Topic: litecoinpool.org is far over 51 % of the network-hashrate (Read 2177 times)

Or to put it another way, would you trust someone who looks like this?

Here he admits attacking the chain

It was indeed Coiledcoin

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.607529

What troubled me was the fact that he used his pool's hashing power without bothering to notify his miners.

Hardly the behavior one would expect from a trustworthy pool operator

Luke's pool mines many chains without his users apparently caring which chains he mines with their hashes nor whether he is attacking those chains or mining them normally. Possibly the users might get a cut of the namecoins, I am not sure of that, but I am pretty sure they don't get cuts of any of the other chains. If I recall correctly the chain he outright attacked (and, as far as I know, still mines albeit normally) was coiledcoin. (? DId I remember that correctly?)

-MarkM-

I've not been around the forums for a particularly long time.  What chain did Luke Jr attack?  What were the circumstances?  How much of the 51% did he personally control?  And how much of the remainder of the 51% was controlled by people who supported the destruction of the alt chain?  I was unaware of a successful 51%, even on an alt chain.

If many users want to band together to destroy a cryptocurrency--bitcoin or alt coin--then they may do it in a pool, if they collectively have the hashing power; that is certain.  I'm more interested with the case where a lot of miners who want a currency to succeed--either in the long run because they believe in its potential or at least in the short run so they may cash out--are in a pool that accidentally grows beyond 51%.  My previous post assumes that the majority of a pool is mining there with the intent of honest mining, not attack mining, and that they would be opposed to their hashes being used for an attack and would take measures to prevent/rectify that.

I don't recall Luke's majority of hashing power being broken, I thought he simply stopped the attack silently and unilaterally after he considered the attacked chain to be effectively dead.

As far as I know he still mines the chain, still with a majority of its hashing power, but does normal mining instead of attack mining - maybe not even all the time even, possibly he switches back and forth and the chain is dead enough still that no one notices? Basically if the chain ever does start to recover, Luke will hold a lot of coins, maybe a majority of the coins. So its possible he switched from attack mode simply because he felt the sheer number of coins he will hold will be enough for him to destroy the coin in the markets by dumping. Heck maybe he does dump them.

Supposedly he did lose a few users, but only a few. The main difference with pooler's pool attacking litecoins is there you are talking about attacking the very chain that the users are expecting to profit from. But still, if all pooler did was refuse blocks from others, some of his users might well see that as simple compeition, saying if other miners have a problem they should just come join the pool...

-MarkM-

Maybe Luke Jr could comment, he knows all about using his pool to destroy Alt chains

I support people finding different pools or solo mining to prevent/fix pools getting over 51%.  I used to mine LTC with litecoinpool.org, but have switched most of my mining to solo and I still get a few blocks a day (for now...).  That said: is a 51% attack by a pool really something that the community needs to worry about?

It's my understanding that during the standard 51% attack the owner of the 51% uses their hashing power to build a chain of false blocks in secret, which they then releases all at once, reverting transactions that have already been used to buy something that has been delivered.  Now, obviously, there is no danger of this happening if the owner of the pool is honest, so unless pooler starts to listen to troubling voices in his head, we should be good, but let's assume for a moment that litecoinpool.org regains 51% and that pooler goes a bit insane.  If he were to attempt a 51% attack, wouldn't it be obvious as the network would suddenly stop seeing blocks mined by his pool?  Unlike a solo attack where a single user has 51% and can control all of the machines (and can even hide his hashing power by never letting it on the network, thus avoiding the sudden 51% drop in hashing power of the network), a pool attempting a 51% attack requires that most of the members of the pool stay on for the duration of the attack.  It seems like it's just not that big of a deal to me for a pool to have >51% of the hashing power.

In another 51% attack, the attacker simply denies all transactions while building a block chain that orphans all others' blocks.  This would also be easily discovered and would only be able to continue for as long as the users stay in the pool.

I almost wish that a pool would try a 51% attack just so the community can see how quickly everything returns to normal after the pool's 51% is broken, though it would admittedly ruin the owner's name.

Thoughts?

www.coinotron.com is an old pool, but we could use some power too

http://mine.liteco.in is a new pool, we could use some power

this might be good for the next few days, when you have some MHash, but when the difficulty is up with factor 10?

then it's bingo or casino-time to find a block...

so you have to use a pool...

I can only agree with you about that.
Yesterday I closed the pools to new users, and put a link to the list of Litecoin pools on the registration page.
Let me repost the link here: https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/wiki/Comparison-of-mining-pools
As you can see there is a wide selection to choose from.

go solo bro

More people should solo-mine Ltc...IMO

i don't think it's a big problem, because pooler is a very honest guy.

But it isn't very healthy, when 1 pool has more then 51 %.

Edit: yeah, i mine at litecoinpool.org, but ~ half of my hashrate is located at coinotron.com