Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9

[molecular]

Considering ngzhang had about 100 FPGAs in his room mining at about 380 gigahash, it is entirely possible someone is just mining with FPGAs on their own. We've said his name numerous times, but he's not Beetlejuice. We all know he has the early money and funding to do it and the technical expertise to make it work.

Why isn't he including transactions? Because he doesn't have to. This happened in Bitcoin's history once before.

It's ArtForz, folks. Move along.

"because he doesn't have to" is not a reason. He doesn't have to mine either, yet he does.

I'm not ruling him out, but I find it suspicious that there are no tx.

Someone else with the FPGA/ASIC power? More likely.

It could really be FPGA board testing, as was suggested. Maybe someone doing this stealthily without the higher-ups knowledge so he tries to keep a low profile network-wise or the testbed-hardware doesn't have the resources for full blockchain or is booted from a read-only usb stick or something...

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[ribuck]

The botnet operator is only defrauding those whose computers are controlled by the botnet. The botnet doesn't defraud Bitcoin by hashing blocks.

The botnet (if that's what it is) is not causing a significant problem for Bitcoin. And if it does cause a problem in the future, it's self-limiting due to the block reward change and the possibility for transaction fees.

There are many things that really are worth worrying about. This "botnet" is not one of them.

Finally, what would Satoshi do? Take a look at this post of his from 2008:
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09980.html

He's talking about blocks with double-spends, but he might equally-well have been talking about blocks with no transactions:

Even though everyone present may see the
shenanigans going on ... we can't have subfactions of nodes ... The CPU power
proof-of-work vote must have the final say.  The only way for everyone to stay
on the same page is to believe that the longest chain is always the valid one,
no matter what.

[zefir]

Not sure someone brought the speculation already up (thread got tl;dr), sorry if so.

While searching the forum for something else, I noticed in [1] that user 'asicminer' tried to raise funds for an ASIC mining card last year. Forum majority agreed that he is a scammer and he left claiming to have found some investor for an exclusive contract including non-disclosure agreement over 3 years.

Two things came to my mind: 1) BFL was heavily accused being a scam by forum majority until they delivered Singles (some minority still claims), and 2) asicminer brought the investor(s) up mid of 2011 which would perfectly match the time frame to deliver and ramp up a ASIC mining farm.

So, is it that implausible that he was not talking BS and the investor(s) have just started to happy-slap existing GPU miners?


[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=29696.msg395632#msg395632

[wachtwoord]

True, we can change the definition of 'valid' though

[P4man]

So, is it that implausible that he was not talking BS and the investor(s) have just started to happy-slap existing GPU miners?

Yes. I only read a few posts in that thread, thats a 100% scam. Developing a full custom asic costs millions of dollars. Anyone begging on this forum to raise that kind of cash is a scammer, period.

That said, its not entirely implausible someone else did produce an asic, like largecoin. But Im fairly confident our MM is just a botnet.

[Raize]

Sorry, I've been known to both fat-finger and Bitcointalk while drunk.

I meant 38 gigahash, it's still a huge amount by just one person reselling FPGAs. And keep in mind he had two sets of over 100 each and at one point linked some of us (via email) to his actual sales stats on accident (it was over 400 Icarus boards on just batch 3).

Evidence please?

We all know Artforz has, in the past, mined without including transactions and was kind enough -- when he was GPU mining over 50% of the blocks for a short while -- to include them again once he figured out how to. Also, he had between 50-100 gigahash at his immediate disposal when he was active in the alt currencies forum, and all-the-while he was still mining BTC while crushing alt-currencies (though luke-jr proved he was better at it). Art's been absent, and probably very busy if this is actually him. No, I don't have hard evidence, but he's been gone for months at a time before (last summer through the fall, for example, and always comes back with larger and larger gigahash at his disposal).

But should we even care? No!

You guys really are freaking out about nothing. The Chinese New Year ended and the FPGA manufacturers all shipped out their units, then someone comes online with about 20% of the network and after a difficulty increase only has around 15%. Here soon with the scores of FPGAs going online and possible sASIC devices being sent, it really is a wonder that we haven't seen these kinds of increases sooner, especially after it bounced off the $2 mark. Someone clearly liquidated any remaining GPUs and struck a deal with a large financier to mine with FPGA or custom ASIC.

I've mentioned several times that a few million spent to own 20-40% of the Bitcoin network is chump change for a small country or medium sized bank. Hell, the CIA venture capital fund could own 15% of the Bitcoin network in a lead time of less than 6 months and probably has the qualified staff either within their own walls or in the NSA to operate this. And you think an intelligence organization that has knowingly engaged in illegal markets in the past is just going to sit and overlook an opportunity to own part of the biggest electronic black market?

I guess my point is that this seems to be a pretty small issue and diminishing. Even assuming it was the world's largest botnet, it's only going to be profitable a short while longer. I'd recommend ignoring this, especially after the next two difficulty increases. If a miner ever gets to the point where they have 50%, the entire Bitcoin network becomes untrustworthy to actually use, so the price will plummet and the whole thing will be worthless to use, meaning the miner will have wasted their time. Whoever it is has no incentive to tell us who they are, nor reach 50%, they'll mine at pools to hide that they have so much computing power so as to preserve the price of their coin.

TLDR;Everything's going to be alright.

[shad]

so if this is e new miner, why isn't there a increase of the total network has speed?
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is.  What chart are you looking at?  Maybe your monitor is upside down?

[silverbox]

There is.  What chart are you looking at?  Maybe your monitor is upside down?

That happens to me all the damn time!!! 

http://techpaul.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/image-on-my-screen-is-upside-down-help/

[bulanula]

I am pretty sure it is either an ASIC miner or ArtForz. No evidence but I think that is what is happening.

This is no botnet. Maybe an institution or government ?

Anyway, watching because I don't like how this crap looks. No TX in blocks = something fishy is going on here.

What if this dude gets above 51% ? The supposedly 40 million value of BTC will become worthless all of a sudden as people realise this system is flawed ?

Funny that with about 10 million you can compromise a system that is supposedly worth 40 million now

10 million for the NSA and their limitless budgets is like 1000 USD for all of us comparatively ( e.g. spare change ). Sooner we realise this and move on from the dumb explanation "won't happen" and we actually fix the fault using technology the better for BTC and all our coins, I think.

I don't even want to think about it TBH ...

[Littleshop]

I am pretty sure it is either an ASIC miner or ArtForz. No evidence but I think that is what is happening.

This is no botnet. Maybe an institution or government ?

Why do you think this is no botnet?  Do you think ArtFotz would sabotage his own investment in bitcoin by delaying transactions and reducing confidence? 

All signs lead to a botnet.  Changing IP addresses.  No transactions because transactions would lead to more internet traffic making the botnet easier to find.

[rampone]

Botnet: only explanation that fits.

[shad]

There is.  What chart are you looking at?  Maybe your monitor is upside down?

i am not seeing a jump of 30%

[Raize]

If it is a botnet:
1) It can't grow exponentially and can be ignored.
2) The CPU cycles consumed will increase energy costs, meaning people will be more likely to find and remove it so it can be ignored.
3) It is possible it has always been around, but mining sporadically via the other pools so as not to draw attention to itself.

The thing is, if it is a botnet and it has been *this* loud? Why hasn't any AV vendor reported it in the last two weeks plus?

I think my argument still stands, it is someone with a lot of FPGAs or ASIC and they are just being quiet and not processing transactions. As I stated, ArtForz did this once before, if he is dropping sASIC, he could be doing it again. So could any small country or government agency with the wherewithall to do nothing but mine.

[CA Coins]

If it is a botnet, what is the difference between:

1.  hacking into 100k computers, and "mining", without consent or processing any transactions, roughly 700 BTC a day (est. 1 Th/s)

and

2.  hacking into Linode and stealing 43k+ BTC?

[cottoneyeJoe]

So could any small country or government agency with the wherewithall to do nothing but mine.

Now that the old man is out of the way, Kim Un is free to focus on bringing the shambling NK economy into the digital age...1 TXN at a time!

They dont want to risk it being a back door to getting Stuxnet'd so they wrote their own version...skipping the complexity of implementing TXN handling.

Phase 2 will be to enlist every Korean language copy of StarCraft into the botnet and they will have the capitalist dogs south of the 49th printing money for them!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

I, for one, welcome our new Hermit Kingdom blockchain overlords!

[pieppiep]

There is.  What chart are you looking at?  Maybe your monitor is upside down?

That happens to me all the damn time!!! 

http://techpaul.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/image-on-my-screen-is-upside-down-help/

Reminds me : http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html

[ribuck]

If it is a botnet, what is the difference between:

1.  hacking into 100k computers, and "mining", without consent or processing any transactions, roughly 700 BTC a day (est. 1 Th/s)

and

2.  hacking into Linode and stealing 43k+ BTC?

1. Hacking into 100k computers is a crime against the owners of those computers. It's not an offense against the Bitcoin network, which does not require processing of transactions and certainly doesn't require "consent".

2. Stealing 43k BTC from Linode is a crime against the owners of those BTC.

Since you asked, that's the difference.

Also, there is an upside (of sorts). If mystery miner is getting 25% of the blocks, there's less risk of DeepBit getting 51%.

[Hawkix]

That's why I vote that every miner software should LOG the winning share. It can be later compared with the blockchain and thus allow identify that where your winning ticket ended at all. This would reveal other proxies, like ABCPool, too.

Plus, you can cheer and drink a lot after found block .

[ribuck]

Unless this is where deepbit is sending his overflow 

Heh, that would be funny! But I think DeepBit's miners would soon notice the statistical anomalies.