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I'm with Matt Corallo on the "centralization is very concerning" issue but the nuclear option isn't going to fix anything at all neither.

Has anybody tried to shed light on to why pools are centralized? I read claims about pay-per-share needing a deep balance sheet and stuff but I've been theorizing about this since ten years now that an attacker wouldn't need to buy and operate 51% of all mining equipment. They only need to run a pool that pays out more than the competition. How expensive is that? Let the pool operate at a loss and you kill all competing pools.

I think this is how nation state adoption of Bitcoin mining looks like. You don't need to build huge mining farms to control the hash rate. You only need to recruit big mining farms to mine what you want to get mined.

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Leo Wandersleb 1y ago

So if this mysterious meta-mining-pool behind all the fronts is sponsored by an actual attacker, we can be sure as hell that this attacker will be first in line to attack any new POW with the same deep pockets, too.

Able Kirby 1y ago

Yes, telling people what to do is a doomed approch, and I'm surprised that Matt would make that error. Bitcoin is underpinned by game theory, rather than coercion.

We need a clear explanation of exactly why this breaks the game (if it indeed does) and then understand how to make the game more secure without breaking it further. The explanation needs to include a full world view on a long timescale, with acts and reactions, beyond just one agent in one state considers a control play.

Leo Wandersleb 1y ago

I think he is making noise. The nuclear option for example is so ridiculous that it only makes sense if it's meant to scare people into action.

That said, game theory also has to consider calls to action as a tool. The economic incentives are such that people will defend the network but somebody will have to tell them that danger is lurking right now and defense is needed now.

Leo Wandersleb 1y ago

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334 1y ago

Great thinking. Will nation states collaborate or compete? And how does that affect the incentives/game theory?

Matt Corallo 1y ago

It’s not that I’m a fan of the nuclear option, but rather that I have no *other* ideas if things like Sv2/p2pool don’t get adoption. We’ve been at this for a decade and it’s been a massive problem for a decade.

Leo Wandersleb 1y ago

I think it's been a massive **concern** since the first pool was launched but not really a problem. We have several projects monitoring censorship and of course things can move suddenly without us being prepared but if that meta pool started censoring orphaning blocks with OFAC sanctioned transactions, are you convinced that individual miners that learn about them having contributed to those censoring blocks would all just nod and go back to what they've been doing before like they do when they read your call to action?

Yes, miners did not get all hands on deck when indeed OFAC transactions were fitlered out in individual blocks in the past and that is a bad sign but you can argue that they do this at the cost of missing out on those fees. If they do re-org out those transactions it becomes a clear 51% attack that nobody can argue about anymore. It is a change in quality I would not assume to be treated the same.

gsovereignty 1y ago

What you are discussing is phase 4, we're currently in phase 2.

It's also worth noting that mining is intended to be centralized while bitcoin is not under attack, becoming increasingly decentralized (and less efficient) in proportion to how criminalized it becomes.

https://youtu.be/X_xgmVLyB94?si=z5HDoK1laP_GmpQY