justusranvier
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January 19, 2015, 10:37:44 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Year after year, concern trolls talk about the "inevitable centralization" of mining.
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JorgeStolfi
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January 19, 2015, 10:53:07 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Year after year, concern trolls talk about the "inevitable centralization" of mining. And year after year the bitcoin faithful bury their head in the sand, "if we don't worry about it, it is not a problem".
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Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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sickpig
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January 19, 2015, 11:00:57 PM |
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Thanks for the link, appreciated.
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Bitcoin is a participatory system which ought to respect the right of self determinism of all of its users - Gregory Maxwell.
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Spaceman_Spiff
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January 19, 2015, 11:03:04 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Year after year, concern trolls talk about the "inevitable centralization" of mining. And year after year the bitcoin faithful bury their head in the sand, "if we don't worry about it, it is not a problem". I have wondered if several decades from now, governments might not end up securing the blockchain by goverment-funded mining in order to protect the economy, property records etc. from evil 51% attacks by other nations or terrorist groups. I might be dreaming of unicorns and rainbows though....
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cypherdoc (OP)
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January 19, 2015, 11:08:58 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Year after year, concern trolls talk about the "inevitable centralization" of mining. And year after year the bitcoin faithful bury their head in the sand, "if we don't worry about it, it is not a problem". I have wondered if several decades from now, governments might not end up securing the blockchain by goverment-funded mining in order to protect the economy, property records etc. from evil 51% attacks by terrorist groups or other nations. I might be dreaming of unicorns and rainbows though.... i keep thinking of that great article by Stefan Thomas way back in the first issue of Bitcoin Magazine May 2012 where he writes a fictitious article about foreign state sponsored blockchain 51% attack with an alert US gvt defense mechanism in place that springs into action. it's a great article.
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Trolfi
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January 19, 2015, 11:31:31 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Today's hashrate distribution: F2Pool 20% + AntPool 12% + GHash.IO 10% = 42% of the network. Unknown miners: 30%. It only would take for a fraction of those "unknown" miners to collude with the three leading pools (assuming they are indeed separate entities) in order to attack the blockchain. Very concerned about the long-term viability of this experiment. Very concerned.
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cypherdoc (OP)
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January 19, 2015, 11:32:52 PM |
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nice advertising: ![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FA1VAnMo.jpg&t=665&c=2C0-LaL8cqyg0A)
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cypherdoc (OP)
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January 19, 2015, 11:40:10 PM |
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The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. Year after year, the number of active mining pools go up. Today's hashrate distribution: F2Pool 20% + AntPool 12% + GHash.IO 10% = 42% of the network. Unknown miners: 30%. It only would take for a fraction of those "unknown" miners to collude with the three leading pools (assuming they are indeed separate entities) in order to attack the blockchain. Very concerned about the long-term viability of this experiment. Very concerned. oooooooh. i am SO scared: ![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FZ2zI4xC.png&t=665&c=bkzxZikc9Ru1Og)
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JorgeStolfi
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January 19, 2015, 11:57:50 PM |
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oooooooh. i am SO scared: ![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FZ2zI4xC.png&t=665&c=bkzxZikc9Ru1Og) Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture. The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate. What could possibly go wrong? As long as there is sand around...
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Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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zanzibar
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January 20, 2015, 12:04:56 AM |
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Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture. The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate. What could possibly go wrong? As long as there is sand around...
Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%. These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime. They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point.
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cypherdoc (OP)
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January 20, 2015, 12:11:19 AM |
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Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture. The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate. What could possibly go wrong? As long as there is sand around...
Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%. These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime. They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point. exactly right. if Bitcoin becomes a mainstream currency, mining pools have a chance to become the accountants of the entire system which would mean enormous profits. but if they attack themselves, they get nothing.
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Trolfi
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January 20, 2015, 12:46:27 AM |
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The incentives section in bitcoin.pdf refers to miners using CPU power. It does not address the inevitable current and future mining centralization.
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smooth
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January 20, 2015, 12:47:11 AM |
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Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture. The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate. What could possibly go wrong? As long as there is sand around...
Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%. These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime. They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point. To be fair it isn't really known how much of the hash rate is concentrated with a few large farm owners. The pool charts JorgeStolfi (or cypherdoc) likes to show don't indicate that at all. A single farm owner can split his hash across pools and a pool can represent hash from a number of miners. Both are unknown and unknowable. It is fundamentally a more dangerous situation than the first round of 51% pool scares when it was pretty clear that each pool had a huge number of independent miners.
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smooth
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January 20, 2015, 12:48:41 AM |
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The incentives section in bitcoin.pdf refers to miners using CPU power. It does not address the inevitable current and future mining centralization.
Not in the paper, but Satoshi did talk about mining centralization when he was around. It isn't unexpected entirely, though some aspects of it may be.
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BlindMayorBitcorn
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January 20, 2015, 12:57:53 AM |
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The incentives section in bitcoin.pdf refers to miners using CPU power. It does not address the inevitable current and future mining centralization.
Not in the paper, but Satoshi did talk about mining centralization when he was around. It isn't unexpected entirely, though some aspects of it may be. I remember some quotes here to the effect that we should try to make a gentlemen's agreement to stall the arms race for as long as possible. He knew what was coming
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Forgive my petulance and oft-times, I fear, ill-founded criticisms, and forgive me that I have, by this time, made your eyes and head ache with my long letter. But I cannot forgo hastily the pleasure and pride of thus conversing with you.
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JorgeStolfi
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January 20, 2015, 12:57:56 AM |
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Yes, I know that you do not see anything wrong with that picture. The top 6 companies have 60% of the hashrate. What could possibly go wrong? As long as there is sand around...
Yes, but you would be saying the same thing if it were 10 with 60% or 20 with 60%. These are pools, miners can re-direct their rigs anytime. There is no magic number. The fewer companies you have in the right half that chart, the higher is the risk that they will collude to act as one entity, each giving up their immediate gain (reward for getting the next block appended to orthodox chain) for a greater long-term gain (such as a larger reward per block). Why would their affiliated miners defect? If the change will mean more money even for miners who are not in the cartel, why would they resist the change? Not long ago there was just one pool, GHash.io, with more than 50% power. Bitcoiners were scared, but considered the probem solved when it shrank to less than 50%. No one asked where those miners who left the pool went. No one asks who are the owners of all those pools. How many of those big miners are in the Bitcoin Foundation, paying Gavin's salary? They are not going to conspire to destroy BTC, what would be the point. In the real world, cartels and monopolies do not form to destroy their markets, but to extract more money from their customers than they could if the markets were free. And there are plenty of things that a majority coalition of miners could do in that direction.
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Academic interest in bitcoin only. Not owner, not trader, very skeptical of its longterm success.
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solex
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January 20, 2015, 01:01:18 AM Last edit: January 20, 2015, 05:43:18 AM by solex |
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Very concerned about the long-term viability of this experiment.
Don't be concerned. Even if the "unknown" increases and reached 100%, it is extremely healthy, and was the normal state of affairs before mining pools were invented! Unknown miners are unknown to each other and can't collude. Yes, you can have a big secretive miner, like 18xf3MQ, but several exist today anyway. It only would take for a fraction of those "unknown" miners to collude with the three leading pools (assuming they are indeed separate entities) in order to attack the blockchain.
Who is Discus Fish going to call in the "unknown" group to collude with? Are they going to start ringing every single number in the Chinese Phone Directory? You can't criticize the concentration of mining power into a few pools while also lumping in the unknown miners. That is illogical. The only thing better than unknown miners is the P2Pool. P2Pool has scaling problems, and maybe there needs to be many of them. This is an important development to further improve the mining situation.
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smooth
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January 20, 2015, 01:04:41 AM |
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<gold important on the international stage>
<admittedly it seems so> with Bitcoin, you merely have to check the signature, which takes a millisecond.Ask, oh, say everyone who's been robbed of their BTC, how great that is. If I'm remembering correctly there may be a few people in this category. FWIW, this is another pretty decent reason for considering Bitcoin as an important reserve more than a trivial exchange item. That was exactly the context you quoted. Germany could move reserve bitcoin around in minutes or hours at virtually no cost instead of the huge effort involved with moving tons of gold.
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Adrian-x
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January 20, 2015, 01:08:00 AM |
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Bitcoin can't be money with a capped transaction rate. Gold only maintains purchasing power due to being subsidized by central banks - there's no such thing as intrinsic value for a currency. If those transaction rate limits are hit and the situation isn't fixed, then Bitcoin will disappear.
The transaction rate limits are fixable. The real problem is the inevitable centralization of mining. It seems that no one knows how to fix that. Bitcoin with centralized mining does not make any sense. centralized mining is a problem when the incentives encourage a single mining monopoly, as long as there is competition its not centralized.
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Thank me in Bits 12MwnzxtprG2mHm3rKdgi7NmJKCypsMMQw
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