Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9

[DeathAndTaxes]

If this miner got to the point where they are mining 51% of the network and had supernodes specifically designed to capture transactions, could they start changing those transactions into 1% spend and 99% fees and then only accept transactions where the fee was higher than the sent coin?

Miners can't change transactions.  Not with 1 % of the network, not with 100%.  Also fees can never be higher than the "sent coin" = input.  Fees are simply the difference between input and output.

I am not sure what you are asking.

[1713933462]

1713933462

[1713933462]

1713933462

[Joric]

Some charting skills. This is getting really weird.

[finway]

This sucks.

[cunicula]

Some charting skills. This is getting really weird.

hmm... so it is growing. Wonder if they plan to let other people keep mining.

[nibor]

$5000 a day business! Worth creating a botnet for ($1.8million a year!).

Bet they are monitoring the forum and already writing the code to "hide" better. i.e. include some transactions and vary the ip address a bit.

[jjiimm_64]

As long as the 'proof of work' has not been bypassed, I do not think this is a big deal.

again, as long as the protocol held!!

[muyuu]

I for one welcome our new Spanish overlords.

[finway]

$5000 a day business! Worth creating a botnet for ($1.8million a year!).

Bet they are monitoring the forum and already writing the code to "hide" better. i.e. include some transactions and vary the ip address a bit.

If that happens, it will be good.

[cunicula]

As long as the 'proof of work' has not been bypassed, I do not think this is a big deal.

again, as long as the protocol held!!

Not a big deal if you are using the system to make send payments or speculate. However, if you are currently mining, it is a big deal.  It is a matter of time before this guy/group or someone like this guy/group chooses to exclude blocks found by other miners.  All they need is 51%. The days of profitable, independent mining are numbered.

I hope these people are also ASIC manufacturers because that would be really funny.

1) Sell a bunch of expensive mining hardware to lone miners to recoup development costs.
2) Maintain a dominant residual share of this hardware.
3) Use the dominant share to shut out all the suckers who purchased mining equipment from you.
4) You have all newly mined coins and revenue from equipment sales. Your customers have worthless hardware.

[coblee]

Not a big deal if you are using the system to make send payments or speculate. However, if you are currently mining, it is a big deal.  It is a matter of time before this guy/group or someone like this guy/group chooses to exclude blocks found by other miners.  All they need is 51%. The days of profitable, independent mining are numbered.

I hope these people are also ASIC manufacturers because that would be really funny.

1) Sell a bunch of expensive mining hardware to lone miners to recoup development costs.
2) Maintain a dominant residual share of this hardware.
3) Use the dominant share to shut out all the suckers who purchased mining equipment from you.
4) You have all newly mined coins and revenue from equipment sales. Your customers have worthless hardware.

If they invested a lot of money into getting such a big hashrate, it would be extremely stupid of them to perform this kind of 51% attack. Sure they will get all the mined coins, but bitcoin prices will plummet when this kind of attack becomes successful. Because then that means one entity has total control of the coin. If they indeed manage to get 51% of the network, it would be far more profitable for them to mine normally and stay hidden and mine the majority of the coins.

[cunicula]

Why would value plummet, if the practical usefulness of the txn medium for users remains unaffected? Will the silk road users refuse to buy drugs using coins controlled by a 51%? Should speculators anticipate this mass protest and sell? Is there an economic logic behind this, or is it just the conventional wisdom?

[coblee]

Why would value plummet, if the practical usefulness of the txn medium for users remains unaffected? Will the silk road users refuse to buy drugs using coins controlled by a 51%? Should speculators anticipate this mass protest and sell? Is there an economic logic behind this, or is it just the conventional wisdom?

Because this miner can choose to not process your transactions. So if you get paid in bitcoins, you may not be able to spend them! The decentralized appeal of bitcoin will be destroyed if one entity can control what/when transactions can go into blocks. They are currently already not including any transactions into their blocks.

[BlackPrapor]

Not a big deal if you are using the system to make send payments or speculate. However, if you are currently mining, it is a big deal.  It is a matter of time before this guy/group or someone like this guy/group chooses to exclude blocks found by other miners.  All they need is 51%. The days of profitable, independent mining are numbered.

I hope these people are also ASIC manufacturers because that would be really funny.

1) Sell a bunch of expensive mining hardware to lone miners to recoup development costs.
2) Maintain a dominant residual share of this hardware.
3) Use the dominant share to shut out all the suckers who purchased mining equipment from you.
4) You have all newly mined coins and revenue from equipment sales. Your customers have worthless hardware.

If it's for profit, then it's not feasible to kill the system, that brings you that profit. If it's a gov contract to kill bitcoin, then that's the aim - get 51%. Wanna bet which one it is? 

[cunicula]

Why would value plummet, if the practical usefulness of the txn medium for users remains unaffected? Will the silk road users refuse to buy drugs using coins controlled by a 51%? Should speculators anticipate this mass protest and sell? Is there an economic logic behind this, or is it just the conventional wisdom?

Because this miner can choose to not process your transactions. So if you get paid in bitcoins, you may not be able to spend them! The decentralized appeal of bitcoin will be destroyed if one entity can control what/when transactions can go into blocks. They are currently already not including any transactions into their blocks.

They don't have a strong incentive to perform a socially beneficial functions right now because they are free-riding. Once they acquire monopoly, their incentives will improve dramatically and I strongly expect that they will include all txns in blocks. I also think double-spend attempts are extremely unlikely.

[jetmine]

Why would anyone push out 0 tx transactions without malicious intent?

One answer can be found this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66514.msg775108#msg775108

It's defense, not attack.  And it will certainly not continue forever.  Once the vulnerability can be fixed, it will stop.

[Joric]

Another chart (I used modified http://github.com/joric/pyblockchain, I'll update it soon).

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why would anyone push out 0 tx transactions without malicious intent?

One answer can be found this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66514.msg775108#msg775108

It's defense, not attack.  And it will certainly not continue forever.  Once the vulnerability can be fixed, it will stop.

Quite the spin.  One can oppose BIP16 and still include transactions.  Interesting you oppose BIP16 and thus see everything (even something as stupid as 1 tx blocks) as opposition.

[jetmine]

Quite the spin.  One can oppose BIP16 and still include transactions.  Interesting you oppose BIP16 and thus see everything (even something as stupid as 1 tx blocks) as opposition.

One cannot.  Read the last paragraph of this post:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60950.msg711055#msg711055

It is not possible to vote against BIP16 without already having implemented it.  This might work for those people who oppose it for "political" reasons.  But it's a catch-22 for those who oppose it precisely BECAUSE they can't update (easily).

Probably piuk has logs of 88.6.216.9 and can shed light on the client version.

The only remedy is to either update or stop processing transactions.  In the long run the update will happen but things take time.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Your link doesn't support anything you just said.

Gavin simply advised not to "vote" in favor of p2sh unless you are p2sh capable.  There is no issue with a solo miner processing transactions.  If running old non p2sh capable bitcoin they will see p2sh transactions as invalid.

If the mystery solo miner was including all transactions EXCEPT p2sh ones it would have some validity.  There is absolutely no reason to exclude all transactions to "stop" p2sh support.  Eligus for example doesn't support p2sh and processes transactions in every block.   Your full of crap jetmine.  Stop reaching for conclusions that aren't there.

On edit:  looks like the mystery miner supports p2sh.

coinbase: 040c350b1a028d06062f503253482f
decoded: 5�/P2SH/

http://blockchain.info/tx-index/3325470/26df9b84d9346393cbe4ba00f907aacfe7ff2f832049d6ebd66a515d5ac6a709

It is causing confusion because it looks like Deepbit supports p2sh but it is only because "mystery" is only broadcasting blocks to other pools and thus those pools are relaying them to blockchain.info.  So "mystery" blocks appear to blockchain.info as coming from Deepbit and other pools.

On edit edit: maybe not.  Other miners may be relaying through deepbit. Hard to say if the p2sh blocks shown "from" Deepbit are from mystery or another miner.

[bitclown]

Looks like the magical mystery miner is now connected only to other miners, thus appearing as Eligius and Deepbit on Blockchain.info.