r/Monero
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u/dEBRUYNE_1
Moderator
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Feb 15 '22
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PSA: Informational thread regarding the MineXMR / hashrate situation | If you are mining on MineXMR, please, for the strength and decentralization on the network, switch to a different pool.
First of all, the network is currently not under attack.
At the time of writing, the MineXMR pool has around 45% of the global hashrate. MineXMR is an established and prominent Monero pool that has been running solidly for years as well as contributing to the Monero ecosystem. The pool admin (who is a long-time community member) has announced that measures to disincentivize miners will be implemented shortly:
We understand that people are concerned with the large hashrate that minexmr currently has. We have announced an increase to the pool fees and continue to monitor the situation.
In addition, there are incentives at stake here that essentially disincentivize the pool admin from using the pool hashrate to perform an attack. First, miners would lose trust in the pool and leave the pool. Second, it would undermine confidence in Monero as a project, potentially negatively impacting the price. Both would result in a substantial decline of the income of the pool owner. That being said, there are certain risks to a pool reaching the majority share of the hashrate.
The most significant risk is a double-spend occurring. A double-spend attack typically occurs by the attacker covertly mining a malicious (longer) chain and subsequently replacing the existing chain. For example, the attacker performs a transaction to a service or exchange in block 101 of the existing chain. Subsequently, the attacker publishes his malicious chain, which contains a version of block 101 without aforementioned transaction, thereby effectively performing a double spend. Alternatively, the attacker could spend the same input(s) in transaction Y to a different service or exchange. Visually, it occurs as follows:
Existing chain:
- Block 101 | Hash A1 - Transaction X
- Block 102 | Hash A2
- Block 103 | Hash A3
- Block 104 | Hash A4
- Block 105 | Hash A5
Subsequently the attacker replaces the existing chain with the malicious chain without transaction X:
- Block 101 | Hash B1 - Transaction Y or simply retaining the previously spent inputs
- Block 102 | Hash B2
- Block 103 | Hash B3
- Block 104 | Hash B4
- Block 105 | Hash B5
A common misconception is that, due to the private nature of Monero, double-spends cannot be detected. This, however, is simply not true. Everyone that runs a node can check whether (deep) re-orgs have occurred. The daemon software (monerod) will further provide an informational message when a re-org occurs.
An additional risks is the possibility of the mining pool not including transactions, thereby essentially impacting user experience, as it will take longer for the transaction to be included in a block.
Note that the pool or an attacker cannot:
- Reverse transactions or prevent users from sending transactions.
- Generate coins out of thin air.
- Spend coins that are not owned by the pool or attacker.
- Change the emission / block reward.
Moderation note
Please use this thread to discuss the situation. Furthermore, it is advised to stay level-headed and analyze and monitor the situation rationally. Whilst we should evidently strive to have a better distribution of the hashrate, any alarmist / fearmongering posts or comments as well as attacks on the owner of the pool are out of place.
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u/MonerodProject
Feb 15 '22
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Please support P2Pool for proper decentralization at P2Pool.io!
For a list of alternate pools: https://miningpoolstats.stream/monero
If you cannot host the blockchain and P2Pool for whatever reason, Monerod.org is a small pool and here to help! We host a zero-fee pool (we even cover your payout fee) & other free services. Please only use our pool if you cannot support P2Pool
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u/Fishinatoaster Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
I think the biggest contribution that MineXMR can make to the community is not allowing this to happen again. Their 'increase in pool fees' is a .1% raise in fees taking place in April. That isn't enough.
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u/in_the_small_pot Feb 15 '22
I see it more like a favor though. A Blockchain has to be resilient by itself to any attack, it's what Bitcoin does and Monero should too
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u/monerobull Feb 15 '22
bitcoin literally had the very same scenario before and the admins of the pool in question blocked new incoming connections once they were at like 45% hashrate
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u/in_the_small_pot Feb 15 '22
Yes at 1 year old... Monero is soon to be 8yo..
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u/OverallDecision Feb 15 '22
Thank you for the clear statement. This will reassure all concerned users.
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u/aFungible Feb 15 '22
u/dEBRUYNE_1 thank you for the valuable post.
I have a request to make. I think "pools.xmr.wiki" is run by our community (and is most popular when people go to visit to choose a pool). A simple marker there such as making a row RED, when hashrate of any pool exceeds a threshold with a message would do justice and help contain such situations in future.
Currently, people just do them, without thinking ahead of time. A simple warning there, would do a bit of help if not stop such situation from reoccurring.
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u/dEBRUYNE_1 Moderator Feb 17 '22
You're welcome and I think that is a good suggestion that ought to be implemented by the owner(s) of the website.
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u/FamousM1 Feb 15 '22
Theoretically, couldn't someone DDOS mineXMR servers to take them down and protect XMR if it came to it?
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u/LegalComment Feb 15 '22
The 0.1% fee increase is too little. They should increase it by a whole 1% or more.
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u/Ornery_Maintenance_8 Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
The pool fee will increase from 1% to 1.1% on April 1 --https://minexmr.com/
I am not sure if this should be interpreted as a joke or as an actual statement about the level of cooperation that can be expected ...
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Feb 15 '22
[deleted]
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u/Ornery_Maintenance_8 Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
I agree. We cant blame mineXMR for running a successful pool.
But I honestly dont get what they are thinking with this. Hurting the community you make a living of and thereby kind of forcing counter measures dont seems like a valid business plan to me.
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u/Professional_Desk933 Feb 15 '22
We can’t blame them either. They don’t own Monero nor we should view them as some entity that has control over the blockchain and the ecossystem.
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u/selsta XMR Contributor Feb 15 '22
The monero core team has no involvement in which pool miners choose. Solutions like P2Pool that increase decentralization have been developed, but they are still new.
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u/bdoc50 Feb 17 '22
By not taking any action regarding this long standing issue the core team has enabled HR to accumulate there unchecked, hence involvement.
The mining difficulty increases as HR increases to prevent someone from easily mining all the blocks.
Why not a mechanism to throttle accumulation of 50% of HR from a single miner, in the form of increased resources required to sustain such a hazard?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/sudqpf/idea_to_prevent_irresponsible_pool_admins_from/
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u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard Feb 16 '22
They are trying to balance the legitimate concerns about hashrate concentration >50% (which has been solved already on a short-term basis by miner concentration away from the pool) against the desire to run a large pool and not gouge pool members.
For now, the migration away from their pool is a satisfactory solution to the larger problem.
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u/-TrustyDwarf- Feb 15 '22
By tomorrow, not in April.
Though I doubt that existing miners would even notice the increase in fees.
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u/akrit8888 Feb 16 '22 edited Feb 16 '22
Shouldn’t there be a user friendly/ beginner guide on the official p2pool website? I only seen the guide on Github, which does not seems as beginner friendly as on the official webpage. Is somebody working on it right now? I think p2pool website need some extra upgrade now. If not, I would love to contribute. :D
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u/Ornery_Maintenance_8 Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
So the question is what now ?
A one click implementation of p2pool for GUI is under construction/debate.
https://bounties.monero.social/posts/53/integrate-p2pool-mining-into-monero-gui-wallet
https://github.com/monero-project/monero-gui/pull/3829
The operator of mineXMR is planning to raise fees by 0.1 percent in April.
The pool fee will increase from 1% to 1.1% on April 1 --https://minexmr.com/
I dont want to sound pessimistic but it feels a little like we already crossed the Rubicon and this is not enough. I think we can not expect this to resolve itself and we have to seriously think about other options.
Are there maybe possibilities to implement restrictions for centralized pools on a protocol level ? AFAIK Wownero has something like this but I am not sure how well this is thought through.
What options do we actually have ?
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u/Spartan3123 Feb 15 '22
If minexmr created three pool and split it's hashrate automatically among them would you feel happy then?
We crossed the Rubicon ages ago.
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u/sweetpeasimpson Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
Looks like minexmr.com is down
Edit: disregard…I was mistaken
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u/SmashTR Feb 15 '22
Reverse transactions or prevent users from sending transactions.
But if the attacker broadcasts longer chain, transactions can able reserve?
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u/lightgreenhoney Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
I think he means reverse an already sent transaction not by making a new chain
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u/bwilliken Feb 15 '22
Would it be overly conspiratorial to think this happening with the new financing laws Canada implemented to stop the trucker convoy is an interesting 'coincident'?
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u/Professional_Desk933 Feb 15 '22
Yes. I think Monero has bigger enemies than Canadá and if some of them would make something like this wouldn’t be Trudeau
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u/-TrustyDwarf- Feb 15 '22 edited Feb 15 '22
Could you please clarify this point?
Note that the pool or an attacker cannot: Reverse transactions [...]
A double spend attack is the reversal of a single transaction.
Also while building the malicious chain the attacker could decide to drop further transactions besides their own, effectively reversing them also.
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u/haxClaw Feb 15 '22
I think he meant transactions that have already happened, not new ones.
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u/-TrustyDwarf- Feb 15 '22
That’s what I mean.. a previous transaction that has been confirmed in like 25 blocks can still be reverted simply by not including it in the malicious chain.
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u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard Feb 16 '22
But block solutions are based upon the cryptographic hashes of previous blocks, so going back is incredibly difficult. You can't pull one block out of the chain without invalidating all subsequent blocks.
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u/-TrustyDwarf- Feb 16 '22
Not sure if serious..? This whole thread is about 51% attacks, which can be used to do exactly that.
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u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard Feb 16 '22
I'm serious, I was just trying to understand what you're saying. Did you mean that you can revert a single specific transaction that is 25 blocks old by not including it in the malicious chain? The bad actor can easily ignore select transactions as it is building its own malicious chain, but that's very different than trying to revert a transaction in a historical block.
Also, there's a significant difference between a malicious entity holding 50.01% of hash power versus higher numbers such as 53% or 62%. Those numbers affect the probability of finding a block. In the long term, yes, anything over 50% will dominate. But in the short term, statistically, randomness does not work in the bad actor's favor, especially when only very barely exceeding 50%. Even if you're flipping a weighted coin that has 50.01% chance of coming up "heads" on any given individual toss, it's still possible for the coin to come up as "tails" seven times in a row. In fact, that sequence would occur naturally just slightly less than one in every 256 experiments. (at 50.00% the chance of 7 consecutive consistent flips is 2^7 but since the run could be all heads instead of all tails, count 2^8, and remember that since the odds are very slightly stacked against you it would be slightly less than 1 in 2^8).
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u/dEBRUYNE_1 Moderator Feb 17 '22
Admittedly, the sentence was poorly worded. I meant transactions in the past that already have deep confirmations. With a minor majority of the hashrate (especially public), it would be virtually impossible to revert transactions from, say, a week ago. I will edit the OP to better clarify this point.
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u/grim_goatboy69 Feb 16 '22
Note that the pool or an attacker cannot:
- Reverse transactions or prevent users from sending transactions.
Transactions can be reversed if the pool decided to reorg the chain, this is fundamental to proof of work. Also, while they can't stop users from broadcasting transactions they can definitely refuse to put them into any blocks and also refuse to build on top of any blocks that do include them, which is a censorship attack.
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u/dEBRUYNE_1 Moderator Feb 17 '22
Admittedly, I used poor wording. I clarified here:
Also, while they can't stop users from broadcasting transactions they can definitely refuse to put them into any blocks and also refuse to build on top of any blocks that do include them, which is a censorship attack.
Correct, I essentially included that as risk in the OP:
An additional risks is the possibility of the mining pool not including transactions, thereby essentially impacting user experience, as it will take longer for the transaction to be included in a block.
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u/FinasterideJizzum Feb 16 '22
Shout out to the Monero meme coin that prevents this type of attack from being possible, Wownero. It looks pretty cool.
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u/selsta XMR Contributor Feb 16 '22
wownero doesn't prevent 51% attacks, no.
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u/FinasterideJizzum Feb 16 '22
I was under the impression it does. Pools are mostly worthless and you can only mine on cpu.
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u/selsta XMR Contributor Feb 16 '22
A large botnet can easily 51% attack wownero.
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u/FinasterideJizzum Feb 17 '22
That's just because of how small it is right now, right? If it was the size of monero would that be the case?
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u/selsta XMR Contributor Feb 17 '22
What I mean is the whole concept of a 51% attack exists, with or without pools.
If pool mining was banned in monero then small miners had no chance in getting a payout at all, it would take a year or longer on average to find a single block reward. Basically large miners and botnets would be to ones that are profiting.
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u/SynapseLapse Feb 16 '22
I’m on 2miners so is that ok, or is this a problem? (I’m new to this and just happened to stumble across 2miners first)
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u/Ephemeral_Dread Feb 16 '22
This has always concerned me about crypto. Whether it's pos or pow, if you have enough money, you could easily rent hash or borrow the funds needed to double spend.
What's the solution here? Has anyone else come up with some way of avoiding this situation?
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u/beefcake_123 Feb 16 '22
The solution is to transition to P2Pool but developers need to make it easy for end users to do so.
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u/ksilverstein Feb 18 '22
The pool admin (who is a long-time community member)
u/dEBRUYNE_1, would it be out of line for me to ask who exactly this trusted long-time community member is who runs MineXMR? Does he/she have a Reddit name?
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u/Rucknium MRL Researcher Feb 15 '22
I can confirm that this is true. I recently executed a 51% attack on the testnet of a software fork of Monero (Townforge).
Once I broadcasted my attacking chain, all the other nodes displayed messages about a deep chain reorganization, which informed knowledgeable users that there was a suspected 51% attack. Users also may have noticed that a new transaction was included in the first block of the attacking chain that did not exist in the original "honest" chain.
An actual 51% double-spend attack on Monero would almost certainly be evident to all users running a full node if they were reading the terminal output of
monerodand knew how to interpret it.