You previously said that eligius lost ~400 BTC, based on $571 for 1 BTC that comes out to ~$228,400 that was stolen. Your largest mining address lost ~$14,850 from the selfish miner. If you look at your number 5 mining address they only lost ~$3,300 from the selfish miner. The point is that the amounts of individual miners are relatively small and probably would not be worth hiring an attorney over, also attorneys would probably want to be paid by the hour for a case with that much is dispute. If you were to hire an attorney to bring a case trying to recover the entire $228,400 (400 BTC) then there would be a better chance that an attorney would work on a contingent basis (agree to only get paid if they win and the payment would be taken out of the settlement/judgment).
Probably right. Which would mean it'd have to be a class-action case (if there even is such a thing in China).
As far as I know, nobody ever wins in class-action lawsuits...
The attorneys usually win in class actions cases.
Are you located in China? Is the selfish miner located in China?
I am not sure where the appropriate venue for such a lawsuit would be. If you are located in the US and the selfish miner is located in China then federal court would be appropriate as there is a dispute over international commerce. You would need to prove that the "damages" were done in the US. If the pool is in the US and the pool was the entity that was damaged then this should be clear.
If it is determined that the individual miners were damaged then this is much less clear. If a class action lawsuit were to be filed then "class members" located in the US could be included and the suit would be filed in federal court. The definition of located complicates things significantly, does it mean the equipment is located there, does it mean the "owners" of the BTC addresses live there, does it mean they are US citizens/residents? I honestly do not know the answer to the question.
One thing I noticed lacking on your website is something that says what laws would be followed in the event of a dispute or what court cases would be held in (what state/district). If there is zero relationship between the pool and the miners this may be a non-issue.
2 - Individual miners may not have standing to sue the selfish miner. In a civil case (involving money/damages) you must prove that damages be caused, but also that he damages were against you. There is clearly a relationship between the miners and the pool (the miners provide work for the pool and in exchange for each unit of work the pool provides a maximum amount of payment, if payment is less then the maximum then when the pool can afford to pay more then the maximum the units that got paid less get paid more). The relationship between miners at the pool are not as clear. I am not an attorney, but I think a likely ruling would be if a miner tried to sue another miner at the same pool, the judge would say that their "beef" is with the pool operator, not the selfish miner. On the other hand if the pool operator were to sue a miner the damages are more clear, as the miner did not provide the work, the miner said they provided the work, and the pool operator paid for the work that was not done. There is clearly a fraud here.
Pools don't pay miners for work, merely coordinate cooperation between miners who pay each other.
This is especially clear-cut on Eligius, where most of the funds never pass through the pool operator's hands.
That may be how it is on a logistics standpoint, but is that how it is in the eyes of the law? If you were BTC Guild or ghash I would say defiantly no, as both of those pools have block rewards (and tx fees) paid to the "pool" wallet, and the BTC is then eventually transferred to miners' wallets via automatic payouts. Eligius is very different in that it pays the block rewards (and tx fees) directly to miners via a TX in the found block. Someone could argue what you are saying but they could also argue that since the pool determines who gets paid how much via the payout cue (this being embedded into the header of work provided by the pool - I think this is how it works) that the pool does really control the found blocks. Even a attorney could likely not answer this question with certainty, as I don't think this kind of dispute has been litigated before. The only person who can answer would be the judge that hears the case (and any appellate panel of judges that hear any appeals).
I do question what this person's motive would be. In theory he paid good money for this equipment. As far as I can tell he has done this to multiple pools. Do you think it would be possible to modify mining software so that only the stratum shares are sent back to the pool with the correct header, but the other shares could use a different header (one that pay out to another address)? Do you have a way to determine when he withheld a block from the pool? If so can you compare that to other blocks found around that time, is there any consistency as to who found the blocks? I know that it has previously been determined that you cannot modify block headers to make a found block payout to your own address as the hash would be invalid, but someone who has the resources to have millions of dollars worth of mining equipment might have the resources to make this happen.
*grabs some more popcorn*
