A bunch of naive, idealistic blather
The first thing you fail to understand is that this is a business, not a charity. Get that through your head and the rest of it will make sense.
If you want to buy a miner for me, I will happily point it at any pool of your choosing. As long as I'm spending MY money on equipment, then I'll point MY equipment on whatever fucking pool I see fit. If smaller pools want to attract more miners, they should get their asses in gear and improve the pools to make them more attractive for use. Things like extended stats, DDoS protection, and consistently working payouts (I'm looking at you, Eligius).
If you are so concerned about decentralization, I sure hope you are solo mining. If you can't walk the walk, then stop trying to talk the talk.
... a comment on this post. I am not sure a post could have been more skillfully crafted to drive home my point.
This next comment is not meant to be inflammatory, although I understand if you take is so. It is meant for you to take into account, as a data point while making and employing your business plan.
Centralization is the enemy of this experiment. "Business men" that mine for profit without regard for the network are not a friend to the experiment if their efforts result in too much centralization (usually a goal of a for-profit company).
Those of us that see this as a threat (such as ASICminer & a couple of other Chinese companies) to the eco system, are working hard to drive up the diff with de-centralized hashing in an effort to make your business less-viable. The hope is that this will cause fewer people to sink huge sums of money into centralized operations such as yours if the returns are simply not there.
I hope it works. I am doing my part.
If the project cannot stand on its own two feet without special care and feeding, it will die and deservedly so. So as to loop this to an on-topic tangent...taking KnC miners into consideration the fact that anyone with a large enough capital base can purchase such a device (or multiples of devices) means that no longer is bitcoin given the luxury of being coddled by nurturing hobbyists who will do anything (including sacrificing their own profit margin) in order to make sure the network survives. Bitcoin is now in the limelight of the world, and the Big Boys are entering the game wearing their Big Boy Pants and playing by Big Boy Rules. ASIC companies such as KnC will fill whatever demand is out there in order to line their pockets (and rightfully so if you believe in free enterprise). People buying these machines will implement them in such a way as to maximize their returns on investment (classical definition). Those who stand in the way of that will get squished. Those who work towards filling niches that are complimentary to that will be rewarded (ie alternative pools that people actually want to use, developing a less cumbersome way to use p2pool-type technologies that appeal to the masses, etc). That's the reality, and trying to pontificate from some "moral high ground" about some kind of socialistic operational theory is less than helpful. That type of input, if actually a majority-held one in the community, would only hasten bitcoin's demise as the people putting in the capital that is making bitcoin relevant would stop doing so and the whole house of cards would collapse. Bitcoin only has value because people THINK it has value. If you tell people it only has value as long as they are willing to lose money (either directly or through less-than-optimal operations that decrease potential profits versus other investments) through participating in it...how long until it stops having value?
So again..want to help? Work on those things that are symbiotic with the large-scale capitalism that bitcoin is meant to help foster beyond the bounds of government oversight and regulation. Telling people they shouldn't be trying to maximize their investment in it is the same as telling people that they shouldn't invest, period...which is not helpful.
Now that KnC has a proven ASIC design, I expect them to begin flooding the market in 2014 with as many as they can churn out in order to cash in before the big difficulty crunch where average power costs equal expected fiat-converted returns and extending that run with a transition to a more power-efficient gen2 product. Ditto bitfury and their distribution outlets. That's the trajectory of the market...the only thing an individual can do is choose on which side of the bullet he wants to stand. The best thing for the overall market is to encourage more (and bigger) investment that will drive the price of BTC upwards to extend the useful life of the individually-owned miner, as well as encourage more mainstream adoption of the currency as a storage of value.
And as for "centralized operations such as mine"...in the bitcoin mining realm I'm just another guy with miners at home trying to get them to pay for themselves and maybe a little extra to the greatest extent that I can manage. The "big business" portion is in the markets which should be outside your moral concern. I've already left a lot of potential gains on the table by mining in the first place instead of just using those funds to buy more bitcoin directly and you want me (and others) to sacrifice even MORE for some "code of ethics" or whatever. LOL.
The notion that I should somehow sacrifice "for the greater good" when it's clear that any concession that I might make would just be pocketed as profit by somebody else is ludicrous. But hey, if that's your bag...go for it. The rest of us thank you for your contribution. And make sure and buy as many KnC rigs as you possibly can to keep them out of the hands of those evil profit-mongers like me. I'm sure KnC might even send you a Christmas card if you buy enough
Well stated. Aside from the snark, I think you've described my position fairly well. I don't think that SeanRaney is wrong altogether, but I do think he's seeing a small piece of a big thing.
All things done by living beings are done for perceived profit. Whether that perception is ACCURATE is open for debate, but nobody does something deliberately to harm themselves unless they are disturbed or defective. Even then, often, it's to profit in some manner. The cutter gains the profit of attention. The "altruist" gains the profit of adulation, and the capitalist gains tangible wealth. That is not in any way an exhaustive list. When profits are regulated by fiat and other control mechanisms, two things happen. Those with the pull and wherewithal buy the regulators, and those without either stop producing or go somewhere more conducive to doing business.
The pools themselves ARE the result of such capitalistic forces. CPU mining became too difficult, so people found a way to pool their resources. That this led to additional problems and possibilities is just the way things are. We do not invent advanced technologies in one step. It took us millennia to go from writing to computers. Every advancement creates new problems, some anticipated, some not. Free markets eventually solve the problems, as they cry out for solution!
In this particular instance, as has already been pointed out, you already have p2pool, which my knowledge of is not good. But it does address the problem of pools being centralized (to the extent that they are). If this becomes significantly a problem, other solutions or variations of that one will supplant the "pool" model, or compete with it on equal footing. As I mentioned, I do know one strength of p2pool over the poolserver model, but I do not know it's other strengths and weaknesses. I am certain, however, that it has not AS YET reached a point where the miners in general think it's benefits outweigh it's deficits. I know this because the vast majority of miners are mining from the pools.
Frankly, since the mining community at large IS aware of the issue, and because at least so far the major pool operators have proven to be honorable men, I don't see where there is much impetus to go beyond that model right now. On the other hand, with newer and faster devices coming in waves, that could change overnight. Given the talent pool that I have personally observed in
this thread alone, I don't see a realistic chance of a successful 51 percent attack on the bitcoin network ever again. I am very new to mining. I am more of a student at the moment. I think I could change pools without having a failover set in CGminer in under a minute. Can't comment to the other miners because I haven't used them. While the pools have a lot of
perceived power, it is illusory. A pool with no-one connected to it is a waste of electricity, nothing else. The very fact of that is a built in safety and check on the greed of the operators.
I think SeanRaney's concerns are valid, but I think they have been adequately addressed, both by his way of doing things, and by the way this market is working.
Edit for bold. Mistyped the tag. Oops.
