Weird patterns on Block Explorer | Bitcointalksearch.org

theymos

administrator

Activity: 5166

Merit: 12850

Quote from: epii on May 04, 2011, 12:10:57 AM

Oh, I get it - when the client generates the block, it includes the transaction for the generation bounty in the block, so that transaction can pay out to anyone, and this is valid so long as the total payout = 50 BTC (or whatever the bounty is at the time) + transaction fees. Right?

Would it be possible for a miner to create extremely erratic payouts (i.e. distribute the bounty to a million addresses) as a vector of attack? Or would the block be rejected in that particular case for being over 1MB?

Right. The generation is just an input to a transaction. The value of the input is found by the block subsidy + fees. The outputs follow the normal transaction rules.

The generator could easily create a giant generation transaction with tons of garbage outputs. You don't even need to pay out to the outputs: 0-value outputs are valid. The block size is limited to 1MB, though.

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

Oh, I get it - when the client generates the block, it includes the transaction for the generation bounty in the block, so that transaction can pay out to anyone, and this is valid so long as the total payout = 50 BTC (or whatever the bounty is at the time) + transaction fees. Right?

Would it be possible for a miner to create extremely erratic payouts (i.e. distribute the bounty to a million addresses) as a vector of attack? Or would the block be rejected in that particular case for being over 1MB?

Ricochet

sr. member

Activity: 373

Merit: 250

As an example, here's one of the blocks generated with Puddinpop's pool - http://blockexplorer.com/b/99004

slush

legendary

Activity: 1386

Merit: 1097

Quote from: theymos on May 03, 2011, 05:38:34 PM

It's nice because all participants get paid immediately instead of having to wait 120 blocks.

Well, that's not absolutely correct. People _see_ block payments immediately, but also have to wait 120 blocks till it mature (or 100 blocks with hacked bitcoin client).

theymos

administrator

Activity: 5166

Merit: 12850

Quote from: epii on May 03, 2011, 05:16:28 PM

Block discovery bounties can be paid directly to multiple addresses?
http://blockexplorer.com/b/121668

Yep. That's Luke-jr's pool. Puddinpop's pool also used to do that. It's nice because all participants get paid immediately instead of having to wait 120 blocks.

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

Block discovery bounties can be paid directly to multiple addresses?
http://blockexplorer.com/b/121668

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

http://blockexplorer.com/b/118777

Total BTC: 95069.09

You don't see that every day.

Four transactions over 10000 BTC:
http://blockexplorer.com/t/2s9dR7tzdg
http://blockexplorer.com/t/6CoNTeXvvj
http://blockexplorer.com/t/3SMDDjhy4V
http://blockexplorer.com/t/2wcj9do8EA

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

Discovered via Bitcoin Monitor:

Block found at 2011-04-11 18:52:57
http://blockexplorer.com/a/2EnJ1VL8Kx

Bitcoin Charts reports the following trade on MtGox:
Apr 11, 2011, 18:53:44 | 0.75618 | 50.00

Looks like some miner's got a bot to sell off block bounties. This is the first time I've seen this particular pattern.

[Tycho]

hero member

Activity: 742

Merit: 500

Recently i saw some nice pattern - ~8+ blocks found in pairs constantly in the day before difficulty step :)

slush

legendary

Activity: 1386

Merit: 1097

Quote from: epii on April 07, 2011, 05:13:03 AM

It took 12 minutes to calculate this block: http://blockexplorer.com/b/117147

There were more than 90 unconfirmed transaction at the time the block before this finished, and at the time this one finished. Why did only one (non-generation) transaction appear in the block?

a) Somebody is accepting only transactions with fees (edit: most probable; there is currently only one more transaction with fees, which is 'sendmany' payout from the pool. Sendmany transactions are accepted only by newest clients, so older clients ignore this (their bad, they are missing my fees just because they use older bitcoin version

.

or

b) Somebody started bitcoin client and found block pretty quick. Older transactions are not actively relayed to freshly connected node, so it's pretty normal that bitcoin client does not know all pending transactions.

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

It took 12 minutes to calculate this block: http://blockexplorer.com/b/117147

There were more than 90 unconfirmed transaction at the time the block before this finished, and at the time this one finished. Why did only one (non-generation) transaction appear in the block?

jkminkov

hero member

Activity: 698

Merit: 500

Quote from: slush on March 25, 2011, 08:14:17 PM

Quote from: epii on March 25, 2011, 07:44:02 PM

To start things off... does anyone know what's going on with this block? http://blockexplorer.com/b/115060

Looks like Tycho's pool payout... [/url]

it is, I see my wallet listed there

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

From bitcoinmonitor.com, every 10 on the 10:

Notice that every ten minutes on the dot there is a transaction of around 200 BTC. A several of them are exactly 191.12 BTC. For example:
http://blockexplorer.com/t/7JNH6MUkCn
http://blockexplorer.com/t/4B52WFCPx2

And yet, the breakdown of the 119.12 is completely different.

Any ideas?

slush

legendary

Activity: 1386

Merit: 1097

Quote from: epii on March 26, 2011, 04:22:01 AM

I guess most of the weird patterns I've observed would probably be pool payouts and such then. Kind of a hit for anonymity.

I don't think so. Nobody really know who owns those addresses. And while mining standalone, anybody can watch your mining income, too, because once you spend some coins, they are connected together in the spending transactions.

If you care about anonymity, you can use pools over Tor as some people do.

Quote

Is the 1000 BTC that remains probably Tycho's profit, then?

Probably not, the rest on the account are payouts for people which don't cross their withdrawal limits.

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

Quote from: slush on March 25, 2011, 08:14:17 PM

Quote from: epii on March 25, 2011, 07:44:02 PM

To start things off... does anyone know what's going on with this block? http://blockexplorer.com/b/115060

Looks like Tycho's pool payout... For example, my pool's payouts looks like this

I guess most of the weird patterns I've observed would probably be pool payouts and such then. Kind of a hit for anonymity. Is the 1000 BTC that remains probably Tycho's profit, then?

TiagoTiago

hero member

Activity: 616

Merit: 500

Firstbits.com/1fg4i :)

(just adding this thread to my watchlist)

slush

legendary

Activity: 1386

Merit: 1097

Quote from: epii on March 25, 2011, 07:44:02 PM

To start things off... does anyone know what's going on with this block? http://blockexplorer.com/b/115060

Looks like Tycho's pool payout... For example, my pool's payouts looks like this

epii

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 106

Open thread to discuss unusual or confusing transactions observed on http://blockexplorer.com , and possible explanations for them.

To start things off... does anyone know what's going on with this block? http://blockexplorer.com/b/115060

There are more than 70 transactions of over 1000 BTC in a single block! Each transaction appears to feed into the next one, which is why they all appear in descending order of value.

Topic: Weird patterns on Block Explorer (Read 2822 times)