9 ms·

Satoshi's Hashrate

192 points by mdelias 12y ago

leeoniya 12y ago
[off-topic] apparently blogspot.com has something against me wanting to use the top 20% of my scroll bar. (FF and Chrome)
- itry 12y ago
  Indeed. This is one of the most unreadable pages I came across in a while. The sidebar also creates a ton of problems. It interferes with my navigation habbits. When I use the cursor keys to move around, suddenly some other page loads.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
  Also unreadable without JS. The mobile version works though.
  - OldLikeDos 12y ago
    I tried it on an iPad just to see the difference and I encountered strange scrolling problems.
  - pasbesoin 12y ago
    Pull it from Google cache. (I hate this category of Blogspot templates...)
    - pasbesoin 12y ago
      Well, perhaps I was downvoted for "hating" those templates. I really, really dislike them. As for the JS dependency, when I want to read an item published under such a template, I view the Google cache copy. It loads up just fine without JS -- or I'm forgetting that, foolish me, I have google.com whitelisted. Not sure about one's satisfaction with this on mobile, but it would be worth a shot.
- nodata 12y ago
  and they still haven't removed that cursed gears intro whenever I visit the page. Hello Flash homepage intros!
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Nor do they want us to use CMD-[left arrow] to navigate backwards through our browser history.
  - SuperKlaus 12y ago
    And no space bar for scrolling, so annoying.
abrkn 12y ago
I find it increasingly hard to believe that Satoshi was one person. It is, however, in the best interest of everyone but journalists that they keep their identities hidden to avoid ad hominem attacks.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  I've always felt it was more of a consortium of people as well. It makes a lot of sense if you start to think about it. With a small group of people working on it, it spreads the knowledge out, decentralizes any authorship or specific authority for credit and makes it easy for the team to simply vanish without a trace since most people are looking for one person, instead of many. Sounds a lot like BTC itself, doesn't it? I wouldn't doubt this was part of the design from the very beginning. It then leaves the by-product behind for others to pick up and push forward - which is essentially what's happened.
  - javert 12y ago
    I very much doubt Satoshi is a group of people, because the nature of bitcoin is too much of a creative leap to have been discovered by committee. That said, "Satoshi" could have had a group of suboordinates or collaborators working with him on the grunt work. Though again, from what I've read about the original C++ code, it looked like the work of a lone genius-albiet-non-programmer.
    - Retric 12y ago
      A distributed Digital currency backed by processing power was a fairly old idea at the time. The first time I heard about the idea was late 90's but I think it's earlier than that. EX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
      - jafaku 12y ago
        What about the idea of a blockchain? Because that's the creative leap.
thekylemontag 12y ago
very interesting read. definitely makes it seem as though Satoshi was a group of people running many machines. would be very interested to see more content like this in the future from other early-stars of the BTC world.
- alex_duf 12y ago
  Or she/he/it was smart enough to behave like a group.
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    Or it was a group of people smart enough to realize that behaving like a group was exactly the thing people would think a group of smart people who want to stay anonymous would be unlikely to do.
streptomycin 12y ago
From this can we estimate what kind of hardware Satoshi was using? Like was it feasible to get that hash rate on 1 desktop computer back then, or would he have been using a large number of computers?
- andrewljohnson 12y ago
  That's what the author concludes actually, that this data might help determine Satoshi's hardware. "These insights may help investigators determine the sort of hardware Satoshi used, and how much control he would have had over the early client or his PC / cloud infrastructure."
0x0 12y ago
Looking at the hash rate reductions and how it seems to be explicitly controlled first (1) to drop just below 50% and then (2) fading out, it's almost as if Satoshi was thinking (1) build trust in the network by not maintaining a 51+% attack position and (2) the network is self-sustainable, my work here is done.
- boyaka 12y ago
  Yeah, I imagine there was a testing aspect to what he was doing, and you pointed out some potential tests. Maybe just making sure the version that went live responds the way he predicted it would.
nikanj 12y ago
Unscrollable on iPad mini. Why must they keep on "improving" the basic web experience :(
- 13throwaway 12y ago
  Use the "reader" button (the three lines in the corner). It's a little known feature but great on sites like this.
  - MBCook 12y ago
    Ah yes, the "un-fuckup the internet" button. It's existence is a continual reminder of just how little many sites think of users. I had been using it more and more in the last year or two, but I'm starting to give up. Between sites where it doesn't work, the pagination isn't right, or how slow sites are to load all their 'features' I've simply been leaving sites more and more.
yohanatan 12y ago
> It's clear that Satoshi was able to achieve some sort of fine tuned [hash-rate] control. I'm not sure how such control could be maintained, but I'm willing to guess that the standard client on a home PC wouldn't be able to do it. This is something the operating system can provide (or another application). No need for a 'special' client.
- willvarfar 12y ago
  As he wrote the original client, he could easily slip a `sleep()` into the version he was running too.
- itry 12y ago
  Or simply run the application only a certain number of hours per day.
mcs 12y ago
There most likely was a simple gpu miner that wasn't public knowledge until later, which helped in balancing out the network without needing a horde of machines early on.
MrJagil 12y ago
I hope Gwern and other writers interested in the Satoshi phenomenon keep tabs on stuff like this... I mean, the fact that you might be able to deduce his hardware and other small clues slowly being revealed, might eventually lead to a pretty stable image of the persona behind Bitcoin.

192 points by mdelias 12y ago

[off-topic] apparently blogspot.com has something against me wanting to use the top 20% of my scroll bar. (FF and Chrome)

itry 12y ago
Indeed. This is one of the most unreadable pages I came across in a while. The sidebar also creates a ton of problems. It interferes with my navigation habbits. When I use the cursor keys to move around, suddenly some other page loads.
TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
Also unreadable without JS. The mobile version works though.
- OldLikeDos 12y ago
  I tried it on an iPad just to see the difference and I encountered strange scrolling problems.
- pasbesoin 12y ago
  Pull it from Google cache. (I hate this category of Blogspot templates...)
  - pasbesoin 12y ago
    Well, perhaps I was downvoted for "hating" those templates. I really, really dislike them. As for the JS dependency, when I want to read an item published under such a template, I view the Google cache copy. It loads up just fine without JS -- or I'm forgetting that, foolish me, I have google.com whitelisted. Not sure about one's satisfaction with this on mobile, but it would be worth a shot.
nodata 12y ago
and they still haven't removed that cursed gears intro whenever I visit the page. Hello Flash homepage intros!
pavel_lishin 12y ago
Nor do they want us to use CMD-[left arrow] to navigate backwards through our browser history.
- SuperKlaus 12y ago
  And no space bar for scrolling, so annoying.

abrkn 12y ago

I find it increasingly hard to believe that Satoshi was one person. It is, however, in the best interest of everyone but journalists that they keep their identities hidden to avoid ad hominem attacks.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
I've always felt it was more of a consortium of people as well. It makes a lot of sense if you start to think about it. With a small group of people working on it, it spreads the knowledge out, decentralizes any authorship or specific authority for credit and makes it easy for the team to simply vanish without a trace since most people are looking for one person, instead of many. Sounds a lot like BTC itself, doesn't it? I wouldn't doubt this was part of the design from the very beginning. It then leaves the by-product behind for others to pick up and push forward - which is essentially what's happened.
- javert 12y ago
  I very much doubt Satoshi is a group of people, because the nature of bitcoin is too much of a creative leap to have been discovered by committee. That said, "Satoshi" could have had a group of suboordinates or collaborators working with him on the grunt work. Though again, from what I've read about the original C++ code, it looked like the work of a lone genius-albiet-non-programmer.
  - Retric 12y ago
    A distributed Digital currency backed by processing power was a fairly old idea at the time. The first time I heard about the idea was late 90's but I think it's earlier than that. EX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
    - jafaku 12y ago
      What about the idea of a blockchain? Because that's the creative leap.

thekylemontag 12y ago

very interesting read. definitely makes it seem as though Satoshi was a group of people running many machines. would be very interested to see more content like this in the future from other early-stars of the BTC world.

alex_duf 12y ago
Or she/he/it was smart enough to behave like a group.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  Or it was a group of people smart enough to realize that behaving like a group was exactly the thing people would think a group of smart people who want to stay anonymous would be unlikely to do.

streptomycin 12y ago

From this can we estimate what kind of hardware Satoshi was using? Like was it feasible to get that hash rate on 1 desktop computer back then, or would he have been using a large number of computers?

andrewljohnson 12y ago
That's what the author concludes actually, that this data might help determine Satoshi's hardware. "These insights may help investigators determine the sort of hardware Satoshi used, and how much control he would have had over the early client or his PC / cloud infrastructure."

0x0 12y ago

Looking at the hash rate reductions and how it seems to be explicitly controlled first (1) to drop just below 50% and then (2) fading out, it's almost as if Satoshi was thinking (1) build trust in the network by not maintaining a 51+% attack position and (2) the network is self-sustainable, my work here is done.

boyaka 12y ago
Yeah, I imagine there was a testing aspect to what he was doing, and you pointed out some potential tests. Maybe just making sure the version that went live responds the way he predicted it would.

nikanj 12y ago

Unscrollable on iPad mini. Why must they keep on "improving" the basic web experience :(

13throwaway 12y ago
Use the "reader" button (the three lines in the corner). It's a little known feature but great on sites like this.
- MBCook 12y ago
  Ah yes, the "un-fuckup the internet" button. It's existence is a continual reminder of just how little many sites think of users. I had been using it more and more in the last year or two, but I'm starting to give up. Between sites where it doesn't work, the pagination isn't right, or how slow sites are to load all their 'features' I've simply been leaving sites more and more.

yohanatan 12y ago

> It's clear that Satoshi was able to achieve some sort of fine tuned [hash-rate] control. I'm not sure how such control could be maintained, but I'm willing to guess that the standard client on a home PC wouldn't be able to do it. This is something the operating system can provide (or another application). No need for a 'special' client.

willvarfar 12y ago
As he wrote the original client, he could easily slip a `sleep()` into the version he was running too.
itry 12y ago
Or simply run the application only a certain number of hours per day.

mcs 12y ago

There most likely was a simple gpu miner that wasn't public knowledge until later, which helped in balancing out the network without needing a horde of machines early on.

MrJagil 12y ago

I hope Gwern and other writers interested in the Satoshi phenomenon keep tabs on stuff like this... I mean, the fact that you might be able to deduce his hardware and other small clues slowly being revealed, might eventually lead to a pretty stable image of the persona behind Bitcoin.