Topic: ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It - page 1294. (Read 3917531 times)

The moral of the 51% tale is that bitcoin, as the first cryptocurrency, is fragile as long as it's young and the hashing is not technology bound. Decentralization can only be guaranteed if there are no technology leaps - and these ASICs are likely to be the second to last leap to occur. The next one will be, when a company has enough money to develop a chip which is state of the art (and I don't think BFL has that quite yet).

If you want to protect bitcoin from 51% attacks during these times, first thing to do is to (re-)introduce checkpointing again - at least temporarily.

Why not just use a decentralized Pool like P2Pool?
That should at least provide some transparency.

Thing is, splitting it between pools still requires exactly same solo-mining.  In both cases you have to trust friedcat not to 51% attack - as there's no way to FORCE him to split it between pools.  So as there's no way to secretly double-spend, splitting between pools achieves absolutely zero in practical terms - and so shouldn't give any PR benefit.  Maybe in practice it WOULD give PR benefit - but I don't believe we should be pandering to the ignorant who don't understand simple logic just so they feel happier that somehow some need for trust has been removed (when it hasn't).

No matter what we discuss or what friedcat agrees to do, we (and everyone else) still has to trust that if the chips arrive, work and could generate 51% of network power he won't abuse it.  And IF it all works like that then he'd be cutting off his nose to spite his face by 51% attacking anyway - as if you can mine the majority of newly minted BTC last thing you'd want to do is massively devalue BTC (beyond the devaluation likely to occur anyway when ASICs come out) and risk some major change in hashing algorithm to shut your chips totally out of BTC in the future.

Plus honestly not sure why people think ASICs will work well on pools alongside GPUs/FPGAs - won't they need an entirely different granularity of work to avoid being totally inefficent?  Are people who propose splitting across multiple pools suggestng the ASICs sit idle whilst pools get adjusted to work with them?  If not (and they accept solo mining before moving to updated pools) then why the need to move if he didn't 51% before moving (and let's face it - best way to 51% attack anyway would be to do it before even announcing the ASICs were ready, which no plans/announcements/commitments to pool mine can prevent).

It's meaningless PR - far better to explain WHY it's entireless pointless than play out some pretence at the cost of efficiency.

Besides the irrational fear, there is a very legitimate aspect of the concern, regardless of whether it is even plausible to think that ASICMINER is a threat. Your PR move has zero value for people who matter, especially the ones who have the responsibility to develop the system itself. It's very un-Bitcoin to have to trust any particular party, and it really doesn't matter whether it is benign. The only way to address this concern is to split hashing power into different stations and introduce some degree of social insulation between them. This may very well be easily doable. Maybe not though. You may still view it as a PR move, but I think it is much more defensible.

Of course for all we know, all chips are toast and we are arguing over nothing.

There already are users that demand that once asics are out the hashing algo should be changed to prevent that these asics are used for attacking the network. So yes, there will be people screaming about the power asicminer gets.

Even when the hashing is split through some pools, the hashingpower in asicminers hands remains the same and could be used for an attack anytime too when stopping to hash into the pools. But the noobs wouldnt cry so hard at least.
Hashing into pools would have another advantage. Asicminer could put at least enough power into each pool so that it is at the top of hashers. That means a username representing a website to buy the asics of asicminer will be a nice, big commercial campaign for cost: zero. And on top... its exactly targetted at the persons that would buy the asics. Miners at the pools. (I once suggested that to friedcat but he didnt want to give me some shares for the idea. ) Anyway... i think its a good idea. The website could show the date when users can buy the asics, maybe even with prebuy. So asicminer could earn some money.

I think it would be good to let asicminer mine solo under 51% and be the top miners in pools to run a zero cost ad campaign. I think that will have the best outcome with the least fear of noobs.

Regarding a price on a new exchange platform. There is no price to be set by friedcat. Only shareholders would be put into exchange with their shares and these shareholders can, only if they want say they will sell for a price of "whatever". The same goes for buyers. They say how much they want. So there is nothing needed like a startingprice. That will be completely build on its own.


Diablo... so Luke-Jr killed Asiminer out of the wiki and gmaxwell is closing the thread and moving it to offtopic? Asicminer is clearly one distributor of Asic-Hardware. If Luke-JR and gmaxwell work against Asicminer that looks fishy. I dont see why they act this way. They drive away potential buyers from Asicminer. Im not sure what to think about this. Especially because all the other companies arent selling anything yet too.
I see asicminer is mentioned in the article at least.

On the other hand i think Asicminer should start to think about how to sell the Asics. There needs to be a website at one time at least. Now the demand should be created. Its not good to let this part of the business lay down until short before selling i think. Others could take away the needed domainnames and so on. Plus you lose time of cheap advertising because potential customers cant find any infos.

Of course mining is way more important. And i hope it will be done as far as it goes because why should asicminer give away the cashcow for cheap.

bla bla bla.....

is there any relevant information about asicminer lately....  last i heard there would be information in a week.. it has been a week.

Reading your eloquent responses above, I am starting to feel you may be right in some way. Regardless, I would prefer a  continuing influx of "random idiots" (as you call them), and less yelling and more constructive discussions amongst us who are already here, welcoming them.

FUCK YEAH!

Wait, wait. This will reduce the influx of random idiots finding their way to Bitcoin?

DO IT! DO IT NOW! DO IT WITH FIRE!

BFL running with all the money would be terrible for their customers, but it might actually be a good thing in a way for Bitcoin. It would be based in the US, would be large enough and tangible enough that I think criminal and civil cases could be successfully pursued. All the other big money scams in Bitcoinland haven't seemed to produce any kind of punishment for the perpetrators.

Seeing as most people think they will get an ASIC from BFL soon, I doubt many people will sell off their Bitcoins if ASICMINER temporarily holds >51% of the hashing power.

Would make no sense at all.

And if BFL never produces a working ASIC the shit will hit the fan anyway, the biggest monetary scam in Bitcoin yet.

So, move on people, nothing to see here, have a good day !

So you mean we will be able to see very cheap bitcoin again? Should we feel happy about this?

Fair enough, I agree. This is logical. The problem is - just look at this forum - there is an irrational, overblown fear of the "51% attack". If ASICMINER starts soloing with a huge chunk of power, or if it contributes to one pool thus making that pool close to or over 50%, all hell will break loose in the forums, then the press will pick up, and next thing you know the public will be irradiated with sensational half-truths, disinformation, and fear mongering. Therefore, it may be a prudent PR move to distribute the power, in a transparent manner, into the hands of several pool operators.

Thing is, it's an entirely pointless discussion for purely logical reasons.  Let's assume ASICMINER gets its ASICs out first and ends up controlling 50%+ of hasihng power.  Then either:

Friedcat is going to abuse that to double-spend - in which case us talking about whether to use one pool or many is going to achieve precisely zero.

Friedcat is NOT going to abuse that to double-spend - in which case using ANY pool or combination of pools only adds risk and inefficiency.

Nowhere is there ANY scenario in which using one pool or many pools reduces  risk.  It's not like double-spending can be done without anyone noticing - which would need to be the case for using pools at all to make ANY sense whatsoever (as if that were true then there'd be a purpose to it - ensuring that it wasn't being done in secret).

Put a different way, if he's willing to use pools then there's no need for him to do so.  If he's unwilling to use pools then us asking would change nothing.  Either way it's wasted effort : it costs him (and us) money for no benefit and no reduction in risk (in fact a possible increase in risk).

I was under the impression that people here were discussing whether to distribute ASICMINER hashing power between multiple pools or not. I am not sure I understand your comment, but I am sure you did not understand mine. Also, I am sure mine was not nonsensical.

People are concerned with a single entity controlling >50% hashing power. Personally, this doesn't make my top list of concerns. Anyway, if someone fired up ~20 THash/s tomorrow, they would be able to (with absolute certainty) double-spend their own transactions, and to prevent others' transactions from getting confirmed. If that same someone directed this mining power to a pool, then that pool operator would be able to perform these disruptions. By the same token, if someone contributed 10-15 THash/s to one of few major pools, this may get that pool close or above the 50% of total power, leading to same kinds of problems as above.

Nonsense, you control the hash power. You don't need to mine on any pool. Besides, mining on a pool doesn't prove anything and only introduces inefficiencies.

What you have to realize is, the only strength of Bitcoin comes from decentralization of notarization. You put considerable power on one spot, and that strength is gone. Having 40% hash power on a pool is not the same as having 40% on a single physical location, or owned by a single entity. Pools have no control on the hash power. They might have a single shot for an attack in their lifetimes, but if anyone really had 50% physical control, we'de be fucked.

I'm not saying anything bad will happen if we did in fact control a high percent. However we are writing history here, and I wouldn't want the fact that we do, or even can, to make news. It will degrade trust in the network without any ill intentions from our side.

Not sure why people are getting in a fuss about possible 51% attack by a pool operator.

If ASICMINER is first to have operational ASICs then there's no need to use a pool at all (other than maybe 1 device for testing purposes).  The function of pools is to give payouts near the average - nothing more.  If ASICMINER is first then it'll get pretty steady mining income anyway as it would be a decent chunk of network power - so zero reason to use a pool.

If, on other hand, ASICMINER is NOT first with ASICs then its ASICs wouldn't be anywhere near enough to do a 51% attack anyway - only thing to avoid would be mining on same pool as another ASIC producer who was privately mining not selling (and don't think there's any of those anyway).

So where's the issue?

On relisting, my preference would be (in order):

1.  BTC.CO (best functionality)
2.  Bitfunder (looks promising to me)
.
.
.
10th Crypto - shockingly bad interface : doesn't even show which orders are yours in market list and most operations seem to take way more clicks than they should.  Already well overtaken in trading volume by BTC.CO and sure Bitfunder will pass it in a matter of weeks.

If possible it would be great if only those people who wanted their shares moved to the platform had them moved - and those who didn't want the risk had theirs manually managed (as would be the case if the share wasn't relisted at all).  I'm NOT in favour of a website where you can only trade ASICMINER - it'd be better than nothing but means extra transfer fees/delays every time I want to buy/sell ASICMINER for something else.

probably a nightmare to make, but would it be possible to give all shareholders the option to mine with their part of hashing power at their favorite pool? with some website/accounts ...  , i dont think this is going to happen but it could be a solution for the people that fear this 51% attack,  (and i dont think they should worry too much)

I vote no 3rd party exchange platform.

It was already stated that ASICminer may investigate creating their own dedicated trading platform, and I support that cause.

Let's not give anyone else the opportunity to mess with peoples funds/shares again.

I vote for BitFunder https://bitfunder.com/!