[ANN] SpreadCoin | True Decentralization (No Pools) | Testing New Masternodes

[thelonecrouton]

you are talking about something like an "Automated Escrow", right?

Make everyone pay into a pot first, so should they dare to steal, you just keep what they previously payed.

Yeah, that's the idea.

There's a 3500 SPR bounty if anyone is able to make this idea work.

That is quite low... IMHO..

So what you're saying is a potential workaround is really hard and costly to implement?

No not at all and that workaround is also not absolutely needed - but a good idea as some kind of extra insurance, I'm just saying that 3500 coins is quite low as a bounty.

Feel free to add to the bounty.

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[luigi1111]

What if we considered a hashrate cap? Even if people organized themselves in pools they could only mine up to a certain point. Perhaps no more than 20 Mh/s per mining operation.

Please do tell how you would implement such a system?

If a miner is reporting a hashrate set above the maximum then there will be a refusal of payout.  They will effectively mine the block but will not receive the reward.

Even if someone had several machines mining to separate wallets it still creates the most decentralized coin in all of existence.

Such a system is trivially exploitable; it won't work.

Why wouldn't it? The system would take the refused SPR and put it into a faucet giving it back to the people. Creating economical stimulation.

Why would a miner report having a HR that high if he's going to be penalized for it? If they go via shares, he'll just use multiple workers/logins.

It's also against free market principles, but that's rather unrelated.

[njs811]

What if we considered a hashrate cap? Even if people organized themselves in pools they could only mine up to a certain point. Perhaps no more than 20 Mh/s per mining operation.

Please do tell how you would implement such a system?

If a miner is reporting a hashrate set above the maximum then there will be a refusal of payout.  They will effectively mine the block but will not receive the reward.

Even if someone had several machines mining to separate wallets it still creates the most decentralized coin in all of existence.

Such a system is trivially exploitable; it won't work.

Why wouldn't it? The system would take the refused SPR and put it into a faucet giving it back to the people. Creating economical stimulation.

Why would a miner report having a HR that high if he's going to be penalized for it? If they go via shares, he'll just use multiple workers/logins.

It's also against free market principles, but that's rather unrelated.

But that's the beauty. The WORST possible situation is that we see thousands and thousands of small pools popping up. This means extreme decentralization. Someone with 4 farming machines will have to point them in different directions.

[defunctec]

This solves the problem fairly elegantly I believe. It's still not the ease of running a "standard" pool, and there are additional considerations, like: how popular would a BTC pool be if you had to deposit 25 BTC to mine there (even considering that their wouldn't be any other pools where you didn't have to do this)? Edit2: this plays on the "(which isn't much)" above; what if it was a "lot"?

Edit: tacotime, why wouldn't you send the SPR equivalent of one block reward? BTC would be subject (I believe unnecessarily) to exchange rate volatility.

but more users will probably join a pool than only requires a tiny amount of BTC to join and the amount of risk losing SpreadCoins versus equivalent Bitcoins is probably pretty similar.

So to mine on this hypothetical pool, I would need to send the pool a little collateral first?

Sounds like a scam, and would steer clear of such a pool.

[thelonecrouton]

This solves the problem fairly elegantly I believe. It's still not the ease of running a "standard" pool, and there are additional considerations, like: how popular would a BTC pool be if you had to deposit 25 BTC to mine there (even considering that their wouldn't be any other pools where you didn't have to do this)? Edit2: this plays on the "(which isn't much)" above; what if it was a "lot"?

Edit: tacotime, why wouldn't you send the SPR equivalent of one block reward? BTC would be subject (I believe unnecessarily) to exchange rate volatility.

but more users will probably join a pool than only requires a tiny amount of BTC to join and the amount of risk losing SpreadCoins versus equivalent Bitcoins is probably pretty similar.

So to mine on this hypothetical pool, I would need to send the pool a little collateral first?

Sounds like a scam, and would steer clear of such a pool.

Also easy to sabotage. Join pool. Steal SPR. Lose collateral. Evens. Pool users annoyed. Repeat.

The pool would need to take a much larger than 1 block collateral from each miner to dissuade saboteurs.

[luigi1111]

This solves the problem fairly elegantly I believe. It's still not the ease of running a "standard" pool, and there are additional considerations, like: how popular would a BTC pool be if you had to deposit 25 BTC to mine there (even considering that their wouldn't be any other pools where you didn't have to do this)? Edit2: this plays on the "(which isn't much)" above; what if it was a "lot"?

Edit: tacotime, why wouldn't you send the SPR equivalent of one block reward? BTC would be subject (I believe unnecessarily) to exchange rate volatility.

but more users will probably join a pool than only requires a tiny amount of BTC to join and the amount of risk losing SpreadCoins versus equivalent Bitcoins is probably pretty similar.

So to mine on this hypothetical pool, I would need to send the pool a little collateral first?

Sounds like a scam, and would steer clear of such a pool.

They would have to become established and trusted, similar to current coins' pools, just a little more trusted.

What if we considered a hashrate cap? Even if people organized themselves in pools they could only mine up to a certain point. Perhaps no more than 20 Mh/s per mining operation.

Please do tell how you would implement such a system?

If a miner is reporting a hashrate set above the maximum then there will be a refusal of payout.  They will effectively mine the block but will not receive the reward.

Even if someone had several machines mining to separate wallets it still creates the most decentralized coin in all of existence.

Such a system is trivially exploitable; it won't work.

Why wouldn't it? The system would take the refused SPR and put it into a faucet giving it back to the people. Creating economical stimulation.

Why would a miner report having a HR that high if he's going to be penalized for it? If they go via shares, he'll just use multiple workers/logins.

It's also against free market principles, but that's rather unrelated.

But that's the beauty. The WORST possible situation is that we see thousands and thousands of small pools popping up. This means extreme decentralization. Someone with 4 farming machines will have to point them in different directions.

No it won't. All it will do is mask the problem.

[njs811]

This solves the problem fairly elegantly I believe. It's still not the ease of running a "standard" pool, and there are additional considerations, like: how popular would a BTC pool be if you had to deposit 25 BTC to mine there (even considering that their wouldn't be any other pools where you didn't have to do this)? Edit2: this plays on the "(which isn't much)" above; what if it was a "lot"?

Edit: tacotime, why wouldn't you send the SPR equivalent of one block reward? BTC would be subject (I believe unnecessarily) to exchange rate volatility.

but more users will probably join a pool than only requires a tiny amount of BTC to join and the amount of risk losing SpreadCoins versus equivalent Bitcoins is probably pretty similar.

So to mine on this hypothetical pool, I would need to send the pool a little collateral first?

Sounds like a scam, and would steer clear of such a pool.

They would have to become established and trusted, similar to current coins' pools, just a little more trusted.

What if we considered a hashrate cap? Even if people organized themselves in pools they could only mine up to a certain point. Perhaps no more than 20 Mh/s per mining operation.

Please do tell how you would implement such a system?

If a miner is reporting a hashrate set above the maximum then there will be a refusal of payout.  They will effectively mine the block but will not receive the reward.

Even if someone had several machines mining to separate wallets it still creates the most decentralized coin in all of existence.

Such a system is trivially exploitable; it won't work.

Why wouldn't it? The system would take the refused SPR and put it into a faucet giving it back to the people. Creating economical stimulation.

Why would a miner report having a HR that high if he's going to be penalized for it? If they go via shares, he'll just use multiple workers/logins.

It's also against free market principles, but that's rather unrelated.

But that's the beauty. The WORST possible situation is that we see thousands and thousands of small pools popping up. This means extreme decentralization. Someone with 4 farming machines will have to point them in different directions.

No it won't. All it will do is mask the problem.

But how? The goal of SPR is to create the most decentralized currency in existence.

[luigi1111]

This solves the problem fairly elegantly I believe. It's still not the ease of running a "standard" pool, and there are additional considerations, like: how popular would a BTC pool be if you had to deposit 25 BTC to mine there (even considering that their wouldn't be any other pools where you didn't have to do this)? Edit2: this plays on the "(which isn't much)" above; what if it was a "lot"?

Edit: tacotime, why wouldn't you send the SPR equivalent of one block reward? BTC would be subject (I believe unnecessarily) to exchange rate volatility.

but more users will probably join a pool than only requires a tiny amount of BTC to join and the amount of risk losing SpreadCoins versus equivalent Bitcoins is probably pretty similar.

So to mine on this hypothetical pool, I would need to send the pool a little collateral first?

Sounds like a scam, and would steer clear of such a pool.

Also easy to sabotage. Join pool. Steal SPR. Lose collateral. Evens. Pool users annoyed. Repeat.

The pool would need to take a much larger than 1 block collateral from each miner to dissuade saboteurs.

I agree on sabotage being fairly easy, but take issue with "much". Only a small % more should be plenty to dissuade.

Pool users shouldn't be that annoyed; they aren't really affected. If collateral is any % larger than block reward, they should be happy, as they get more than they would've if he hadn't stolen.

[njs811]

But how? The goal of SPR is to create the most decentralized currency in existence.
[/quote]

Because it's not actually accomplishing anything. You can't force pools/miners to use particular addresses; they can use whatever they want. Therefore, you can't police maximum hashrates. All they have to do is switch some numbers around, and they're suddenly compliant.
[/quote]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

[luigi1111]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

[njs811]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

[luigi1111]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Edit: AND, wouldn't even work.

[thelonecrouton]

The collateral pool idea is not new:

Hey guys, would it be possible to create a pool like this;


Each miner mines to a separate address. The pool (and the miner obviously) knows the private key.
The pool has insurance of lets say, 15 spr in a separate address for each miner. The insurance needs to be paid by the miner before he starts mining.

The miner submits shares and once he finds a block he publishes it to the network.

If the miner steals coins from his address then he gets banned from the pool and the pools uses his insurance to pay the other miners.


Could this work? Or is it not possible because it isn't how mining works for spreadcoin?

The problem here is that if you will find a block and will not try to steal its reward pool can still claim that you are trying to steal it and use both your funds and block reward. For external observer it is not possible to distinguish between situations when you are trying to steal money and when pool operators are just lying about this. Even if pool is operated by some legally registered entity with non anonymous owners they can steal your money and you wouldn't be able to prove anything.

If you cannot find blocks consistently but are still mining that means that even one block's reward worth something for you.

[njs811]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Essentially yes. However, i'm not suggesting an escrow service or a website handle this.  What if something like the masternodes program handled it.

[luigi1111]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Essentially yes. However, i'm not suggesting an escrow service or a website handle this.  What if something like the masternodes program handled it.

The problem remains that it's still effectively unenforceable.

[njs811]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Essentially yes. However, i'm not suggesting an escrow service or a website handle this.  What if something like the masternodes program handled it.

The problem remains that it's still effectively unenforceable.

But i'm not entirely understanding why. Even if someone had their machines pointed at several different pools that still keeps pools small and numerous. We can never run into the 51% problem.

[e1ghtSpace]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Essentially yes. However, i'm not suggesting an escrow service or a website handle this.  What if something like the masternodes program handled it.

The problem remains that it's still effectively unenforceable.

Yeah. If this was implemented, then "so much for a decentralised coin"

[tacotime]

The collateral pool idea is not new:

Hey guys, would it be possible to create a pool like this;


Each miner mines to a separate address. The pool (and the miner obviously) knows the private key.
The pool has insurance of lets say, 15 spr in a separate address for each miner. The insurance needs to be paid by the miner before he starts mining.

The miner submits shares and once he finds a block he publishes it to the network.

If the miner steals coins from his address then he gets banned from the pool and the pools uses his insurance to pay the other miners.


Could this work? Or is it not possible because it isn't how mining works for spreadcoin?

The problem here is that if you will find a block and will not try to steal its reward pool can still claim that you are trying to steal it and use both your funds and block reward. For external observer it is not possible to distinguish between situations when you are trying to steal money and when pool operators are just lying about this. Even if pool is operated by some legally registered entity with non anonymous owners they can steal your money and you wouldn't be able to prove anything.

If you cannot find blocks consistently but are still mining that means that even one block's reward worth something for you.

I don't think his argument is valid, because
(1) The pool and other users know the pubkeyhashes that are mining.
(2) If the miner pubkeyhash finds a block and then refuses to give the funds back to the pool within say, 60 blocks, it's totally clear to everyone mining on the pool that this has happened aside from just the pool itself.
(3) Miners can mine to another pubkeyhash, but that's the exact same as solo mining.

The pool could steal from the users, but that's the same as with Bitcoin. It's more profitable for the pool to allow people to mine honestly and take a percent fee than it is to steal a generated block.

[e1ghtSpace]

The payout for finding a block would look at the reported hashrate during the time the block was mined.  If that hashrate exceeds the maximum the payout is refused.

Such a thing doesn't exist.

Not yet. If there was a third party service which held all of the payouts until the hashrate is determined that would solve large pools.

Wait, hold on. You're suggesting a centralized system to "solve" the problem of too much hashpower in too few hands?

Essentially yes. However, i'm not suggesting an escrow service or a website handle this.  What if something like the masternodes program handled it.

The problem remains that it's still effectively unenforceable.

But i'm not entirely understanding why. Even if someone had their machines pointed at several different pools that still keeps pools small and numerous. We can never run into the 51% problem.

Then why don't they solo mine?

[luigi1111]

The collateral pool idea is not new:

Hey guys, would it be possible to create a pool like this;


Each miner mines to a separate address. The pool (and the miner obviously) knows the private key.
The pool has insurance of lets say, 15 spr in a separate address for each miner. The insurance needs to be paid by the miner before he starts mining.

The miner submits shares and once he finds a block he publishes it to the network.

If the miner steals coins from his address then he gets banned from the pool and the pools uses his insurance to pay the other miners.


Could this work? Or is it not possible because it isn't how mining works for spreadcoin?

The problem here is that if you will find a block and will not try to steal its reward pool can still claim that you are trying to steal it and use both your funds and block reward. For external observer it is not possible to distinguish between situations when you are trying to steal money and when pool operators are just lying about this. Even if pool is operated by some legally registered entity with non anonymous owners they can steal your money and you wouldn't be able to prove anything.

If you cannot find blocks consistently but are still mining that means that even one block's reward worth something for you.

I don't see this problem as very different from the "pool got hacked, all coins are gone; sorry guys" problem. That is, I don't think it'll stop pools from being set up and having people mining at them.

I think established pools reputation is meaningful enough that doing what's described above would result in the death of the pool. A few reports of the pool taking miners deposits and they'd be mining somewhere else.

Edit: and this:

I don't think his argument is valid, because
(1) The pool and other users know the pubkeyhashes that are mining.
(2) If the miner pubkeyhash finds a block and then refuses to give the funds back to the pool within say, 60 blocks, it's totally clear to everyone mining on the pool that this has happened aside from just the pool itself.
(3) Miners can mine to another pubkeyhash, but that's the exact same as solo mining.