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Showing 8 of 8 results by rainsford
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Board Politics & Society
Re: Fact: Taxation is violent.
by
rainsford
on 12/06/2011, 16:25:48 UTC
Quote from: Atlas on June 12, 2011, 02:10:29 AM
Quote from: smellyBobby on June 12, 2011, 01:59:17 AM
The universe is full of coercive forces, both non-human and human. The only way to remove other coercive human forces from your life is to completely remove all other humans. Otherwise in some way, directly or indirectly your life will be affected by other humans. No Ideology is beyond this simple rule......
If all humans were on a level playing field, without monopolies on force, everything would be quite alright. The potential coercive forces would have little relevance.

Except all humans being on a level playing field implies much more than simply a lack of a monopoly on force.  Force, power, whatever you want to call it, will inevitably consolidate to some degree in any group because it gives an advantage to those doing the consolidating.

Even if you're right that a completely level playing field benefits everyone the most, there is significant incentive to the individual to make the playing field as unlevel in his favor as possible.  In an anarchist society, I'm not sure how you can possibly prevent that from happening.
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Topic
Board Mining
Re: What just happened to Deepbit?
by
rainsford
on 08/06/2011, 05:16:12 UTC
Quote from: Notrem on June 08, 2011, 05:12:57 AM
I found pps better working for me (420mh/s) Today was like 2h round on deepbit. I got 0,6BTC, with PPS: 0,7BTC

Isn't that probably an edge case?  2 hours is a long round for deepbit, I believe.  The AVERAGE round length almost certainly results in a worse payout for PPS.  Mathematically isn't not possible that PPS with a 10% fee is better.  And unless you're in a tiny pool or only care about hour by hour amounts, the variance for non-PPS doesn't seem like enough to be a problem.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: 50%
by
rainsford
on 08/06/2011, 05:00:22 UTC
Quote from: tehcodez on June 08, 2011, 04:51:18 AM
Quote from: rainsford on June 08, 2011, 04:49:10 AM

I'm really not so sure.  People don't really have any reason to pledge allegiance to any particular pool long term, nor is there the real life problem of making a choice (voting) and then being stuck with it for years.

I mine with BTCGuild because I like their website.  A day from now I could decide I like someone else and mine in their pool.  A day later I could switch back.  There is hardly any cost in doing so, for me or any other miner, so any power a pool operator has is extremely temporary and entirely contingent on keeping their miners happy.  That makes a pool operator doing bad things seem at least fairly unlikely.

Wrong.

Its a fundamental issue in trust...investor confidence. Once the trust is broken, it won't be restored.

Sooo that means, when a broken chain is discovered (and when can lag), how does the joe-investor who just dropped $100k on btc recover?

He sells...

Which is also a powerful incentive for pool operators to NOT mess with the block chain.  If they do it an are discovered, they screw themselves out of all the BTC they're earned so far (which in the case of deepbit is a LOT).  If they aren't discovered but there is even the hint of wrongdoing, miners jump ship.  The best choice for them is being above board, I think.

But I'm also playing devil's advocate here, to be honest.  I would feel more confident about the whole thing if hashing power was distributed a bit more evenly.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: 50%
by
rainsford
on 08/06/2011, 04:49:10 UTC
Quote from: tehcodez on June 08, 2011, 04:43:52 AM
Because he has, or develops, any one of uncountable delusions of how a majority pool can be used. (or someone related to him/can access the pool/can pop his crap)

As I posted over on another thread( dealing with this topic only 15% of people (or less)) get....

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Trust is everything in this game, unfortunately most of the players are unfamiliar with that concept, and freely give in to nonsense (in RL, see tea party voters).

...accidents/mistakes/someone finding where he lives/someone ddos another pool/random craziness happens.

I'm really not so sure.  People don't really have any reason to pledge allegiance to any particular pool long term, nor is there the real life problem of making a choice (voting) and then being stuck with it for years.

I mine with BTCGuild because I like their website.  A day from now I could decide I like someone else and mine in their pool.  A day later I could switch back.  There is hardly any cost in doing so, for me or any other miner, so any power a pool operator has is extremely temporary and entirely contingent on keeping their miners happy.  That makes a pool operator doing bad things seem at least fairly unlikely.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: 50%
by
rainsford
on 08/06/2011, 04:40:08 UTC
Quote from: kiwiasian on June 08, 2011, 04:30:56 AM
Guys, chill out. Even if it surpasses 50% Tycho is not going to do anything evil.

I believe he probably wouldn't, since by all accounts it looks like cares about the success of his pool, the miners involved in it, and Bitcoin as a whole.

But there's also the democratic factor.  Even if he has 50% of the hash generation, that's only as long as the miners in deepbit are willing to GIVE him 50% of the hash power.  Anything "weird" happening in deepbit or any other pool, and it's very easy for a huge percentage of the miners to go somewhere else.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: Deepbit Approaching 50% Once Again
by
rainsford
on 06/06/2011, 03:02:32 UTC
Quote from: gsan on June 06, 2011, 02:54:54 AM
Quote from: rainsford on June 06, 2011, 01:03:22 AM
From a variance standpoint, Bitcoin's design makes the largest pools the most attractive.  Which is bad for the security of the currency, and unfortunately an unavoidable result of how Bitcoin works.  You can trust that people will "do the right thing" and move to smaller pools, or you can trust the pool operators not to abuse their power, but the whole point of Bitcoin was to avoid having to place that kind of trust in individuals.

Well, the individual miner is just in for profit and has nothing to gain from the pool's ability to disrupt the functionality of the network, so we could safely assume that s/he has an incentive to take away this ability from the pool. So, assuming that we have a mining system that does this with few enough disadvantages, almost everyone with significant stakes will switch. If this is possible, I wouldn't call the current problem an unavoidable result of how Bitcoin works.

Here is one approach: https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137

Another could be creating a more distributed mining environment. For instance, we could embed an optional standardized pool functionality within mining software, that could be turned on at the user's will. Miners could constantly switch nodes that they get work. In this case though, a trust system or a sophisticated distributed accounting system would be needed.


My comment about it being an unavoidable part of Bitcoin was the finding of increasingly rare (from the standpoint of any individual miner), but increasingly valuable blocks being a key part of Bitcoin's security.  Those make it valuable for individual miners to join pools to make the rewards of mining more stable.

But as you point out, switching pools is an easy and obvious thing for miners to do.  And it doesn't take THAT big of a pool to even out the rewards of mining.  I'm not sure being part of deepbit is better from that perspective than being part of any number of other, smaller pools.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: Deepbit Approaching 50% Once Again
by
rainsford
on 06/06/2011, 02:55:34 UTC
Quote from: anisoptera on June 06, 2011, 02:08:33 AM
Quote from: rainsford on June 06, 2011, 01:03:22 AM
You can trust that people will "do the right thing" and move to smaller pools, or you can trust the pool operators not to abuse their power, but the whole point of Bitcoin was to avoid having to place that kind of trust in individuals.

No, the whole point of Bitcoin was to put the power to choose who to trust, or not, into the hands of individuals, and the way that's done is by voting with hash power. If you trust Tycho and think he's offering a fair deal, you hash for him. If you trust some other pool operator instead, you hash for them. If you want to go it alone, that's an option with its own risks and rewards; one of the rewards might be the ability to selectively prioritize your own transactions, or other such things.

The point is, he doesn't really control that power. The people giving it to him are engaged in an implicit contract that he's offering, and if he violates the terms of that contract, some people will stop trusting him.

Interestingly, most of you are worried about the fact that he might double spend, and instead missing the enormous cashout potential any large pool operator has.

Think about how big a block reward is in terms of USD right now. One block is worth $750 USD. Just cashing out by stealing all the generated reward a pool operator has control of, until everyone wises up and leaves, would be enormous.

You are already trusting that they aren't going to do this to you. Eventually enough people would leave the pool if he did something naughty that he would lose his power. No matter what that naughty thing is.

That's a good point.  I was thinking in terms of centralized power, which I was thinking Bitcoin was designed to avoid.  But although deepbit has a lot of power, deepbit doesn't really control it, as you pointed out.  Anything bad going on, and it's very simple for everyone who mines in the deepbit pool to switch to another pool.  It's a democracy of sorts, really, with the amount of control a pool operator has being directly tied to how much trust miners have in them.  And given the relatively low cost to switching pools (as long as you cash out fairly often), a lack of trust can translate into a lack of power VERY quickly.  Which is in contrast to the central control of most currency.

Thanks for the insight, I really hadn't thought about it that way.
Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: Deepbit Approaching 50% Once Again
by
rainsford
on 06/06/2011, 01:03:22 UTC
Quote from: myself on June 05, 2011, 11:08:19 PM
...
on the other side we all see the pie chart and you should ask, why we get that? well because the design of the rewards is stupid (/clap devs) humans are impatient that is why 80% of all hashing powers is a pools and no solo mining, ppl want results and they want to see that  bitcoin counter move and move right after the install, the current system is just stupid, just go to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/old_calculator.php put 300 that is the hash rate for a 5850 that anyone can have what you get is 21 BTC per month so you need almost 2,5 months of solo mining just to get a damn single block and a reward of 50 BTC that the only reason why ppl dont mine solo, you dont see results right after you start mining, want more ppl out of pools decrease the reward by 1000 times and also the difficulty

deepbit give us our sugar candy every hour while other pools or solo mining dont

That's pretty much what I was thinking after reading your first post.  Large pools are a natural result of how Bitcoin is designed, and for the individual miner, the best case would be taking part in a pool that has 100% of the hashing power.

Unfortunately the problem is only going to get worse.  As more and more hashing power is added, and as bitcoins go up in real value, the lump sum value of solving a block will go way up while the chance of doing so will go way down.  In the very, very long term it might average out, but nobody is going to be willing to wait that long.  And I'm not really sure it's reasonable to expect them to, to be honest.

From a variance standpoint, Bitcoin's design makes the largest pools the most attractive.  Which is bad for the security of the currency, and unfortunately an unavoidable result of how Bitcoin works.  You can trust that people will "do the right thing" and move to smaller pools, or you can trust the pool operators not to abuse their power, but the whole point of Bitcoin was to avoid having to place that kind of trust in individuals.