In the words of the great Encyclopedia Galactica: DON'T PANIC
Did the "possible 51% attack" originate form a regular mining pool? I somehow doubt that. Prematurely blaming regular pools is IMO a bad move and definitely not good Karma. Isn't it much more likely that the attack was coming from an external actor, rather than the existing Karma mining community? What if it is related to the 1.5+ GH/s Nethash that were unaccounted for last week? Was it even an attack on the regular network or rather aimed at Mintpal directly? I'd like to see some facts before we rush to conclusions and point fingers.
If it was indeed a 51% attack, it is pretty much the scenario I and others were warning about in April. Because of the new ASICs several GH/s of mining power are suddenly at the whim of a few select people. Moving our existing hashrate to P2Pools doesn't protect from that. P2Pool is a tiny piece in the puzzle of securing the network at best.
Another piece would be if the community and/or LLC joined the game and secured the network by aquiring additional mining power, either through renting rigs or purchasing ASICs. This was already suggested as an idea on the Karmashares forums IIRC.
In the interest of not getting this whole mining/algo/PoS discussion started again, I'll just shut up now. The team will work it out, I trust them to do whatever is best for Karma.
Did the "possible 51% attack" originate form a regular mining pool? I somehow doubt that. Prematurely blaming regular pools is IMO a bad move and definitely not good Karma. Isn't it much more likely that the attack was coming from an external actor, rather than the existing Karma mining community? What if it is related to the 1.5+ GH/s Nethash that were unaccounted for last week? Was it even an attack on the regular network or rather aimed at Mintpal directly? I'd like to see some facts before we rush to conclusions and point fingers.
If it was indeed a 51% attack, it is pretty much the scenario I and others were warning about in April. Because of the new ASICs several GH/s of mining power are suddenly at the whim of a few select people. Moving our existing hashrate to P2Pools doesn't protect from that. P2Pool is a tiny piece in the puzzle of securing the network at best.
Another piece would be if the community and/or LLC joined the game and secured the network by aquiring additional mining power, either through renting rigs or purchasing ASICs. This was already suggested as an idea on the Karmashares forums IIRC.
In the interest of not getting this whole mining/algo/PoS discussion started again, I'll just shut up now. The team will work it out, I trust them to do whatever is best for Karma.
This is me speaking for self.
No one is blaming anyone as we don't have proof on who did what. But there has been speculation among a few of us that there is the possibility of a shadow pool or pools who are modifying their front ends to show one thing yet combining hash power in the back or have a private pool made up of huge hash power rigs that is working hidden to the public. Again we don't have any tangible proof on who is or is not doing this, however I will challenge you to look up all the pools you can find and then add up their hashrate. You will find that their is currently close to 1.5-2gh of net hash that is unaccounted for. And i think you would be foolish to think there are that many people solo mining. While asking people to mine at a p2pool is not a fix all it does put us one step forward in an attempt to spread the hash rate instead of having it all focused in one place. Hell for all we know you could be unknowing hashing away at a pool that is feeding this type of attack without you even having a clue. In the end to each is their own, if you switch to a p2pool or not that is up to you. But at least it was put out there on what could be happening and its up to you if you wish to react or not. The health of Karma and its security is very important the Karma Team and rest assured they are looking into doing what they can to make sure Karma remains secure for years to come.
Nobody has named anyone, but as a regular here I couldn't help but notice some bad Karma in the air concerning certain pools lately. Then this rumored attack takes place and suddenly everyone writes and tweets "OMG switch to P2Pool now". Didn't really feel right to me. Disclaimer: I personally do not mine anymore . I've always liked P2Pools though, so I would switch if the high electricity cost and the sharp drop in profitability hadn't forced me to dismantle my rigs.
IMO it most likely is an unknown/hidden pool. Heard about the Synology NAS mining malware that mined the creator 500 Million Dogecoin? He/She/They set up a private pool for that purpose and went unnoticed for months. Not saying that's happening here. But if you were - uhm lets say an industrial scale miner and sat on a fat and juicy Scrypt-Farm with a few hundred MH/s or even GH/s - would you mine in a public pool and pay fees to some stranger, or would you just set up your own, non-public, pool?
The best way to decipher negative posts or 'FUD' from members is to ask "Ok, who is set up to benefit from all of this?" - In every negative upchuck, every FUD, there is a subtle (or not so subtle) attempt to push someone is one direction or another that will ultimately benefit the person posting in ways seen and unseen. In this situation, the party who benefits from all this nonsense is P2pools - in particular, a certain pool certain members have been promoting and admitted to being in discussion with.
In both their posts they have attempted to get people to switch to their pool with the enticement of rewards and zero fees. It matters not what their intentions are - they are holding themselves out as promoting a pool through the use of negative speculation and baseless accusations.
They should never have mentioned their connection with this certain p2pool - you cannot give free and frank advice to a community when you are set to benefit from that advice should people decide to follow it.
