Author: Mike Hearn 2013-11-07 16:14:47
Published on: 2013-11-07T16:14:47+00:00
The ASIC race will slow down once everyone has one, has more or less optimal power supplies, and process improvements aren't easily reachable anymore. This will cause people to dissipate from the large pools because eliminating their fees will become the next lowest hanging fruit to squeeze out extra profit. There is no particular reason we need only a handful of pools that control a major fraction of the hashpower. A few hundred pools or lots of miners on p2pool would make many theoretical attacks not very relevant. Peter Todd warns that driving up everybody's orphan rate without anybody noticing is not possible. If any large pools try to carry out an attack, Gavin Andresen will tell people to switch to a more responsible pool. He suggests mining on a smaller pool or better yet, p2pool. ASICMiner could have made use of the attack in question if memories of their peak hashing power were correct. GHash.IO, 22%, says they're a "private Bitfury ASIC mining pool" involved with CEX.IO who has physical control of a bunch of hashing power. They're a bit short of 30%, but some behind-the-scenes deals, and/or lowering the barrier with reactive block publishing could fix that. Todd recommends a witchhunt against the large pools.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:37:27.796244+00:00