Damus
Leo Wandersleb profile picture
Leo Wandersleb
@LeoWandersleb
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 · 107w
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 · 107w
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 secur...
Leo Wandersleb · 107w
nostr:npub185h9z5yxn8uc7retm0n6gkm88358lejzparxms5kmy9epr236k2qcswrdp nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzq3huhccxt6h34eupz3jeynjgjgek8lel2f4adaea0svyk94a3njdqyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tcpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcqyrzk9t5jqp4hekd35pjlvcd20mldwsmgkcrql85zghffc6s8l02w5dtkm54
334 · 107w
Great thinking. Will nation states collaborate or compete? And how does that affect the incentives/game theory?
Matt Corallo · 107w
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.