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Towards the end of the video, the owner makes a point that this democratic distribution of mining power instead of large miners controlling the network is a goo

Towards the end of the video, the owner makes a point that this democratic distribution of mining power instead of large miners controlling the network is a good idea. Curious to hear more about this -- does anyone know good writing re: Democratic / distributed benefits of mining?

TD-Linux 9y ago
Probably the worst outcome is easier 51% attacks: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack Note that from this perspective, a mining pool is effectively a single miner - so a Serbian miner might not actually help, depending which pool it's attached to.
- nybble41 9y ago
  > Note that from this perspective, a mining pool is effectively a single miner.... That isn't really true. A pool operator who tried to abuse their position to carry out a 51% attack against the interests of the pool members wouldn't retain their majority for long. Individual miners would switch to a different pool, or simply shut down their hardware. Conscientious pool participants could also scan the blocks they're asked to work on to detect such attempts before they are carried out, though I don't think any of the standard pool software does that yet. To sustain a 51% attack for a meaningful length of time you would have to own the hardware, not just manage it for others.
deleted 9y ago
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seanalltogether 9y ago
The bitcoin protocol is somewhat at odds with the desired goal of distributed mining. Only 1 entity gets the reward of mining a block, and only 144 blocks are mined per day. You are encouraged to join the strongest pools to have the highest chance of making money. According to blockchain.info, the top 6 mining pools control 75% of the market. https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools
- ric2b 9y ago
  Statistically the reward is the same whether you're solo mining or in a pool. Actually less in a pool because they take a cut of the profits. The benefit of being in a pool is that you get the (smaller, since they're shared) rewards more frequently instead of waiting possibly years until you solo mine a block. But there's really no reason why you have to be in the biggest pool, if you're in a pool with a 1/144 share of the hashrate you'll already be getting daily income, why do you need it to be more frequent? Note: I think solo miners also get a bit more average latency when receiving bloks, I'm not sure if that offsets the cut the pools take enough to make the expected value of being in a pool higher or not.

TD-Linux 9y ago

Probably the worst outcome is easier 51% attacks: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Majority_attack Note that from this perspective, a mining pool is effectively a single miner - so a Serbian miner might not actually help, depending which pool it's attached to.

nybble41 9y ago
> Note that from this perspective, a mining pool is effectively a single miner.... That isn't really true. A pool operator who tried to abuse their position to carry out a 51% attack against the interests of the pool members wouldn't retain their majority for long. Individual miners would switch to a different pool, or simply shut down their hardware. Conscientious pool participants could also scan the blocks they're asked to work on to detect such attempts before they are carried out, though I don't think any of the standard pool software does that yet. To sustain a 51% attack for a meaningful length of time you would have to own the hardware, not just manage it for others.

deleted 9y ago

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seanalltogether 9y ago

The bitcoin protocol is somewhat at odds with the desired goal of distributed mining. Only 1 entity gets the reward of mining a block, and only 144 blocks are mined per day. You are encouraged to join the strongest pools to have the highest chance of making money. According to blockchain.info, the top 6 mining pools control 75% of the market. https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools

ric2b 9y ago
Statistically the reward is the same whether you're solo mining or in a pool. Actually less in a pool because they take a cut of the profits. The benefit of being in a pool is that you get the (smaller, since they're shared) rewards more frequently instead of waiting possibly years until you solo mine a block. But there's really no reason why you have to be in the biggest pool, if you're in a pool with a 1/144 share of the hashrate you'll already be getting daily income, why do you need it to be more frequent? Note: I think solo miners also get a bit more average latency when receiving bloks, I'm not sure if that offsets the cut the pools take enough to make the expected value of being in a pool higher or not.