Topic: Solution to mining centralization; Reward bottom 50% mining power with altcoin (Read 880 times)

I appreciate the idea but there must be proper pool details.

Thanks. I didn't know there are so much issues when we need to know hash power and pool details.

As I said this started with the assumption that it's possible to know hash power and pool details. If that's impossible then this solution is useless in its current form.

Thanks everyone for your comments.

They don't even need to split anything physically, just put some random text into the coinbase TX and each block will look like it's mined by a new pool. As frodo explained above - the reason we know who mined a block is because most pools identify themselves voluntarily. If there was a penalty for being big we would see 144 different pools mining those last 144 blocks and would have no way to determine the bottom 50%.

block_1 - antpool mines this altcoin block, because they mined bitcoin block_1
block_2 - pool-x mines on top of block_0, because they will check last 144 blocks and see antpool already mined say, 20% blocks. top 50% pools consist of 3 pools; antpool (20%), pool-y (16%), pool-z (15%).

antpool really gains by splitting into 2? I am not arguing. just clueless.

This is an altcoin, with its own consensus and enforcing nodes.

The Bitcoin network is incapable of identifying miners at the consensus layer. To put it very simply, all that the network sees when a new block is added to the blockchain are the block's contents (i.e., the transactions in the block) and its metadata (i.e., the block's hash, the block's merkle root, the block's size and weight, etc.). There is no indication whatsoever at the consensus layer of which entity mined the block.

The identity of a particular block's miner as shown by block explorers — e.g., Blockchain and Blockchair — are simply guesses by the block explorers themselves, based on various block attributes such as the block's coinbase text and the output(s) in the block's coinbase transaction. There is no indication whatsoever in the block itself that mining pool X or miner Y was the one that mined the block.

Even hashpower estimates by block explorers are mere guesses by the block explorers themselves, based on algorithms that take into account, among other things, the time interval between blocks.

There is therefore no way for the Bitcoin network to distinguish between the top 50% or the bottom 50% of mining power at any given time, making this proposal unfeasible.

Even if there is a feasible method of distinguishing between the top 50% and the bottom 50% of mining power — e.g., through the use of oracles — such a method would most likely require a hard fork. Given how messy segwit's soft fork was (it wasn't even a hard fork), I highly doubt that such a proposal would even get past the proposal stage. And that's not even including the fact that the hard fork would need to add a sidechain mechanism for the altcoin portion of this proposal.

Even if, by some fluke, the Bitcoin community — developers, miners, and users — agreed to the hard fork, such a change would then open another can of worms. Now that the Bitcoin network would be able to identify a particular block's miner(s) at the consensus layer, and now that the Bitcoin community has been emboldened by a successful hard fork that supposedly mitigated the centralization of mining power, what's there to stop Bitcoin from undergoing new forks (soft or hard) that prevent certain miners from mining new blocks once they are deemed to have too much mining power? While this may seem like a good thing on its surface — mining pools would be further disincentivized from amassing more than 50% of Bitcoin's mining power — this essentially introduces an element of censorship into the network at the consensus layer and sets a precedent for further censorship. Mining pools would, of course, evade such censorship by splitting up their mining power to appear to the network as multiple discrete entities — i.e., a Sybil attack.


A Bitcoin full node — e.g., Bitcoin Core — is a block producer's only interface to the Bitcoin network. Without a full node, a block producer would not be able to submit any new blocks to the Bitcoin network, in the same way that without a web browser, an Internet user would not be able to access the web.

The block has to be accepted by all nodes (consensus). Proof-of-work is one such consensus scheme: nodes on the Bitcoin network verify that block hashes are valid and meet the required difficulty. You're suggesting proof-of-bottom-50% for the altcoin reward but there is no viable verification method for it.

E.g. if Antpool mines a block Coinbase has to accept it otherwise you wouldn't be able to transact those mined coins with Coinbase.

Not nodes. This altcoin reward goes to Bitcoin block producers only.

It depends on what they do with that collusion but generally no, it wouldn't be stealing. In fact, if by colluding they can get higher rewards that would be beneficial to their miners.

The point is that any criteria for the "bottom 50%" or "top 50%" has to be independently verifiable by any node and there doesn't seem to be any feasible way to do that.

No idea. We need to know few things about pools, beyond doubt.

If mining pools collude, isn't that like stealing from their pool miners?

How exactly would you verify this? And how would you prevent the largest pools from bypassing this scheme by splitting up, or by pretending to split up?

This is a stupid idea. The last thing we need is another shitcoin.

Assumption is we know who's mining for which pool. Whenever a known pool / solo miner finds a block, he also builds this altcoin block. He uses same coinbase as in Bitcoin main chain, and rewards himself with 12.5 altcoin. We can check last 24h blocks to verify this.

If this block (alt) is valid (miner/pool isn't among top 72block producing pools) btc miner who finds next block (btc) will also builds on top of this.

I checked pool stats for last 365 days.. top 50% (57.84%) are btc.com, antpool, btc.top and viabtc.

This altcoin reward can be distributed from block-0, btc genesis block.

As we use same coinbase, I think anyone can build blocks and no pow mining is required for this alt. I'm not sure.

I know this is a half-boiled solution, but I think it's quite possible. If done right, this should force hash power to distribute well among pools.

To get this reward miner has to find at least one bitcoin block. Finding BTC block is prerequisite to building this alt block.

So just wildly curious... how do you propose to determine who the bottom 50% are?  By the pool they mine on?  No pool is over 50%...

Exclude the top pools?  That would be BTC at 22%, Antpool at 13.4% (35.4% total), ViaBTC at 11.7% (47.1% total), and about a 1/3rd of F2Pool users (how to pick which third?)?

Who would be the percentage cop?

Do you really think you could get such a proposal passed knowning it would penalize half of the population relative to the other half?

Exclude by destination address?  No problem, I'll create 150 accounts with one S9 per account...  automating such things is pretty trivial (ask Storj, where folks had 1200+ at one point because they wanted to favor the little guys).

Obviously it's not bcash.

Only bottom 50% bitcoin mining hash power get to mint this new coin.

kind of what bitcoincash is. so I think not.

the real issue is asic builders are building and selling gear like mad and lower power cost miners keep buying it.  this causes slippage in coin price.  which for an asic builder only taking btc means he gets more coin

i.e. 6600 usd  btc  was once 20000 usd.

so 10 s9's at 660  mean 1 btc for bitmain
and 10 s9's at 2000 usd meant 1 btc for bitmain when coin was higher.

so to bitmain  in both cases they get 1btc.   they have zero incentive to stop selling in terms of earning btc with way they earn 1 btc.


down the road they will sell new gear more efficient and stop supply of gear hoping that all those cheap coins they got in april may june july of 2018 rise back to 10000 or more.

so as long as bitmian and innosilcion flood the market with cheap gear. btc price will stay low.

my 2 cents for what it is worth.

I would like to know your views on this solution.


Solution to bitcoin mining centralization; Reward bottom half of mining power with an altcoin. only bitcoin miners mint / receive this new altcoin. They use same coinbase address as in Bitcoin main chain.


Top 50% bitcoin miners (who found half of blocks for the day/month, etc.), won't get anything. Other 50% gets as much altcoin as bitcoin they mine on Bitcoin mainnet. There should be effectively 10.5M of this altcoin. This altcoin will have non-zero value in open market. This altcoin should subsidize and force hash power to distribute well.

Thanks.