Topic: Join me in the biggest mining pool boycott Bitcoin has ever seen (Read 13190 times)

For the 3rd time, yes, block withholding is equally possible with classical pools and with unverified GBT. Block withholding is not the problem because it is difficult to monetize it, hence, few will attempt it. The first time I mentioned block withholding here, was in the sentence "this could be used for more than just a variant of block withholding".

The real problem - which is perhaps difficult to see now because it will fully manifest later on, when coinbase is negligible and tx fees (which are ever-changing) are significant, and reward methods will adapt accordingly - is faking the total tx fee. To prevent pool hopping, reward methods will be more similar to PPS, with the payment for each share depending on the total tx fee of the block it tries to become. If the pool doesn't verify the miner's tx set, the miner can report a higher total tx fee than there actually are in the block, tricking the pool into paying more than his work is worth. This attack is profitable, and hence, everyone will do it if the pool allows it.

And of course, to prevent this attack, GBT pools should verify the tx set, hence increasing bandwidth.

As mentioned, I think the problem should be solved with SCIP. I gave my own version of why GBT without verifying tx set is bad, if not now then in the future; slush should explain why he believes the whole tx set needs to be verified.

Again - it verifies that the tx exists in the Merkle tree with the given root, assuming the Merkle tree exists. It does not prove that a Merkle tree exists. This distinction is of no importance in some other use cases you mentioned, but it is important here.

No it hasn't. The full tx set is not required for shares which don't solve the block.  Sure a miner could make up a bogus tx set and submit shares but the miner doesn't save any work and doesn't benefit the miner in anyway.  To avoid getting caught the miner would need to never submit any shares which produce a block.  In essence this is just a more complicated form of block witholding.  In the miner wants to withhold blocks it is far easier to just do that.

The pool needs to verify the coinbase is part of the tx set otherwise the miner could submit non-pool work but this doesn't require the full tx set.  That is the whole point of using merkle trees.  How would I be financial ruined by only performing the "a" & "b" validations below.  How would I incur losses which are greater than an attacker just withholding blocks?  Please be specific.


For non-block shares only two things need to be verified
a) the blockheader = no different than stratum or getwork
b) the coinbase to verify it is part of the merkle set = only the merkle branch is needed.

Any pool is already doing "a",  if the miner supplies the tx set the only additional verification needed would be "b", and that doesn't require the full tx set, it doesn't require the computation of the full merkle tree and you still haven't explained why it would be this massive overhead.  I would point out this isn't something I came up with.  The use of a merkle branch to validate a specific tx without the full tx set is already used in merged mining, p2pool, and SPV clients.

Thanks god you're not running the pool. You would be financially ruined in few hours . Just kidding :-)).


It has been already answered by me and Meni. With Stratum, server choose set of transactions willing to include to block. Do full validation like finding outputs to spend, check limits of script and so on. Then it prepares merkle tree and everything stores *internally* to its memory, under so-called "job id". Then server broadcast merkle branch (part of merkle tree) to *all* connected miners, with proper job id. Once miner submits share with given job id, pool just takes precalculated and already verified data from its memory, do sha(sha(header)) and checks if the share is valid and/or winning.

When the pool offer miners to pick their own transactions, then the story is completely different. Pool still *must* check all shares like in Stratum, because it credits the miner by small portion of bitcoins (in PPS, for simplicity). But pool must do the same validation for every submitted share. The same work which is done once per 30 seconds for all connected miners in pool.

Of course there's some space for shortcuts, like validating proof of work for every share, but do the full validation only for few shares. I was not thinking about this too much, but I bet it will open Pandora box with some side channel attacks to the pool, like pool hopping in proportional pools.

Actually I think that ratio 1:10 for Stratum vs full share validation was rather conservative.

Well actually Meni did.   I am glad you agree that GBT is not worse security-wise.   I don't see how it is significantly worse performance wise.  The full tx set is not necessary for non-block shares.  The pool can ensure the miner isn't not working for himself using the merkle branch and the blockheader.  Please describe why it is significantly worse performance wise.  There is some overhead but that overhead can be offset by the pool just requiring higher difficulty shares when the miner selects the tx set and in return the risk of centralization is significantly reduced.

Apples and oranges. Nobody said GBT is worse security-wise. Just performance-wise. There's big difference if the pool needs 10 servers or 100 servers around the world, because of change in share validation process.

Right and my point is that today every single pool in existence is subject to a much easier withholding attack called "don't submit any hashes which solve the block" and not a single pool in existence provides any enhanced payout based on the tx value of the block so there is absolutely no additional revenue for such an attack.

So I don't really see using GBT as being ANY WORSE that what pools are doing right now.  The major difference becomes that the miners are in control of tx selection.

No.

If there is a Merkle tree of valid txs, the Merkle branch proves that the tx at its leaf is a part of the tree.

It does not prove there even is a tree. At each depth of the branch, the miner can make up a completely random hash to concatenate with the deeper hash.

Like I said, block withholding is possible without this but it's difficult to make money from block withholding. With what we have here, the miner can solicit from the pool more payment than he's due (I'm assuming an evolved reward method), that is, an actually profitable attack.

That was my point.

Block withholding has nothing to do with used protocol. Such attack can be used for getwork/GBT/Stratum.

The pool can verify the coinbase tx is part of the merkle tree by the merkle branch without need for the full tree.  Sure the miner could select a set of txs with low or no txs fees but compared to the ability for a miner to simply withold all blocks it is a negligible threat.  

Today without using GBT block withholding is a significant risk.  The risk isn't increased by using GBT.  

The pool knows that the miner did work, and that the work cannot reward anyone else. But without requesting the full tx set, it doesn't know there actually is a tx set which hashes to the given Merkle root. The miner could be making the whole thing up.

When tx fees are meaningful, this could be used for more than just a variant of block withholding. The miner can misreport the total tx fees in the block he offered, and obtain more payment than his work is actually worth.

This can be solved with SCIP.

Since smart miners are essential for Multi-PPS, I discussed it in that thread as well.

It is still the same sha256(sha256(header)).  The only additional step is verifying the coinbase tx is part of the merkle tree.  If that is what you mean by "full validation" then ok but it isn't a significant overhead and the pool could simply require higher difficulty shares to compensate.

If you mean Stratum shares, then the difference is that Stratum job is prepared by pool itself, so there's no need to validate everything for every share. Just sha256(sha256(header)) is enough. But things are different once every miner can pick completely different transactions to hash...

As opposed to any other share?

...but it still needs to do full validation of that share.

Thanks for the correction.  Why would it be expensive in terms of bandwidth?  For shares which don't solve a block the tx set isn't needed.  The merkle root, and merkle branch is sufficient to verify the attempted share has the correct coinbase tx.   Shares that do solve a block are rare enough to be a rounding error on bandwidth requirements.

Correction, Eligius doesn't allow it either. NO pool supports that. Just because pools support GBT doesn't mean they're actively allowing miners to contribute their own transaction list. That would be ridiculously expensive in bandwidth.

In theory yes but it requires
a) The pool support a mechanism where the miner not the pool handles tx selection (getblocktemplate is one possible solution but others could be defined).
b) The miner has a local bitcoind running to independently select transactions.
c) The mining software supports the system.

If you mean as of right now? The answer is no.  GHASH (and AFAIK all other major pools except Eligius) support no mechanism where the miner can independently select the tx set for the next block.

from one of the comments:



is this possible? That would be interesting. that way i can benefit from all the features of Ghash without giving them my power to vote/doublespend. In fact, everyone should do this, so they can vote individually and prevent doublespending, while still enjoying the benefits of your favorite pool.

Hi Technomage,

I am a BitCoin novice user and only started micro mining a couple of weeks ago. But what you say is very sound. Facts and the true are always clear but some people try to hide from the majority or obfuscate them for their own selfish ends.

The bottom line is that if there are only a few large mining pools, these operators can hold us to blackmail and as you say, make the decisions on the development of the BitCoin protocol to suit their own ends.
Thank you for raising awareness on this vital issue. I think the long there danger of creating a few big mining pools doesn't ever appear on most small time miner's radars. They go with what is easy and what their friends have done. It's not feasible for me to implement P2SH mining at this time as I have under 10 GH/s processing power. I think I read the minimum recommended hashing power for implementing P2SH is 40 GH/s

Keep up the good work!

Best wishes,
Zephyr

On windows, the compiled executable does not need python, twisted, etc. If you are using the uncompiled .py script, you will need python, twisted, etc on windows or linux.

*fucking jaw drop* I Could Not run it without Twisted and Python (python i understand why it could be needed, But wtf is twisted?)
Python is needed for the scripts.... Dah fack.... I was getting errors without it (and i had to reinstall it too!, i already had python, Yes i used it, It was working)
Twisted<-I have no Fucking idea, But i got Pages of different repeating errors without it installed
(No, I did not use/build from the source of P2Pool)

Now i wish i took a screeny of the errors..

Well think of it this way, To mine on deepbit, It'll take you... Five.. too eight minutes to fully compleat?
Goto site->Download guiminer->Pick Deepbit->Register at deepbit->Point miner & add flags, done.
(from what i can remember) for P2Pool
Goto P2Pool thread in forum->Download Python,Twisted,P2Pool,CGminer->Configure P2Pool,Bitcoind and CGminer aiming, Done.

Difference? One is a minized tray icon that is "incognito" while the other is three minimized cmd windows on the task bar.
Sadly, It took me 2hrs to configure P2Pool.

This.

I haven't even bothered to try and set up p2pool just because I don't need yet another thing to mess with and steal a few hours of my life.  Give me something that is as easy to use as double-clicking, and I'll use it.  Otherwise, I'm just not going to bother.

Yeah, for several days it was under $1, i remember checking it constantly on Mtgox.

This is what happened my first time around, i invested about $2500 in 5970's, and already had 2 before i began, i heard about bitcoins if only because i had been searching around for 5970 info and bitcoin poped up, but anyway, if you look at this chart i began around the middle of July, within a few days of browsing these forums i found out that it would be profitable in the long run - unfortunately i couldn't see the future, well about a week later that dip happened, right around the time it hit $2/coin i had sold all my 5970's and i lost my ass, i paid $699 a piece for them and by that point i was strapped for cash you can imagine how many other people were also selling of their equipment at the same time and because of the deflation, it took me at least a month to sell it all and i ended up selling them for around $350 shipped. That was a massive hit, i didn't even make enough BTC to pay the week and couple days of energy those 5970's used.

That's where alot of my fear comes from, iv'e re-invested in BTC again in more than one way-

If i could i'd make a neat little GUI that connected both CGMiner and P2pool with optional kernals and what-not but i pulled my hair out trying to make a G15 applet that accepted the API key, i wasn't able to complete it, i'm just not brain enough for that.

I think if there was an easier way to set up it might grab more attention, you know, graphs, some sort of BTC/24hr, or more importantly a unified miner, it took me a couple of hours just to set up the miner/pool hasher following a guide, and i still don't even know how to open the bitcoin wallet as a RPC server without doing it with GUIMiner in Windows.

I haven't been a part of BTC Mining for very long i will admit that, i was around when BTC went from $20 to $0.50, i still have that feeling like if i don't get ahead, i won't. If i don't rationalize, as you put it, there is no way i will come out ahead. As human beings we are developed around being rational to survive and i think until i come alittle closer to finishing the payments on these mining rigs i won't be to comfortable taking the risk. I'll never work against a pool or anybody efforts to mine, i keep my opinions pretty neutral and decide what i have to do to "survive" for my situation. 

Chea, Just listen to holliday, I was on P2Pool for.... 30mins? Found nothing, Turned it back on for 1hr, Got 4shares, For a total of about .02btc
600mh/sec two 6870's


Hey guys, I've got P2Pool running on my gaming desktop, And i want to point my 24/7 miner at it's P2Pool port... Thing...
So that im detected as one entity with 1.6ghash rather than two entities one with 600 the other with 1000.
I tried to do this with Solo minining and gave up, Granted i didnt put much work into it... Perhaps i should check around in the P2Pool thread

I gave P2Pool a try for 2 or 3 days and i got nothing from any payout, i am a simple thinker, i mine at deepbit because i can see my mining making progress.

I used CGMiner and some other program to connect to the pool and it was just a flay of "waiting for work" i used up 3 days of 3000 Mhash/s and went into the negatives, that's what turned me off, it added some address to my other wallets receiving but nothing ever came from that.

Besides that i'm am one of the type of people who would like to see Bitcoins succeed and become a currency we can one day trade with Newegg or Amazon as an online currency, but it is a vicious cycle which can be summed to an analogy for my personal situation.

Where mining is your job, and ways of mining are your transportation.

I see solo mining like walking to work, you will show up late every time and eventually be out of a job.
I see P2pool as public transportation that i have to wait an extensive amount of time for and still end up being late.
I see deepbit as using the car i own, the gas i fill it with is getting me to work bringing me ahead to one day be able to either invest in more bitcoins or faster transportation.

Maybe 3000Mhash/s isn't much to some of you, but that's all i have and for me (someone who assumes is on the low-end of the hash spectrum) this is the only way i don't go backwards, These cards cost roughly $165 by themselves per month to run, that's not including hot water, cooking meals or anything else in daily life, it isn't feasible for me to dedicate my rigs to a pool that i can't make up the difference from atleast breaking even.

someone told me it was due to a string of bad luck, following longer it turned into someone having some fishy activity and getting paid every 40 minutes. If i'm not working, i'm with my daughter and i have to have a place where i can set up and mine without worrying if i'm breaking even, that's my reason for staying with Tycho, so far he hasn't done anything that i can see to hurt me or anybody else, just reading these forums and the "P2pool mission" it sounds like you guys want to run "Wal-Mart" out of business because they carry a little bit of everything, while i happen to like being able to get my DVD's and TV dinners in the same place.

Everyone who cares for bitcoin's success, should solo mine or mine on p2pool, follow development and vote with their bitcoin clients (hashing power).

Weakening the security of your own money is stupid!

Count me in.

Two points i think are crucial:

1) Gavin and the other devs should and will come to an agreement. No one else should stick their nose on that.
2) All pool admins will support what they decide.

The first point assumes that they, over all the others conoiceurs, have weighted pros and cons of each implementation, and decided on a solution. They have proven until today that they do the best they can, and everyone should support them, for the better and the worst.
The second point is, i assume and always assumed the main pool admins do what the developers decide.

As long as those are true, i see no point for the alarmist.

what the F**K is p2sh...
Im using P2Pool
And im using Deepbit.

Leave me alone im being a goodboy, I shall bake bread for your flame war, And then make one side pay more than the other for it.

I have actually read a great deal on this issue, both the BIP changes, the issues the dev team is having, and the issue of centralisation.  Yes it will affect me while I am using bitcoin actively, but the detail and materiality may not.

I also find it unusual to receive pm's telling me I shouldn't mine on Deepbit, and the degree of "evil" associated with it.

So, I am at a pool that has 30% (it was higher), it meets my needs, and has someone who has a service that has attracted a lot of business.  However, there might be more centralisation in the dev team, but people are not dismantling that with such gusto.

Perhaps you should take more interest in these issues then. The health of this decentralized network is important, and indeed it will affect you.

Read that - mix of sigh and lol.

I mine at deepbit, don't belong to a team (can't see any point - this isn't boinc) and I don't particularly care about the mining programs or squeezing every last bit cent from my GPUs or software.  Last time I went to the deepbit site I didn't care to look at any voting stuff (if there is any) - but it tells me my hash speed and earnings.

I think many of you are unfairly targeting Tycho in this. I recommended he make some comments, but it's probably best if I make them here in his defense, myself.

Due to Deepbit's size, they really are at the mercy of the other miners and pools. If they support P2SH, and enough miners do not, their miners will be operating on a blockchain that is not democratic enough and prone to double-spends. If they do not support P2SH, and enough miners do, their miners will be operating on a blockchain that is not democratic enough and prone to double-spends. The decision has to lie with the rest of the pool, because any decision Tycho makes risks forking it.

I'd like to mention that I, personally, do not appreciate Tycho being put into this position, because this is asking him to represent the Deepbit miners as a whole, many of which may have a multitude of opinions, and the vast majority of which probably do not even specifically care either way, they just want to mine Bitcoin.

If future development decisions are going to be brought to the public for voting at the behest of any one developer, such as this one has, I would recommend Tycho ALWAYS cast his pool in favor of whichever developer makes the most effort to keep the issue OUT of the public sphere. I don't know who is to blame for this in this case, but developer hubris needs to be punished by miners and the Bitcoin public, not rewarded.

TL;DR - Deepbit is too big to weigh in on this issue individually and risk forking the chain. I'm also not happy this issue is public enough now that Tycho is obligated to address it.

Final note: I mine at a number of places, but Deepbit is not one of them.

...which have almost the same DDoS resistancy, still provide low variance mining, is easier to setup and chainless (you don't need to run bitcoind on miners and have them well connected).

Insider knowledge? Just kidding as usual

The same miners who don't care also won't care to boycott.  The ones who would "boycott" are smart enough to make their own decisions and change to pools which support their views.

So a "boycott" is a useless tactic.   It would be like all vegetarians boycotting a steakhouse.  The only thing that helps is awareness.  The next massive DDOS attack (and it will happen) use that to convince people to try out p2pool.

Actually I don't think there will be any choice.

I can predict the future:
1) Slush and BTCguild support BIP16
2) Luke-jr supports BIP17
3) Some small pools support BIP16
4) I'll check if there is considerable support of BIP16 and if it is, then I'll implement it too.
5) BIP16 wins.

Well, or nothing happens.

I use a small pool, only because I want there to be more than 3 voters.  All pools are not equal and so the miners are not voting on this issue by using any specific pool.   

The majority miners have spoken.  There is going to be only three people that will make the decision on which implementation is chosen. 

(I am more unnerved that this is construed as an attack on the three largest pools.)

Speaking of voting, is there a list of which pools support which changes?  I'll certainly go with the "wait for further testing" option because I feel we will be stuck with a hack that fixings a problem that doesn't matter right now. 

I mine with one of the top three pools, and whatever multisig is chosen is fine with me.  I really don't care about that particular issue, or at least, haven't yet found a reason to care.  If someone wants to give me a reason, feel free...

Regarding the issue at hand - it's really rather simple.  As soon as the leader of my pool makes a decision I don't agree with, I'll switch pools.  Until then, I am not concerned about large pools existing.

Also, lol @ Brunic's multi-language rage.  But, he does have a point. 

Ever taught about the language issue?

I went to make an account on Deepbit to check, and you can choose English, Russian(I think?) and an Asian language(Japanese? Korean? Chinese?). After that, I went to check the teams:

1   OverClockers.Ru   Join   849   696.80 M   256.09 GH/s
2   Ukraine   Join   306   381.41 M   141.27 GH/s
3   RonPaul2012   Join   159   272.83 M   117.09 GH/s
4   America   Join   508   361.41 M   113.03 GH/s
5   Bulgaria   Join   211   341.91 M   97.66 GH/s
6   Poland   Join   259   251.25 M   95.02 GH/s
7   vOz   Join   322   401.25 M   93.92 GH/s
8   Beijing   Join   26   135.03 M   82.77 GH/s
9   Germany   Join   353   159.91 M   60.73 GH/s
10   RMB   Join   130   184.88 M   51.30 GH/s
11   Canada   Join   149   114.83 M   49.62 GH/s
12   FRANCE   Join   64   81.25 M   40.34 GH/s
13   Russia   Join   176   124.89 M   33.96 GH/s
14   Belarus   Join   56   75.64 M   30.11 GH/s
15   Serbia   Join   31   75.06 M   21.56 GH/s

So, we can clearly see that we have Russia(2 times!), Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland, Beijing, Germany, Belarus, Serbia. You almost have 1 THash only looking at the top 15 teams. And we don't know about the individuals who are NOT in a team.

My guess is that a large group of miners don't care because they don't talk your language. They don't understand you, they don't know all the fuss is about and, more importantly, Deepbit is the only large pool I know that have a complete interface that cater to the languages of these people. That's why they go there, because they can understand what is written on their screen.

I've already tried to start a topic/project about a way of introducing Bitcoins in different languages (French notably, because business is in french here). I got NO replies, answer, PM, whatever, like the only language on this planet is English.

You know that only 25% of the Internet use English correct?
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

How can you make Bitcoin international if you cater to the needs of only 25% of the population? Where is the multi-language client? Where is the multi-language version of this website: http://www.weusecoins.com/ ? Or of the video on it?

But hey, go on with your revolution against Deepbit. Write english messages everywhere so that people who don't understand that language can be sure they never care about what you say.

***EDIT***

Wanted to add, if Tycho ever see this post, is that I congratulate him for being one of the rare person who try to make mining more international. He is an example to be made of, not somebody to be shame of. And no, I don't mine on his pool.

Actually, what technomage says is true.
Most miners don't know or don't care.
If deepbit, slush... normal pools display message in their site, encouraging  miners to join p2p , so that bitcoin network will be safe.
Technomage wants like asking politicians to help & develop all the humans in country.
That too cant be said exactly, as deepbit, slush....are NOT monopolying bitcoin network, but Technomage wants big pools to spread awareness to their miners.

I know many miners who never even not updating their mining programs to new versions.

If big pools display message, it will be known to at least the miners who checking the site knows about p2p, same as displaying messages to spread bitcoin, its anonymity, decentralized....

Thanks digital, you expressed it exactly as I wanted :-)

I think what slush is trying to say is that mining in big pools doesn't take away the miner's right to choose.

They still have a brain, can still read threads and make educated decisions just like someone who is solo mining or p2pool mining.  If they don't like the decisions a pool makes they can move away from it.  It's a decision they can make, just like deciding whether or not to support BIP.

I mine with slush, and I don't feel like my ability to support one change or another has been impeded in the least.  If I didn't like what slush was doing I would let him know and if things didn't change I would leave slush.  Bottom line.  It seems like slush has all the power because it's his pool, but in reality the pool is made up of thousands of workers who can all make their own decisions.

That is what I thought originally as well. When BIP 17 was announced at the forums I got very confused about the whole thing and to me that was a sign that BIP 16 had bigger issues. Yet it was clear from the start that Gavin didn't like BIP 17.

If it truly is the case that there is concensus among developers (besides luke) that BIP 16 should be enabled, I would vote for that. To me the only thing that really matters here is the general opinion among the devs, the problem is I don't know what it is.

Actually the only one developer who is strongly against BIP 16 is luke-jr (or anybody else?). On the other hand he can be very loud...

I think that all the p2sh issue is getting more dramatic here that it need to be and some ^^ people are using it for their personal childish fights instead of thinking about bitcoin project more globally.

I agree that this is a complex issue. I'm no coder so the technical details between the different BIP's is beyond me. I still want a choice in the matter as should everyone else. I have to trust the devs more in this than I do the pool operators, that's just the way I think.

The problem is that even the devs don't agree unanimously on which implementation of P2SH to use so that makes it so much harder for me. The feature is very important for Bitcoin but perhaps it's best not to rush it. That's why I personally don't even know how to vote right now, I'm on the fence.

What I have to stress here is that as it is in real world politics, people tend to study the issues at hand much more when they have more power over them. This has been proven with studies done about the Swiss direct democracy system. This is why I definitely want to work for raising awareness so people study the issue and make an opinion instead of just blindly mining in a big pool which decides in behalf of thousands of miners.

I think I understand. I'm in the business over the year and you're not the first who's panicking because of "large pools". Actually, as I said, I'm not keeping gun to anybody and changing the pool is *very* easy, when the miner think the pool is doing something nasty. Freedom of choice is also be free enough to join large pool if somebody want.


I absolutely agree. For that reason I think it's much more safer (for the Bitcoin network as global entity) to let decide few people who are in direct touch with main developers than let's decide by people who simply don't care. Yes, I understand that centralization sounds terrible, but honestly it's also the way how to move Bitcoin to any direction. Because, like in the real world politics, 90% of people simply don't care.

Well, feel free to mine solo or connect to the pool which vote for your direction, I have no problem with that. But pressing everybody to vote for himself, even when he absolutely don't understand what's the issue, is the oposite extreme.

If the top 3 pools wanted to do the right thing, they would mass email all their users about P2SH and ask them to investigate the issue and make an opinion on it. This would raise awareness more than anything.

You still don't understand the underlying issue. I may be a bit aggressive with my approach but the truth is that most miners do not seem to understand nor care about P2SH. That is the real problem, this whole thing to me is about raising the awareness of regular miners. And the fact that the mining network is simply too centralized.

If you look at my signature you will see that there is no mention there of P2SH. In fact this issue will not go away even if all of the top three pools suddenly start supporting it. This is a bigger issue that is about all future development of Bitcoin, what happens regarding P2SH is not the most relevant issue here. I'm not sure if I myself agree with the way devs are trying to rush a solution that the dev team in itself does not agree with unanimously.

Well, let's just say that the feeling is mutual. I'm very pissed that you undermine the seriousness of what I'm talking about, I'm not spreading FUD here, I'm spreading awareness.

If the miners were actually aware enough to actively change pools to change their vote on Bitcoin development, we would have no problem here. None whatsoever. The problem is that a large majority of miners seem to not care about any of this or understand any of this. Many probably haven't even heard about the whole thing yet. This is why we have a very big problem with such centralization and I think the deadlines for the whole P2SH are a bit rushed. Miners are not yet used to the idea that they can vote on these things.

The issue is that the Bitcoin devs want to keep working on the system, implementing multi-sig that everyone likes anyway apart from disagreements about small issues of implementation, wheras one large pool thats unpopular anyway due to issues with there fees could prevent them doing so, or possibly even tidying and expanding the protocall in the future as well.

As far as there are big pools supporting both solutions, there's no real problem, because miner *can* vote by moving to the pool which is supporting the same thing. So you're wrong.

And please remove my pool from your signature, because you ARE spreading the FUD. It sounds that people have no choice and they cannot vote FOR p2sh when they're mining on large pools, which isn't true.


What's your problem exactly? Pools arent holding guns on people's heads. If somebody want to support p2sh, let's connect to pool which want it too. If you don't want p2sh, move to deepbit.


I must say that I'm pretty angry when I see this kind of misinterpretations and fears.

You misunderstood my OP. I clearly stated that the problem is the centralization of voting power in the hands of a few individuals, such as yourself. This is simply unacceptable.

Even if the pools miraculously come to an agreement over this over the next few days and we go forward with BIP 17 (is that the one you're supporting, btw?) this issue of centralized power will still be there.

I don't expect everyone to leave your pool nor would I want that, but I do want more decentralization than we have now. The top 3 pools have over 50% of the network which basically gives ultimate power over both the network and the development of Bitcoin to 3 individuals.

To 3 individuals. I'll let people chew on that for a while.

Why isn't P2Pool dominating yet?

Technomage, please don't spread the FUD. Where did you read that I'm not supporting p2sh? I'm in the touch with Gavin and I'm going to release p2sh patch on the pool soon and I stated this many times on forum (however I haven't time to spam *all* forum threads about p2sh topic).

23.Jan: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.709045

Now is the time to start thinking about the future of Bitcoin. We're currently in a situation where the developers of Bitcoin are attempting to enable a new feature called multisig which is a massive technological improvement to the Bitcoin protocol.

There have been great debates on which implementation of multisig is the best but this is not the issue anymore. The main concern for me and many others have become the massive power mining pool operators have over these changes, especially big mining pools such as Deepbit and to a lesser extent Slush and Guild. No one who cares about Bitcoin or the profitability of Bitcoin mining should mine in any of these pools.

For the developers to be able to safely go forward with these changes they need 55% of the processing power in the network and Deepbit holds more than 30%. It's important to understand that this issue is undermining the whole idea behind Bitcoin. This massive centralization is a threat to all future development of Bitcoin. It's not about 51% attacks anymore, this is much more significant. One pool operator, namely Tycho, holds all the cards as far as any major development of the Bitcoin protocol is concerned.

The risk in all of this is that we could see people lose confidence in what Bitcoin is supposed to be about, decentralization, and we will also see a massive stagnation of the development of Bitcoin which will lead to some other, more decentralized cryptocurrency to run over Bitcoin. This is the biggest issue Bitcoin has ever faced, period.

For more information on this I recommend these following threads. Read what P2SH is about. Move to a smaller pool and consult your mining pool operator on what he thinks about the multisig implementations. The other option is to move to p2pool and vote for yourself, directly. Or at least pressure your current pool operator to offer different servers for different votes so you have a choice.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bip-16-17-in-laymans-terms-61125
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/miners-dont-even-know-they-can-vote-on-p2sh-60829
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mining-pools-and-voting-on-the-future-of-bitcoin-60981