I've added all the big mining pools to my addnode list and also increased my connection limit to 400.
Is there anyway for you to display which mining pools have seen and are relaying a particular
transaction? You could then calculate a rough estimate of how much hashing power (and what percentage of the total known bitcoin network) was aggregated behind an unconfirmed transaction. Imagine a table with the major mining pools, their hashing power, and a simple yes/no if they are working on a given version of a transaction. The chance of a double spend after all the major mining pools are working on a particular transaction would be slim to none.
This information could help implement Satoshi's suggestions to the so-called "Snack machine problem" and significantly reduce any risk associated with accepting a unconfirmed transaction (
http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=423.msg3819#msg3819).
Here are some of my posts on the topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19481.msg253928#msg253928, and particularly
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19481.msg254559#msg254559Interesting, I like this idea. Basically you tally how many times a transaction is relayed to your client which would give you an idea of how far the transaction has propagated across the network. A transaction could then be given a score based on how far it's propagated. If is relayed from an ip of a know mining pool then you can give bonus points based on that pools hashing power. It isn't full proof, but it could definitely help.
Theres a couple of things i need to do first before i can implement this.