Topic: Is Bitcoin not decentralized anymore? - page 2. (Read 6981 times)

Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake

http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

You are absolutely right.
So there's no point of arguing.
Maybe I don't understand what Danny is saying or maybe he doesn't understand what I am saying.
So no point for this to go on.

Danny I apologize man.
Maybe I don't understand what you are saying.
I have edited my posts.

Clearly you two are not on the same page, name calling doesn't help anyone.

He is asking (among other things) if you think it is a problem because you haven't been clear on that. For example...

So you are not worried about a 51% attack, but are worried about media FUD about a 51% attack. What is the bigger problem, the risk of a 51% attack or the FUD about a 51% attack?  If the FUD is the problem, could education be the answer?

I don't think it's fair to claim nothing has been done to eliminate the risk of a 51% attack. As far as I know, there is no known way to solve this problem without a central authority, all pow/pos coins are affected. Does this mean the problem is being ignored? I wouldn't think so, I am sure there is at least one person out there working on a different method for consensus.

Minor edits for clarity

That's ok, I've got enough patience.


Well, not entirely.  At least when others see this thread, they'll have an opposing viewpoint so they'll be less likely to mistakenly believe that your proclamations have significant merit.


I'm fully aware of many of the risks involved in the Bitcoin protocol.  I accept them, because there isn't yet any known way to fix them without a trusted authority.  The particular risk you are referring to has been known since the original announcement of the the Satoshi whitepaper, before the programming was ever even released.  There are two possibilities:

• It isn't a problem, and Bitcoin will be a successful experiment because the financial incentives result in the network being protected
• It is a problem, in which case Bitcoin is a failed experiment.

Time will tell which is true.  Without running the experiment, there's no way to know for sure.  So here we are, thousands (or millions?) of us all voluntarily participating in a global experiment on distributed consensus protected by proof of work.


Not sure what you mean.

You are trying to say that there isn't a problem, but we need to fix the problem (that doesn't exist?) so that the media won't scare people.

I'm just trying to help you decide if there is a problem or not so we can have a logical discussion.  It's impossible to have an intelligent discussion with someone that wants to fix a problem that they don't believe exists.


Nah.  My employer pays me to sit around and accomplish nothing.

Silly question, meet silly answer.


Probably, but at least I don't get defensive and argumentative when someone points out weaknesses in my ideas.  I'm willing to consider the advice on its merits and accept the verifiable facts.  Then I can work with others to find ways to strengthen the program.  Interestingly, none of the software that has been implemented to my specifications has been "attacked" successfully yet.  All successful attacks on software I've been involved in either attacked weakness in code that was under someone else's control, or attacked weaknesses that I had already pointed out, but which the company chose to ignore.

That doesn't mean I'm incapable of being unaware of weaknesses in my software, but it does demonstrate that making an effort to understand what you are saying/doing and researching ideas that have been discussed in the past results in much better ideas than just suggesting ideas that have already been analyzed without being aware of the past analysis or taking the time to consider the implications.



You say Toemaytoe, I say Tahmahtoe.

the funny part is :

in P2P file sharing, miner pool is like server of indexing files ... all attack by private investissments.
and you see ... at the end, only decentralizer DHT or Kademlia win to "continu" the job.

solo-mining is like that.
or P2Pool (for high end hashrate machine).

---

i don't understand why ghash.io use 1 identity in the bitcoin network... it's really simple to split 1 server in 10 others to split mining job.

BTW does anybody else have an idea on how we can get rid of the problem?
If you got an idea just let us know and we can build upon it.

OK, so I am back and we could go on forever quoting each other trying to prove our point.

But I am not going to do that because it's pointless.

But I do have one question for you Danny:

How does a computer programmer that always takes the time to think about possible attacks and try to prevent them, accept the fact that the current protocol is flawed and can lead to a serious, actually completely destructing attack?

Doesn't really go hand to hand with what you are arguing about with me does it?

One more question:
Did you ever produce anything at all?
Because I can guarantee to you that there will always be someone better than you ready to "attack" your software and be very successful at it.

PS: It's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) not GPG.

Are you even listening to your self?

BTC was built upon greed.
You are an idiot by making comments like that.

PS: Yes, GREED....
SATOSHI mined more than 1 million BTC, he ONLY transacted ONCE and that was to Hal Finney.
He kept the rest to himself......

The problem is in the protocol yes, but that's not the point. You, as in the miners, aren't doing the necessary to scale down this problem. Instead you're sticking to ghash.io and that's why we ended up here.
If miners actually did care about BTC no pool would get close to 30% not to mention 50%.

There can be a pseudo-return to those days, but it's very iffy.

If pools or companies allowed for miners to take part in votes on what the company or pool should do based on their mining rate, then it may bring back more miners. But a LOT of things would have to change.

I have to laugh at the statement where you said there will be giant entities battling it out, but I think those "entities" will entail cloud mining, such as GHash's companionship with cex.io. PBMining, and a few others exist that use a cloud hashing format, and I think that's how the mining would still be done by the "users" but hosted by the companies.

This was Satoshi's plan.  Are you not aware of this?  This has been known and expected from the beginning, Satoshi even said so himself.


No.

Great. Then there's nothing to fix.


If the media is the problem, then fix the media.


Not sure what that has to do with this discussion.  Lots of people "are involved in projects".  Lots of people aren't.  It doesn't change the fact that either we need to be worried about a 51% attack, or their is nothing to fix and people just need to be educated.  If the media was saying that Bitcoin transactions could be reversed, would you be saying that we need to change the protocol to fix it so they stop saying that?


A problem that you say doesn't exist needs to be fixed?  You are familiar with the term "cognitive dissonance", right?


Generally? No.  I've found that they rarely know what they are talking about and are more interested in improving revenue than delivering facts.


And we can't fix media FUD by changing a protocol.


Which is why we need to focus on education.


I wouldn't expect the average Joe to be using a highly volatile, extremely risky, beta software safely at all.


I don't care if it succeeds or not. It's an interesting experiment, and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.  I expect it to succeed, but there's certainly a possibility that the whole thing collapses in the future.


I have no difficulty comprehending at all.


Great.  So nothing to worry about anymore then.  We can all move on to other discussions.


Yes, obviously.  No need to fix it unless it's actually broken.

The trust is in NOT the system, it's in the execution. You and another party can TRUST that your transaction will be processed by the bitcoin protocol and be irreversible. You still need to trust the person to whom you send bitcoin to honor the sale/service/exchange as agreed. The network/system, does nothing to make that trustless.
Pools were not something that existed when bitcoin was released. It's miners working together to help all miners that AGREE to work together to split found blocks proportionately. This is not something bitcoin needs to control, as the blockchain is decentralized and visible to anyone. IF a pool abuses it's hash power and attempts to re-write, the network will punish them and they will have ZERO trust forever more. A 51% attack is detectable and preventable. No one entity has shown that they have enough hash power to do so.
The FUD will always be there. Before the Ghash 51%, it was mutable TX, before that it was hacked exchanges, before that China, etc, etc.

If you forget about 51% pools for a second, there is a second problem too. Mining has become big boys game. Samller miners are dropping off faster than new ones that are getting into game. Those who survive are getting bigger and bigger, and are swallowing each other slowly. To enter mining game you just need more and more money, which cant be good for decentralization and diversity.
If things continue way they are going right now, at some distant future, there will be only few very large entities mining and battleing it out with insane ammount of hash power and money that they need to invest just to stay a float and not to be swallowed by one little bit above them.

Do you think that there will ever be a time when mining will come back to common user? I just cant see it happen with what we have today.

Considering how many "corporations" are mining, enough of them with a user input wouldn't be super bad. There would just have to be a large variation between the pools, and lots of hardware in each.

It would be bad, but it wouldn't necessarily wreck everything. Cloud mining works (Unless you have a phobia for that kind of thing) and having 15 different companies pointed at different pools wouldn't necessarily wreck the system, but it all depends on how you look at it.

On a side note, however, the amount of stuff you can use Bitcoin with is increasing dramatically, and that's better for everyone.

You guys are so fucking selfcentric that you don't get the point.
ITS NOT THE POOLS FAULT NOR MINE.
THE PROTOCOL AS IT IS IS FLAWED.

It's as simple as that.

You cannot expect every single fucking miner to point their equipment elsewhere EVERY FUCKING TIME theres a 51% concentration instead of just getting rid of the problem.

You know why?

BECAUSE YOUR TRUSTLESS SYSTEM DEPENDS ON TRUST, between miners and pools.

Nice decentralization and trustless system we have there......

You DID bring Ghash to 40PH+

Let's assume the following:

Ghash has 40PH
Ghash owns 50% = 20PH
Miners on Ghash own the other 50%
If each miner had 720GH, that would be about 27,000 miners to equal 20PH

The world pop is ~ 6.6B
If 0.01% use bitcoin, that is 660,000 users
Say a little less than half of us mine bitcoin = 300,000

Now, let's assume that 1/3 of the network hash is pool owned. ~96PH total
That is ~63PH owned by "private" miners, of which there are 300,000
That is only an average of 212GH per miner
You are 3.5x above that average

So yes you and the other miners at Ghash ARE causing the problem.

No one can tell you to point your miner(s) at a certain pool, that is the freedom of the network. Yet that freedom also brings responsibility. You are to act responsibly to protect the network. Asking for a hard fork is taking away that freedom and centralizing it. That is the opposite of what bitcoin is about.

You want a tool? Here, use this
It will tell you which pools are "too big". Move to a smaller pool and all is fine. Each one of us holds the future of bitcoin in their hands. We can build, we can just toss it to the side, or we can destroy. It really is up to you.

bitcoin is slowly becoming more and more centralized with miners

with services and users it is diversifying

Here we go again....

Danny I have much respect for you man, and I do believe you have a lot of knowledge but I don't think you got my point.

I (as in me personally) am not worried about a 51% attack right now.
I am worried about what this is doing to BTC (mostly caused by media FUD).

The FUD that has been going around is damaging BTC rep and it's slowing down adoption as people tend to see the bad side of things instead of the benefits.

I personally am involved in projects that are aimed to promote BTC.

And yes I "demand" (as you put it) for this "problem" to be fixed as to get BTC to acquire greater adoption.

Seriously man, do you not read the news?
NOT everybody has the knowledge to understand that when a pool has 51% it doesn't necessarily mean destruction.

We need to get rid of this issue if we want mass adoption.
And you cannot expect the average Joe to have the knowledge you have on the subject.
If you want BTC to succeed then I advise you (just like you advised me) to put your knowledge and skills on how to get rid of this problem rather than - well basically - go bypassed it.

I don't understand why that is so difficult for you to comprehend.

Gavin himself stated that he has a "solution" but it's currently not needed (or something along those lines).
When will it be needed, when we actually have a 51% attack?

You clearly haven't been paying attention in this thread, or you'd realize that my response was in reference to S4VV4S claiming that it isn't a problem for pools to have 51%, and then demanding that someone try and fix this problem.

If he doesn't believe that there is a problem, then there is no need for him to continue demanding that the protocol be "fixed" (why fix something that isn't broken?).  If he feels that the protocol must be "fixed", then he should start admitting that there is a problem.  Until he gets over his cognitive dissonance, and chooses one side of the debate or the other, any conversation on this topic with him is useless and unproductive.  Every time you tell him that he has the power to vote with his hashpower, he states that he doesn't believe there is a problem that would require him to do so.  Then in the same post he talks about how the problem needs to be "fixed".