Decentrally mined currency has failed so far

[franky1]

forgive my ignorance, why is p2pool not going to work?

because he is mis understanding the multiple users connected to a mining pool, centralisation (which i and the OP mentioned) vs a single mining farm centralising the hash power.

i think many people think that the solutions do exist. i am not saying "dont worry about it" in a mannor that is saying governments wont attempt regulation. or dont worry people wont want to hold all the power.. im saying that protocols do not need to change. as the issues are with individual humans and the choice of second layer software tools they use. and the fact that these second layer software tools already exist to get around most worries, and/or can be tweaked simple to get around the others.

most of you seem to be like your screaming out that everything is broke and there is nothing individuals can do.. yet the opposite is true. you individuals are the decision makers. the protocol is just a protocol. its up to you how to access it.

the protocol doesnt need changing in regards to all the panicking stuff mentioned in this topic. just human choice

[Flashman]

Heh, it's like "Panicking sheeple are ruining bitcoin, meanwhile, here's more FUD, WOLF SIGHTED!!!"

[blackbird307]

blackbird307, I am not concerned about the Bitcoin price. I mention in passing that I had made some correct expectations on the declines in price only to establish a bit of my credibility as to be able to foresee trends.

lol, credibility, and internet.

The applicable theme of this thread is to about whether Bitcoin can succeed very well, while simultaneously defeating our ideals about monetary freedom.

Yeah, except miners don't work for free, they have expenses, so you can't ignore the price. And here you are talking about your "credibility" because of a prediction in price. Even though the theme of the thread is not about the price.

[alc]

The centralization of farms is a bigger problem than the centralization of pools.

Agreed, though really they're two different expressions of the same problem: the impetus towards centralization via economies of scale.

because he is mis understanding the multiple users connected to a mining pool, centralisation (which i and the OP mentioned) vs a single mining farm centralising the hash power.

See above.

turvarya]ad 1. lol, where? China?
There were some banning of websites in Austria, but I just changed my DNS for that.

ad 2. with all the lobbying from the content companies in the governments, i don't see how it is a smaller issue for the governments. They really tried a lot, to get such sites offline and they clearly failed. I mean, you don't really want to tell, they didn't try pretty hard, do you?

1/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay
2/ You don't see "copyright" as a smaller issue than "control of money"? You're entitled to your opinion, I suppose.

[alc]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Do you see a future (decade+) in which hobbyists continue to be involved in mining, continuing to represent a significant share of the hashrate?

[turvarya]

The centralization of farms is a bigger problem than the centralization of pools.

Agreed, though really they're two different expressions of the same problem: the impetus towards centralization via economies of scale.

because he is mis understanding the multiple users connected to a mining pool, centralisation (which i and the OP mentioned) vs a single mining farm centralising the hash power.

See above.

turvarya]ad 1. lol, where? China?
There were some banning of websites in Austria, but I just changed my DNS for that.

ad 2. with all the lobbying from the content companies in the governments, i don't see how it is a smaller issue for the governments. They really tried a lot, to get such sites offline and they clearly failed. I mean, you don't really want to tell, they didn't try pretty hard, do you?

1/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_The_Pirate_Bay
2/ You don't see "copyright" as a smaller issue than "control of money"? You're entitled to your opinion, I suppose.

lol
Austria is on that list. I have no problem going to that site or the other sites, so the "ban" is useless. That just is in favor or my argument: They tried, but they by far didn't succeed.
You can compare them by the technology and how government try to ban them.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

the problem has always been and will always be how do we get there? Talk doesn't get it done.

This.  Imagine if Satoshi went around ranting and writing essays instead of actually coding the protocol.

The OP purports to be tech savvy, and I'm not here to challenge that...but if he is, wouldn't his time and energy be better spent building stuff (or at least having a focused technical discussion with a specific goal), rather than whatever it is we seem to be doing here?

I was in a good mood last nite (perhaps it was the date I had ), and I was thinking I was really impressed how all the guys here were respectful and stayed on topic ("what a great group of guys" was the thought). I even felt guilty for being so forceful with some of my admonishments, and need to keep an open mind to the perspective of others.

Any way, the reason for discussing is that marketing surveys should precede development. Also given my variable health (usually not good and maybe not good enough anymore to code really large projects), it is good for me to share as maybe there are others who will develop something, in case I am unable to.

Also I guess I like debate, since I am good at it and given my crappy health I am not as consistently good at coding as I was before I got ill. I guess I want to feel as I am productive still, and frustrated with my recent handicap (which I am diligently trying to cure by every non-chemo means I can find). Also if I will not be cured and will die sooner, the writing is what I can leave to humanity, perhaps to help (maybe not though if I am incorrect). Another is according to Armstrong's 8.6 year cycles, I have been on a downwave since May, 2006 when I  was infected with HPV which lead to the condition I have now. And thus I am due for an upturn wave Jan 2015, so perhaps I am just finding a way to occupy my mind until my productive wave turns up again. I did not release any new software since 2006.

Also I am (perhaps too) focused on Armstrong's model and its predictions for a renewed global contagion starting Oct 2015. And his warnings about the global police state. I really need to be careful that I don't become a zealot and become blinded to other possible outcomes. However I also don't want to be complacent. So I am not sure yet if the opposing attitude here in this thread is correct, or if Armstrong's paranoia is more correct. I am trying to determine this.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

...and also people can use different types of pool software such as p2pool etc which offer different features...

The centralization of pools is a problem until it is solved, apparently p2pool is not the solution, and this sort of hand-waving and saying "it'll be ok, we'll figure this out" strikes me as naive, and fundamentally unwise.

forgive my ignorance, why is p2pool not going to work?

because he is mis understanding the multiple users connected to a mining pool, centralisation (which i and the OP mentioned) vs a single mining farm centralising the hash power.

The traditional pools could all cease to exist today and Bitcoin would be just fine. There would probably be a period (a few days to a week) of slower than average blocks as unprepared hash rate providers set up p2pool and solo mining (becoming actual miners in the process). Any competent hash rate provider should have his mining software already set up to automatically default to p2pool and ultimately to solo mining should the traditional pools fail for whatever reason. Mining software makes this extremely easy.

I mentioned in the OP that P2Pool can not be resistant to the share withholding attack:

...

Some of have argued that there is P2Pool, but how many times do I have to repeat that P2Pool can't be impervious to a share withholding attack[1], thus it can't be a sustainable paradigm.

...

[1]	https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339902.msg3719385#msg3719385 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=789978.msg9115612#msg9115612

See the linked posts from the [1] footnote for more explanation. In a share withholding attack, the adversary sends shares to the pool so he gets paid, but withholds any share that is a block solution, thus the pool never gets any revenue from the adversary's shares. Thus the adversary steals income from the other members of the pool. The government can entirely destroy P2Pool if ever it becomes widely used.

Share withholding can in theory be used to destroy all pools in Bitcoin now, because Bitcoin did not implement Meni Rosenfeld's oblivious shares fix[2] (which he proposed I think in 2011). Even if Bitcoin or other altcoin implements Meni's oblivious shares fix, P2Pool can not use it, while server based pools can. The reason is because the secret (so no miner knows which shares are block solutions) in the oblivious shares fix can't be hidden because in P2Pool there is no pool server to hide it with.

So franky1 et al, this should serve as an example to you that in software engineering, the details matter a lot and can totally change the conclusion. So please check your hubris and confidence at the door before you enter this discussion, because I have done a lot of research and thinking about the details that matter. I appreciate our discussion because I want to determine if I am incorrect. And I will surely admit it if I am. But I also hope you approach this discussion with a similar open mind, because it is also likely that you are incorrect.

Additionally P2Pool requires that every miner run a full node, which given the size of the block chain (and even savvy forum members complaining about the download time) for Monero and Bitcoin, that pretty much rules out mining by all and certainly rules out instantaneous mining and gratification (which is one of my main goals for an altcoin and please don't tell it is not possible and botnets and all that crap because you don't know the details of what I have up my sleeve). Remember my special talent is not that I am not just a programmer, but also a capable marketer (I had 1 million users of my CoolPage.com software in 2001, when the internet had 1/10 the users it does now). Also most ASICs are not capable of doing the logic of a full node[3].

Additionally P2Pool would make it unlikely to achieve fast block periods[4], because the propagation delay would be quite variable given so many different cases of peer connection qualities.

[2] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.4980.pdf#page=29
[3] https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/06/19/mining/
[4] https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I have stopped reading after a while.
I just have one question:
If governments can regulate everything, why is https://thepiratebay.se/ still there?

I had already answered you before you wrote that, but you stopped reading so that means your laziness caused you to miss an important detail as follows.

You are making the same category error in your comparison as Holliday did (erroneously equating two orthogonal categories). Please refer to my reply to him, wherein I pointed out that the government can not centralize actions (e.g. growing marijuana) people can do independently.

Whereas, money is inherently a centralized concept, because we all need a ledger that we can agree is the record of who paid what to whom. Thus individuals can't ignore government regulations acting independently with their Bitcoin if the authorities can find the mining pools (and thus the government can regulate the mining pools, i.e. the servers control which transactions are put on the block chain).

The only way you can stop the government from having this power, is to hide the mining pools so the government can't find them (the servers).

It doesn't amaze me that n00bs can repeat the same category error over and over again, completely failing to establish the logic firmly in their mind. This is the difference between a very high caliber computer programmer and normal folks. To be a very good computer programmer, you need to have very well developed logic skills.

So don't you see? That piratebay is a paradigm that doesn't depend on a centralized resource, thus it is "whackamole" in that the authorities can whack one instance but other instances can pop up any where in the world spontaneously.

Whereas, crypto-currency depends on the the consensus of 50% of the hashrate. Thus if the majority of the users follow the edicts of the government and transact through the government approved mining pools, then the spontaneous instances of decentralized mining pools are impotent.

You don't understand that the government is expert at social engineering, otherwise it wouldn't exist. Social engineering is the definition of a politician.

Remember money is always a consensus paradigm. Don't forget that crucial distinction!

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/11/30/swiss-vote-on-gold-anti-immigration-today/

However, owning gold will not solve that problem nationally if the rest of the nations do not respect gold as a medium of exchange in a world converging on electronic money. Whatever the medium of exchange, it must be universally accepted. The problem is gold is far from a constant value and its value is predicated upon its universal acceptance. If other countries are moving to electronic money, gold may serve no role in official international settlements. You cannot look at your personal preference as an individual and impose that upon the rest of the world.

satoshi was just 1 man

How do you know that? Did you meet him?

This exhibits a lack of rationality.


Some of you think the tide is turning and the masses all over the world are waking up to the abuses of the USA government and other manifestations of the powers-that-be.

The greatest mistake anyone can make is to assume the majority will ever do the right thing. They never do. The majority is always wrong. If that were not the case, then evolution would stop functioning.

Any one who plans for the future based on hope in the system and the majority, is a sheeple cow and will prosper when society does and suffer when society does.

We westerners have experienced an amazingly long period of prosperity in the world and especially in the Western nations. This has been propped up by central banks which never allow any debt defaults to correct excesses and misallocations. Thus we've amassed a huge debt bubble that is going to pop with horrific implications on society-at-large.

The powers-that-be are well aware of how to manipulate this "awakening". As always, they turn idealism into fury and collective outcomes which empower their designs. They infiltrated the Black Panters during the Vietnam protest era. They helped to fuel the "free sex, free drugs" destruction of the boomers and western society. They were instrumental in the Bolshevik Revolution, etc.

They will unleash an economic implosion contagion, social unrest, violence, and upheaval. You will be so busy trying to survive all the crap that is hitting you in your daily life, that you won't have any time to sit down and produce anything. All your pontifications about you can do this and that, will fly out the window when you are too busy trying to avoid the daily violence and secure your food.

The growing hatred of the USA and the angst that will be spread, is fuel for the fire of burning the nation-state system to the ground, after which the weary burned out fury will welcome the one world governance savior to restore order.

The masses love chaos when they've been cooped up too long in a well controlled order. Let them fight for a while and grow weary then they will beg for order again and to be managed like the compliant sheeple they really are.

You are safe within the herd until the herd stampedes over a cliff or stampedes over you.

Because the majority are not leaders. The majority are sheeple and I think that includes you reader.

[franky1]

OP now your just a comedy event.

so lets try again on your new worry
if miners are putting in millions of shares thinking they will get paid. but a pool owner doesnt submit a winning result to the pool. the miners will not get paid. after all... the funds have to come from somewhere.

and when people dont get paid.. they move

your acting as if PEOPLE have only one option and if that one option is broke or manipulated then its screwed for everyone forever.

bitcoin is 1 protocol. but mining has so many options, so many variations that all.. yes all of your worries have a second, third and fourth option for humans to choose.

do not think that people are fixed to one option when it comes to mining.

[RobbinHoodz]

Because over the past year, I've run every possible design through my mind, studied everything I could find from others, and have finally come to this conclusion.

Could you list all the designs that ran through your mind?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

OP now your just a comedy event.

so lets try again on your new worry

Politics is for those who are trying manipulate the minds of others.

You didn't like that quote of your irrationality, because it impacts your reputation amongst the people who follow you blindly.

Politicians are dishonest or at least disingenuous. You know damn well I never stated a new worry. What I am explaining is what I summarized in the OP.

I don't give a rats arse about politics nor my reputation. I am interested in being correct, so I will prosper. I will lay out the red carpet for you to win the infatuation of the majority, and be incorrect with them.

if miners are putting in millions of shares thinking they will get paid. but a pool owner doesnt submit a winning result to the pool. the miners will not get paid. after all... the funds have to come from somewhere.

and when people dont get paid.. they move

Well my little grasshopper, you aren't too strong in the logic department are you?

You don't see your logic error?

I let you ponder it for a few minutes before I embarrass you.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

I had forgotten to get back to this post.

unun you actually bring up very good arguments.

i hate to bring in the ultra-noob idea since i know very little and i'm sure this has already been thought of multiple times but is it not possible for a theoretical coin to track the entire array of PoW and dole out coins to every single participant? such as a decentralized system of pool mining built into the infrastructure instead of a winner take all?

each period of time the amount of work done by each participant running a mining client is recorded, added up and divided by the total to receive their share to their designated address.

One challenge is the bandwidth and propagation of all these mining shares to every node on the network. Different nodes have different connection qualities.

The reason we don't run a separate smaller pipe from the water district to every house, is because multifurcating networks are more efficient, e.g. a large main pipe has less friction and needing to readjust the line to one house doesn't require digging up the entire city.

There are other subtle design considerations, but I don't think I need to go into all that.

anonymity i know nothing about. but i feel like some kind of 'good-enough' system that could be built to be scaled over time to deal with evolving threats could be built as well.

The problem is that once your anonymity is broken and you are in jail, exterminated, or heavily fined, you don't really have a chance to evolve.

Anonymity has to be strong enough from the start to meet your goals. It can't evolve later. Remember everything is recorded, so the weakest anonymity you used is still around forever, while cracking algorithms and computer processing power is always increasing.

a thing of it is, there is a huge theoretical incentive to build such a platform. if you build the actual bitcoin 2.0 you will become a multimillionaire or billionaire. very few other jobs can offer that kind of salary so i'm sure some super smart ppl will be behind something at some point if the demand for it is present.

on that final point alone, i think something will be thought of. there's just too much money in making solid money to not be innovated on by someone.

That is a huge motivating factor, but it just isn't easy to create something real at that level. Not only technical and implementation effort, but also marketing effort because the long-term exposes the true market capability whereas pump and dump can obscure it for a short time. It is much easier to create a pump and dump scam.

[franky1]

i decided to re-read all of your posts again and see if there was any 'worry' you had that had not already been conceived, thought about and had a solution to right now....

the result, there are solutions. and when certain event may transpire as you worry they will, PEOPLE will change to them.

i know my true identity is on the internet, i know that people can trace me.. but that has nothing to do with bitcoin or mining. that is to do with human choice. nothing stops anyone from connecting to a pool via various ip changing methods. or never telling a soul their home address, etc

so now tell me the logic problem you have with my last post

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Actually they would never confirm, because the 50% hashrate could blacklist the minority hashrate. This hints at franky1's logic error.

[cbeast]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Actually they would never confirm, because the 50% hashrate could blacklist the minority hashrate. This hints at franky1's logic error.

50% of whom? The mining businesses that don't want higher fees?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Because over the past year, I've run every possible design through my mind, studied everything I could find from others, and have finally come to this conclusion.

Could you list all the designs that ran through your mind?

I never wrote it all down. There are so many cases and thoughts that have transpired. If you are calling out the hubris of "every possible", then granted I could have and probably did miss some possibility.

Could you narrow the scope of the question? Do you mean anonymity strategies? Do you mean network structure? Do you mean factors that impact marketing (e.g. mining for everyone without an ASIC)? And if you are not knowledgeable about how to narrow the scope, then you probably wouldn't understand a very detailed answer any way.

The question is very broad and I don't have time (energy) to write a long essay.

I did for example conclude that amongst anonymity strategies, only one-time ring signatures appears to be viable for on chain anonymity. Up until recently I thought a variant of CoinJoin could work because most people don't care about their anonymity and the person who cares could run their own pool, but I was never able to conjure a design for a viable way to prevent the non-reputation (i.e. randomly selected) pools from being Sybil attacked. The natural paradigm is concentration of pools as I have explained upthread[1] and also because reputation is the one viable way to deal with Sybil attacks. And much credit goes to smooth because he corrected some of my wrong assumptions about one-time ring signatures.

[1]

In that post I cited: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/ Which links to: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/06/19/mining/ If, in the current 100 PH/s network, you are running an ASIC with 1 TH/s, then every block you have a chance of 1 in 100000 of receiving the block reward of 25 BTC, but the other 99999 times out of 100000 you get exactly nothing. Given that network hashpower is currently doubling every three months (for simplicity, say 12500 blocks), that gives you a probability of 15.9% that your ASIC will ever generate a reward, and a 84.1% chance that the ASIC’s total lifetime earnings will be exactly nothing.

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Actually they would never confirm, because the 50% hashrate could blacklist the minority hashrate. This hints at franky1's logic error.

50% of whom? The mining businesses that don't want higher fees?

The mining business that doesn't want to be raided by the authorities and have their computers and ASICs farms confiscated.

I think you, franky1 et al fail to appreciate that an ASIC farm is a fixed position investment, with a lot of fixed capital infrastructure. You don't move these without being seen nor without losing some of your capital (downtime, loss of favorable electricity connection, favorable rent lease, etc).

It is as if you guys are living in some Bugs Bunny fantasy world and have never actually run a business.

[cbeast]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Actually they would never confirm, because the 50% hashrate could blacklist the minority hashrate. This hints at franky1's logic error.

50% of whom? The mining businesses that don't want higher fees?

The mining business that doesn't want to be raided by the authorities and have their computers and ASICs farms confiscated.

As long as they are paying their taxes and bills, why would any authority do this?

[UnunoctiumTesticles]

Anyone who has their transactions "banned" by pools will simply pay enticing enough fees to have other miners include their transactions. OP seems to ignore financial incentives when speaking about banning Bitcoin. If there is money to be made, people will route around any regulations. This has been proven over and over again in the history of the world.

A few questions.

If people have to pay high fees to get their transactions confirmed, why would they use Bitcoin rather than some competing form of money transfer?

If the the hashrate of miners including blacklisted transactions shrinks to insignificance vs. those who adhere to the blacklist, surely it doesn't matter how high the fees are? Those transactions could take weeks/months/years to confirm, depending on what percentage of the overall hashrate the adhering farms represent.

Actually they would never confirm, because the 50% hashrate could blacklist the minority hashrate. This hints at franky1's logic error.

50% of whom? The mining businesses that don't want higher fees?

The mining business that doesn't want to be raided by the authorities and have their computers and ASICs farms confiscated.

As long as they are paying their taxes and bills, why would any authority do this?

For not complying with an AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulation requiring them to blacklist transactions and mining pools which don't require identity for all transactions, e.g. all transactions must originate from Peter Thiel's Coinbase, BitPay, Paypal, Facebook, etc.. where the user has provided the necessary KYC (Know Your Customer) documentation. (Don't you remember all these ignorant fools who are proclaiming Bitcoin doesn't need fast on chain transactions, because off chain services will provide it!)

Are you not aware that Civil Asset Forfeiture is already running amok in the USA.

My gosh it is only 13 years since 9/11 and all the Patriot Act crap which has spread to every country under USA pressure ("you are either with us or against us", POTUS Bush), and you guys are still clueless at the modus operandi for how the powers-that-be are taking control of everything via the terrorism false flag paradigm.