Mining Hashrate Caps

I noticed this article today.

GHash Commits to 40% Hashrate Cap at Bitcoin Mining Summit

http://www.coindesk.com/ghash-commits-40-hashrate-cap-bitcoin-mining-summit/

Here's a quote from Satoshi when the mining arms race began:

"We should have a gentleman’s agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network. It’s much easer to get new users up to speed if they don’t have to worry about GPU drivers and compatibility. It’s nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now."

Maybe outdated now, but I thought it was interesting.

Can someone explain to these guys and the public why promising to limit yourselves to *only* a 50% chance of successfully double-spending a 6 confirm transaction is still not acceptable?

q=0.4 z=0 P=1 z=1 P=0.828861 z=2 P=0.736403 z=3 P=0.664168 z=4 P=0.603401 z=5 P=0.550625 z=6 P=0.50398 z=7 P=0.462301 z=8 P=0.424782 z=9 P=0.390828 z=10 P=0.359976 z=11 P=0.331858 z=12 P=0.306167 z=13 P=0.282649 z=14 P=0.261083 z=15 P=0.24128 z=16 P=0.223076 z=17 P=0.206324 z=18 P=0.190896 z=19 P=0.176676

On 07/17/2014 06:59 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:

> I noticed this article today.
>
> GHash Commits to 40% Hashrate Cap at Bitcoin Mining Summit
>
> http://www.coindesk.com/ghash-commits-40-hashrate-cap-bitcoin-mining-summit/
>
> Here's a quote from Satoshi when the mining arms race began:
>
> "We should have a gentleman’s agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as
> long as we can for the good of the network. It’s much easer to get new
> users up to speed if they don’t have to worry about GPU drivers and
> compatibility. It’s nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly
> equally right now."
>
> Maybe outdated now, but I thought it was interesting.
>
>
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On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 09:35:20AM -0400, Mark Friedenbach wrote:

> Can someone explain to these guys and the public why promising to limit
> yourselves to *only* a 50% chance of successfully double-spending a 6
> confirm transaction is still not acceptable?

Hi, Mark.

We were asked on the bitcoin-documentation mailing list about a month ago to work on something like this and we're getting close to a pull request for the Bitcoin.org website. There's a preview here:

    http://dg0.dtrt.org/en/mining#lucky-attack

(Remember, it's a preview and still being actively written/edited.)

Discussion about that doc belongs on the bitcoin-documentation mailing list. Here's the particular thread:

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bitcoin-documentation/PKwBcroWGGg

Thanks,

-Dave