Official announcement from Ghash.IO

[mantaxer]

Official announcement from Ghash.IO

Rapid growth of GHash.IO mining pool, seen over the past few months, has been driven by our determination to offer innovative solutions within the Bitcoin ecosystem combined with significant investment in resource.

Full:  http://www.pressat.co.uk/releases/ghashio-is-open-for-discussion-93ee9eeb66b80e94bbe31705d451780e/

[bryant.coleman]

This is very convincing for me:

We never have and never will participate in any 51% attack or double spend against Bitcoin. Still, we are against temporary solutions, which could repel a 51% threat.

Leave them alone. They are the biggest mining pool out there, and they have played their part in supporting Bitcoin (through relaying transactions). No need for any bad blood.

[dserrano5]

This is very convincing for me:

We never have and never will participate in any 51% attack or double spend against Bitcoin. Still, we are against temporary solutions, which could repel a 51% threat.

You ironic, right? That's only words.

[Bit_Happy]

Even if we can trust them, we are not supposed to have to make that choice.
The issue is not resolved...

[Scott J]

Even if we can trust them, we are not supposed to have to make that choice.
The issue is not resolved...

Totally agreed - crypto is great because it is trustless.

We do not want to have to trust any third party.

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

This is very convincing for me:

We never have and never will participate in any 51% attack or double spend against Bitcoin. Still, we are against temporary solutions, which could repel a 51% threat.

You ironic, right? That's only words.

Well a temporary solution would be just that, temporary. It would be simply kicking the problem down the road to be dealt with later.

Any solution would likely hurt them in some way, regardless if it is temporary or a long term solution and they likely do not wish to pay for multiple temporary "solutions"

[franky1]

Ghash is just a business. even with over 51% of hash, they are showing no intent to change code to perform any attack. which is good. but if anything protocol wise that needs to change i am certain that a pool owner would not shoot themselves in the foot by implementing themselves.

that includes mischievous code, or code to dilute their customer base, and as such any code to keep the customer base below 51% of any business should be done at the bitcoin-core level and not at the business level.

due to the fact that if GHASH implemented a customer dilution practice, and discus/eligius didnt. it would be unfair on GHASH and would just cause another 51% drama event with a different pool. thus it would have to be an 'all or nothing rule' covering all pools

... so would you want bitcoin-core to have a rule that stops any IP from having more then 10% of network hash, thus giving all pools a fair chance/slice of the pie. or to blame individual pools for being greedy by not turning customers away, or to continue as we are and every few months cry like babies when different pools reach 51% worrying about if they will shoot themselves in the foot.

in short if you dont want another 51% drama event, speak to the bitcoin-core dev team, as there is no point pointing fingers at the pools

[QuestionAuthority]

This is very convincing for me:

We never have and never will participate in any 51% attack or double spend against Bitcoin. Still, we are against temporary solutions, which could repel a 51% threat.

Leave them alone. They are the biggest mining pool out there, and they have played their part in supporting Bitcoin (through relaying transactions). No need for any bad blood.

Come on dude, get serious. Even a 5 year old kid understands "stranger danger".

[galbros]

I hope they are being sincere and honest.  However it appears they have attacked a bitcoin casino in the past:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0

So they are not Snow White.

[waldox]

i say assume the worst
if they are not creating havoc yet its because the incentive is not big enought for them to do it
but once the incentive is big enough there to do it (ie govt pays them 1 billion (usd) to fuck around with bitcoin or get imprisoned) then they may do it
for the govt 1 billion (usd) is like 1 good hard days worth of printing, or a secretary entering 1 with a couple zeros behind it (10 seconds of work)

[cle]

everyone who mines there already knows this or they wouldn't be mining there.

I'm over at Eligius but have considered switching to Ghash...

[beetcoin]

This is very convincing for me:

We never have and never will participate in any 51% attack or double spend against Bitcoin. Still, we are against temporary solutions, which could repel a 51% threat.

Leave them alone. They are the biggest mining pool out there, and they have played their part in supporting Bitcoin (through relaying transactions). No need for any bad blood.

not sure if you are being sarcastic or whether you are serious, but..

[samurai1200]

Having to trust GHash is completely beyond the point. What if they were perfectly altruistic, but someone held a gun to the operators' heads IRL while performing an attack? Removing the need for trust has the added benefit of removing responsibility to protect against wrong-doers.

[franky1]

Having to trust GHash is completely beyond the point. What if they were perfectly altruistic, but someone held a gun to the operators' heads IRL while performing an attack? Removing the need for trust has the added benefit of removing responsibility to protect against wrong-doers.

good point its the same as the scenario of a pool that had 30% and another pool having 21%. some well organised guy can easily arrange to raid/bribe the 2 pools and get them to implement the same code. meaning a total of 51% of miners would be relaying new confirmed blocks that have nasty rules added.

the only solution would be a 10% cap that is put into the main protocol, that way pool owners have no choice, but to only get a 10% customer base/chance of solving a block and would require 6 pools to be collaborating/co-erst into doing nasty mining rule changes

[ShakyhandsBTCer]

Having to trust GHash is completely beyond the point. What if they were perfectly altruistic, but someone held a gun to the operators' heads IRL while performing an attack? Removing the need for trust has the added benefit of removing responsibility to protect against wrong-doers.

good point its the same as the scenario of a pool that had 30% and another pool having 21%. some well organised guy can easily arrange to raid/bribe the 2 pools and get them to implement the same code. meaning a total of 51% of miners would be relaying new confirmed blocks that have nasty rules added.

the only solution would be a 10% cap that is put into the main protocol, that way pool owners have no choice, but to only get a 10% customer base/chance of solving a block and would require 6 pools to be collaborating/co-erst into doing nasty mining rule changes

How would you enforce such a cap? Couldn't a pool operator simply broadcast found blocks to different nodes and/or have the found coins sent to different BTC addresses when blocks are found?

[Peter R]

What GHash.IO wrote and posted to Reddit was accurate: any solution that hinders innovation or punishes success is not a real solution.  Their proposal to start an open dialog was appropriate.  

The most up-voted comment on Reddit was luke-jr's statement:

Inter-pool discussions including addressing decentralisation of mining as an industry have been ongoing since 2012 on both mailing lists and IRC. GHash.io is the only major pool that has not been involved in these to date. It's ironic they propose "starting" what everyone else has been doing for years.

Diplomacy will become increasingly important as the value of the network grows.  It doesn't matter whether talks were going on before this time or not.  The point is that they wants to start talks now.  But this is also what the community wants so just take them up on their offer in a respectful way:

"As a member of the bitcoin mining community, I was pleased to learn of GHash.IO's proposal to hold a ‘round table’ meeting of the key players in the mining industry.  Through open dialogue and our common interest in protecting the network, we're confident that real progress towards solutions that foster innovation while promoting decentralization can be made."

[toknormal]

I don't think Bitcoin should pander to monopolists.

The 51% threat MUST remain in place as an important cornerstone of it's decentralised nature. GHash.io need to realise that if they want to grow then they picked the wrong industry sector.

What needs to be done here is exactly NOTHING.

This whole scenario needs to be allowed to play itself out so that mining pools naturally start to dissipate due to lack of incentive caused by the glass ceiling on growth. No technical modification is needed to address the 51% problem because the solution is already built into the Bitcoin economy and Peter Todd has already demonstrated that.

Again, GHash.io need to realise that this is not a sector that businesses can "grow" past a certain size because once they approach the 51% mining monopoly, the Bitcoin economy will start to devalue in its entirety causing them to be stuck in a catch 22 situation.

People don't seem to have thought this through. What would a technical solution do ?

[1] - it would remove the economic inhibitor to mining pool growth

[2] - give the green light to mining pools that wanted to grow past the 51% level

How is this possibly in the interests of Bitcoin users ? The answer is it isn't. It's purely in the interests of mining pool businesses.

Leave things exactly as they are.

It will be a problem for a while and then it will never return again as pools realise that this is an industry sector with anti-monopoly mechanisms already built in and their ambitions for growth won't be pandered to.

I for one am more than prepared to allow the price to sink for a while to allow this these mechanisms to play themselves out.

[Lethn]

Am I the only one who thinks we should actually try a 51% attack on Bitcoin and see if it actually works? This will finally dispel the stupid myth or find a fix for it if it turns out to be real, it's not a good idea to leave a big problem unchecked. To be frank though, a lot of this reminds me of the whole black hole scare where people who knew nothing about science were running around in a panic about what some idiot teacher in a high school came up with and of course in the end, nothing happened.

[beetcoin]

you know, when i have to explain what bitcoin is to someone, i'm not going to say it's decentralized.. because that's the wrong description. it just shifts the balance from the bureaucratic federal reserve to.. mining pools. there's still someone somewhere with the ability and power to call the shots or affect the direction of bitcoin.

Am I the only one who thinks we should actually try a 51% attack on Bitcoin and see if it actually works? This will finally dispel the stupid myth or find a fix for it if it turns out to be real, it's not a good idea to leave a big problem unchecked. To be frank though, a lot of this reminds me of the whole black hole scare where people who knew nothing about science were running around in a panic about what some idiot teacher in a high school came up with and of course in the end, nothing happened.

people would be up in arms if it worked.. bitcoin would crash big time, imo. when whales find out about it, at least, they'll probably considering dumping their coins.

[DeboraMeeks]

Am I the only one who thinks we should actually try a 51% attack on Bitcoin and see if it actually works? This will finally dispel the stupid myth or find a fix for it if it turns out to be real, it's not a good idea to leave a big problem unchecked. To be frank though, a lot of this reminds me of the whole black hole scare where people who knew nothing about science were running around in a panic about what some idiot teacher in a high school came up with and of course in the end, nothing happened.

Youre not alone on that one Lethn. I want someone to prove if it can be done once and FOR ALL.
Deb