The future of bitcoin is determined by the people who use it, and especially by the people who mine it. Each hash calculated on a block is a vote for how the bitcoin network should operate. Up until now, we've effectively had a one-party system. It's a distributed democratic system that has heretofore been left unused. That has changed. We the miners now have the power to determine the future of Bitcoin.
If you are currently using one of our p2pool nodes or are considering doing so in the future, you have a decision to make. If not, feel free to disregard this message. If you use p2pool but don't care much, you can disregard this email as well, and we'll make the decision for you.
As some of you are aware, a version of Bitcoin XT with code to allow for a hard fork to increase the maximum bitcoin block size was released less than a day ago. You can read a description of Bitcoin XT and some of its motivations, Mike Hearn's Manifesto for the release, and Gavin Andresen's exhaustive list and rebuttal of counterarguments for bigger block sizes for more information on this debate. For news supporting the use of Bitcoin XT, you can check out http://reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt and http://voat.co/v/bitcoin. For news that censors anything promoting the use of Bitcoin XT and moderated to favor the status quo, you can check out http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin.
Mining with Bitcoin XT will have no major differences from mining with Bitcoin Core unless 75% of the last 1000 blocks mined are mined with XT or a derivative. If this threshold is ever reached, then a waiting period of two weeks will start, after which XT nodes will start to accept (and possibly create) blocks up to 8 MB in size. The creation of a > 1 MB block will create a hard fork. There is no way to increase the block limit without a hard fork, and demand for bitcoin transactions will soon exceed what can be supplied with 1 MB blocks. Some people think that creating a hard fork like this could kill Bitcoin. I think this will save it.
Toomim Bros operates two p2pool nodes. We have switched one of those nodes to use Bitcoin XT, and we will leave the other one on Bitcoin Core. That way, our customers can choose whichever node they want in order to make their own vote for how Bitcoin should be run. Everyone is welcome to use these nodes, though you won't have great mining efficiency unless you're inside our datacenter.
So far, Bitcoin Core (and consequently all Bitcoin protocol) development has progressed on a consensus model. All of the main developers have to agree to a change in order for it to take effect. For any important change, there will always be some people who are unhappy about it, so consensus only works for making important changes in oligarchies, and even in oligarchies, it doesn't work well. We at Toomim Bros think that decisions about how Bitcoin should operate ought to be democratized. As such, we support the existence of Bitcoin XT and think that all miners should have the option to choose which version they wish to support and use.
Toomim Bros also thinks that 1 MB is way too small, and that the network can and should support larger blocks. We think that one goal for Bitcoin should be minimizing the real cost per transaction. Currently, that cost is supported primarily by the block subsidy, and runs at about 65 kWh per transaction. (300 MW mining network, 1.27 transactions per second.) That's about $4 per transaction. Increasing the transaction volume would not directly require any significant increase in the mining network power consumption, so it would reduce the real cost per transaction. Our facility spends about 80x as much on electricity as it does on internet connectivity. We do not think large blocks will present a large burden on small bitcoin miners like us.
As such, we are putting the miners owned by Toomim Bros (the company) and the Toomim brothers (the individuals) on the XT node.
We're running XT on 74.82.233.205:9334 (global IP) or 10.0.1.2:9332 (LAN IP), and Core on 74.82.233.205:9332 (global IP) or 10.0.0.1:9332 (LAN IP).
(We also will probably be changing our IP address for these nodes soon. I'll publish details about the new IP once we're ready to make those changes.)
Jonathan Toomim
Grand Poobah
Toomim Bros Bitcoin Mining Concern
We are a medium-sized (750 kW, soon to be 2.25 MW) bitcoin miner hosting company located in central Washington. Visit http://toom.im for more information on us.
I'm interested to see how our customers vote. Most of our customers don't use p2pool right now. It would make me happy if some of them decided to switch to p2pool in order to be able to vote for XT.
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[–] jtoomim [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
CPU mining is extremely inefficient and ineffective. A high-end CPU can mine at about 50 MH/s using 150 W of power. A typical modern ASIC miner can mine at about 250 GH/s using 150 W of power, which is 5,000 times more efficient. Even using hydro, you're polluting 20% of 5,000x = 1000x as much as someone mining with an ASIC powered by 100% fossil fuels for the same hashrate. Also, for the cost of a single CPU, you can buy a miner capable of 1,152 GH/s, which is 20,000 times more powerful than the CPU.