Topic: [1500 TH] p2pool: Decentralized, DoS-resistant, Hop-Proof pool - page 301. (Read 2591971 times)

Not a single point of failure, a potential point of failure.....

Not a single point of failure, a potential point of failure.....

Exactly. So nobody will use it.....

That is creating a potential point of failure, the whole idea of a peer to peer network is to avoid that.

To offset the costs of the API I was considering offering 2 options (miners choice):

So the technology is there to do something like that. But trouble is perhaps it's not really p2p anymore. You've just invented a semi-centralised pool that enforces a payment to the boss - even a benevolent one. So politically this could be hard to achieve in practice.

I don't think there's anything stopping someone from re-coding it to remove the donation, however I'm not sure how the permissions are setup on the main git repo, whether those changes could be re-submitted back into the main branch without forrestv's approval.  That might require a fork.

Anyone is free to fork the code and make their own changes, but I'm sure also if someone did something like that with nefarious purposes it would be found out pretty quickly and that node could probably be blocked from interacting with the rest of the nodes.  Now I say that without knowing for sure, but that would be my guess.

Would it not make sense to see if there are others who would be willing to put up very well connected peer nodes, which won't service miners, but will provide peering and maybe the data and API system so that it can be queried by the local nodes?  I've got resources to be able to contribute and am willing, Paul seems to, and I'm sure there are others who will pitch in as has been the case to date.

It certainly looks like you're saying you want to move it away from being Open Source, tbh:


Personally, I got into Bitcoin because I believe that it has the potential to change the world & dismantle the corrupt Banking systems, & I'm happy if I break even or even make a loss if it succeeds in doing so. I want BTC to replace money, & I also know I'm not alone in believing it can. I'm totally not interested in getting rich, and if I were, mining BTC is not the way I'd go about it  

There is far more worth in BTC than making a quick profit. The long term potentials are limitless. World changing even.

Frankly, while my own desire for compensation is high, the benefits of being an open source and 0% fee pool are hard to ignore.

The primary Coin Cadence front-end that you see now on my site requires a lot of data that is simply not available to a regular p2pool node without some major changes that increase resources required by the server to the point where it would effect efficiency for most mining on their own nodes.

To solve this I will be providing an API that will allow nodes to pull the data they don't have access to from my servers.

Open source and free will only take any project to a certain level, as long as people are willing to donate to foster a better cause.  I don't think this works in the BTC world, since we're all doing this for one reason - to mine BTC and make money......

I agree with everything you said KGB. But given its open source what stops someone from stripping out the mandatory fee and gaining the benefits without paying.

The share chain solution is that if the majority of p2pool are willing to play by these rules and reject freeloading shares that don't include the development fee then it would be enforced. That would be a hard fork so would need managing.

Will the majority of miners play ball though?

Forget it. Won't work. It must & will stay Open Source, like Bitcoin itself.

Personally, I don't think a solution is all that hard, it just requires a little press advocacy and some determination by a small handful of folks.  I also think that the ball has started rolling in that direction, thanks to windpath's efforts to date, and if momentum can be kept up and others pitch in to help out, it should be fine.  To that end, here's what my solution suggestion would be:

1) Get the project away from reliance on forrestv, which is already happening.  Again, nothing personal, but if he's not committed with or without donations, having it rest with one single person is detrimental, and as we have seen stunts growth horribly.
2) Re-work the p2pool project pages, sites, and get the important info updated - how to get it, how to set it up, where to go for answers, list of nodes and peers - need to be cleaned up and _maintained_ so that it's relevant.  This at least in part is happening, a-la windpath.
3) The hardest and probably most controversial - change the mindset of the pool from "open, 0%" to "proprietor-owned (note I didn't say proprietary, slight but important semantic difference) with minimal fee (1-1.5%)".

#3 I think is the answer to address the major problems facing the pool.  Open source and free will only take any project to a certain level, as long as people are willing to donate to foster a better cause.  I don't think this works in the BTC world, since we're all doing this for one reason - to mine BTC and make money, not to cure cancer or find alien life.

What's the biggest difference between proprietary pools and p2pool?  Proprietary pools have an entity (person, business, etc) behind them driving their pool to be better, because it attracts new miners and ultimately helps their bottom line.  That's the fundamental "problem" with p2pool - the ideology is great, but call a spade a spade in this case and admit the reality that without reward, you're not going to get a lot of people to do things to help beyond some forum posts.

I would suggest the only way to have this work is treat it like a true O.S. project - form a core group of members as caretakers of p2pool (you can easily see who could be a candidate by their actions).  Then change the code to remove the .5% donation to forrestv and replace with a 1% donation to an escrowed account overseen by the core group.  From this 1% amount, you could do 3 things that could ensure the ongoing health of p2pool - 1) form bounties for developers to tackle the coding of fixes big and small, 2) reward public pool node/peer operators for providing their time, services and resources maintaining high quality nodes that all miners can use and finally 3) re-distribute the leftover percentage directly to all the miners using the built-in reward/tip system already existing in p2pool.  This will provide a mechanism for properly funded development, and rewards to all who are doing their part to use p2pool and help it grow and flourish.