Topic: Chinese Pools and Double Spending... (Read 703 times)

I knew that. I mean why miners do this. The why was for the next part of the sentence you quoted here:


So what calculation? I know they sort transactions by fee size. But a huge transaction with a big fee might be worse than a small transaction with a smaller fee. Be it that you could include more transactions and gain more fees from more transactions or that you only include fees that pay the highest fee per kb. That way you could get the maximum fee and a small, fast propagating block.

The answer is simple.
Miner (pool) receives new block from a peer. What should it do?
Check integrity, parse and check all transactions, remove these transactions from current mempool, etc
This takes time. May be several seconds.
OK, what miners do? They start mining from the empty block immediately. And process all checks asynchronous.
Sometimes asics find solution for these empty templates.

The number of transactions in block is used in difficulty calculation.

Miners using such pool are greedy and they will proceed to do so as long as they can earn a tiny amount more coins.

What i wonder is why miners use 1 transaction blocks for getting an advantage but other miners not even make some calculation like "When i get paid this high fee for this huge transaction then my block will be bigger and gets propagated more slowly. I should only accept transactions based on price per kb. That would be more near to the profit i get from it."

If anyone considers SPV mining and / or 0-1 transaction blocks for a moment please consider spending a moment to read this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/empty-blocks-1085800

Personally, I think everyone should consider these things because it does have an impact on every current and future user or even potential user of the bitcoin network.

I am not a core dev, a great debater, a master cryptographer, huge miner, big bagholder or any other term which may be applied to so many of this great community. I don't have enough of any coin to be a rich man if they were worth ten thousand tomorrow. Like the people in Greece you must have a decent amount of Fiat or some other asset you may transfer to bitcoin in order to hold said coin.

I am a simple user with a tiny amount of hashrate who hopes to be here when Bitcoin does become a worldwide currency used by hundreds of millions of people everyday and I thoroughly enjoy reading what is posted here daily, what I find on other sites, and really almost any source because I appreciate multiple views of many topics.

I find myself constantly asking many people the same question because I sincerely do enjoy opinions rooted in various trains of thought. Obviously people with different goals have different opinions.

Being one of so many who have been impacted, no matter how small the impact at this point, I am still one of many, and I currently have no doubt regarding what is a huge issue yet to be addressed. The most important thing we as users and miners can do is tell, beg, barter, buy, reason, plead or simply talk with any miner possible so they vote with their hashrate and move to pools who are not SPV mining and pushing through blocks without transactions.

I will repeat myself and I try not too but I think one question is worth such.
There is one reason to SPV mine and push 0 - 1 transactions through the network.
To increase profit.
It has been proven to do so, and I do not think anyone debates that point. I hope we all agree faster propagation times for a portion of the pools means those pools will make more profit. Lets avoid the rabbit hole of how much and agree it does. Pools want to make a profit, the more the merrier, the more profit, the more miners, and the cycle continues, wash and repeat.

Now ask yourself why are only certain pools choosing these actions?

No, they didn't stop. They still do it because they have an advantage doing so. Though they now promised to verify the block they are hashing on, while they hash on the next block. So at least a fork is less likely to happen but there is still a chance that it happens.

SPV clients trust miners without validating whether the blocks follow the rules of the Bitcoin network.

When BIP 66 was introduced, some miners started to produce invalid blocks [As their backend was allowed to mine on blocks without validating them] but Bitcoin Core 0.9.5+ knows that it is invalid thus rejecting the block and those transactions included in the block would appear unconfirmed to those clients while confirmed to the other SPV clients.

I believe the pools have stopped the SPV mining since they would be suffering loss if they don't stop it. They would be able to double spend their own transaction when they have 51%+ power.

Double spending means that the same inputs have been spent 2 or more times. In this case, most of the double spends are from the spam attack which sometimes will send 2 transactions that have the same inputs. A double spend does not duplicate the Bitcoin, but rather screws over one party, the one who the Bitcoin should be sent to. The reason people suggest waiting for a couple of confirmations is because it becomes much much harder to double spend once the transaction is confirmed.

Sorry if this is mentioned elsewhere, but with with Chinese pools refusing to stop SPV mining, and all these "stress tests" going on right now with the double spending warning up... What are the odds of a double spend occuring? Does a double spend somehow duplicate the Bitcoins being double spent, or does one party get screwed over? Here is a list "The latest 200 double spends (10 Minute Cache)" https://blockchain.info/double-spends only 1 of which (.5% of list at time of this post) in 2014 and 195 of which (97.5% of list) happened this month! Have the Chinese figured out how to successfully double spend using all their hashpower? Is this what is causing the BTC price to go up, due to manipulation? Should this be means for concern for the entire network, since the biggest pools refuse to comply with stopping SPV mining???