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Bitcoin is highly centralized, 90% of mining power was in one room recently. Ethereum's Ethash is better protected against specialized hardware, but not well ve

by kushti 11y ago

Bitcoin is highly centralized, 90% of mining power was in one room recently. Ethereum's Ethash is better protected against specialized hardware, but not well verified yet. In other aspects you've mentioned, especially scaling, Ethereum is surely nightmare.

manigandham 11y ago
> 90% of mining power was in one room recently Any details on this?
- jnbiche 11y ago
  S/he means the principles of the component mining groups were in one room, I presume. I stopped following Bitcoin closely a while back, but I can't imagine one party getting 90% of the hashrate without dire consequences.
- kushti 11y ago
  https://news.bitcoin.com/scaling-bitcoin-workshop-hong-kong-wrap/ https://news.bitcoin.com/scaling-bitcoin-workshop-hong-kong-... "I think the biggest news to come out of the conference is that miners representing over 90% of the hashing power on the network all agreed that the block size needs to be increased."
- ufo 11y ago
  A handful of chinese miners control a huge chunk of the mining power for bitcoin. They recently appeared together in a bitcoin conference, which technically meant that 90% of the hashing power appeared under the same roof. - https://twitter.com/lopp/status/673398201307664384 https://twitter.com/lopp/status/673398201307664384 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vn0go/photo_on_scaling_bitcoin_stage_people/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vn0go/photo_on_sc... - https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3vn984/decentralization_has_been_finally_debunked/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3vn984/decentrali...
Taek 11y ago
That's not really the case. There were representatives for 90% of the hashing power, but pools are composed of many individuals who each own their own rigs, and companies like BitFury are also composed of many people. There was 1 or 2 representatives from each organization out of the many that actually participate in the mining process. It's not great, but if you look at Ethereum you'll see the same distribution (2 pools have 50%, 4 pools have 75%) and Ethereum does not have anywhere near the same throughout load, which is where most of the centralization pressure comes from. Further, Ethereum is supposedly much more vulnerable to selfish mining attacks, which means a pool that decides to start doing selfish mining should be able to overtake the others in terms of profitability very quickly.

by kushti 11y ago

manigandham 11y ago

> 90% of mining power was in one room recently Any details on this?

jnbiche 11y ago
S/he means the principles of the component mining groups were in one room, I presume. I stopped following Bitcoin closely a while back, but I can't imagine one party getting 90% of the hashrate without dire consequences.
kushti 11y ago
https://news.bitcoin.com/scaling-bitcoin-workshop-hong-kong-wrap/ https://news.bitcoin.com/scaling-bitcoin-workshop-hong-kong-... "I think the biggest news to come out of the conference is that miners representing over 90% of the hashing power on the network all agreed that the block size needs to be increased."
ufo 11y ago
A handful of chinese miners control a huge chunk of the mining power for bitcoin. They recently appeared together in a bitcoin conference, which technically meant that 90% of the hashing power appeared under the same roof. - https://twitter.com/lopp/status/673398201307664384 https://twitter.com/lopp/status/673398201307664384 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vn0go/photo_on_scaling_bitcoin_stage_people/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3vn0go/photo_on_sc... - https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3vn984/decentralization_has_been_finally_debunked/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/3vn984/decentrali...

Taek 11y ago

That's not really the case. There were representatives for 90% of the hashing power, but pools are composed of many individuals who each own their own rigs, and companies like BitFury are also composed of many people. There was 1 or 2 representatives from each organization out of the many that actually participate in the mining process. It's not great, but if you look at Ethereum you'll see the same distribution (2 pools have 50%, 4 pools have 75%) and Ethereum does not have anywhere near the same throughout load, which is where most of the centralization pressure comes from. Further, Ethereum is supposedly much more vulnerable to selfish mining attacks, which means a pool that decides to start doing selfish mining should be able to overtake the others in terms of profitability very quickly.