitted?

[S4VV4S]

Nope, if the protocol was to be changed as to not allow a node to submit x number of blocks within x time, and all nodes agree to this, it would be a start.

How are you going to determine how many blocks a node has submitted?

By assigning each node with a personal signature maybe.

I am not an expert on the matter.

I am just making a suggestion here.

[Yakamoto]

Ok let's have a calm discussion and make our own suggestions.

So, people want individual nodes, hard forks, or no pool being allowed past 15%.

On the nodes topic; I have no knowledge on that, so don't ask me.

On the fork topic; No. A hard fork is a last resort. You can't willy-billy fork the blockchain.

On the 15% topic; Turn it into 25% and I can kinda of see it happening. GHash and Cex.io should point SOME of their hardware at different pools. Not all, but some at least.

[DannyHamilton]

Nope, if the protocol was to be changed as to not allow a node to submit x number of blocks within x time, and all nodes agree to this, it would be a start.

How are you going to determine how many blocks a node has submitted?

By assigning each node with a personal signature maybe.

I am not an expert on the matter.

I am just making a suggestion here.

And who does this "assigning"?  Some sort of trusted authority?  Doesn't that just replace the miner that has 51% of the network hashing power with some other authority you need to trust?

[bitcoiner49er]

"DECENTRALIZE!!"

"GIVE US AN ALTERNATIVE TO FIAT!!"

"DON'T BE A LEMMING!!"

"THE POWER OF BITCOIN IS IN YOUR HANDS!!"

*mumble*mumble*mumble*

"Wait! You mean I have to practice what I preach?"

"But that means I'll earn 0.001% less bitcoin!!"

"Besides, someone ELSE will take care of it."

I've been with Slush since 2011.

Despite the fact that many tout the advantages and decentralization of bitcoin, we all crawl back to what benefits our self the most. Human nature. Even when you create a digital haven that could be free of such entrapment's.