Meni Rosenfeld: Mining Pool Reward Systems, Bitcoin Economics, Bitcoin in Israel

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