Quote from: joel coin on October 24, 2017, 02:46:02 PM

Quote from: mdude77 on October 24, 2017, 01:19:27 PM

- A block withholding attack hurts the miner in question. The only reason someone would do that is to tarnish the pool. Only someone with deep pockets would (and could) do that. That would point to other pools who are making ridiculous amounts in pool and transaction fees.

I was looking at all the top pools, >50% of the btc network is either owned/invested in by Bitmain or physically located in China (and/or both): I won't name them but just look at the top 5-6.

Theoretically speaking, couldn't they either benefit from broadcasting to each other what the next blocks are (either on purpose or just the sheer fact of being *physically located* in China) before those communications are received and processed by the other members of the network?
I am constantly seeing triples or quadruples of blocks found by the same pool or the same related 2-3 pools that it just seems to me this could be happening.

I don't know whether it's possible but with how money hungry Bitmain is I have no doubt that they'd do it in a heartbeat if they figured out *how*

There is no doubt that far too much hashpower resides in China and with Bitmain. I believe there is a documented "51% attack" that could be used to take over the network by someone with too much power. Diversity of pools is very important.

However that doesn't seem to be going on here. Somehow this pool just isn't getting blocks as often as one might expect. It's not like blocks are being found and then orphaned; they just aren't being found.

M