Topic: Merged mining now live (Read 5696 times)

Interesting, rather than simply misunderstanding terms it seems we genuinely have different philosophies on freedom and morality.

I would see buying a hash similar to, for example, buying a laptop (ignoring intellectual property for the moment).  I don't feel that I need explain to the seller exactly what I intend to do with the laptop before a "fair price" can be agreed upon.  Instead, I really believe that a person has a right to buy the laptop from one person and then, shortly after, sell that laptop, second-hand, to someone else for a profit (without informing the original seller).  If asked by the seller what I planned to do with the laptop I feel I have a right to not disclose my knowledge (lying raises moral problems).

Yes, I fully see a submitted share as a 'proof of work' as this term is defined by the pool.  This is just a mechanism for arriving at a price for the hash.  The pool specifies exactly what they pay out in exchange for these proofs of work (the reward system).  The difference is, I don't believe that the pool should have to tell the user what they might do with the purchased hashes before a fair deal can be reached.  If a pool suggests that it is a Bitcoin mining pool and it doesn't actually use the submitted hashes to mine Bitcoins then this is dishonest dealing and very wrong to me.  However, I believe a service would have a right to simply advertise itself as paying bitcoins for CPU time and use the hashes for something undisclosed (such as mathematical research).

I can certainly appreciate your apparent belief in a more transparent market though.  Truly fair prices would be much more common and people would be very much protected from losing out in a trade but this comes at a significant cost of freedom, one I would find difficult to bear.  I know I'm a little unusual in my views though (insider trading and data protection have always been grey areas for me and the less said about copyright the better).

Hidden fees (the way I understand that phrase) is very wrong indeed, this is dishonest dealing and I do not condone that in any way.  Merged mining is worlds apart from hidden fees in my book.

Anyway, I can see I'm a troll on this thread so I'll leave you guys in peace now.  PM me if you want a response.

Principally, I believe omitting details in an advertisement that are directly related to your inputs (hidden fees, contracts etc, merged-mining etc) is not appropriate.
If it directly concerns you or your inputs, you should be informed.

I don't believe a hash has to be intellectual property for you to claim responsibility of that hash generation.
You cannot own a hash, a hash is an array of alphanumeric characters. You can however claim responsibility for submitting a generated hash to a pool.
If you claim responsibility of the hash you submitted that becomes your input.

Therefore, if you agree the above statements, we can logically conclude that you should be fully informed about how your inputs (claim of hash generation == work), are being used by the pool.

Remember, Bitcoin implements a Proof-Of-Work system for coin generation.
Only once you are fully aware of how your work is being utilized, can you then determine for yourself, what a 'fair split' is.

From the two largest non merged mining pools in existence:

deepbit

I completely agree and have never said otherwise.  If a pool says that it is giving you a "fair split" and then gives you an "unfair split" then they are cheating or incompetent (my problem with some of the proportional pools).  If they simply imply that the deal is fair but, when read carefully, it is not specifically state to be fair then it is dishonest or incompetent in my opinion (just like most advertising put out by large companies these days).  I'm much more interested in hearing what people think about a pool which explicitly states "We pay x BTC per share you submit" and nothing more.  Do you believe that they are guilty of fraud if and only if they use those shares to generate namecoins?  Is it really any business of the miner what the pool does with the hashes they have accumulated if there has been no agreement about what can and cannot be done with the hashes?

No look at the wording of most bitcoin pools.

They talk about submitting shares and received a PROPORTIONAL SHARE of the REWARD.

Well if the pool also hashes namecoins, crapcoins, or cosbycoins then the REWARD includes those alt coins either directly or indirectly (no problem w/ pool selling those alt coins and increasing the the pool reward.

Have you actually gone back and looked at the intro, faq, getting started, and signup pages for major pools?

Maybe if you did you would realize your perception and reality aren't the same thing.

IF your promise to share "the reward" fairly then put 10% (or x%) of the reward into your own pocket before you start the sharing it is theft by deception.

The only pools which could "secret mine" and even have the shred of legitimacy are pools which PPS and don't make any claims about fair share, proprotionality, splitting equally, etc.

Even with most PPS (for example Arsbitcoin) the wording implies a fair split of revenue.


If arsbitcoin (which I don't think ever would) wanted to engage in "secret mining" to be ethical about it would need to change the text on their webpages.


If a website simply said.
"We will pay you 0.000029597456 BTC per share you submit (Period) it wouldn't be a problem if they used shares for anything they wanted.  Pools can't have their cake and eat it too.  They can't use language which indicates a "fair split" and then perform an unfair split.

Pools can compensate however they want it wouldn't even need to be an equitable split.  Someone could make a pool that simply paid 0.025 BTC per 10K shares flat.  Now I would point out this isn't a very good deal but it wouldn't be unethical if they simply promised  a flat payout without any claims of "fairness".  Alternatively someone could make a PPS hopping pool (which hops other pools) and promises to pay 0.03 BTC per 10K.  If they end up making more than that well that is fine.   Just don't try to have it both ways.

Eligius is doing merged mining.

Bitcoin pools agree to use the hashes you submit to generate Bitcoin blocks and, in exchange, they send you Bitcoins.  What else the pool does with this hash is irrelevant to this agreement.  They could publish an article about Bitcoin containing one of the hashes you submitted as an example and make a lot of money from this publication.  By what you have said I'm guessing you would feel entitled to some of this profit.  The only way I can make sense of that is if you somehow feel that you "own" the hashes you submit to the pool!  This is, of course, ridiculous.


They are not taking your work; you are offering it in exchange for bitcoins.  Do you actually claim to own the primes that you find?  I defend your right to discover a new prime and keep it a secret from the world but not your right to make it common knowledge and require royalties to be paid to you for its use.  The prime itself does not constitute art so not even intellectual property laws will give you this.

Are there others out there that actually believe that they can own a hash or a prime in this way?  Do people actually believe that one could own a logical fact such that it would be immoral for two other people to exchange this information with one another without the owner's consent!?

I'm still failing to see the essential root of the anger and feeling of unfairness that people have about a pool operator secretly mining and keeping namecoins.  Why am I in such a minority here?

Do people somehow feel that the hashes they create are their own intellectual property!?  Do you feel that by submitting a share to a pool that you are only licensing them to use that share for a certain purpose and that them using that share for any other unadvertised purpose is unethical?  How can one think that they have a right to expect that, especially without specifically getting the pool operator to agree to such terms.  There is nothing artistic which is added so certainly copyright cannot apply.

It's hard to find a perfect analogy but this is pretty close:

Let us suppose that the PrimeGrid (distributed CPU large prime finding project) starts paying users bitcoins for their CPU time.  The deal is that a sufficiently large prime is worth 200 BTC to be shared between the contributers.

The people running the project publish all of the primes that they find.

The people running the project secretly use some of the primes found in their encryption software which they sell for dollars.

Would most of you be angry at the the project owners for this because they didn't advertise that they were using your CPU power for some personal gain?  Would you feel entitled to your share of those dollars despite the fact that no such deal was ever made?  If you found a particularly large prime would you feel that you owned it and should be able to collect a royalty on its use?

You're right. I would consider that unfair, under some circumstances. However both circumstances a still unethical (advertising)

If I saw no purpose to owning an alternative coin, yet they could get those coins as a side-effect of me looking for BTC, and the pool did not advertise this, they can have the shit that I produce, so to speak.   - This is a fair scenario. Unethical advertisement practices however

If however, for any reason I thought it might be worth just keeping the alternative coins (e.g. for some crazy reason other people want alternative coins, you have them. use/sell them. ), yet the pool I was mining at didn't advertise they were keeping the coins I found as a side-effect of looking for BTC, I WOULD BE MAD - unfair, unethical

If you would discard all but certain outputs from your inputs, why be so greedy to not let others take which you do not want?

Meaning, from your input of hashing power, you only want BTC and would discard any other coins. Why be so greedy to not let others have the alternative coins you would discard?

You may have to be brutally honest about your perception of alternative coins values. Are they really worthless? Worth discarding? If they exist and other people want them, perhaps I want them just to sell/use them?

But yes I have not challenged the idea that its unethical advertisement/operations however you put it.
Unfair, to me, in this circumstance is different.

Thinking really critically, if I wanted the alternative coins just for the purpose of discarding/deleting them, and the pool I mined at did not advertise I was also hashing for these alternative coins, it would be unfair. But is it? The only reason I want them is to discard them?

Thanks, I missed how that could have come off.  I've edited it.

I would just like to clarify that Slush is publicly merge mining and recording all blocks.  He simply doesn't have code to distribute them to miners based on proportional hashing power.  Every mined namecoin block is visible w/ timestamp and those namecoins (~18K at last count) will be distributed to pool miners.

I know that wasn't your intent w/ the example but I don't want someone else confused by it.

I don't see it that way.

If Pool X displays they are a BTC pool, then I can submit shares to that pool for BTC. However if that pool *doesn't* display that they are merged mining, that means Pool X Op is taking the shares I paid for (with electricity) and secretly profiting.

Let's say a store has a sale on Widgets.  Normally Widgets are $1 but during the sale you get a free Mini-Widget when you buy a normal Widget.  Now lets say I'm unaware of this sale and proceed to buy a Widget and leave the store.  If the cashier were to then go take a Mini-Widget off the shelf (since technically it's been accounted for), how is that not 'stealing'?

Theft may not be the right word, but it's certainly unethical no matter how you slice it.

Edit: Further, if the pool is charging a mandatory fee (such as Slush) and is secretly merged mining, that's a double-whammy. EDIT: SLUSH IS OKAY, HE IS NOT SECRETLY MERGED MINING. SLUSH WAS JUST AN EXAMPLE OF FEES.

It is a problem.

The solution is more pools adopting merged mining.

Hmm. And it bothers no one that a single pool has over 60% of the Namecoin hashing capacity?

I just updated website. List of Namecoin blocks mined by pool is here.

Lol yes, we're talking better than 60% more profitable than ordinary Bitcoin miners.  Don't forget to consider the significant promotions that the smaller pools are doing to try and get a large user base.

Hopping between the proportional and PPLNS pools at simplecoin.us seems to be the most profitable at the moment (the PPLNS pool essentially offers BTC+2% and NMC+10% and will do for quite some time).

Most of that is slush and he fully intends to pass those namecoins out to the miners.  Currently the merged mining is just testing.  I'm sure slush has taken appropriate steps to ensure that the pool users are not being affected by this testing.

Well no it looks like 350GH of hashing power is "missing".  Either they are all solo operators or some pools are collecting namecoins without notifying their miners.

+1

No one is being paid fewer bitcoins.  No hashing power is being taken away from Bitcoin at all.  Approximately, merged mining allows Namecoin to use the same hashes which are generated for Bitcoin.  No longer does one have to choose between mining bitcoins and mining namecoins.  Instead, Namecoin blocks simply happen as you are trying to find a Bitcoin block.  If a miner does not want them then they could stay with a normal Bitcoin pool or use a merged mining pool and just delete the gained namecoins, their Bitcoin income will not be affected and nor will their power consumption.

The simple fact is that a merged mining pool is currently about 45% more profitable than an ordinary Bitcoin pool.  Only a few pools have implemented it at this time due to the scrappy state of the code and the lack of protocol documentation and all of these pools appear to be passing on (or intending to pass on) the mined namecoins to their users.

If you "Do Not Want" them exchange them for BTC, there are people that do want them...

You probably don't understand how merged mining works. If is pool doing merged mining, he don't "steal" your hashpower for mining some other weird coins. You'll still have the same BTC income as you did before MM. That's the beauty of merged mining.