Topic: Why are people drawn to GHash.io, and how can we reverse it? (Read 5004 times)

That should be a hypothetical 51% attack.   If some pool does cross that threshold it doesn't mean there will be such an attack.  Besides it would be a stupid crime, risk of being caught almost certain and potential gain is probably negative when the costs are factored in.  So I would have to disagree ... .16% extra income per week is a HUGE deal.   On the other hand there are probably even more advantages of being in a large pool, as you often get to unfairly start working on the new block before other pools do.   

=== OFF TOPIC NOW, just my view ===
When it come to fiat currency, identity theft costs billions, but people live with it.  I personally think bitcoin would be better off if there was a 51% attack.  It would probably survive just fine only shaking out the weak players.   After that people would actually have more respect for bitcoin knowing that it is reasonably safe.  Anyway, it simply isn't possible to have a complex system without some risks.  To me the problems with handling the keys for accessing one's wallets is a vastly larger risk than any 51% attack.   

Why are people drawn to GHash.io?
Because they provide conversion of Bitcoins into fiat by selling hashing power to investors.
Investing is bad for the Bitcoin economy though, we should be replacing fiat, by spending Bitcoins into circulation.

How to stop big pools?
Needs to be done on the protocol somehow.
How about the bigger the pool the more Bitcoin dust it has to process?
If people saw they were disadvantaged on bigger pools they'd be more inclined to switch to smaller ones.

How to improve P2Pool?
Payment every 24hrs? When I see micro payments it puts me off. You need a lot of GH to get 0.001BTC (above dust) payouts. This is one of the highest entry barriers to mining on a pool anywhere. Still I use it as my backup pools, because it requires no account, and you get virgin unspent coins with no history.

BTW: www.p2pool.org is not the only option. Also check out http://p2pool.hostv.pl/ for a list of others.

+1

Maybe not alone, but when combined with sleek looks, yes, yes it is clearly worth it risking bitcoin over.

I think people are sending a message to the big bitcoin adversaries: Please launch a bitcoin attack pool.  Just payout 10% higher than any other pool, make sure the website is sleek and we will join!

Only NMC has value, and Bitminter already has it. DVC and IXC nearly has no value, together they add 0.16% extra to your mining income.

0.16% extra income is worth the possibility of 51% attack on Bitcoin?

I didn't like the look of the Bitparking site. Also GHash looks more professional.

Bitparking does all of the above and I0C as well.  Last time I checked DVC, IXC and I0Cwere completely worthless.  Probably 51'd by GHash.io already.

GHash.io does have something other pools don't have. You are merge mining NMC, DVC, IXC and BTC at the same time.

I was with Bitminter, and after discovering the additional merge mining. I switched to GHash.io.

What's wrong with bitminter itself?

We need a benevolent DOSer to fuck Ghash.

Unfortunately for Bitcoin, I am afraid that many people share your priorities.  Bitcoin can tolerate masses of it's users being greedy, but it may have a harder time weathering masses of short-sighted, irrational investors.  Mining bitcoins has been a losing investment in terms of BTC for most smaller players, yet the fact that people still irrationally gravitate towards it as a good investment helps to keep it that way.  Rational investors just need to steer clear of markets at which the uninformed masses are blindly throwing their money.  But that is just the investment side of mining.

People might still be wiling to mine at a loss in BTC terms, (though hopefully still profitable in fiat), for the sake of securing the network, to guard against double spends, empty blocks, and centrailization in general.  To those people we all owe our gratitude.  They are still being greedy though, as they want to protect the value of their bitcoin holdings in the long term.  It is far-sighted, long term greed.

Bitcoin is dependent on people caring about decentralization, especially its investors.  hyphymikey, your priorities did not include supporting well-being of the network.  Would you prefer a pool that returned 100% because of no fees, an extra 5% payout from double-spend proceeds, and 5% on top of that just because the pool wants to encourage you to stay with them?  The ignorance of miners is bitcoins biggest weakness.  Such a pool is a valid attack vector on the protocol, and it is enabled by short-sighted, ill-informed 'hashers'.  It would be the cheapest and easiest way for the government to attack bitcoin.

Start pool and hire the best people to make it slick and easy.  Payout 110% (this is subsidized, remember?  Attract the massive number of people who bought hash power to make a quick buck and don't care about Bitcoin as project.  And boom, your over 50%.  Actually, make that two seemingly different pools at 30% each.

I have been testing a linode stack scripts automated p2pool hosted vps with the prime directive of miners currently at gnash.io incentive to leave while helping promote truly decentralized p2pool. Not sure if this will attract miners from gnash.io but the idea is to offer miners with a free p2pool vps that is setup and deployed for them in minutes, and makes things people either love, or hate, like merged mining, already set up and good to go. I think it would be best if the entire setup is and was audited by trusted well known people if possible, and I could use help of course! I do not have the financial wherewithal to support this indefinitely but I am able and willing to start with a 2 or 3 btc worth of hosting. I have been testing on linode vps but it would probably require dedicated hosting with some sort of stack-script like solution to be as cost effective as possible. I am not sure if this is something that may get some of the "independent" miners to take action but I am sure its worth trying, if not this then something ... Is this the type of thing you would support? This is by no means a perfect solution, not even sure if it is a good one but its an idea and now its yours to judge. If someone has a better idea I would happily donate my btc I am about to spend on hosting and use it in some other way.

If any pool had the ease of use of bitminter, with the lowest fees, and would advertise with mining manufacturers as the "go to place" it would take over.

What I'm looking for in order:

1. Ease of use
2. Consistent payouts (Larger the pool the more consisten.. You get larger by advertising you ease of use)
3. Fees (Some pools are 1%, that's cheap to me. So paying it over 0 isn't that big of deal)

Which is why I wonder why any miners want to mine at a pool which mines very small blocks, intentionally delaying thousands of perfectly valid transactions by keeping them out of every block they mine.  Just compare the sizes of Ghash.io blocks with blocks from Bitcoin friendly pools.  Miners must be blind.  If it isn't intentional, it must be due to gross incompetence.

I wonder why the Ghash.io is trying so hard to destroy bitcoin.  They haven't done anything to reduce the size of the pool, and keep mining microblocks.  When one pool operator which already is known to deny most transactions gets to decide for themselves which transactions will go into blocks and not, Bitcoin have lost one of its most important properties.  Instead of being a distributed currency, it is a currency controlled by one malicious pool.

Right - not a coincidence. It is obvious they diluted the commodity. I just don't want to invoke the wrath of the severely pro/con cex.io people here because cex.io is irrelevant to the current hash rate. Those miners are mining regardless of whether you or I have rented them or they are currently not rented to anyone. The pro/con debate over cex.io being a way to make money hasn't been resolved yet, so it is unlikely to be resolved in the midst of this current issue, but bringing it up it is likely to make it harder to focus on the real issue if people can't get away from it.

cex.io is part of the problem, I was trying to convince people to stay away from the place and keep their money out of it. This is not going to stop the miners they already have but would probably slow down their expansion.

About 3 weeks ago a sell off at cex.io started which saw the price dropped from 0.072 to 0.032 at the end of last year. 2 days ago I noticed ghash.io had 33% network share and today 40%. Coincidence?

Features drive the market at times (esp. when people keep asking for them), when you have 3x alt coins on merged mining, give the people something they've been asking for a long time (auto-split payouts) and then to sweeten the deal, you also get 3% of any referrals bought cloud hash speed (which for me is almost 20GH/s)... also alerts that are really persistent & accurate...

Well, maybe now some of the pool owners whom turned down the idea of auto-split percentages (and other features) will reconsider, until said day, I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot of hashing power going to ghash.io just due to the features it has over other pools.

I'll try to make it clearer. The OP and the point of this and other threads is the hash power not the potential for someone to gain or lose trading at cex.io. It is completely irrelevant if everyone sold their cex.io hashing power today at a loss or gain. Ghash.io would still have the hash power and possibly even more incentive to do something untoward with the blockchain. People are pointing their own miners to ghash.io. That's what OP wanted to figure out how to stop, or at least slow.

This.

What are the cost of these incentives when you are holding a paperweight at some point and all your "payouts" are in the form of private keys that are worth nothing?  What if all these great incentives aren't the result of supply and demand, rather artificially propped up in hopes of luring miners in so a 51% can be achieved?