Author: Peter Todd 2013-05-31 16:57:58
Published on: 2013-05-31T16:57:58+00:00
In a recent post on bitcointalk, Peter Todd discussed the need for change in Bitcoin mining practices. Currently, the largest pools control Bitcoin, leaving a lot of hashing power in the hands of very few people. Additionally, pools have little incentive to run secure operations and many have been hacked with their funds stolen, which could be used to attack the network itself. To address this issue, Todd suggests implementing pooled-solo mining, a concept he discussed with Gregory Maxwell and Luke Dashjr at a recent conference. Essentially, miners with equipment would run a local Bitcoin node and use it to construct blocks, while the pool tracks shares and organizes payouts. This way, even if the pool is hacked, only miners would be affected rather than the entire network. Luke created getblocktemplate last year as a means to audit mining pools, which can be extended for pooled-solo mining. Todd plans to fund a developer, likely Luke, to make this happen under Keep Bitcoin Free's next project. The goal is to put the direction of the network into the hands of individual miners rather than big pools. By making changes like increasing the blocksize directly impacting decentralization, it will be easier to convince people to adopt them.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T18:18:30.479358+00:00