Episode Details

Meni Rosenfeld is Founder of Bitcoil and Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association. Having organized several meetups and conferences in Israel, he is a very active member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Meni has been studying mining pool reward methods for several years and in 2011, wrote a paper titled “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems”. This research gave him a broad understanding the reward system landscape and the issues with many of the methods used by pools. He later wrote proposals for alternative non pay-per-share methods and which would render pool hopping impossible: the geometric method and double geometric method.

Episode links:

• Mining Pools Reward Methods Talk - Bitcoin 2013 Conference [YouTube]
• Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems [paper]
• Summary of mining pool reward systems [paper]
• Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending [paper]
• Meni Rosenfeld's vanity thread [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
• Geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: New cheat-proof mining pool scoring method
• Double geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: Hopping-proof, low-variance reward system
• Mine in multiple pools to reduce variance [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
• Multi-PPS [Bitcoin Talk Forum]
• ASIC will not centralize Bitcoin mining [Meni’s blog]
• Blocksize Economics by Gavin Andresen [Bitcoin Foundation]
• Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake [paper]
• Israel Bitcoin Meetup Group
• Israeli Bitcoin Community Facebook Page

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/049