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Topic: Is it possible to set up a pool anonomously? (Read 943 times)

hero member
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https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=905210.msg
September 04, 2015, 08:11:58 PM
#9
Aren't there a few pools out there that offer TOR connectivity?  I swear I've seen a few... of course I could be wrong here.

I am pretty sure mmpool is:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mmpoolorg-15-fee-dgmpps-tx-feesvardiffmerge-minetor-559011
Quote
Access via TOR using hidden service phkttm64gbquasaq.onion

I would PM the Pool Op before switching to make sure I used the correct address. They were dealing with some dDos issues a few weeks back. Op kept it going by giving people new IPs and ports.
More traffic on their pool and it would be very enticing sometimes because I personally like the thought of merge mining as a miner, but I don't like taking a chance on it causing any BTC mining issues.

Which is also why I do not like to mine on Tor. Even if I am being paid on share work, I still want to have the fastest connection possible, which is why I looked at wireless for two seconds, although I will probably not make more money from that choice. I simply want to turn in my work and get more, etc. as fast, lean, and clean as possible. Although there are many times I think I have done some F-d Up something or other with my network and sometimes I have made some big mistakes. I also am not afraid to start searching, reading, testing, or begging in the right situation for the right thing I'm sure.

I think we would find most of us are the same way regarding the lean and fast (within reason for many, not all by far)
I mean if there is a choice for the exact same resources, or for many people you can use a few more resources and make a large jump in that direction, we will choose what we perceive to be better running, but maybe not as private.

...and what I meant about "within reason for many, not all by far" is there are many "hobbies" out there people spend tens of thousands, millions, and hundreds of millions on. When you spend your money on something, (time is money, maybe less or more important to everyone but the same in this scenario.) Or time, Money + Time = Mining Hobby then human nature is going to apply the same amount of pressure, or exert the same over all of us and like anything in life some won't dig in at all to know who is doing what if an anonymous pool has high hashrate, say even 20 PH (people move around for much less, I think some move because their left buttcheek had an itch on Thursday) but say a pool with 20 PH ran anonymously had been running for a few weeks and had equal payouts in a PPLNS style system following all of the established pools, then yes, there is a percentage of miners who would move because other people are there or they are drifter miners anyway. I think part of that group is also the people who see a magic money box but never login and have someone else running and checking it, people who have never owned a miner, don't know much, or care to know much. Also some people cannot own them, they cannot afford too. There are a lot of those people who get one anyway maybe because they know someone at work who talked them into it, but it costs them. There are people who are bouncing around large amounts of hash they own playing with different alts with 50TH for kicks that afternoon is kindof an expensive afternoon for me, but not for many, many people. They would mine at an anonymous pool.

I think the majority of Bitcointalk miners, miners who stay informed on BTC news, miners who have a bit of Engineer, miners who take the time to read the forum will not intentionally make a choice which lowers the quality of the connection in any significant way. For many people the goal of a hobby (life?) becomes or was one of learning and / or teaching. We teach mistakes to our kids, friends, colleagues, random anyone on the internet so they learn what not to do, right? (For many reasons outside the scope of even how far outside the scope I am) But seriously am I right? Due to the nature of people, we will always choose the better way if the same amount of resources are required, and I am not really elaborating on the many miners who will spend well in excess of what they would consider a real return of investment. Some people are paying the extravagant power costs to be able to mine. They will not choose a slower mode. There are many reasons for this but the main one is because you can. Like restoring a car or overclocking a PC. For pleasure.
By the way, to make sure I correctly assert my opinion of miners I must say, if you are not hurting or stealing from anyone, if your mining is truly victim-less, then everyone is created equal because ultimately we are equally supporting the BTC network. I do not at all mean to imply someone is a better miner because they do not enjoy doing it all themselves. There are plenty of people who own miners but haven't ever done more than connect power, a cat5 cable, and configure a pool. There are also probably people who own huge mines who couldn't tell you how to turn it on. Money makes money in any business if the person is invested in some way, and has those skills. The biggest miners don't need networking, electronic, software, troubleshooting skills to make money.

If things more or less stay on the same paths of all variables performing as they typically have the opportunity for a new anonymine public pool to be successful in any long term BTC situation does not exist. So, one theory (specifically in the context of having already established BTC's instability and referencing the averaged growth or loss), price may go a little higher but will not see Glory days of anything consistently over 400 until mining centralization is closing in with 3 - 4 real competitors in the market place vying for blocks. By that time they would probably have a pretty good idea of what each would earn. In my opinion though we will see a nice bump in value before halftime. How long will it be until there are only 3 or 4 mining companies? 2 - 4 years. Completely pulled that one out of my ass but I believe the big boys either already have or will have been purchased by the real big boys, the guys on Wall Street with a Hobby of either looking for money on the street or collecting private jets. Either could be interested or not, but they definitely know how to make money from any company.

So I've rambled my way around this thing the long way to say that no, most people will not run to a pool run by an anonymous person(s) / company unless you offer higher payouts than the known pools but some small amount will for some small amount of time, again unless you figure out how to maintain a larger amount of hashrate for as long as they mine there.
Even offering higher payouts, trying to incentivize, use some funding you received to get interest type of thing will get you questioned, it can seriously backfire. This is because no one can sustain a model in that manner unless they are willing to lose money, and it has been sold to the BTCcommunity not that long ago.
You will never get enough business to be serious long-term competition without losing money and even if you can easily afford the money you wil be called scammer although it does help attract a certain group so overall it would help but it depends on several variables and you still wouldn't pull it off unless you had the pockets to be one of the central mining Big4.

I wish it weren't true that mining will be centralized and controlled in cinderblock buildings with AI running everything, but it will.

Someone mentioned Alts... People seriously think a majority of bitcoin miners would jump to an alt coin and start mining it? Nooo come on. If a serious amount of miners started jumping to some Alt coin what would that show the world? The insecurity of the Bitcoin, and I said it that way for a reason, The Bitcoin, because some people call it that if they are talking about the blockchain, or any other part they understand is involved but do not know the name. The world will see The Bitcoin as nothing special after all. Money begins to evaporate. The BTC will have to be under $80 - $85 USD for a consistent time period, maybe 1 year? The difficulty will have already been blowing up, 5 - 15% jumps in difficulty and then you will start to see some desperation. Maybe some people willing to try anything would throw 1 or 2 PH at an alt if they think they can pump and dump it, but I do not think you will see a large amount of hash move to an alt. If miners are running, they will be BTC mining, or ending up with BTC for their hash.

I think human nature rules the majority of people will always choose to mine with someone they know other than someone they do not. Take the same sample size from bitcointalk miners and all things being equal they will never choose the anonymine. Once the speed issue is addressed (and a couple-few other things) those same people would choose the more private way because (all things being equal) why not choose the better way for the same amount of money? When I say all things being equal I mean that there isn't any other reason you wouldn't use Tor, or that the only reason you would use anony-mine is if you desire the option of using a more private method.

I don't think the question is technical in nature. Well, certainly not in a sense of troubleshooting electronics and pulling out schematics, but maybe in a context of Psychiatry, and in that sense, most of theBTCBTCBTC miners, who actually measure power, connect wires and login locally sometimes are wired that way. We all are wired certain ways. So if you are headed down that rabbit hole I am confident there will be quite a bit of feedback, but if you go back to electrical technical and start talking about what is the best M.O. you will receive far more opinions.
I'd respectfully request further clarification regarding your perception of technically but regardless of your answer, the outcome is the same. To run an anonymine you would have to make sure rewards are higher than most / all established pools and do so quickly. Time is running out.

Established pools can offer Tor access if they choose to do so. You can be private now anyway. The only advantage in what I perceive you have lain out is for the Pool Op which is highly suspicious in a community where the favorite buzzword of the year is again transparency. People will roast that anonymine bitcointalk thread like it is Hitler reincarnated. Many people will take a certain amount of risk for an increased amount of profit. Once people saw such being paid to people they believed to be real then maybe they would entertain anonymine with a little hash, maybe more than I think, but I don't think so because I am boots on the ground with these bitcointalk guys everyday, reading everything I can, massive lurker.

 We are talking potentially large amounts of BTC debt. If you can pile up debt in Fiat you can pile it up in BTC, it would be easy to pile up quick depending on how you get your fiat, how much you have to pay over 99%, if you have to pay out early or if you were super lucky and actually earned greater than 100%. Forget about money laundering. Any successful pool in that space will be crucified, much less an anonymine.
By the time you go to all that trouble (Time + Money) to be private, operate a Public Pool which allows private connections via Tor, well then all things are not equal, you will be Doxxed and you just started losing money.
Possible? yes
Successful? Only if you are doing something illegal and never get caught.
Original? Only if you promoted the fact the Pool Owner / Operator are anonymous. It isn't as though you cannot be an anonymous pool operator who offers Tor access. If you have the skills and money to setup a pool which rivals the established pools how hard would it be for you to use a fake identity? Of course, unless you were doxxed, but you would invite less attacks using a fake identity. Still very much wrong and probably illegal somewhere one of the anonymine users and you live. In that case whew, you would be flamebait for the duration.

Good Luck with all of this.  Wink
legendary
Activity: 1344
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Mine at Jonny's Pool
September 04, 2015, 07:41:01 AM
#8
Aren't there a few pools out there that offer TOR connectivity?  I swear I've seen a few... of course I could be wrong here.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
September 03, 2015, 02:23:01 PM
#7
Anything is possible.  However, I assume miners would see decreased performance trying to run a pool through onion routing.

That is what I wanted to know, how significant do you think this decrease would be? Would it be significant enough so that the pool would be unable to compete with other pools in terms of it attracting enough miners?

I am not the right person to answer this question.  I have no knowledge of hosting anything on an onion service.  I could make a case for why it would decrease performance and why it wouldn't.  Someone who has actually run an onion service of some kind or has researched it could probably answer this question.
Thank you for your insights anyway. It will be interesting to find out how feasible this is, and how much this would actually decrease performance.
donator
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Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
September 02, 2015, 12:32:44 AM
#6
Anything is possible.  However, I assume miners would see decreased performance trying to run a pool through onion routing.

That is what I wanted to know, how significant do you think this decrease would be? Would it be significant enough so that the pool would be unable to compete with other pools in terms of it attracting enough miners?

I am not the right person to answer this question.  I have no knowledge of hosting anything on an onion service.  I could make a case for why it would decrease performance and why it wouldn't.  Someone who has actually run an onion service of some kind or has researched it could probably answer this question.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
Anything is possible.  However, I assume miners would see decreased performance trying to run a pool through onion routing.
That is what I wanted to know, how significant do you think this decrease would be? Would it be significant enough so that the pool would be unable to compete with other pools in terms of it attracting enough miners?
donator
Activity: 4760
Merit: 4323
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Anything is possible.  However, I assume miners would see decreased performance trying to run a pool through onion routing.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
Pools effectively demand a significant amount of trust from its miners to mine there. Anonymous pool operators would never get anyone mining there.
It is a hypothetical question, I do understand that what you are saying is true, but I would still like to know if this is technically possible. Thank you for your response however. Smiley
-ck
legendary
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Ruu \o/
Pools effectively demand a significant amount of trust from its miners to mine there. Anonymous pool operators would never get anyone mining there.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
Is it possible to set up a pool anonymously now? This would need to be a viable pool that could be competitive with other pools on the network?

My first reaction is that this is not possible because of the latency times involved in anonymity technologies, which would prevent such a pool from being competitive due to block propagation, which is why I presumed that such pools do not exist now as far as I am aware off. Even though I have this preconception I would like to be more certain that this is truly the case, and hear what people with a deeper technical understanding of this subject think. This is a purely hypothetical question for the purposes of my research around questions in the block size debate. Please refrain from debating the block size issue here, since I would like to just know the answer to this specific technical question.

If you would like to discuss the block size issue with me, you can do so on another thread that I started here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/why-i-support-bip101-1164464
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