Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

I see your confusion.  You've confused propagation with verification.

Again, this isn't about creating a too-big block, or even an especially large one (though the larger it is the longer the verification time can be).
It is about creating blocks of acceptable size with valid but complex transactions.

Yes, other miners may decide to implement some trap for blocks that take a long time to verify.  Doing so runs the risk that not everyone else will do that, and get stuck mining on the not-longest chain.

If the block is discarded and they continue on the previous, then they are forking at risk of orphaning.  Either way the miners have a risk and the complicated TX miner has an advantage... unless everyone does the same thing (and they won't).

does your above argument depend on the existence of the relay network or not?

The debate might be helped with a graphic of network topology types. Bitcoin is the bottom right "irregular" type, except far larger and messier than the simple example here. This makes it infinitely more robust than all the other types. Call that Satoshi genius or simply an emergent property of decentralization or both.



Let's say that a "rogue" block gets mined by a node and sent to its peers. For illustration this might be too big for most bandwidth e.g. 100MB (leaving aside the message size limits) or a deviously constructed bloated tx block of 5MB which takes 3 hours to validate. If this rogue block can't be efficiently handled then it borks the node's immediate peers for a period of time. However, the rest of the network continues in a viable state. If the block is finally processed the invs to the next peers get ignored because the chain has moved on and the rogue block orphaned.

We immediately see that a fully-connected network has a far higher risk of systemic failure because a rogue block could seize up all nodes simultaneously, yet an irregular (mesh or multi-hop) network will be largely unaffected. Each node having just a dozen connections means that the other 6000 nodes keep on tracking oblivious to the rogue block. This is a reason why "5 nodes worldwide" is useless, and thousands are best.

This design feature is compromised if nodes forward blocks without validation, or if a central block transmission method exists which makes the mining topology more like a bus or star. That's one reason why I really like IBLT as a block propagation efficiency method: it retains the inherent robustness of an irregular topology when all nodes participate in being able to encode (mine) and decode (read, verify).

Agree on the resiliency of topology, but consider...

This threat is not from a bandwidth attack with a big block, for it to work, the block size of the "rogue" has to be acceptable, the transactions valid.
Implementation of IBLT helps only if this rogue is not done intentionally by a miner (and not broadcasting the long-validation-time transactions until included in the winning block).

It gets interesting when the verification takes longer than the propagation which as we've seen can be done with a high volume of outputs and inputs, and possibly more so by ordering inputs/outputs within the TXs and block to avoid validation and processing shortcuts.

Consider further that this is merely a single edge case threat.  When it comes to corner cases (multiple edge cases), you can get other failure conditions in more rare circumstances.  Any hard fork presents at least one additional edge case.

The relay network topology may matter in picking the degree of complexity to have the desired effect, (even a 25 second validation gives about a 5% head start on the 10 minutes, which may be enough to increase profit above the competition).  The relay network topology can also be utilized by picking your peers to make the method more likely to succeed.


I'm a fan of increasing the transaction rate, but I'm more interested in the Bitcoin Experiment being successful in the long run.  I think we'll get there, but don't be so impatient as to stumble over the things to do first.

i think those are all good pts and things we have to watch for but consider what happened to ghash after a simple, minor double spend by one of their employees on a dice site that accepted 0 conf tx's.  plus, an attitude that didn't seem to care or appreciate the importance of network good behavior by allowing itself to repeatedly get above 50% hashrate:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3dpzrv/not_so_long_ago_ghashio_had_almost_50_of_the/

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[OROBTC]

...

GHash.IO was indeed scary looking at that time (briefly over 50% of the hashing power).  But, I was not well hooked into BTC mining talk.  What happened?  Did a bunch of hardware owners switch to other miners?

Thanks, and sorry for the O/T.

[TheRealSteve]

GHash.IO was indeed scary looking at that time (briefly over 50% of the hashing power).  But, I was not well hooked into BTC mining talk.  What happened?  Did a bunch of hardware owners switch to other miners?

There were fears Ghash.io was reaching 51% in the past.. the first time people were discouraged from using, and some left... but most (and a good chunk of this was BitFury) stayed, and eventually people came back.  The second time around BitFury ended up leaving, and then more people left until it was almost completely marginalized.

Thanks, and sorry for the O/T.

Have you seen the thread title lately?  I don't think this thread has been particularly on-topic in quite a while.  cypherdoc tried, valiantly, to bring it back on topic a page back

[OROBTC]

...

There it is, thanks TheRealSteve!  BitFury, ahh...

OK, well let me not be guilty (not guilty at least once), and brings us back on topic:

Gold, bitchez!  (BTC too, I would be happy to see BTC rise even faster)

[cypherdoc]

Have you seen the thread title lately?  I don't think this thread has been particularly on-topic in quite a while.  cypherdoc tried, valiantly, to bring it back on topic a page back

given that gold is entering the next crisis phase, i don't think that will be particularly hard.

[cypherdoc]

There were fears Ghash.io was reaching 51% in the past.. the first time people were discouraged from using, and some left... but most (and a good chunk of this was BitFury) stayed, and eventually people came back.  The second time around BitFury ended up leaving, and then more people left until it was almost completely marginalized.

that's a very accurate description of what happened and a lesson that is greatly underappreciated by the community.

as i've said many times since then, i think that was the very last time we'll see any miner approaching anywhere near 50% as Bitcoin and the mining industry has grown significantly more decentralized since that time as the charts so well show.  and this is why i hate it when guys like gmax and the other BS devs go around stating as fact that mining is centralized as justification for fixing Bitcoin with offchain solutions like SC's and LN.  this is the crux of my issues with them; their bearishness and view of the space as something that needs to be changed.

[cypherdoc]

There were fears Ghash.io was reaching 51% in the past.. the first time people were discouraged from using, and some left... but most (and a good chunk of this was BitFury) stayed, and eventually people came back.  The second time around BitFury ended up leaving, and then more people left until it was almost completely marginalized.

that's a very accurate description of what happened and a lesson that is greatly underappreciated by the community.

as i've said many times since then, i think that was the very last time we'll see any miner approaching anywhere near 50% as Bitcoin and the mining industry has grown significantly more decentralized since that time as the charts so well show.  and this is why i hate it when guys like gmax and the other BS devs go around stating as fact that mining is centralized as justification for fixing Bitcoin with offchain solutions like SC's and LN.  this is the crux of my issues with them; their bearishness and view of the space as something that needs to be changed.

as evidence of this, right now, Discus is showing 16% of the network while BTCChina is 17%.

[TheRealSteve]

Instantaneous measurements are pretty iffy, but yes, hash rate seems reasonably distributed over a 1 week period.. albeit primarily skewed toward pools in a single country and a few private companies.

[tvbcof]

as evidence of this, right now, Discus is showing 16% of the network while BTCChina is 17%.

https://i.imgur.com/kPsKq5R.png

A pool once got around 50% of the mining and fritzed everyone out.  The most obvious and common sense thing large miners could have done was to break apart their 'empire' at least on paper so they could mitigate concerns along these lines going forward.  It's almost inconceivable that this would not have happened.  Cypherdoc and other blatant propagandists studiously ignore this possibility.  What sets cypherdoc (Generalissimo, Free Shit Army) apart is that he continues to rely heavily on charts and graphics which are supposed to somehow prove that mining consolidation is not a threat and is not likely to every be because .

Cypherdoc's work when he now known to be shilling (using the term formally) was pretty basic and obvious.  Even had I discovered the work in real-time rather than after the fact I would have characterized it as so.  He is not known to be shilling for those who seek to bloat Bitcoin at present but his methods are similarly simplistic to the point of being laughable.

[justusranvier]

A pool once got around 50% of the mining and fritzed everyone out.  The most obvious and common sense thing large miners could have done was to break apart their 'empire' at least on paper so they could mitigate concerns along these lines going forward.  It's almost inconceivable that this would not have happened.  Cypherdoc and other blatant propagandists studiously ignore this possibility.  What sets cypherdoc (Generalissimo, Free Shit Army) apart is that he continues to rely heavily on charts and graphics which are supposed to somehow prove that mining consolidation is not a threat and is not likely to every be because .

Cypherdoc's work when he now known to be shilling (using the term formally) was pretty basic and obvious.  Even had I discovered the work in real-time rather than after the fact I would have characterized it as so.  He is not known to be shilling for those who seek to bloat Bitcoin at present but his methods are similarly simplistic to the point of being laughable.

I'm not sure what kind of goal you're espousing here.

Is a single owning a lot of hashing power intrinsically harmful because it's wrong somehow, or is the actual problem the attacks someone might perform which are made easier by owning a lot of hashing power?

If it's the latter, then if miners who own a lot of hashing power are forced to behave in the exact same why they'd behave if they had less hashing power in order to avoid a financial loss, and in particular give up control over their hashing power to multiple entities such that they are not in a position to conduct an attack, why is that not a perfectly valid solution to the problem?

[TheRealSteve]

The concern with over-reliance on statistics (lies, damn lies, etc.) is that a single entity could have their hash rate split up among several pools, slowly building out to well over 50%, without anybody really noticing.  Then if for any reason they wanted to attack the network or a specific pool or a specific idea, they could do so by consolidating their hash power back their own command.  So while having that single entity spread out their hash rate is a good thing, it's not so much a solution to the problem as it is obscuring the fact that there is a problem in the first place.  Thus the emphasis on 'seems' in my post.

Whether a single entity having a majority of the network is an actual problem or an academic one (until actual abuse occurs) is another matter, but a single entity is much easier to influence by outside actors even if the entity itself has no ill will.

[cypherdoc]

as evidence of this, right now, Discus is showing 16% of the network while BTCChina is 17%.

https://i.imgur.com/kPsKq5R.png

A pool once got around 50% of the mining and fritzed everyone out.  The most obvious and common sense thing large miners could have done was to break apart their 'empire' at least on paper so they could mitigate concerns along these lines going forward.  It's almost inconceivable that this would not have happened.  Cypherdoc and other blatant propagandists studiously ignore this possibility.  What sets cypherdoc (Generalissimo, Free Shit Army) apart is that he continues to rely heavily on charts and graphics which are supposed to somehow prove that mining consolidation is not a threat and is not likely to every be because .

Cypherdoc's work when he now known to be shilling (using the term formally) was pretty basic and obvious.  Even had I discovered the work in real-time rather than after the fact I would have characterized it as so.  He is not known to be shilling for those who seek to bloat Bitcoin at present but his methods are similarly simplistic to the point of being laughable.

yeah, and the flip side of your criticism of me is that you are an overly pessimistic and conspiratorial troll who thinks we're headed towards a totalitarian regime that dominates the masses.  Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.  what we see in the charts is what we get, afaic.  one needs to weigh the fundamentals of the industry, the free mkt that Bitcoin allows, the open source nature of the code, the mathematics behind mining, the geopolitical distribution of the mining industry, and the massive profit potential of what Bitcoin offers, and what is going on in the fiat & pm world in determining whether what we see in the charts i present is real.  i think it is.

yes, i think there is so much freely floating fiat out there in the world today that it would be close to impossible for a single owner to achieve close to 50% of the hashrate today.  it would simply cost too much and there are too many entities with very deep pockets to dominate the industry.  and how is a gvt supposed to be able to deanonymize separate but single owned pools while all of us in the industry can't, let alone subvert them for an attack?  the stakes are just too high for a single pool to risk what happened to ghash by playing dirty.

[iCEBREAKER]

ouch:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3dovjp/wsj_lets_be_honest_about_gold_its_a_pet_rock/

Birds of a free shit army feather flock together.

I am not shocked to find Generalissimo Frap.doc of the FSA pushing the anti-gold Keynesian 'barbarous relic'/Bernankian 'not real money' party line.

He just wants to add our gold to his stash, on the cheap.



6,000 years of civilization say Frap.doc is full of it (it being hubris).

[smooth]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

[cypherdoc]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

So why haven't they attacked?

[brg444]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

So why haven't they attacked?

Because they have no incentive to? You do know that's how the game works right?

[cypherdoc]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

So why haven't they attacked?

Because they have no incentive to? You do know that's how the game works right?

Why don't you explain it to us?

[brg444]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

So why haven't they attacked?

Because they have no incentive to? You do know that's how the game works right?

Why don't you explain it to us?

What is there to explain? Can you not imagine a scenario where an entity controls more than 51% of the network yet decides it is in their best interest not to attack it?

[cypherdoc]

Occam's Razor applies perfectly well here to mining.

Sure it does, and the simplest explanation is simply that huge miners hide their scary network % by breaking them up. Anything else requires a convoluted and unlikely explanation to negate the natural economies of scale for industrial mining.

So why haven't they attacked?

Because they have no incentive to? You do know that's how the game works right?

Why don't you explain it to us?

What is there to explain? Can you not imagine a scenario where an entity controls more than 51% of the network yet decides it is in their best interest not to attack it?

If that's what you think you should sell your coins now.

[brg444]

If that's what you think you should sell your coins now.

I don't necessarily believe that is the case right now but certainly won't pretend this is not possible, see smooth's comment again for explanation.

The point is we have no way to know and it is a big enough risk that we shouldn't ignore its existence even if we are to pretend the odds for this to occur are small