Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why nobody should be accepting transactions with no confirmations.
Right, but surely it happens, no?
Yes, but it's really at the parties risk.
Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
111–120 of 130 posts
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that if one entity controls 51% of the network, they can push arbitrary modifications into the block chain. In effect, they can do whatever they want.
That is not correct, the consequences are still very bad. What can you do with 51%? You can (theoretically) revert a transaction that has been confirmed, by mining blocks attached to a prior point in the blockchain and getting a longer chain than the rest of the network. What can't you do? You can't spend someone's coins when you never had their private key to begin with. Making a transaction is an act of "signing" a…
The thing you're not taking into account is that, even if GHash.io are trustworthy, this still makes them a single point of failure - any attacker who compromises their systems can carry out double spends, or they can even do it themselves and then blame it on an outsider. What's more, this has already happened with GHash.io and it hasn't damaged their reputation in the slightest. (Back when they were a smaller portion of the network, someone spotted malicious double spends of coins obviously linked to GHash.io that were equally obviously done using the miners they controlled. They blamed it on rogue insiders and everyone carried on using them.)
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to play devil's advocate here, is there any proof to that claim?
I don't have a dog in this fight, but Ripple Labs did set things up so they would start off with all the network currency, and still own the majority of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(payment_protocol)#XRP .
That's correct. From Ripplelabs.com:
"Because Ripple’s new architecture does not require mining [to reach consensus], the creators of Ripple faced a choice: exclusively distribute XRP via mining or diversify distribution methods to include useful mining, business development, funding third-party developers, and hiring talent at Ripple Labs, the company responsible for improving upon and promoting the Ripple protocol."
XRP is currently distributed via the "Computing for Good" program:
"We’re giving away XRP in exchange for donating computing power to scientific research via World Community Grid. Anyone with an Internet-connected computer or Android device can participate."
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not correct, the consequences are still very bad. What can you do with 51%? You can (theoretically) revert a transaction that has been confirmed, by mining blocks attached to a prior point in the blockchain and getting a longer chain than the rest of the network. What can't you do? You can't spend someone's coins when you never had their private key to begin with. Making a transaction is an act of "signing" a…
The thing you're not taking into account is that, even if GHash.io are trustworthy, this still makes them a single point of failure - any attacker who compromises their systems can carry out double spends, or they can even do it themselves and then blame it on an outsider. What's more, this has already happened with GHash.io and it hasn't damaged their reputation in the slightest. (Back when they were a smaller porti…
I mine with slush, at mining.bitcoin.cz
I am not at all disputing that 51% attack is one of the known attacks and that 51% of hash power concentrated in the hands of any one actor is something to be prevented.
I also dabble in alt-chains, and the Terracoin chain has often had 51-60% of the hash power in the Coinotron pool.
It happened to GHash.io before, yes. I think they made it right. It's up to the rest of us to take our miners somewhere else to minimize the possibility of a rogue actor at GHash.io causing problems.
As Coinotron once told me, a pool operator just runs a pool, can't control the users. There is no fair way to turn away hash power or "self-police" as a pool operator. I think if I read the graph correctly, the CDF provides a logarithmic probabilistic dis-incentive to be >50% of the hash power and also act fairly (in other words, to work on any broadcasted solved blocks that don't contain rewards belonging to you), so it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin is more of a technology than a currency, as such it does not have to have been a political act to create it.
That's an interesting variant on, "The personal is political" - "The technical isn't political". Some technologies are by their nature effectively neutral - the knife can be used to cut food, shave your face, kill your enemy. In a more recent example, the microprocessor is a neutral technology. But many technologies are inherently political - the Pill, for example, or ICBMs. I would argue that Bitcoin may be more of…
Every technology is political. The only time it stops being political in an overt sense is when it no longer provides an advantage over other technologies which can do its job.
Taking the knife. It's invention was somewhere around the dawn of time for our species so the distinction between political and evolutionary event is blurry. But it's impossible to deny that it empowered the group of our ancestors who could build knifes, their advantage was so overwhelming over those who couldn't that today there isn't any human who isn't a tool user of some sort.
The micro-chip is very much more recent and still clearly political. The societies which can produce them control those who can't utterly. The NSA spying is only the latest in a long string of such events, the use of microchips to cripple weapons used against their creators is another. This technology favors very complex societies that can spend billions of dollars on building fabs, designing chips, training engineers etc.
Now for a thought experiment why a complex society like ours isn't predestined to be the state of humanity. Imagine that tomorrow some scientist somewhere finds out you can create a small stable anti-matter bomb by shaking a tomato on a stick at the sky during a storm. All of the advantages of all weapons since the bronze age are annihilated in a second. Large cities just mean a whole society can be destroyed quicker. Everyone from Amazonian Indians to San Fransisco's tech elite have exactly the same destructive ability, to a very good approximation. In a world like that you'd very quickly end up with a population that lives no closer to each other than the maximum blast radius of said tomato. The majority of technology will more than likely disappear since it gives no immediate advantage to those who posses it and population would plummet since one person can now take on a whole army.
For a further exploration of the impact of technology on the politics of a society see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_sto...
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…
Bitcoin is more of a technology than a currency, as such it does not have to have been a political act to create it.
You have made the fallacy of presuming that technology is neutral.
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
...except you're wrong. Bitcoin participants have developed a solution to the 51% problem, without any regulation, without any government stepping in and telling anyone to do anything. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getblocktemplate Your post is a poorly argued attempt to inject politics into a technical discussion. It reads like the top comment at /r/politics, not HN.
The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…
> Regardless, there is nothing technical about a story of a small group attaining concentrated power over a decentralized currency.
It is completely technical. The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol.
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#118I'm doing my part by moving my altcoin mining capacity over to Bitcoin pools. Not much, but every little bit reduces ghash.io's share.
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#119I don't understand the forum thread. Can someone please explain it in layman terms?
Re: Ghash.io very close to 51% of bitcoin pool
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
The invention of a new currency is a highly political act; claiming it isn't is a political statement in itself. The discussion of any disruptive technology should quickly focus on politics and ethics, or risk being abused. You can't both claim to invent technology that seriously affects society, and at the same time dismiss talk of politics as irrelevant. A technology can either be irrelevant or be political (if you…
> Regardless, there is nothing technical about a story of a small group attaining concentrated power over a decentralized currency. It is completely technical. The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol.
> The incentives and disincentives to centralization are encoded in the protocol.
I am not sure I catch your meaning (about incentives being encoded etc.), but suppose they are. Isn't that a very political statement to design a system that entrusts "the last word" with an abstract algorithm rather than humans? Why is it that way?
And again, whenever engineers build something that they want people to use to change the world, they can no longer hide behind "technical". This isn't a discussion about using one hash function over another. It's a discussion about how quickly concentrated power arose in what was meant to be a system free of concentrated power.