[Bitcoin-development] Proposals for improving Bitcoin mining decentralization

[Ron Elliott]

In this scenario how do you ensure the miner solving the block cannot
reapportion the subsidy to himself rather than the pool?
On Jun 17, 2014 2:09 AM, "Raúl Martínez" <rme at i-rme.es> wrote:

> First of all I apologice due to the possible mistakes in my writing below,
> I am not a Bitcoin developer but I have some knowledge about it.
>
> ----
>
> We all know the recent news, Ghash pool controlling 51% of the hashrate.
> While some consider it a threat others think that is not harmful.
>
> The thing is that we have to do something to stop this from happening
> again.
>
> My proposal is to start thinking about miners that join a pool like
> independent miners and not slave miners, this includes creating a new
> mining protocol that does not rely on the pool sending the list of
> transactions to include in a block. Each individual miner has to collect
> transactions by his own and mine that, this can be achieved by running a
> full node or by running a SPV like node that ask other nodes for
> transactions.
>
> Once this protocol is developed and standarised we as a community could
> require all pools to use it (because its better, because is more
> trustless...), not by imposing it but by recommending it.
>
> Pool owners could send some instructions using this protocol to the miner
> about how many transactions to include per block (some pools want small
> blocks), how many 0 fee transactions to include, how much is the minimum
> fee per Kb to include transactions and some info about the Coinbase field
> in the block.
>
> This way is impossible to perform some of the possible 51% attacks:
>
>    - A pool owner cant mine a new chain (selfish mining) (pool clients
>    have a SPV or full node that has checkpoints and ask other peers about the
>    length of the chain)
>    - A pool owner can't perform double spends or reverse transactions
>    (pool clients know all the transactions relayed to the network, they know
>    if they are already included on a block)
>    - A pool owner cant decide which transactions not to include (but they
>    can configure the minimum fee).
>    - A pool owner cant get all the rewards by avoiding other pools from
>    mining blocks (Because the pool client knows the last block independently
>    that is from his pool or other).
>
>
> The only thing that a 51% pool owner can do is to shut down his pool and
> drop the hashrate by 51% because he does not control the miners.
>
> If the pool owner owns all the hardware in the pool my proposal is not
> valid, if the pool clients dont use this protocol my proposal is not valid.
>
>
> I want to know if this is possible or its been developed or there is
> already a working protocol that works like this, also I want to read other
> people's ways to address this threat, thanks for reading.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> HPCC Systems Open Source Big Data Platform from LexisNexis Risk Solutions
> Find What Matters Most in Your Big Data with HPCC Systems
> Open Source. Fast. Scalable. Simple. Ideal for Dirty Data.
> Leverages Graph Analysis for Fast Processing & Easy Data Exploration
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/hpccsystems
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140617/7251f9ba/attachment.html>