Mining Roundup: BBB Warning, Alpha Technology and a Pool Attack
Succeeding in the cryptocurrency mining industry over the long term may require thinking outside of the box. It takes creativity to rise above the rest and survive in such a fast-moving industry. New ideas such as permacoin, which uses proof of work to store archival data, could be an example of this. The recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing from San Francisco-based hardware designer HashFast is also significant. It's clear that major investment like the BitFury funding round or key partnerships like the creation of PeerNova are needed in order to ensure viability. With that said, let's....
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Read the press release by Ghash.io here. This is a WARNING to all Bitcoin Miners. We sincerely request that miners using Ghash.io leave the pool for other smaller pools to create a more decentralized Bitcoin hash distribution. The Bitcoin pool Ghash.io has in the last 24 hours had more than 42% of the entire Bitcoin mining power making them the biggest Bitcoin mining pool in the world. If they receive more than 50% of the mining power they will be able to double spend their Bitcoins and possibly destroy the Bitcoin value (so called 51% attack). View the recent hash distribution pie chart....
September is here, bringing cold air to many parts of the world that play home to bitcoin mines on both the hobby and industrial scale. If you're a home rig operator, you're no doubt looking forward to the day when you can turn down the air conditioning and let some of that cool fall air inside. This week's roundup takes a look at several corners of the mining community, from inside the new rig of a solar power-producing hobbyist to inside Bitmain's manufacturing facility. Alpha Technology releases update on Viper. The long-awaited Viper scrypt miner has reportedly moved closer to....
This is a press release by Ghash. IO and does not represent our views. Read our earlier post about the situation here: WARNING: GHASH. IO IS NEARING 51% - LEAVE THE POOL. Bitcoin mining pool GHash. IO is preventing accumulation of 51% of all hashing power. GHash. IO, the worlds largest and most powerful mining pool, has entered 2014 with overall hashing power of over 40%, making it the #1 pool currently in the Bitcoin network. The pool has gained significant hashing power due to the 0% pool fee, merged mining of alt coins, excellent real-time data presentation as well as quality 24/7/365....
A newly published Cornell University paper suggests that Bitcoin mining pools should eventually become smaller in size. The author, Ittay Eyal, comes to this conclusion because he believes pools are incentivized to attack each other through a block withholding attack, making it risky to allow any unidentified miners to contribute to pooled mining. The paper, which is partly funded by the SWIFT Institute, examines the consequences of a block withholding attack in an environment with competing mining pools. In a block withholding attack, an individual miner makes it seem as if he is working....
One of the many issues that has a lot of Bitcoiners periodically soiling their pants in fear is that of mining pool centralization. Earlier this year was a crisis with GHash.io and in the year before was one with BTCGuild (which has announced it is going offline soon. How the mighty have fallen). Naturally, nothing came of these supposed crises other than all manner of exhibitionist hang-wringing, such as when Peter Todd told everyone he had sold half his bitcoins due to the threat. But what about the 51% attack? What about decentralization? Bullshit. The 51% attack is a risk that arises....