Why is ypool destroying PTS? (70% mined by ypool)

[isza]

P2P mining should be a standard.

[jh00]

One thing I have planned however, is to put up an clearly visible warning sign when the pool reaches at least 30-40% of the network. It will link to a page with detailed explanation of 51% attack and what affect it can have on the reputation and price of the coin. Everybody is then free to decide if he will risk it or leave the pool.

Well? It is 4 days later and I just logged in. I see no warning.  You have a news timeline right when you login. How hard would it be to throw a warning on that? Please do not procrastinate.

Did I say I'll do it immediately? No. I'd like to automate the process and make it clearly visible on every page, not put up a one-time-warning that nobody will ever read again when more news come along. The hashrate issue is not new and there is certainly no need to rush now. I'll add it when I find the time, maybe in a week, maybe later.

[bitminer9000]

One thing I have planned however, is to put up an clearly visible warning sign when the pool reaches at least 30-40% of the network. It will link to a page with detailed explanation of 51% attack and what affect it can have on the reputation and price of the coin. Everybody is then free to decide if he will risk it or leave the pool.

Well? It is 4 days later and I just logged in. I see no warning.  You have a news timeline right when you login. How hard would it be to throw a warning on that? Please do not procrastinate.

[luigi1111]

Oh no thanks. No longer interested in Protoshares as i lost faith and do not trust the devs anymore. If that is no alarm to anyone of you then im even more glad that im out before the big crash.

oh yea, above 70% of the Pts are mined by your pool and you and your compadres earn 5% of that at minimum, plus the share from your miner binaries. Bias much?

Do you really have any idea? The miner developers at ypool are not affiliated.

As for 5% seeming a bit high, how much power would the other pools have if ypool had the same fees? (as jh00 stated above)

Instead of being angry, why not just mine somewhere else?
Oh I forgot, you don't care about PTS anymore, since you're out.

[Isaaaaah]

Oh no thanks. No longer interested in Protoshares as i lost faith and do not trust the devs anymore. If that is no alarm to anyone of you then im even more glad that im out before the big crash.

oh yea, above 70% of the Pts are mined by your pool and you and your compadres earn 5% of that at minimum, plus the share from your miner binaries. Bias much?

[jh00]

It's not that easy, really. How do you think it works? You gain access to the pool server in whatever way and then you just press the big red button? We don't even have standard wallets running and there is no source to be modified or anything. All the attacker will see are just some weird applications running with strange debug output, every intruder will be happy if he is even able to steal some coins.. but even that is not as trivial as you might think. Not on ypool at least.

Security through obscurity is no security.

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't actually mean to say that obfuscating infrastructure is how our security works, I was just referring to the fact that it is unlikely to ever happen that someone explicitly hacks into a pool server only to pull off a 51% attack. It's not impossible, but very unlikely.

And now you say Oh its cool that people just use one pool... This will kill all other pools leaving PTS to 100% to ypool making it the bottleneck of a coin that was supposed to be a share of future Decentralized Autonomous Corporations, promoted by a company that screams Decentralization but actually does not give a fuck about it.

Why should it affect if people go to ypool or not? Unless bytemaster writes it in big red letters all over the place only about 1% of miners will care about the 51% issue.
If you consider it that important you should invest your energy in making people aware of the problem rather than shouting at bytemaster.

I think a potential solution to this would be to release a distributed pool alongside future DACs which have a built-in mechanism to reward extra shares if people choose to use the distributed pool.  i.e. say 2.5% of ALL mined blocks will be included in the reward for the distributed pool but not for any centralized pools; that way, people could start their own pools if they want, but the distributed pool would have be slightly more profitable and would give incentive for people to switch to it.

What stops a normal pool from disguising as the distributed pool to get the extra 2.5%? The main problem with most suggested solutions is that they require a centralized entity that controls what is real and what not.

[pariah99]

It's one of the few shortcomings of the proof-of-work design.  Even though a solution exists in the bitcoin world (p2pool), people prefer to stay on the larger pools like gigahash to reduce their variance.

I think a potential solution to this would be to release a distributed pool alongside future DACs which have a built-in mechanism to reward extra shares if people choose to use the distributed pool.  i.e. say 2.5% of ALL mined blocks will be included in the reward for the distributed pool but not for any centralized pools; that way, people could start their own pools if they want, but the distributed pool would have be slightly more profitable and would give incentive for people to switch to it.

Also, proof-of-stake would solve this problem unless somebody accumulates a ridiculous amount of the currency.

[Isaaaaah]

Sounds like 100% secure...

[bytemaster]

There is no problem with ypool having 70% of the hash power because they are very limited in what they can do with that hash power.  They can do a Denial of Service or they can attempt a double spend...

...

Consider this a case study in the reality that the 51% attack is not really a concern.

Are you completely out of your mind?
Yet here you are, lead developer of a company who wrote decentralization all over its awful designed websites. You fail to deliver on your own invention stating the day it should be released that Poland was too slow. And now you say Oh its cool that people just use one pool... This will kill all other pools leaving PTS to 100% to ypool making it the bottleneck of a coin that was supposed to be a share of future Decentralized Autonomous Corporations, promoted by a company that screams Decentralization but actually does not give a fuck about it.

Tomorrow i will get complaints by my neighbours for the loud noise emitted by this epic facepalm.

My point is that whether they can control 51 or 100% or not is irrelevant to the security of the coins.  If they start performing a DOS attack on the network then miners will leave and join a new pool.   But ypool has no financial incentive to attack and mining pools cannot perform double spend attacks because every block they work on is public record which means they cannot 'mine in secret' and thus there can be no alternative chains.

True decentralization is competition and lowering the barriers to entry. 

While I am a proponent of decentralization, I refuse to pretend that bitcoin, mining, etc are decentralized when they are not.  Instead I will focus on the true innovations that free us all:

"Irreversible, Unforgeable Global Ledgers"

If you have such a ledger that is distributed far and wide then it does not matter what any one bad actor does. 

[Isaaaaah]

There is no problem with ypool having 70% of the hash power because they are very limited in what they can do with that hash power.  They can do a Denial of Service or they can attempt a double spend...

...

Consider this a case study in the reality that the 51% attack is not really a concern.

Are you completely out of your mind?
Yet here you are, lead developer of a company who wrote decentralization all over its awful designed websites. You fail to deliver on your own invention stating the day it should be released that Poland was too slow. And now you say Oh its cool that people just use one pool... This will kill all other pools leaving PTS to 100% to ypool making it the bottleneck of a coin that was supposed to be a share of future Decentralized Autonomous Corporations, promoted by a company that screams Decentralization but actually does not give a fuck about it.

Tomorrow i will get complaints by my neighbours for the loud noise emitted by this epic facepalm.

[reorder]

There is no problem with ypool having 70% of the hash power because they are very limited in what they can do with that hash power.  They can do a Denial of Service or they can attempt a double spend... however, they cannot get away with a double spend because they would have to steal their customers hash power which could not be done in secret. 

This reality is why we can eliminate mining.  If ypool simply signed every block the situation would be the same as it is today.  They could do no more harm nor could they perform a double spend attack.   

Consider this a case study in the reality that the 51% attack is not really a concern.

Or they can get hacked and someone else will double-spend all our money.

No one can double spend *YOUR* money except you.

Well, this is true, I rather meant mined blocks not distributed yet. Which is not possible too if the pool pays out matured blocks immediately, if it does.

[Isaaaaah]

Alright. All go for ypool then. Wont get any PTS anywhere else...
srsly wtf... Decentralization?

[bytemaster]

There is no problem with ypool having 70% of the hash power because they are very limited in what they can do with that hash power.  They can do a Denial of Service or they can attempt a double spend... however, they cannot get away with a double spend because they would have to steal their customers hash power which could not be done in secret. 

This reality is why we can eliminate mining.  If ypool simply signed every block the situation would be the same as it is today.  They could do no more harm nor could they perform a double spend attack.   

Consider this a case study in the reality that the 51% attack is not really a concern.

Or they can get hacked and someone else will double-spend all our money.

No one can double spend *YOUR* money except you. 

[reorder]

It's not that easy, really. How do you think it works? You gain access to the pool server in whatever way and then you just press the big red button? We don't even have standard wallets running and there is no source to be modified or anything. All the attacker will see are just some weird applications running with strange debug output, every intruder will be happy if he is even able to steal some coins.. but even that is not as trivial as you might think. Not on ypool at least.

Security through obscurity is no security.

[reorder]

There is no problem with ypool having 70% of the hash power because they are very limited in what they can do with that hash power.  They can do a Denial of Service or they can attempt a double spend... however, they cannot get away with a double spend because they would have to steal their customers hash power which could not be done in secret. 

This reality is why we can eliminate mining.  If ypool simply signed every block the situation would be the same as it is today.  They could do no more harm nor could they perform a double spend attack.   

Consider this a case study in the reality that the 51% attack is not really a concern.

Or they can get hacked and someone else will double-spend all our money.