Don't have enough time to sit down and read all the best Bitcoin articles. Well, let us read them for you. This is a crypto Konami quick read. What is up fellow bit Corners? Welcome back to the crypto economy with guys Swan. That is me your host the guy who has read more about Bitcoin than anybody else, you know, and we are going to read about Bitcoin today got another quick read for you. And this one is going to be one about better hash. We have control. We have a we've talked about better hash on the show. I did read a piece. I think by the blue mat actually I'll dig into it. It'll be in the show notes if you want to listen to it on but it was really good introduction and I was really excited about it. I haven't heard much about better hash until this article by stop and decrypt which you're going to read today is titled better hash decentralizing Bitcoin mining with new hashing protocols. And I think this is a really important topic that not just better hash but the idea like what better Josh is in like it's relationship in the rest of the network because better hash is not like a soft Fork. It's not it is a protocol unto itself. It's a way to organize a group of people who are mining around Bitcoin to mind towards the same thing. It's a create a decentralized mining pool essentially and will obviously get into this but I think these types of improvements are just as if not more important than some of the soft fork or like specific protocol improvements that are happening because these can be implemented without any major like without any of the social tension or the consensus problems of Bitcoin or like the actual Bitcoin protocol and they go a long way like this like dandelion is another great example, which we we talked about numerous times about just figuring out a new way for the client. It's just a client side Improvement to broadcast the transaction out into the peer-to-peer Network. And with things like schnoor and like high level like or high degrees of aggregation and Taproot all the different things that are coming. I think really What's the word Spotlight? They really shine a light on what's important in figuring out how to get people to work together like in a decentralized manner for adding data to the blockchain. Like I think it will be I think it will be kind of a rare thing. Unless you're moving enormous amounts of capital in the blockchain to be publishing a transaction from your from one you txo to another you txo without anyone else involved and I think it's important that we have. A on a decentralized way to pool when you know, 20 other people are making their inputs and their outputs that we have a decentralized and trustless way to just pull all of this together. So it's taking up as little space on the blockchain as possible. And it is possible and we do have a lot of these types of things and this is kind of in that same mindset. Like what kind of an improvement is it its own protocol. There's like a protocol for aggregating a signatures or something would be except this is to do with mining Andre decentralizing the Bitcoin mining sphere. So we'll go ahead and just jump into this again. It's by stopping to crib. We've read a number of stop in the crypts. On the show in the past always great stuff my favorite still to this day being the Bitcoin is an impenetrable penetrable Fortress of validation. It's like a where is it? Bitcoin miners beware invalid blocks need not apply this one my favorite articles. So got a lot of those on the show. I'll try to see if I can collect all the ones by stopping decrypt and post them in the show notes. So if you want to go back and listen to any of those and obviously hacker noon and just stopped in to groups page, there's tons and tons of stuff to read so definitely check that out. But last thing don't forget if you hadn't heard you haven't been keeping up. Show we've got a coupon code for bit block bun August 17th and 18th the conference and it's out in Dallas. And if you get your tickets now and you use the discount code CC you will get 30% off. So don't forget that discount codes CC 30% off the price will jump again right at the beginning of August. So get your tickets soon and we'll hang out come out to bit block boom and we'll get to chill. All right, so let's go ahead. Ed and jump into our article again stop and decrypt titled better hash decentralizing Bitcoin mining with new hashing protocols an overview of mining pool exploits that better hash disables. intra better hash is the working name for alternative mining protocols currently in development when it's completed. There will need to be enough miners willing to switch to a new mining pool using these protocols or an existing pool that is willing to serve as both the Old and New protocols while miners gradually ready themselves to switch over in either Circumstance. The initial switch will need to be supported by enough miners to make doing so profitable else profit volatility would Too high, ultimately minors will need to understand why they should switch and there will need to be forward-thinking pool operators who don't want the control that current pools have this can only happen if the problems and risks with the current system are properly understood and conveyed disclaimer. This is not a fork or a consensus rule change. So what exactly is wrong with Bitcoin mining now? Bitcoin mining has a representation problem Bitcoin mining pools are not Bitcoin miners yet pools unduly signal for them pools run the node construct the block select the transactions and can choose what Fork all of their miners hash power is used for this creates a handful of incentive issues and enable some pretty undesirable political leverage better hash aims to address this by giving those responsibilities back. To the individual Miners and stripping the mining pools of their influence for the greater good of the network with better. Hash miners would control their own hash power and pools would just coordinate them and distribute the rewards. Okay, so he's got a graphic here of the mining power at the mining pool hash power distribution and then and shows like just kind of latest Bitcoin blocks and shows like ampoule at 12% F2 pool at 13. It shows how like basically six major miners control mining pools, excuse me control the significant majority of the hash power, but because these are pools so he decided to put another one. Of the same graph by breaking up the actual public hash rate distribution inside of slush pool, which is one of those major pools and then overlaying it on all the other major pools. It shows what the minor Distribution on the whole network is if you took the pools out of the equation and it's crazy. It looks like a it genuinely looks like there's like a million tiny little slivers in this thing. So if you go to the article, For no other reason but to clap and look at that graphic, I definitely recommend so you can see exactly how decentralized mining actually is and see how it is actually the mining pool protocols that create the illusion that there is a lot of centralization in the mining ecosystem. All right, let's get back to the article this article aims to highlight the kinds of exploitation pools can conduct under the current. Mining environment of which would not be possible if better hash like protocols or adopted at the expense of what may be the miners best interests pools can also be hacked and then used by the attacker to engage in this behavior before we get to that let's briefly go over the structural differences between what exists now and what better hash protocols would change about it. Currently many miners don't even run notes and simply connect their Asics to a mining pool using protocols like stratum the pool runs the node selects, the transactions creates a block they would like mind and then sends that block out to all of the miners using their pool and the miners began hashing it once a minor successfully mines a block it gets sent back to the pool and out to the Bitcoin Network. With better hash miners will individually run their own nodes select the transactions create a block and then mine it the block would be configured to pay the pool and just like with the stratum protocol those unsuccessful blocks called shares would be used by the miners to prove. They've been mining for that pool the whole time by just changing who creates the block template to be mind to the individual miners instead of the pool. Owner and then building a new protocol around that concept better hash circumvents. All the issues were going to cover for a more technical overview on the better hash protocols currently in development. This presentation by Matt carollo should suffice but is not necessary to understand the exploits this article discusses because conceptually better hash is objectively better and a fully codified implementation doesn't need to exist in order to grasp how important this is. It should be noted that the name better hash is not definitive as mentioned in the video. the status quo to understand why switching to better hash is so important. Let's unpack all the problems associated with the way things are now for minors that wouldn't exist if they were using better hash. To be brief mining on your own has returns that are most likely to volatile which is why pools have existed since it's early as 2010 critics will point at pool distributions to claim Bitcoin mining is centralized and while counter-arguments a certain minors can just switch the pool. They use it's not always that simple. If you are a minor your options are limited to a handful of mining pools each with their own terms of service that you may or may not agree with pools. Are too large to provide a diverse set of options to pick from at the end of the day. You have no choice, but to choose the pool best suited to you and if most or all of the pools decide that some practice you don't like or agree with is going to be the norm. Then you have no real alternative but to deal with that since starting your own pool probably won't produce a steady enough income stream pools that already exist are relatively large and by having many minors under each of their umbrellas. Has pools have the power over their miners hash power to do a number of questionable things that will go over one by one. Pools can determine what transactions do or don't go into a block. Be bribed to reorganize the blockchain under the right conditions backlog transaction MIM pools to inflate the fee rate. Direct hash power without consent and mine competitive Forks dishonestly mine. Should they have ulterior motives for doing so And Signal support for a proposal using a Minor's Ash power. All of these are essentially the direct result of pools building the Bitcoin blocks instead of the miners as mentioned earlier along with pool exploitation comes third-party exploitation of the pools pools can be hacked and then the hackers can potentially conduct these exploits or pools can be attacked from a network level and then minors are left scrambling to figure things out or switch to another pool with better Hash A Pool Hack wouldn't be able to control a Miner's hash power and Network. Level attacks targeting a pool wouldn't have a direct effect on the miners using that pool. Network level attacks are just as concerning if not more than pools exploiting their miners hash power an attacker can bring down a large chunk of the hash power or redirect it as they please bgp attacks are easy to do in the time and resources required to recover from them is concerning to say the least to convey how trivially an attacker can steal a pools hash rate and conduct any of the exploits written in this article watch three. It's of this presentation below. He has a YouTube video embedded of Matt carollo. The blue mat from the magical crypto conference this year talking about The Good the Bad and the Ugly and network level attacks and it's only 13 minutes if you have some time to sit down and watch it. I just watched the whole thing and it's shocking as the same time that it is excellent. So I definitely recommend taking just a little bit out of your day and sitting down and watching this one. Alright, let's jump back into the are There's no doubting the benefits of a protocol that defends against these kinds of issues. But Solutions too often unheard of potentialities don't always do a great job on their own conveying their necessity. I'd like to bring to light some hypothetical scenarios as well as some that have already occurred in some fashion. So that necessity is more readily understood. So let's take a closer. Look at what each of them are. Please note that some of these are hypothetical and unlikely to actually occur and some may require very specific circumstances While others have occurred in one form or another already. one pools determine what transactions go into a block Often an issue raised when discussing the possibility of 51% attacks if enough pools can be convinced to Blacklist a transaction type or an address even temporarily then it doesn't matter. If you a minor personally don't care and would have included it the motivation for this could be coercion or just a financial incentive to do so whether the pool zone or an external one paid to the pool. scenario 1 censoring a Services hot wallet imagine and exchanges hot wallet being blacklisted by 40% of the pools paid for by a competing exchange. It wouldn't borrow that wallet from transacting indefinitely, but it would noticeably slow down their transaction processing as a minor. Maybe you don't think that behavior is healthy for the ecosystem, but maybe you just have no other choice since you have no say in what your pool does in secret. scenario 2 censoring confidential transaction types Tweet by prob HGT Wing Chun at Sato fishy may we respectfully ask yf2 pool official is not mining Z cash shielded transactions when Z cash switches to fully shielded. Will you continue mining? Retweet by Wing Chun quote the original Z EC pool. I wrote in 2016 didn't include any transactions only empty blocks not because of censorship, but I was too lazy to write code calculating Merkel route. The current code is maintained by our Dev win CSS. He might be same lazy. I guess we'll check with him end quote. The Tweet above ended up proving if we trust his word this example to be non-malicious but is still important to consider scenarios in which something like this was done intentionally Bitcoin doesn't have confidential transactions at the moment and may never have them but it does have different transaction types. If a pool had a reason for doing so then they could theoretically ignore them. So a backlog of specific types of transactions exacerbates raising fees and potentially slowing down any service that makes use of those specific kinds of transactions. All right, I'm gonna need a break get outside of my Bitcoin tent here for just a minute. Let's go ahead and hit our sponsor and we will come back with attack number two pools can be bribed to reorganize the blockchain. For anyone who has a podcast anchor cannot be beaten particularly for trying to get off the ground their entire platform is free. This includes unlimited hosting both in audio that you upload and how much your listeners download. I have uploaded an incredible library of audio now and I've never paid anchor a dime. In fact, they connect me with other sponsors and have run an ad consistently on my show. Ooh, so they've paid me for exposure to my audience. That's really hard to beat. Even if we ignore that I can record directly in the app or my browser. I don't need any other software. If I don't want it I can edit at sound effects clips and they automatically publish to all of the top podcasting platforms. I never had to do a thing. So if you were thinking of starting a show or already have a podcast, there's no better platform out there check out anchor by downloading the app. Go to Anchor dot f m-- today. Two pools can be bribed to reorganize the blockchain. Similar to the examples above pools can decide they don't want a specific version of a transaction to be included in The Ledger and then try and act on this decision such a scenario would be next to impossible to coordinate spontaneously or in hindsight, but if pools were so inclined than just a few of them could build software in preparation for a bribe and then act on it immediately without miners having any say in the matter. Miners might believe this is in their best interest if the bribe was shared with them, but pools have less of an incentive to do this the hire a share they give to the minors additionally in a hacking scenario the hacker could counter the bribe to the pool muddying the waters even more. This was a suggestion after the exchange by Nance was hacked. Although the pools weren't prepared for it and many use this to make arguments about Bitcoin mining being centralized when reality is just the pools that have too much leverage over minors that this could even be potentially abused for more nuanced on this subject. Give the podcast below a listen and make note that none of the things being discussed in it would matter if better hash was being used because this would have been impossible to even consider. If miners built the blocks instead of pools. And he links to an episode of the what Bitcoin did podcast with Adam back and Brian Bishop about block re organizations and why they're bad for Bitcoin. Three pools can backlog transactions to inflate the fee rate. Not only can pools bar specific transactions. They can choose to ignore all transactions below a specific fee rate raising the cost for everyone trying to transact some consider this a trivial issue because smaller pools will take the opportunity to include those transactions since the reward for them is greater rewarding the underdogs in the long-term. I don't think it's as trivial as this since we've seen how the effects of this behavior Can steer arguments in the political Arena over. Rising fees in the short-term sooner or later a fee Market is going to exist but throttling the network below its consensus enforce limitations shouldn't be a tool granted to a handful of people running pools while competition may exist at the pool level to counter this Behavior. We continue to see empty blocks Mind by select pools because the financial incentives are aligned along with instances in the past. Where a few Pools only had transactions that were above 5 satoshi's per byte, even when there was room for the remainder of the transactions in the backlog. It might require some coordination among pools to have an effect. But if the incentives aligned then that coordination isn't difficult or even necessary and now a small group of pool operators would have a valuable tool at their disposal that nobody else has Pools can also do this covertly instead of creating non-full blogs. They can fill them with what looks like legitimate but unannounced transactions that they then collect back to themselves to throw off people businesses and fee estimators by Leading them to believe the new going fee rate is real once the market starts paying the higher price. Then pools could just adjust their malicious transactions up again at the time of the image below the bottom. Bottom 50% of the transaction backlog in size accounted for only seven percent of the reward miners collected in fee the reward grew nonlinearly with the median fee rate in the transaction backlog making this a lucrative Endeavor for any large enough pool wanting to try this out. for pools can direct hash power without consent in more ways than one pools choose what chain to extend pools feed the miners a block and effectively just say - block the miners mind that block until it's found by someone. Then fools feed them. The next block miners aren't tracking different branches themselves and miners generally assume the pool is being honest and Mining the coin or Fork you expect them to mine many miners aren't running nodes. So they aren't validating the consensus rules. This is Those problems in the past when pools decided that they were also not going to validate blocks, but instead SPV mine on top of invalid blocks as a minor. You should want to know that your time and money isn't being wasted by the pool you're using. A scenario, you're a minor and your part of pool a you receive a steady stream of payments for the amount of hash power you provide to the pool. You've done the math it checks out and that never changes. The operator of Poulet decides. They are going to use your hash power to provide life support for another chain. That's at risk one that you don't care about and possibly dislike or consider to be competition the pool continues to pay you the money. Market rate for your sha-256 rigs but you were hash power isn't actually being used on the Chain. You think you're mining since there's now an entire pool mining a different chain. The Network's block production rate slows down decreasing rewards and the market is potentially fooled into thinking there's more support than there actually is for another chain decreasing the potential value of your chain as a minor. This is probably a scenario you'd want to avoid Void unfortunately this scenario has already happened in real life. And then he has below a number of screenshots and a couple of Reddit post and stuff about how Bitcoin.com after the fork. I was used to were using the miners hash rate to actually mine on the B. CH chain and Roger Vera actually says in one of the comments when somebody ask where's the hash power coming from exactly. He said it's coming from the Bitcoin chain whenever we need it. Just showing that he's Just doing this he's just taking the miners hash power and directing it to whichever chain. He thinks he wants to support at the moment and a bunch of people are like really not taking well to this. He's like, you know, you're switching without in asking the on the miners behalf. You're having them forcing them to opt out and set of opt-in a couple people are justifying it, you know, you can switch to a different mining pool free market free choice. I'm not going to read through the whole thing just because it's kind of long but it's definitely one to check out and to keep in mind when you know, there was a fork to a minority chain. And you know, Roger Vera had no problem taking his entire mining pool and basically directing it to bch to give the illusion of support and felt. No, you know personal or moral issue in doing that. All right, let's jump back into the article. five pools can dishonestly mine using miners hash power Consider the scenario above to be the best case example of how this would play out. The pool is being honest with the miners about their intentions and they are at least attempting to remedy what they think will be the financial burden. They're giving the miners a heads up and telling them if they don't like it then leave which is not always simple, but what if they were dishonest If a pool showed they were mining 2 Chainz yellow and green at 80 percent and 20 percent respectively and you were mining the green chain through them. How would you know they were being honest that only 20% of their miners supported that chain they could individually tell each Miner that they are the 20% and they're the only ones supporting it when they really aren't miners would have to coordinate on side channels and add up their hash power to round if they're being deceived the main issue with that is many miners are private and many want to remain private will remain private and should remain private coordinating like this is an impractical work around to avoid being deceived and manipulated Not only would this sort of lie allow complete exploitation of all the miners combined hash power, but the disinformation could influence the markets valuation of each chain anyone who values the The long-term health of the Bitcoin Network would want to avoid these kinds of scenarios. six pools can signal for a proposal using your hash power there doesn't even need to be an actual chain split for this kind of manipulation to take place since the pool gets to signal for all the hash power under their umbrella prior to an actual Fork a situation like the one below would give the appearance that 80% of the hash power is signaling for or against some proposal or Fork given that signaling isn't a financial commitment. There's little risk involved in doing so you would only need to persuade the few individuals running. Spools to temporarily signal support if you wanted to try and move the market in your desired direction if it fails like we witnessed with no to X then it's at no loss to the mining pools. Everyone's hash power still works regardless of the result. No one knows exactly what percentage of hash power all of the pools actually own versus how much belonged to other miners using a pool but the extra transparency is without a doubt a bonus for the effectively silent majority of the hash power without a voice. Nobody wants another know 2x scenario nor should a handful of pools be able to decide that the majority support something when they really don't perhaps the no to X mu I meant wouldn't have been necessary if better hash existed a few years ago. And it shows a historical chart from coin dot dance on the Bitcoin proposals support and shows seg with 2x support. Which almost immediately it just shot up right towards the end of July 2017 and actually peaked at 95 supposedly 95% of the hash rate of the network and he's got it with the caption that quote Miners did not signal for seg with 2x mining pools. did conclusion perspective matters I anticipate there being two different common reactions from people upon reading this both of which I've already received from a handful of people reviewing it. I think it's important to highlight this for the reader you and address it one quote. I didn't know mining pools have so much power. to quote This can give the appearance that pools have more control than they really do. Now for the meta considerations at first glance one might think quote the first person probably didn't know much about mining or Bitcoin in general and the second person has been around the block and understands the nuances enough to measure these scenarios more appropriately and quote another way one might view. This would be quote. The first person is providing a fresh and real perspective on learning about the balances of power in this system while the Person has been around for a while and it's gotten too comfortable and desensitized to the way things are and the potential threats and quote. Both of these initial reactions are valid. Both of these meta considerations are valid if pools had no potential to abuse the system the way it's currently set up then there would be no drive to develop better protocols and you wouldn't be reading this. Conversely if pools were such a significant threat to bitcoin then they would have abused their power in irreparably damaging Ways by now CB cash alternatively to these polarizing perspectives. This is what I'd like your takeaway to be instead. Better hash needs to be implemented because better hash is objectively better than what we have now pool abuse and network attacks shouldn't be possible and we can alleviate these concerns by simply getting minors to run their own nodes so they can create their own blocks and using a better pooling protocol structured around that simple but fundamental change. There's always the potential That something could go seriously wrong. If we don't get ahead of a problem that we know how to fix. So let's fix it. And he's got a couple of additional resources linked below Bob McElroy with decentralizing mining pools for Bitcoin off chain with Jimmy song how mining pools work with Matt. Corallo. And what Bitcoin did episode again Matt Kerala on how Bitcoin works, so do not forget to jump up your if you have not done so yet drop some Applause on this. This is from the hatch. Noon publication and it was again stopped and decrypt putting this great piece together talking about the risks involved in the simple fundamental element of the mining pool protocols that minors are not running their own nodes. They are not enforcing the consensus rules and they they are essentially giving all of that power up to the pool and simply put if that power is there it will get abused somehow and maybe by a hacker particularly. If you watch that that bloom at presentation from MCC that he posts up there. That was a really really good one. It certainly scares the crap out of me and the sense of being able to actually affect what mining pools can do and I mean who knows how long it would take for like a, you know, pool like that to actually figure out Something was going on and then we have a situation like the be cash 51% attack that happened, you know, just a was a couple weeks maybe a month or so ago. Now this it to of the mining pools decided to reject the good to go two blocks deep and do a reorg purposely to reject someone else's transaction and put in their own transaction in place of it. So we see in live I've how this can work for or happen for censorship and he's got the example of Z cash doing the exact same thing and it was supposedly just out of sheer laziness that private transactions weren't being mined by this pool, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. It's just like they're not concerned. It's like whatever. We're still getting our money. We're still getting the block reward who cares and what kind of a frustration inconvenience or possibly even. I mean depending on how much hash power they have a literal like confidential transactions not being able to get through in any kind of a timely manner. It's a censorship. It's an accidental censorship of privacy, which is kind of nuts when you think about it. There's a lot of things there's a lot of externalities to this type of thing and it's obviously it's a huge convenience. For pools or excuse me for miners to be able to work together, but they need to do so in without recreating these Central points of failures that could really cause a huge stink. Like cause like a really big problem for the network and the security. I mean what a simple and rather open attack Vector that is that has nothing to do with the protocol itself has nothing to do with Bitcoin or the network. It's not that's not where the limitation lies that's not where the weakness lies. It's in how minors pool their efforts to work together towards hashing for the Bitcoin blocks. So and that's why I think like there's going to be so many different ways in which I think working together in a decentralized fashion is going to be really important with how we interact with Bitcoin. That's why I brought up at the beginning things like Taproot and schnoor signatures when we can combine an aggregate signatures, like there's a centralized service essentially, but it's like bit flash dot Club just got shown about this the other day by somebody at the Bitcoin meet at the rendezvous. Ali Bitcoin meet up and I'm going to see if this is it I don't want to give you the wrong URL bit flash dot Club. Yeah, that's it. And it says make own sheep transactions using using lightning and what happens is that you pay a tiny lightning fee and then put your own chain transaction essentially in the in the pool of what's going on and they are aggregating transactions. So it's joining multiple lightning transactions into a single. Unchain transaction. So if you're like trying to get money out of your pool, excuse me out of your channel. And so so happens to be a hundred other people. Well, then you aggregate that and you're all splitting the fee to make that transaction a lot cheaper own chain. And I think this is the kind of thing that is going to be very common I think is going to have to be a normal part of interacting with the Bitcoin Network which is why and with the things like mining pools or whatever. You don't want to introduce these Central points of failure, like bit flash. Club might not have much control, but it can also cause like be a huge inconvenience and it would be nice to have some sort of a decentralized way kind of like, you know how Wasabi wallet allows people to coordinate together and make a mixing transaction. Is a lot of different elements involved in this and it's important that we not rebuild centralization back into this just for convenience and he does a guy stop and decrypt just a great job of laying out all of these attack vectors and and I love that. It's like there's not even there's not even any real reason to rebut them in a sense. Like it's just like if you're Running your own node. None of this is a problem. And that's what better hash does. And I would really really like to see protocols like this like it sucks a one of the one of the things that I actually highlighted or is it? Okay, there's no doubting the benefits of a protocol that defends against these kinds of issues. But Solutions too often unheard of potentiality. These don't always do a great job on their own conveying their necessity and that's just a really important thing to remember is that so many of like we have a really bad tendency of waiting until something really terrible happens to implement a solution. And often it's something where the solution has just been sitting there ready to go and I would really like to see some mining pool out there. Take take the reins on this and be like we're going to do it like slush pool or F2 pool or whatever and like actually go like actually do that and you like art we're going to implement better hash because we know it's better for the whole protocol. It's better for the whole network and it It eliminates an attack Vector that there's no reason for it to be there and also like just inhabit. I think all even if the miners are using a pool that centralized I still think they should be running their own nodes, even though it's not like a huge help because all it would do is maybe alert them to some sort of a thing going on. But still, you know, when the solution is there when it's already available. It's like just It just implement it. We really don't want to be in a situation where we're bandage bandaging up a bunch of wounds and you know fixing hardware and trying to get everything back to like some sort of a static normal situation and going. Oh, we really should have done this like a year ago, and we've also obviously we've already seen some of the problems with this the fact that Bitcoin.com pool. Is just by default. I mean they were being open about it. You know, Roger ver test said every book told or at least to put an announcement thing on the website that you know, guess what we're going to use your hash power for be cash. But you know, it's like like stopping to grip said it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world in the world to go pick a different pool and in a scenario like segue to X it looked like everybody was signaling for this like all the major a bunch of the major companies were like, okay I We'll go ahead and do it too and all the major pools were like we're going to get behind it. But it was like, you know, six or seven pools it wasn't the thousands of miners behind those pools that made this decision and what they found out was that that support wasn't actually there and basically the user activated software called their Bluff and thank God they did because segment 2x was fundamentally broken. They never mind a block because the protocol because The the thing that they claimed for oh God, who knows how long that oh, it's only a change in like three lines of code. What could possibly go wrong? You're everybody's completely over exaggerating the risks and it's like no you just don't arbitrarily and Rush protocol changes, like consensus rule changes, like something is going to fuck up. You're an idiot for thinking this is smart and that you're Just do this in two weeks and you know not even test anything not even review this thing and sure enough, you know, it completely went to a halt then it off by one bug Straight Out The Gate and 95% of the hash power operators again pool operators, not Miners and businesses in the space showed what complete buffoons they were that they had no restraint that they were not concerned with security. T and that this many companies all the major companies in the space could not shell out a couple of freaking dollars to review the damn code like what an embarrassment and the fact that that is possible just because pools are centralized and they don't have to be is a really important issue and I think it's like the kind of things that happen with it. Like what's the like this the injured that this sets when people don't essentially push for this or they just kind of Let it Flow by on concerning is exactly the kind of thing that leads to the next quote unquote centralized solution to you know, pooling transactions together and where people just keep giving up more and more control without being concerned about it because nothing's particularly happening right now and everybody has to scramble and freak out and And you know Rush ghetto rig a bunch of solutions together when something terrible happens, so I'm just really glad that this article was put together. I think it's good to talk about this again. And I hope anybody who hears or reads this realizes and thinks about it. And if anybody out there is a minor bring it up like send this episode or send the article or just mention put a thing out to the person who is operating. Your pool that we should really be doing this. This is stupid. And if you're a minor make sure you're running your own no to and I know I've probably said this about a billion times but always be running your own node, even if you were giving your your control up as a minor always be running your own node. I think it's stupid to Hash for blocks that you don't know anything about so hopefully anybody who listens to this take take me up on it. And try to give a little bit of a push for this because I would really really like to see this implemented and it would be amazing to see like 30% of the network behind this and really just make that make that mining distribution chart. I want it to look absolutely impenetrable. I want there to be so many slices on that damn pie that it looks like an absurd thing, too. Even think of trying to control the hash power and attacking the Bitcoin Network. Because that's the only way that's the only way that this thing is going to survive attacks from you know, very powerful and highly funded adversaries and I think we are going to have those adversaries. I think it's really inevitable that that that is a problem we have to deal with so let's go ahead and fix it before we get there, you know. Alright. Well, thank you to stop and decrypt as always or yet another great article. And for putting this piece together and letting me read it on the show so I can talk about it. Thank you to hacker noon for the publication. They always have great stuff great writers. So don't forget to go over to the actual article and drop some serious Applause on this one if you have not and there is a lot of things to go digging a little bit further the one specifically that I think is really great and super short. So it's easy to go through is that 13-minute video from the blue matte? About the network level attacks. So definitely a lot over there to be going to go digging a little bit deeper. All right, guys, we will close this episode out now. Thank you for listening to the Crypt O'Connor. We've got a bunch of great episodes coming. I have been kind of slammed back-to-back have been basically doing dual episodes a day for this week. I just talked with and I believe it just got released car. Camp it and bird from the friends against government podcast. If you've been listening to show we did an episode way way back during the beginning towards the beginning of this show and was just a whole lot of fun and we got to reminisce almost a full year later basically talk about everything that happened throughout the year kind of some crap that I've been having to deal with trying to remodel this house still after all this time and talk about all kinds of stuff the growth of their podcast and just as really really good time and kind of how everybody's thinking about and what the major things are happening in Bitcoin. So definitely go check that one out was a fun episode. And then also I just finished this morning an interview with Aaron van Werdum who obviously, you know, I've read tons of stuff by him on the show. The guy is my favorite writer in the space hands down just an amazing amazing guy and I got His brain, we got a bullshit about all things Bitcoin and learn about his history how he got into this and his takes on like Bitcoin and journalism in general and a bunch of stuff that's going on. So that was a really really fun conversation and I cannot wait to publish it. So stay tuned for that. Don't forget to subscribe and follow me on Twitter. I am at the crypto Kana me on Twitter. And yeah, I'm guys Swan. Thanks for listening. This is the crypto Konami podcast. This is where we dive deep into the tech into the philosophy into the economics everything about this new world in this new economy that were building where we were getting back our sovereignty our Liberty and fingers crossed our privacy because we want a better future and we're going to build it and this is where you learn all about it. Thank you so much for joining me. I love you guys. Don't forget to share this out with everybody, you know in the Bitcoin and crypto economies face. So they too can get the best content in Bitcoin until next time. I am guys Swan signing off. Take it easy guys.
What if we already had a solution to one of the biggest threats to the Bitcoin network, but simply weren't implementing it? Today we read another great piece by @stopanddecrypt breaking down the numerous vulnerabilities of centralized mining pools, that simply wouldn't exist, with the implementation of a @TheBlueMatt's new hashing protocol, #BetterHash. Drop some applause on the original article & check out the library of work on StopAndDecrypt's Medium page: https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing-bitcoin-mining-with-new-hashing-protocols-291de178e3e0 https://medium.com/@StopAndDecrypt  Other resources & media mentioned on the show:  https://bitflash.club/ https://anchor.fm/thecryptoconomy/episodes/CryptoQuikRead_091---BetterHash-Aims-to-Increase-Bitcoin-Mining-Decentralization-e2ndro https://anchor.fm/thecryptoconomy/episodes/CryptoQuikRead_077---Ethereum-Blockchain-Exceeds-1TB-e2nds8  Support my work and join the official #CryptoconomyCrew telegram group by becoming a patron: https://www.patreon.com/thecryptoconomy  ---   This episode is sponsored by  · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. 