Mining centralization is badMining centralization is bad
From 2010–2016, three independent pools reached dangerously high proportions of the network’s hashrate. More recently, while no single pool has directly approached that threshold, something more insidious has emerged: the block templates produced by pools representing a substantial share of hashrate are being sourced from a single entity, often referred to as “Antpool and Friends.” These “proxy pools” appear independent, but have effectively ceded their autonomy.
Measures to combat miner centralization include client-side block template solutions like DATUM and solomining pools like P2Pool, but many Bitcoiners see block propagation speed as another way to break apart miner centralization.
Today, stale block rates appear low. Yet this metric is artificially suppressed by the very centralization it obscures. When large swaths of hashrate draw templates from a single source, the latency inherent to the Bitcoin network is effectively sidestepped.
It’s easy to forget, but there was a time where some pools regularly saw their stale rates approach 5% over a one month period.
Should client-side templating gain meaningful adoption, we would expect stale rates to rise, creating a disincentive for further adoption. We believe that this can be mitigated with the appropriate tooling. We also hope to minimize the efficacy of certain classes of selfish mining attacks (e.g. accidental or explicit selfish mining attacks that are dependent upon or enhanced by slow block propagation).
(re) enter FIBRE(re) enter FIBRE
The https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56485/can-someone-please-explain-fibre-to-me-like-im-5-and-why-is-it-useful was primarily developed by @TheBlueMatt before 2017.
FIBRE kind of acts like a "distributed node" that allows a block to be propagated around the world with an absolute minimum of delay. Miners can connect to their nearest instance of FIBRE and learn about blocks and transactions somewhat faster than via normal routing of transactions on the Bitcoin relay network.
Fibre trades off bandwidth for latency and can send several times the size of the block data in order to achieve the lowest delay across the long-haul links that it rides over. https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56485/can-someone-please-explain-fibre-to-me-like-im-5-and-why-is-it-useful
FIBRE seems to have fallen out of use some years ago, but it looks like https://lclhost.org/ is bringing it back:
Over the course of a few months, w0xlt rebased the FIBRE protocol against https://github.com/bitcoinfibre/bitcoinfibre/releases/tag/v30.0-fibre and designed a suite of https://github.com/bitcoinfibre/fibre-monitoring/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md that enable FIBRE Network Operators (FNOs) to easily manage their deployments.
With these tools in hand, Justin deployed a public FIBRE network with six nodes: New York, Seattle, Tokyo, Beijing, Frankfurt and London. The network is in beta and can be monitored on our https://bitcoinfibre.org. Justin also put together an updated https://bitcoinfibre.org/setup-guide and https://bitcoinfibre.org/faqs based on his learnings.
Fixing centralization with centralization?Fixing centralization with centralization?
I feel like I may be missing something in how this works because I have this question: it seems like FIBRE is a somewhat centralized network. How do we know that FIBRE will broadcast all transactions equally? What stops FIBRE from becoming the new Antpool and Friends?
A Friendly Reminder-
What is Stacker News?
It is a social media platform intentionally created to enable a P2P V4V BTC denominated community.
Originally Stacker News (SN) custodyed sats on behalf of participants but the threat of government regulatory prosecution on the pretext of money transmitter forced a move away from the custody of sats by the platform to the platform enabling participants to send sats via their wallets.
To achieve this participants need to attach wallets to both send and receive sats.
Where participants do not or cannot attach LN wallets transactions will often default to Cowboy Credits.
This change was a compromise forced by the threat of government prosecution.
The difficulty of attaching both sending and receiving wallets is moderate- it takes some effort and newbie or non tech people may struggle with it, but most competent Bitcoiners can succeed in attaching wallets and thus enabling sats denominated P2P transactions.
But a number of Stackers have chosen not to attach wallets- in particular sending wallets which enable you to send sats into the SN community.
Very few have attached just a sending wallet- many have attach just a receiving wallet.
Those who only attach a receiving wallet can receive sats from others but cannot send sats into the community. They may feel that as content providers they have no need or obligation to send sats into and within the SN community. I disagree.
Where these receive but not send (horse but no gun) Stackers proclaim to be Bitcoiners but refuse to enable a sending wallet they are demonstrably hypocrits. They claim they want to build and grow the BTC LN MoE network but they cannot be bothered contributing toward that growth by attaching a sending wallet and demonstrating they are not just talking, but are also walking and supporting a sats denominated platform.
If we do not use the LN wherever and whenever we can it will not grow and develop.
Some claim it is too hard to attach wallets- its too hard on their self custody nodes or wallets- this just highlights how much work the LN still needs before it is capable of anything approaching 100% reliable MoE capability.
But the best way to grow and strengthen the LN is it use it – despite its remaining flaws and glitches.
When wallets are supported by people using them they receives transaction fees and can develop liquidity and systems further.
When LN wallets are not used the LN decays- it does not have the usage and fees income to grow.
So when self proclaimed advocates for BTC and LN refuse to attach wallets (especially sending wallets) I see hypocrit.
I will continue to see hypocrit until and unless someone can explain why I should not.
Calling me a Nazi, trolling and making fun of me crudely seeking to avoid the issues I raise will not stop me from asking why are you claiming to be a Bitcoiner but refusing to attach wallets and use the LN here where we can help it grow.
Now some are deliberately concealing their wallet status, as if this is about a right to privacy.
Concealing your wallet status means nobody else can verify whether or not you are serious about using BTC LN, or whether you are just an all talk no walk hypocrit.
Do not trust- verify.
What about this fundamental principle do they not understand?
And then they talk about 'content' being more important than whether or not you have attached wallets - in this context the intentional lack of attached wallets undermines your credibility as your actions do not match your words.
Your submitted content may be great, but you as someone claiming to be a serious Bitcoiner are undermining your credibility and the credibility of your content by being a hypocrit.
Your content, is tainted by your verifiable hypocrisy.
SNs needs both good content providers and those who pay for that content if it is succeed.
I am more in the latter group than the former but both are required overall or the model does not work.
So as a net contributor of sats and thus a net consumer of content I object where content providers refuse to engage in the P2P V4V ethos by refusing to attach both sending and receiving wallets and I will both withhold my contribution of sats and sometimes downvote in response.
V4V needs to work reciprocally or it will not work at all.
The content providers need net sats contributors/content consumers who send sats into the platform, or the entire platform fails.
Ladies and gentlemen please-
Attach your LN wallets and show your maximised support for BTC, LN and SNs.