* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
@ 2012-05-24 17:05 ` Arthur Britto
2012-05-24 17:13 ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
` (5 subsequent siblings)
6 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Arthur Britto @ 2012-05-24 17:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: Bitcoin Development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1912 bytes --]
I think you need the stronger change. Otherwise, the mystery miner could
just put in a few transactions to himself to mask his block. His block
would appear to be of some use while not being helpful.
-Arthur
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
> There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
> empty blocks. Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
> 80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
> easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
> transactions.
>
> Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
> implementation change:
>
> - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block < X
> (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)
>
> or even stronger,
>
> - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
> unconfirmed TXs
>
> The former is easier to implement, though there is the danger that
> no-TX miners simply include a statically generated transaction or two.
>
> The latter might be considered problematic, as it might refuse to
> relay quickly found blocks.
>
> Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
> already getting frequent (1 in 20).
>
> --
> Jeff Garzik
> exMULTI, Inc.
> jgarzik@exmulti•com
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 17:05 ` Arthur Britto
@ 2012-05-24 17:13 ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
2012-05-24 17:23 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 17:27 ` Robert McKay
` (4 subsequent siblings)
6 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Joel Joonatan Kaartinen @ 2012-05-24 17:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: Bitcoin Development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1941 bytes --]
I think the strong verification would go well if you add it along with an
optimization that avoids rechecking transactions that have already been
verified as valid. Any transactions it doesn't have to verify are from the
pool, of course :)
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 7:33 PM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
> There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
> empty blocks. Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
> 80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
> easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
> transactions.
>
> Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
> implementation change:
>
> - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block < X
> (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)
>
> or even stronger,
>
> - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
> unconfirmed TXs
>
> The former is easier to implement, though there is the danger that
> no-TX miners simply include a statically generated transaction or two.
>
> The latter might be considered problematic, as it might refuse to
> relay quickly found blocks.
>
> Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
> already getting frequent (1 in 20).
>
> --
> Jeff Garzik
> exMULTI, Inc.
> jgarzik@exmulti•com
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 17:13 ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
@ 2012-05-24 17:23 ` Jeff Garzik
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Garzik @ 2012-05-24 17:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Joel Joonatan Kaartinen; +Cc: Bitcoin Development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
<joel.kaartinen@gmail•com> wrote:
> optimization that avoids rechecking transactions that have already been
> verified as valid. Any transactions it doesn't have to verify are from the
> pool, of course :)
Work in this area is already progressing, though it is outside the
scope of this proposal regarding lazy miners and empty blocks.
--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 17:05 ` Arthur Britto
2012-05-24 17:13 ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
@ 2012-05-24 17:27 ` Robert McKay
2012-05-24 18:16 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-24 20:31 ` Luke-Jr
` (3 subsequent siblings)
6 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Robert McKay @ 2012-05-24 17:27 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
On Thu, 24 May 2012 12:33:12 -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
> empty blocks. Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
> 80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
> easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
> transactions.
>
> Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
> implementation change:
>
> - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block <
> X
> (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)
>
> or even stronger,
>
> - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
> unconfirmed TXs
If miners wanted to continue mining empty blocks without bothering to
monitor the Tx pool they would just switch to stuffing the empty blocks
with a dummy transaction of their own to get round your new rules. They
could also spam them to the p2p network so that they end up in the
mempool if that were necessary. This would probably still be slightly
easier than 'doing it properly'.
Once the block reward halves in a few months time then receiving
transaction fees will probably become more important to the miner's
profit and loss calculations and they'll spend the extra time to
implement proper transaction processing. I suspect if we do nothing this
particular issue will go away. Perhaps it could be helped along by
publishing some example code to make it easier for them.
The ability to refuse transactions seems like an important part of the
game theory of transaction pricing. Miners are supposed to be able to
jack up transaction costs by declining to process no fee or too low fee
(in their opinion) transactions.. the counter balance is that they are
losing money by doing that and leaving more on the table for the next
miner to score a block.
I expect that in the future there will be other instances when people
complain that the miners are being 'unfair' and that the rules should be
changed in some way to lower transaction fees (ie: increase block size).
If block sizes are increased ever larger and miners aren't allowed to
refuse to process transactions it will get rid of the financial
motivation for mining and less mining will happen. We should be very
careful when making these kinds of changes.
Setting percentage quotas of stuff in the mempool sounds dangerous..
miners that hear about a block from a rival miner soon enough could
possibly DOS the mempool on the rest of the network to get the block
rejected. I think it should be legitimate not to publish a transaction
to the p2p network at all.. in the future there will probably be lots of
networks other than the p2p network.. right now we have the IPv6 network
and the IPv4 network.. in the future there could be many other protocols
and perhaps not all transactions will make it back to the old legacy
ipv4 p2p network or into the mempool of bitcoin nodes on that network..
but they should still be able to get into the block chain.
Rob
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 17:27 ` Robert McKay
@ 2012-05-24 18:16 ` Jeff Garzik
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Garzik @ 2012-05-24 18:16 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Robert McKay; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Robert McKay <robert@mckay•com> wrote:
> If miners wanted to continue mining empty blocks without bothering to
> monitor the Tx pool they would just switch to stuffing the empty blocks
> with a dummy transaction of their own to get round your new rules.
Yes. This was stated in the original email.
> Once the block reward halves in a few months time then receiving
> transaction fees will probably become more important to the miner's
> profit and loss calculations and they'll spend the extra time to
> implement proper transaction processing. I suspect if we do nothing this
> particular issue will go away. Perhaps it could be helped along by
> publishing some example code to make it easier for them.
At current rates it is potentially years before that point is reached
-- years of degraded service for existing users.
> The ability to refuse transactions seems like an important part of the
> game theory of transaction pricing. Miners are supposed to be able to
> jack up transaction costs by declining to process no fee or too low fee
> (in their opinion) transactions.. the counter balance is that they are
> losing money by doing that and leaving more on the table for the next
> miner to score a block.
>
> I expect that in the future there will be other instances when people
> complain that the miners are being 'unfair' and that the rules should be
> changed in some way to lower transaction fees (ie: increase block size).
If you see a rule change, you have misunderstood the proposal.
This is an -implementation- change, which users and miners are free to
accept or reject as part of their choice of software to use in the
bitcoin ecosystem.
As such, miners continue to be free to build upon empty blocks, and
let those blocks become part of a useful chain. You would not simply
/ban/ empty blocks completely, but avoid relaying top-of-chain empty
blocks.
Mining power and network collaborate to choose the best chain at that
point -- perhaps even including those empty blocks. Clients will
continue to follow the longest, strongest chain, even after this
implementation change.
An implementation change is a soft vote of choice by the user, not a
hard requirement on all users.
> I think it should be legitimate not to publish a transaction
> to the p2p network at all.. in the future there will probably be lots of
> networks other than the p2p network.. right now we have the IPv6 network
> and the IPv4 network.. in the future there could be many other protocols
> and perhaps not all transactions will make it back to the old legacy
> ipv4 p2p network or into the mempool of bitcoin nodes on that network..
> but they should still be able to get into the block chain.
See above -- such behavior is perfectly fine.
It should be noted that out of band (OOB) TXs, transited through third
party means outside P2P network, would not cause _empty_ blocks, as
the block chain will continue to have traffic for the foreseeable
future.
OOB TXs are a great idea, too. In a hyperscaled bitcoin future, OOB
TXs might even be the norm.
--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2012-05-24 17:27 ` Robert McKay
@ 2012-05-24 20:31 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-24 21:00 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25 0:45 ` Luke-Jr
` (2 subsequent siblings)
6 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-24 20:31 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:33:12 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
> empty blocks. Even with satoshi's key observation -- hash a fixed
> 80-byte header, not the entire block -- some miners still find it
> easier to mine empty blocks, rather than watch the network for new
> transactions.
>
> Therefore I was wondering what people thought about a client
> implementation change:
>
> - Do not store or relay empty blocks, if time since last block < X
> (where X = 60 minutes, perhaps)
>
> or even stronger,
>
> - Ensure latest block includes at least X percent of mempool
> unconfirmed TXs
These are problematic for legitimate miners:
1) The freedom to reject transactions based on fees or spam filters, is
severely restricted. As mentioned in other replies, this is an important point
of Bitcoin's design.
1b) This punishes miners with superior transaction spam filtering. As with all
spam filtering, it is often an "arms race" and therefore the filter rules must
be kept private by the miners, and therefore cannot be disclosed for the
validating clients to take into consideration.
2) For a few seconds after a new block is received, the new transaction merkle
root(s) are not finished calculating. During this time, most miners are
working on "blank" blocks with the new previousblockhash but no transactions.
If those blocks are ignored, miners are forced to shutdown mining during this
time.
3) As you mentioned, illegitimate miners can easily workaround these
restrictions (even the second one, by flooding the network with their own
transactions). This puts the legitimate miners at a disadvantage in their own
search for valid blocks, unless they also come up with counter-measures
themselves.
The argument that these are not rule changes is flawed:
1) As of right now, 99% of the network runs a single client. Anything this
client rejects does de facto become a rule change.
2) Even if there were a diverse ecosystem of clients in place, discouragement
rules that potentially affect legitimate miners significantly mess with the
odds of finding a block.
3) If legitimate miners do not adopt counter-rules to bypass these new
restrictions, the illegitimate miners are left with an even larger percentage
of blocks found.
To summarize, I believe such a change as proposed would be very harmful to
Bitcoin.
Luke
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 20:31 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-24 21:00 ` Jeff Garzik
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Garzik @ 2012-05-24 21:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> These are problematic for legitimate miners:
> 1) The freedom to reject transactions based on fees or spam filters, is
> severely restricted. As mentioned in other replies, this is an important point
> of Bitcoin's design.
> 1b) This punishes miners with superior transaction spam filtering. As with all
> spam filtering, it is often an "arms race" and therefore the filter rules must
> be kept private by the miners, and therefore cannot be disclosed for the
> validating clients to take into consideration.
This is simply not true given current available data, i.e. the current
blockchain and ongoing not-spam transaction rate/pool.
> The argument that these are not rule changes is flawed:
> 1) As of right now, 99% of the network runs a single client. Anything this
> client rejects does de facto become a rule change.
According to your own numbers even, this is not true. 99% of the
network runs a wide variety of rules and versions. Even with a
"critical" security announcement, the percentage of those running the
latest version is not large.
> 2) Even if there were a diverse ecosystem of clients in place, discouragement
> rules that potentially affect legitimate miners significantly mess with the
> odds of finding a block.
> 3) If legitimate miners do not adopt counter-rules to bypass these new
> restrictions, the illegitimate miners are left with an even larger percentage
> of blocks found.
Miners are not the -only- ones that get a say in what is spam, and
what is not. If miners are generating garbage, network users have the
right to veto that garbage.
--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
` (3 preceding siblings ...)
2012-05-24 20:31 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-25 0:45 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-25 0:51 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-26 5:03 ` Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
2012-05-29 15:33 ` Gregory Maxwell
6 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-25 0:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:33:12 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
> already getting frequent (1 in 20).
FWIW, based on statistics for Eligius's past 100 blocks, it seems 10% (1 in
10) of 1-txn blocks is not actually unreasonable. This also means these 1-txn
mined blocks are not necessarily harming Bitcoin intentionally. Anyone care to
figure out the math for how fast miners need to finish processing transactions
to reduce the number of 1txn blocks?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 0:45 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-25 0:51 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25 0:57 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-25 1:00 ` Gregory Maxwell
0 siblings, 2 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Garzik @ 2012-05-25 0:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:33:12 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
>> already getting frequent (1 in 20).
>
> FWIW, based on statistics for Eligius's past 100 blocks, it seems 10% (1 in
> 10) of 1-txn blocks is not actually unreasonable. This also means these 1-txn
> mined blocks are not necessarily harming Bitcoin intentionally. Anyone care to
> figure out the math for how fast miners need to finish processing transactions
> to reduce the number of 1txn blocks?
Look at the time since last block, and correlate with the number of
non-spam TX's in the memory pool at the time. It is obvious which
ones are quick blocks (<60 seconds since last block, no big deal) and
which ones are the lazy miners (> 120 seconds since last block).
--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 0:51 ` Jeff Garzik
@ 2012-05-25 0:57 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-25 1:17 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25 1:00 ` Gregory Maxwell
1 sibling, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-25 0:57 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:51:09 AM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> > On Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:33:12 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >> Comments? It wouldn't be a problem if these no-TX blocks were not
> >> already getting frequent (1 in 20).
> >
> > FWIW, based on statistics for Eligius's past 100 blocks, it seems 10% (1
> > in 10) of 1-txn blocks is not actually unreasonable. This also means
> > these 1-txn mined blocks are not necessarily harming Bitcoin
> > intentionally. Anyone care to figure out the math for how fast miners
> > need to finish processing transactions to reduce the number of 1txn
> > blocks?
>
> Look at the time since last block, and correlate with the number of
> non-spam TX's in the memory pool at the time. It is obvious which
> ones are quick blocks (<60 seconds since last block, no big deal) and
> which ones are the lazy miners (> 120 seconds since last block).
Block times are not accurate enough for that.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 0:57 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-25 1:17 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25 7:47 ` Christian Decker
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Jeff Garzik @ 2012-05-25 1:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> Block times are not accurate enough for that.
The times in your log are very accurate, assuming your system clock is
remotely accurate.
--
Jeff Garzik
exMULTI, Inc.
jgarzik@exmulti•com
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 1:17 ` Jeff Garzik
@ 2012-05-25 7:47 ` Christian Decker
2012-05-25 13:44 ` Alan Reiner
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Christian Decker @ 2012-05-25 7:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1533 bytes --]
How about a simple proof of work test? This one though does not ask for CPU
work but asks the miner for a random old transaction. If the miner really
stores the entire blockchain he will not have any problem answering to that
getdata request, whereas a botnet would have to ask someone else for it,
which could be detected if the response time deviates too much from what
has been previously measured (compare it against getdata for the block they
advertise). It's not perfect but it allows an estimate of whether it is a
chainless miner.
Regards,
Chris
--
Christian Decker
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 3:17 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> > Block times are not accurate enough for that.
>
> The times in your log are very accurate, assuming your system clock is
> remotely accurate.
>
> --
> Jeff Garzik
> exMULTI, Inc.
> jgarzik@exmulti•com
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 7:47 ` Christian Decker
@ 2012-05-25 13:44 ` Alan Reiner
2012-05-25 14:00 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Alan Reiner @ 2012-05-25 13:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Christian Decker; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3150 bytes --]
I like the concept except that it only works if every node connected to the
miner enforces the rule (if it works). Once any one of the nodes forwards
the block, other nodes see it coming from a node that can pass the
challenge.
I don't think any solution based on node queries will succeed, especially
if it requires spontaneous super-majority-of-nodes acceptance. I think
it's gotta be based on the block itself and each nodes' own info.
If you could spontaneously get all miners to agree not to build off of
anti-social blocks (however that is defined) , it would have a chance of
making a difference, but individual miners would have an advantage
building off the antisocial block because they only need to produce one to
create the longest chain (and collect reward) while the miners following
the rules need two blocks.
--Sent from my overpriced smartphone
On May 25, 2012 3:48 AM, "Christian Decker" <decker.christian@gmail•com>
wrote:
> How about a simple proof of work test? This one though does not ask for
> CPU work but asks the miner for a random old transaction. If the miner
> really stores the entire blockchain he will not have any problem answering
> to that getdata request, whereas a botnet would have to ask someone else
> for it, which could be detected if the response time deviates too much from
> what has been previously measured (compare it against getdata for the block
> they advertise). It's not perfect but it allows an estimate of whether it
> is a chainless miner.
>
> Regards,
> Chris
> --
> Christian Decker
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 3:17 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
>> > Block times are not accurate enough for that.
>>
>> The times in your log are very accurate, assuming your system clock is
>> remotely accurate.
>>
>> --
>> Jeff Garzik
>> exMULTI, Inc.
>> jgarzik@exmulti•com
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Live Security Virtual Conference
>> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
>> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
>> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
>> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bitcoin-development mailing list
>> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 13:44 ` Alan Reiner
@ 2012-05-25 14:00 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-25 14:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Alan Reiner; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6115 bytes --]
We just implemented our own mining tool, soup-to-nuts, and I would say that
the likely motivation for what I presume are botnet owners is just economic.
It's a lot more work to make sure your merkleing and keeping up-to-date are
happening than it is to just get an 80 byte header from a central server,
and re-calc a single transaction merkle client-side.
Not to mention the extra work to keep track of what version of
getmemorypool output you're receiving work for in a broadly distributed
pool.
For what it's worth, we did this extra engineering work since we care about
Bitcoin, but if I just wanted to pull value out of the ecosystem, we would
have skipped it.
The only solutions to this are economic solutions -- making such 'cheater'
blocks less valuable, or increasing the value of the transactions.
Also note that botnet operators likely care, in the end, about fiat
currency, so going to 25 btc per block in what I think of as transaction
fee subsidies won't necessarily impact this -- it's a matter of what
happens to exchange rates vs generation rates that will matter.
I think we also have to moderate this consideration against the rights (and
arguable benefits) of someone wanting to build an express-delivery mining
service, one that will provide provably faster certification for those
adding a transaction fee of, say, 1 btc.
My own experience now in the MMO world is that we have to carefully
understand how we deal with griefers who control massive resources (compute
or gold-farmers). It may not be a winning battle to choose a solution which
harms the rest of the network in exchange for harming the griefers.
This is definitely out of the box, but one solution might be to change the
difficulty calculations to just ignore 1tx blocks; that would minimize
impact on others to a great extent, and would let someone set up an express
block service if they chose. I guess we'd have to settle on whether or not
such blocks counted towards the issuance countdown as well. Or, we could
allow only 1/10 generation fees on such blocks.
Peter
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 9:44 AM, Alan Reiner <etotheipi@gmail•com> wrote:
> I like the concept except that it only works if every node connected to
> the miner enforces the rule (if it works). Once any one of the nodes
> forwards the block, other nodes see it coming from a node that can pass
> the challenge.
>
> I don't think any solution based on node queries will succeed, especially
> if it requires spontaneous super-majority-of-nodes acceptance. I think
> it's gotta be based on the block itself and each nodes' own info.
>
> If you could spontaneously get all miners to agree not to build off of
> anti-social blocks (however that is defined) , it would have a chance of
> making a difference, but individual miners would have an advantage
> building off the antisocial block because they only need to produce one to
> create the longest chain (and collect reward) while the miners following
> the rules need two blocks.
>
> --Sent from my overpriced smartphone
> On May 25, 2012 3:48 AM, "Christian Decker" <decker.christian@gmail•com>
> wrote:
>
>> How about a simple proof of work test? This one though does not ask for
>> CPU work but asks the miner for a random old transaction. If the miner
>> really stores the entire blockchain he will not have any problem answering
>> to that getdata request, whereas a botnet would have to ask someone else
>> for it, which could be detected if the response time deviates too much from
>> what has been previously measured (compare it against getdata for the block
>> they advertise). It's not perfect but it allows an estimate of whether it
>> is a chainless miner.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Chris
>> --
>> Christian Decker
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 3:17 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
>>> > Block times are not accurate enough for that.
>>>
>>> The times in your log are very accurate, assuming your system clock is
>>> remotely accurate.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jeff Garzik
>>> exMULTI, Inc.
>>> jgarzik@exmulti•com
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Live Security Virtual Conference
>>> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
>>> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
>>> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
>>> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Bitcoin-development mailing list
>>> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Live Security Virtual Conference
>> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
>> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
>> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
>> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bitcoin-development mailing list
>> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>>
>>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
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Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-25 0:51 ` Jeff Garzik
2012-05-25 0:57 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-25 1:00 ` Gregory Maxwell
1 sibling, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Gregory Maxwell @ 2012-05-25 1:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: bitcoin-development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
> which ones are the lazy miners (> 120 seconds since last block).
It's important to understand the motivations before acting— otherwise
you'll fail to do anything useful.
E.g. if they're empty because some miners want to drive up fees or
fight against the rapidly increasing blockchain size there isn't much
you can do there.
If they're empty because they're mined by botnets which don't have a
local copy of the chain in order to load their victims less (and avoid
central pooling) then you want something like
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68396.0
If they're produced by people who think they gain a mining speed
advantage by not including them then then we need education— dropping
their blocks won't help much: we've seen miners go a month with 100%
of their blocks being orphaned.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
` (4 preceding siblings ...)
2012-05-25 0:45 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-26 5:03 ` Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
2012-05-26 11:52 ` Stefan Thomas
2012-05-29 15:33 ` Gregory Maxwell
6 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn @ 2012-05-26 5:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Bitcoin Development
For what it is worth, I question whether this is a problem. Or, I
guess I question whether the best solution to it isn't for people to
start including more transaction fees. In fact, I'm not entirely sure
that this problem doesn't actually *encourage* people to that
solution, which would be very good if true.
I would be more comfortable if the reward for mining were more
commensurate with the value it provides. Ultimately, of course, that
means that each transaction fee would have to be more of a proportion
of the value *to the spender* of that transaction being included in
the blockchain.
(Aside: in order to convey to outsiders that miners are providing a
useful service rather than gaining undeserved reward for wasting
electricity, I refer to them as "distributed transaction verification
servers" rather than "miners" whenever possible.)
I'm pretty sure that — assuming there isn't some Bitcoin-killing
disaster — transaction fees will eventually rise, but sooner might be
better, especially with the first coinbase-halving looming.
Perhaps people will be motivated to include transaction fees if they
know that some miners don't bother to validate their transactions and
others do. They may feel motivated to reward the miners that are
serving them and punish the ones that are not. (Note: this wouldn't be
a valid strategy on their part from a strictly game-theoretic
perspective, but if they act on those motivations, then I don't care
if it was rational or not.)
Also, they may decide that they want to counteract the added delay
which those no-transactions miners are adding to *all* transactions
(with or without fee), by putting a fee on their transactions in order
to make them take less long when they are processed by a miner which
does process (some) transactions.
Already this visualization, which I typically glance at a few times a
day, usually shows a good separation with fee-included transactions
sometimes doing much better than (some) free transactions:
http://bitcoinstats.org/
However, this graph shows that the aggregate reward to the miners for
processing transaction is minimal:
http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
You can see from the first visualization (assuming it is showing the
typical pattern that I've seen) how you risk greater delay by sending
your transaction without fees. The no-transactions miners push *all*
transactions, fee or no-fee to the right. This may incentivize more
people to change their transactions from red diamonds into blue
circles, in order to move their transactions further to the left, even
though the no-transactions miners are not currently discriminating
among the two types.
Therefore, the presence of those miners may help push the aggregate
fees in that latter graph up, which is something I would very much
like to see.
Regards,
Zooko
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-26 5:03 ` Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
@ 2012-05-26 11:52 ` Stefan Thomas
2012-05-28 14:54 ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 16:30 ` Rebroad (sourceforge)
0 siblings, 2 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Stefan Thomas @ 2012-05-26 11:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
Zooko is spot on - slower confirmations will give people a reason to set
higher fees. As soon as fees reach a level where they matter, even
botnet operators will be looking into ways of including transactions for
some extra profit.
In the meantime slightly slower confirmations aren't a problem. Consider
that even if it takes four blocks to get your transaction included
instead of one, once it is included, you still benefit from every new
block in terms of security. So if you're looking for six confirmations
for example, even a three block delay will only be a 50% delay for you.
And of course there are techniques for instant transactions which
continue to be refined and improved.
As for the proposed solutions: Punishing 1-tx blocks is complete and
utter nonsense. It's trivial to include a bogus second transaction.
Any additional challenges towards miners like hashes of the previous
block are at best useless. If I was running a botnet, I'd just grab that
hash from a website (pretty good chance Blockchain.info will have it :P)
or mining pool or wherever and keep going undeterred. At worst they may
affect scalability one day. You might imagine a peer-to-peer network of
miners who for cost reasons don't download all blocks anymore, but
verify only a percentage of them at random. They might then exchange
messages about invalid blocks including a proof (invalid tx, merkle
branch) why the block is invalid. This is just one idea, the point is
that assumptions about what a legitimate miner looks like may not always
hold in the future.
Finally, there is an ethical aspect as well. If a miner wishes not to
include my transaction that is his choice. He has no more an obligation
to sell his service to me than I have to buy it from him. If I really,
really want him to include my transaction I will have to offer to pay more.
If we as developers think that confirmations are too slow or that more
blocks should include transactions, then the right measures would be:
- Educating users about the relationship between confirmation speed and fees
- Raising the default transaction fee
Every market has a supply curve, so it is economically to be expected
that there will be some miners who don't include transactions, simply
because they are at that end of the supply curve where it is not worth
it for them to sell their service. All markets must have a certain
tension - there must be miners who don't include transactions for there
to be users who want their transactions included more quickly. In other
words there must be somebody not confirming if confirmations are to have
value. If you interfere with that all you'll accomplish is keep
transaction fees below market level, which will make the transition from
inflation-financed hashing to transaction-financed hashing more painful
and disruptive.
Cheers,
Stefan
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-26 11:52 ` Stefan Thomas
@ 2012-05-28 14:54 ` Peter Vessenes
[not found] ` <1338222334.48856.YahooMailNeo@web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
2012-05-29 8:52 ` [Bitcoin-development] " Michael Grønager
2012-05-29 16:30 ` Rebroad (sourceforge)
1 sibling, 2 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-28 14:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Stefan Thomas; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4302 bytes --]
One of the issues here though is that it would be nice if miners published
their own tx rules -- it might be hard to impute them from data.
I had started a thread about this on bitcoin.org some time ago, and I don't
recall what the general outcome was.
I had imagined an open service whereby a miner could publish a short string
in their conbase tying to the service and the service would have different
metadata, including the miner's transaction guarantees.
We offered to host this before, and would still be willing to host such a
service.
Peter
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Stefan Thomas <moon@justmoon•de> wrote:
> Zooko is spot on - slower confirmations will give people a reason to set
> higher fees. As soon as fees reach a level where they matter, even
> botnet operators will be looking into ways of including transactions for
> some extra profit.
>
> In the meantime slightly slower confirmations aren't a problem. Consider
> that even if it takes four blocks to get your transaction included
> instead of one, once it is included, you still benefit from every new
> block in terms of security. So if you're looking for six confirmations
> for example, even a three block delay will only be a 50% delay for you.
> And of course there are techniques for instant transactions which
> continue to be refined and improved.
>
> As for the proposed solutions: Punishing 1-tx blocks is complete and
> utter nonsense. It's trivial to include a bogus second transaction.
>
> Any additional challenges towards miners like hashes of the previous
> block are at best useless. If I was running a botnet, I'd just grab that
> hash from a website (pretty good chance Blockchain.info will have it :P)
> or mining pool or wherever and keep going undeterred. At worst they may
> affect scalability one day. You might imagine a peer-to-peer network of
> miners who for cost reasons don't download all blocks anymore, but
> verify only a percentage of them at random. They might then exchange
> messages about invalid blocks including a proof (invalid tx, merkle
> branch) why the block is invalid. This is just one idea, the point is
> that assumptions about what a legitimate miner looks like may not always
> hold in the future.
>
> Finally, there is an ethical aspect as well. If a miner wishes not to
> include my transaction that is his choice. He has no more an obligation
> to sell his service to me than I have to buy it from him. If I really,
> really want him to include my transaction I will have to offer to pay more.
>
> If we as developers think that confirmations are too slow or that more
> blocks should include transactions, then the right measures would be:
>
> - Educating users about the relationship between confirmation speed and
> fees
> - Raising the default transaction fee
>
> Every market has a supply curve, so it is economically to be expected
> that there will be some miners who don't include transactions, simply
> because they are at that end of the supply curve where it is not worth
> it for them to sell their service. All markets must have a certain
> tension - there must be miners who don't include transactions for there
> to be users who want their transactions included more quickly. In other
> words there must be somebody not confirming if confirmations are to have
> value. If you interfere with that all you'll accomplish is keep
> transaction fees below market level, which will make the transition from
> inflation-financed hashing to transaction-financed hashing more painful
> and disruptive.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5582 bytes --]
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread[parent not found: <1338222334.48856.YahooMailNeo@web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>]
* [Bitcoin-development] Fw: Punishing empty blocks?
[not found] ` <1338222334.48856.YahooMailNeo@web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
@ 2012-05-28 16:25 ` Amir Taaki
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Amir Taaki @ 2012-05-28 16:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
That's a cool idea. Very meta.
________________________________
From: Peter Vessenes <peter@coinlab•com>
To: Stefan Thomas <moon@justmoon•de>
Cc: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
One of the issues here though is that it would be nice if miners published their own tx rules -- it might be hard to impute them from data.
I had started a thread about this on bitcoin.org some time ago, and I don't recall what the general outcome was.
I had imagined an open service whereby a miner could publish a short string in their conbase tying to the service and the service would have different metadata, including the miner's transaction guarantees.
We offered to host this before, and would still be willing to host such a service.
Peter
On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Stefan Thomas <moon@justmoon•de> wrote:
Zooko is spot on - slower confirmations will give people a reason to set
>higher fees. As soon as fees reach a level where they matter, even
>botnet operators will be looking into ways of including transactions for
>some extra profit.
>
>In the meantime slightly slower confirmations aren't a problem. Consider
>that even if it takes four blocks to get your transaction included
>instead of one, once it is included, you still benefit from every new
>block in terms of security. So if you're looking for six confirmations
>for example, even a three block delay will only be a 50% delay for you.
>And of course there are techniques for instant transactions which
>continue to be refined and improved.
>
>As for the proposed solutions: Punishing 1-tx blocks is complete and
>utter nonsense. It's trivial to include a bogus second transaction.
>
>Any additional challenges towards miners like hashes of the previous
>block are at best useless. If I was running a botnet, I'd just grab that
>hash from a website (pretty good chance Blockchain.info will have it :P)
>or mining pool or wherever and keep going undeterred. At worst they may
>affect scalability one day. You might imagine a peer-to-peer network of
>miners who for cost reasons don't download all blocks anymore, but
>verify only a percentage of them at random. They might then exchange
>messages about invalid blocks including a proof (invalid tx, merkle
>branch) why the block is invalid. This is just one idea, the point is
>that assumptions about what a legitimate miner looks like may not always
>hold in the future.
>
>Finally, there is an ethical aspect as well. If a miner wishes not to
>include my transaction that is his choice. He has no more an obligation
>to sell his service to me than I have to buy it from him. If I really,
>really want him to include my transaction I will have to offer to pay more.
>
>If we as developers think that confirmations are too slow or that more
>blocks should include transactions, then the right measures would be:
>
>- Educating users about the relationship between confirmation speed and fees
>- Raising the default transaction fee
>
>Every market has a supply curve, so it is economically to be expected
>that there will be some miners who don't include transactions, simply
>because they are at that end of the supply curve where it is not worth
>it for them to sell their service. All markets must have a certain
>tension - there must be miners who don't include transactions for there
>to be users who want their transactions included more quickly. In other
>words there must be somebody not confirming if confirmations are to have
>value. If you interfere with that all you'll accomplish is keep
>transaction fees below market level, which will make the transition from
>inflation-financed hashing to transaction-financed hashing more painful
>and disruptive.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Stefan
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Live Security Virtual Conference
>Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
>threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
>will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
>threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
>_______________________________________________
>Bitcoin-development mailing list
>Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
>https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
_______________________________________________
Bitcoin-development mailing list
Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-28 14:54 ` Peter Vessenes
[not found] ` <1338222334.48856.YahooMailNeo@web121001.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
@ 2012-05-29 8:52 ` Michael Grønager
2012-05-29 14:47 ` Luke-Jr
1 sibling, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Michael Grønager @ 2012-05-29 8:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Peter Vessenes; +Cc: bitcoin-development
Peter, I like the idea of being able to know what fees to expect from different miners (it is like a service description / SLA for their service), but I would prefer a more distributed discovery mechanism for the information on the fees (Spent 10 years on Grid Computing...).
Miners could e.g. include a pointer to a webpage (or even their min fee) in the coinbase (encoded properly, like the "/P2SH/" string for BIP0016). That way clients could look it up them selves or you could create sites accumulating this information from the chain it self.
So something like :
const char* service_sla = "|https://my_ubercool_asic_mining_pool/sla.php|";
COINBASE_FLAGS << std::vector<unsigned char>(service_sla, service_sla+strlen(service_sla));
The format of the sla.php page should then be specified too - but it could be a json-rpc call returning a json object like (as result):
{
sla_version: "0.1",
accept_no_fee_tx: false,
min_fee: 50000,
big_tx_fee: 10000, // extra fee pr kb
}
I guess miners could work out a more suitable set of fees...
Seems like this calls for a BIP ?
/M
On 28/05/2012, at 16:54, Peter Vessenes wrote:
> One of the issues here though is that it would be nice if miners published their own tx rules -- it might be hard to impute them from data.
>
> I had started a thread about this on bitcoin.org some time ago, and I don't recall what the general outcome was.
>
> I had imagined an open service whereby a miner could publish a short string in their conbase tying to the service and the service would have different metadata, including the miner's transaction guarantees.
>
> We offered to host this before, and would still be willing to host such a service.
>
> Peter
>
> On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 7:52 AM, Stefan Thomas <moon@justmoon•de> wrote:
> Zooko is spot on - slower confirmations will give people a reason to set
> higher fees. As soon as fees reach a level where they matter, even
> botnet operators will be looking into ways of including transactions for
> some extra profit.
>
> In the meantime slightly slower confirmations aren't a problem. Consider
> that even if it takes four blocks to get your transaction included
> instead of one, once it is included, you still benefit from every new
> block in terms of security. So if you're looking for six confirmations
> for example, even a three block delay will only be a 50% delay for you.
> And of course there are techniques for instant transactions which
> continue to be refined and improved.
>
> As for the proposed solutions: Punishing 1-tx blocks is complete and
> utter nonsense. It's trivial to include a bogus second transaction.
>
> Any additional challenges towards miners like hashes of the previous
> block are at best useless. If I was running a botnet, I'd just grab that
> hash from a website (pretty good chance Blockchain.info will have it :P)
> or mining pool or wherever and keep going undeterred. At worst they may
> affect scalability one day. You might imagine a peer-to-peer network of
> miners who for cost reasons don't download all blocks anymore, but
> verify only a percentage of them at random. They might then exchange
> messages about invalid blocks including a proof (invalid tx, merkle
> branch) why the block is invalid. This is just one idea, the point is
> that assumptions about what a legitimate miner looks like may not always
> hold in the future.
>
> Finally, there is an ethical aspect as well. If a miner wishes not to
> include my transaction that is his choice. He has no more an obligation
> to sell his service to me than I have to buy it from him. If I really,
> really want him to include my transaction I will have to offer to pay more.
>
> If we as developers think that confirmations are too slow or that more
> blocks should include transactions, then the right measures would be:
>
> - Educating users about the relationship between confirmation speed and fees
> - Raising the default transaction fee
>
> Every market has a supply curve, so it is economically to be expected
> that there will be some miners who don't include transactions, simply
> because they are at that end of the supply curve where it is not worth
> it for them to sell their service. All markets must have a certain
> tension - there must be miners who don't include transactions for there
> to be users who want their transactions included more quickly. In other
> words there must be somebody not confirming if confirmations are to have
> value. If you interfere with that all you'll accomplish is keep
> transaction fees below market level, which will make the transition from
> inflation-financed hashing to transaction-financed hashing more painful
> and disruptive.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stefan
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
> will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
> threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
>
> --
>
> Peter J. Vessenes
> CEO, CoinLab
> M: 206.595.9839
> Skype: vessenes
> Google+
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Live Security Virtual Conference
> Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
> threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 8:52 ` [Bitcoin-development] " Michael Grønager
@ 2012-05-29 14:47 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:05 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-29 14:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: bitcoin-development
On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:52:49 AM Michael Grønager wrote:
> The format of the sla.php page should then be specified too - but it could
> be a json-rpc call returning a json object like (as result): {
> sla_version: "0.1",
> accept_no_fee_tx: false,
> min_fee: 50000,
> big_tx_fee: 10000, // extra fee pr kb
> }
> I guess miners could work out a more suitable set of fees...
Please not JSON, and not hard-coded logic. Bitcoin already has a secure
scripting system - perhaps we can decide on an initial stack format and run a
script retrieved from the URI?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 14:47 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-29 15:05 ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:18 ` Luke-Jr
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-29 15:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2924 bytes --]
OK, I have a few thoughts on this:
1) Germane to the original conversation, anything hard to implement will
not get implemented by miners.
2) Coinbase is hard-limited to 100 bytes; this has to include space for
voting as well as extra nonce, etc. So, I'm not sure that a full URL is a
good plan.
3) I'm a little fuzzy on the details of BIP governance; but I'm happy to
write one up and get my thoughts down, or someone who's more familiar could
do it, I suppose.
I propose the following spec:
periodically a miner may choose to publish a url through their coinbase as
follows:
1) They shall prepend \mi: to the url to designate it as a url for miner
info, and append a trailing \ to the url
2) The url given in the coinbase shall have http:// prepended to it before
processing.
3) The destination may be a redirect (to allow short URLs), or may deliver
content
4) The content-type returned by the final site post-redirect shall be
either (preferred text/json) or text/plain or text/html
4) The text of the document delivered shall be a JSON format dictionary,
and shall include at minimum the following fields: 'min_fee', 'pool_name',
and 'last_modified' Optional fields can be determined over time as
necessary by the mining community
5) The Service Level Agreement isn't binding, but miners who implement it
are expected to make a best efforts attempt to follow it.
So a valid coinbase could be:
/P2SH/\mi:goo.gl/mr2D\extra_nonce:2110
Generally a miner would occasionally publish the \mi:\ when they had
updated their SLA, or just every so often, but the canonical location would
be the final destination URL from the redirects.
Inre: Luke's complaint about JSON, it is the language of the web. There is
no easier format for both computers and humans to read, and in this case,
it includes extensibility, which is nice, since we have no idea how miners
will wish to divvy up their services; I think one would need to make a
strong case against JSON for a specific reason to not choose it by default.
Thoughts welcome!
Best,
Peter
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:52:49 AM Michael Grønager wrote:
> > The format of the sla.php page should then be specified too - but it
> could
> > be a json-rpc call returning a json object like (as result): {
> > sla_version: "0.1",
> > accept_no_fee_tx: false,
> > min_fee: 50000,
> > big_tx_fee: 10000, // extra fee pr kb
> > }
> > I guess miners could work out a more suitable set of fees...
>
> Please not JSON, and not hard-coded logic. Bitcoin already has a secure
> scripting system - perhaps we can decide on an initial stack format and
> run a
> script retrieved from the URI?
>
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:05 ` Peter Vessenes
@ 2012-05-29 15:18 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:28 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-29 15:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Peter Vessenes; +Cc: bitcoin-development, Michael
On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:05:18 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> 1) Germane to the original conversation, anything hard to implement will
> not get implemented by miners.
Without my got-tired-of-waiting-for-someone-to-merge-it coinbaser branch,
anything modifying the coinbase is hard to implement.
> 2) Coinbase is hard-limited to 100 bytes; this has to include space for
> voting as well as extra nonce, etc. So, I'm not sure that a full URL is a
> good plan.
Rather, I would suggest a 20 byte keyhash, which allows the owner to broadcast
a full URI out-of-band.
> 1) They shall prepend \mi: to the url to designate it as a url for miner
> info, and append a trailing \ to the url
How about a simple prefix to the fixed-size keyhash?
Perhaps "MFR=" (Mining Fee Rules)
> 2) The url given in the coinbase shall have http:// prepended to it before
> processing.
I would recommend miners use https, with a specified SSL keyhash in the URI
(so we don't need to pay for a "proper" SSL cert).
> 3) The destination may be a redirect (to allow short URLs), or may deliver
> content
Clients should simply be required to follow the relevant HTTP specification.
> 4) The content-type returned by the final site post-redirect shall be
> either (preferred text/json) or text/plain or text/html
text/plain and text/html are just wrong and don't make any sense here.
> Inre: Luke's complaint about JSON, it is the language of the web. There is
> no easier format for both computers and humans to read, and in this case,
> it includes extensibility, which is nice, since we have no idea how miners
> will wish to divvy up their services; I think one would need to make a
> strong case against JSON for a specific reason to not choose it by default.
Bitcoin isn't "the web", it's a complicated script-based cryptocurrency.
Everything in the Bitcoin protocol requires a computer's interpretation for
humans, and there's no reason to stray from this default. Also, JSON is not
extensible in any of the ways needed for this specific purpose.
> 4) The text of the document delivered shall be a JSON format dictionary,
> and shall include at minimum the following fields: 'min_fee', 'pool_name',
> and 'last_modified' Optional fields can be determined over time as
> necessary by the mining community
Last Modified and other caching rules are dealt with in the relevant HTTP
specification...
> 5) The Service Level Agreement isn't binding, but miners who implement it
> are expected to make a best efforts attempt to follow it.
While it doesn't make sense to give it the full legal force of a contract, I
think it should be expressed as a "MUST" in the BIP.
> Generally a miner would occasionally publish the \mi:\ when they had
> updated their SLA, or just every so often, but the canonical location would
> be the final destination URL from the redirects.
The coinbase advertisement MUST be part of every coinbase mined by the miner,
or there's no reliable way to prove which blocks are theirs.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:18 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-29 15:28 ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:34 ` Luke-Jr
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-29 15:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4012 bytes --]
I disagree with a bunch of your points, but I'll wait on others to comment,
except I will say that I don't understand what the 20 byte keyhash is. Can
you elucidate?
I am assuming major mining folks have written their own coinbasing
facilities, but perhaps this is not the case -- if so, I agree that some
work is necessary for such miners.
Finally I will just comment that I am guided by the general perspective
that many things about bitcoins are opt-in; therefore it makes sense to me
put difficult work onto those who are motivated to do it, and keep things
as easy as possible for the 'maybes' to participate -- hence small
courtesies like allowing text/plain or text/html.
Peter
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:05:18 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> > 1) Germane to the original conversation, anything hard to implement will
> > not get implemented by miners.
>
> Without my got-tired-of-waiting-for-someone-to-merge-it coinbaser branch,
> anything modifying the coinbase is hard to implement.
>
> > 2) Coinbase is hard-limited to 100 bytes; this has to include space for
> > voting as well as extra nonce, etc. So, I'm not sure that a full URL is a
> > good plan.
>
> Rather, I would suggest a 20 byte keyhash, which allows the owner to
> broadcast
> a full URI out-of-band.
>
> > 1) They shall prepend \mi: to the url to designate it as a url for miner
> > info, and append a trailing \ to the url
>
> How about a simple prefix to the fixed-size keyhash?
> Perhaps "MFR=" (Mining Fee Rules)
>
> > 2) The url given in the coinbase shall have http:// prepended to it
> before
> > processing.
>
> I would recommend miners use https, with a specified SSL keyhash in the URI
> (so we don't need to pay for a "proper" SSL cert).
>
> > 3) The destination may be a redirect (to allow short URLs), or may
> deliver
> > content
>
> Clients should simply be required to follow the relevant HTTP
> specification.
>
> > 4) The content-type returned by the final site post-redirect shall be
> > either (preferred text/json) or text/plain or text/html
>
> text/plain and text/html are just wrong and don't make any sense here.
>
> > Inre: Luke's complaint about JSON, it is the language of the web. There
> is
> > no easier format for both computers and humans to read, and in this case,
> > it includes extensibility, which is nice, since we have no idea how
> miners
> > will wish to divvy up their services; I think one would need to make a
> > strong case against JSON for a specific reason to not choose it by
> default.
>
> Bitcoin isn't "the web", it's a complicated script-based cryptocurrency.
> Everything in the Bitcoin protocol requires a computer's interpretation for
> humans, and there's no reason to stray from this default. Also, JSON is not
> extensible in any of the ways needed for this specific purpose.
>
> > 4) The text of the document delivered shall be a JSON format dictionary,
> > and shall include at minimum the following fields: 'min_fee',
> 'pool_name',
> > and 'last_modified' Optional fields can be determined over time as
> > necessary by the mining community
>
> Last Modified and other caching rules are dealt with in the relevant HTTP
> specification...
>
> > 5) The Service Level Agreement isn't binding, but miners who implement it
> > are expected to make a best efforts attempt to follow it.
>
> While it doesn't make sense to give it the full legal force of a contract,
> I
> think it should be expressed as a "MUST" in the BIP.
>
> > Generally a miner would occasionally publish the \mi:\ when they had
> > updated their SLA, or just every so often, but the canonical location
> would
> > be the final destination URL from the redirects.
>
> The coinbase advertisement MUST be part of every coinbase mined by the
> miner,
> or there's no reliable way to prove which blocks are theirs.
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:28 ` Peter Vessenes
@ 2012-05-29 15:34 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:36 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-29 15:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Peter Vessenes; +Cc: bitcoin-development, Michael
On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:28:56 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> I don't understand what the 20 byte keyhash is. Can you elucidate?
20 byte keyhashes are a fundamental building block of the Bitcoin protocol.
ripemd160(sha256(ecdsaPubKey))
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:34 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-29 15:36 ` Peter Vessenes
2012-05-29 15:39 ` Luke-Jr
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-29 15:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 610 bytes --]
I suppose I mean that I don't understand how to reverse that into a URL
when one is presented only with a block, or perhaps a coinbase in a
transaction.
Best,
Peter
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:28:56 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> > I don't understand what the 20 byte keyhash is. Can you elucidate?
>
> 20 byte keyhashes are a fundamental building block of the Bitcoin protocol.
>
> ripemd160(sha256(ecdsaPubKey))
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:36 ` Peter Vessenes
@ 2012-05-29 15:39 ` Luke-Jr
2012-05-29 15:45 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 1 reply; 31+ messages in thread
From: Luke-Jr @ 2012-05-29 15:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Peter Vessenes; +Cc: bitcoin-development, Michael
On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:36:34 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> I suppose I mean that I don't understand how to reverse that into a URL
> when one is presented only with a block, or perhaps a coinbase in a
> transaction.
A new message can be added to the p2p relay network, similar to tx and alert
broadcasts, that allow miners to publish/update their policy URI signed by the
key in question. Counter-DDoS rules could decline to relay or store URIs for
keys that haven't been published in - or achieved statistical significance in
- the last N blocks.
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-29 15:39 ` Luke-Jr
@ 2012-05-29 15:45 ` Peter Vessenes
0 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Peter Vessenes @ 2012-05-29 15:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Luke-Jr; +Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1754 bytes --]
I see. That is undeniably more secure and "bitcoin-y" than my suggestion.
It's also really a lot more work, especially in that it requires extra
linkages between codebases that in my mind are largely separate.
I'm just one voice, but I persist in believing that the 'lighter' solution,
especially for something that may not be a particularly big problem in the
bitcoin world is good -- it carries much less technical implementation debt
going forward, and has a lower risk of sort of seizing up development with
additional necessary code to worry about for those implementing to-spec
clients.
If that lighter solution turns out to be gameable, or has problems that
require the full force of the bitcoin network and concepts, that would be
the time to implement the improved version. That's just my approach,
however. I worry that building in any additional requirements to the
protocol or codebase adds significant cost to the network as a whole over
the next 10 years.
Peter
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Luke-Jr <luke@dashjr•org> wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:36:34 PM Peter Vessenes wrote:
> > I suppose I mean that I don't understand how to reverse that into a URL
> > when one is presented only with a block, or perhaps a coinbase in a
> > transaction.
>
> A new message can be added to the p2p relay network, similar to tx and
> alert
> broadcasts, that allow miners to publish/update their policy URI signed by
> the
> key in question. Counter-DDoS rules could decline to relay or store URIs
> for
> keys that haven't been published in - or achieved statistical significance
> in
> - the last N blocks.
>
--
Peter J. Vessenes
CEO, CoinLab
M: 206.595.9839
Skype: vessenes
Google+ <https://plus.google.com/112885659993091300749>
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-26 11:52 ` Stefan Thomas
2012-05-28 14:54 ` Peter Vessenes
@ 2012-05-29 16:30 ` Rebroad (sourceforge)
1 sibling, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Rebroad (sourceforge) @ 2012-05-29 16:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
Cc: bitcoin-development
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1075 bytes --]
I'd like to garner consensus on whether anyone else thinks it desirable to
have a flag option for bitcoin to punish blocks for not including
transactions. I notice there are already pro-miner options, such as the
restricting the relaying of free transactions, and so including an option
to restrict relaying of blocks from "stingy" miners to balance against the
current bias, so that the default bitcoin client can be run as much
pro-miner as pro-non-miner.
On Monday, May 28, 2012, rebroad@gmail•com wrote:
> What i think this thread reveals is whether a bitcoin client is pro-miner
> or pro-non-miner. What i think is needed is a fork where one benefits
> miners (e.g. Limits relaying of free transactions, as has been added to the
> current default client), and one that benefits non-miners (e.g. Limits
> relaying of blocks not including free transactions). Then people can vote
> based on the client they use.
>
> It seems to me that the current main client is a pro-miner one, and
> possibly not what most people would vote for if they were given an easier
> choice.
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^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks?
2012-05-24 16:33 [Bitcoin-development] Punishing empty blocks? Jeff Garzik
` (5 preceding siblings ...)
2012-05-26 5:03 ` Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn
@ 2012-05-29 15:33 ` Gregory Maxwell
6 siblings, 0 replies; 31+ messages in thread
From: Gregory Maxwell @ 2012-05-29 15:33 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Jeff Garzik; +Cc: Bitcoin Development
On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@exmulti•com> wrote:
> There appears to be some non-trivial mining power devoted to mining
> empty blocks.
In the last 2016 blocks, as I write this, there are only 35 1 txn blocks.
This is about 1.73%, which wouldn't be surprising just from timing
alone. Moreover, a fair amount (I didn't measure the percentage)
appear to be mined by Eligius— Luke does some clever pre-computation
of the hash tree for faster distribution right after new blocks.
Resources expended on fancy (and potentially risky) techno-economic
hacks to discourage empty blocks would probably be better spent
writing very fast transaction tree generating code.
Can we kill this thread now?
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 31+ messages in thread