When miners start looking at the weekly pie charts, they often start to wonder "Who is this 'unknown'? What is their nefarious purpose?". If they start to read the daily pie charts from blockchain.info and notice "unknown" at 10 to 20 %, they may even start to become concerned.
My recent work on providing unified block attribution history (last week's blocks here: http://bitbin.it/3iIbl6tA) has made it simple to find a bit more about the "unknown".
It should be noted that for my data, unknown means that:
- There is no coinbase signature.
- The block has not been claimed by a known pool.
- The generation address (address or addresses to which the block solving reward is sent) cannot be associated with a block either claimed by a pool, or with a coinbase signature linked to a pool.
1. Crowdsourcing answers.
There are a number of recurring generation addresses, and if these are indeed businesses I'm hoping that some readers will be able to identify some of them for me so I can add them to a known generation address list, and start reducing the proportion of "unknown" hashrate. So to help this along I thought some crowdsourcing might help.
Here are last week's unknown block generation addresses, and the number of blocks they solved during the week:
The total amount of unknowns is 8.8% of the total number of blocks solved for the week, which is not very high. However, if some of those addresses can be identified, the percentage of unknown hashrate contributors could be reduced further.
How about going back in time? Many will probably be pools for which I don't have data and who may have reused generation addresses.
| Unknown recurring generation address | Blocks solved | Percentage of all solved blocks | Maximum hashrate, Thps | Date of maximum hashrate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19fbcmiSmxHGjyBDG2on5Qgfnvxs8ukdNz | 709 | 0.25 % | 1.39 | 2013-04-21 |
| 1JQR7BM3g1p83eXT9EqwsecvfNhDDzQefx | 503 | 0.18 % | 0.829 | 2012-05-27 |
| 1ALA5v7h49QT7WYLcRsxcXqXUqEqaWmkvw | 379 | 0.14 % | 242 | 2014-01-05 |
| 17w9uVZuPgsY7iLBVGB7qTZ1ZiZnTJKHLq | 209 | 0.07 % | 0.192 | 2013-04-28 |
| 1BxD2VLE95n7ZeVJSy3uoiJ5WdR72jWj5f | 193 | 0.07 % | 9.29 | 2013-09-29 |
| 1JTZHBdrDnFaVvuV43sd2oiwDmzUPfa3Ws | 193 | 0.07 % | 0.128 | 2012-10-07 |
| 1aDuWEq2UC4aZtGWoFbYDapnwTSFhqv1u | 100 | 0.04 % | 396 | 2013-12-22 |
| 1MxipvUHfKaZzWVrCGhrLKVPtNxwESRoq2 | 100 | 0.04 % | 0.353 | 2012-02-12 |
| 1L9FE9cgwJnvVs8ZUHrorAmwF7HDrKrP8r | 84 | 0.03 % | 0.979 | 2013-07-14 |
| 14b5MW9Aizj9ccs1UQAacgcRzkS8KXh7Ww | 72 | 0.03 % | 1.12 | 2013-07-21 |
| Total | 2542 | 0.91 % | - | - |
One of the addresses occurs in both lists, 1ALA5v7h49QT7WYLcRsxcXqXUqEqaWmkvw. I'm guessing either that or 1aDuWEq2UC4aZtGWoFbYDapnwTSFhqv1u (or both) could be the "100 Terahash mine", but I have no way to be sure.
Several of the coinbase signatures include "Hi from poolserverj". While it's true that 50BTC.com signed a few of their early blocks this way, not all the blocks solved with that signature were claimed by them and my guess is that the signature is a pool software default. None of the rest have many identifiers; some of the coinbase signatures are very short and clean and so probably indicate no merged mining, and others are very crufty which might mean they're merged mining.
The chart below might also help you identify these "unknown" hashrate contributors.
2. I hate not knowing! So here's some bounties.
I think most of these will end up being pools, a few early adopters of FPGAs and ASICs, and some of the recent ones will be businesses that don't sign the coinbase.
To get the ball rolling, I'll pay 0.005 btc for the first readers to identify any of the addresses in the table below, on the conditions that they can be identified conclusively (proof required).
| Unknown generation address | Bounty for identification |
|---|---|
| 19fbcmiSmxHGjyBDG2on5Qgfnvxs8ukdNz | 0.005 btc |
| 1JQR7BM3g1p83eXT9EqwsecvfNhDDzQefx | 0.005 btc |
| 1ALA5v7h49QT7WYLcRsxcXqXUqEqaWmkvw | 0.005 btc |
| 17w9uVZuPgsY7iLBVGB7qTZ1ZiZnTJKHLq | 0.005 btc |
| 1BxD2VLE95n7ZeVJSy3uoiJ5WdR72jWj5f | 0.005 btc |
| 1JTZHBdrDnFaVvuV43sd2oiwDmzUPfa3Ws | 0.005 btc |
| 1aDuWEq2UC4aZtGWoFbYDapnwTSFhqv1u | 0.005 btc |
| 1MxipvUHfKaZzWVrCGhrLKVPtNxwESRoq2 | 0.005 btc |
| 1L9FE9cgwJnvVs8ZUHrorAmwF7HDrKrP8r | 0.005 btc |
| 14b5MW9Aizj9ccs1UQAacgcRzkS8KXh7Ww | 0.005 btc |
| 1P8TmD3xqgEvxTqVvMVcY76nt2nLBGFTHs | 0.005 btc |
| 1CB2gCFfe25v5Tzrv1nZnahr4FoqWDzwGb | 0.005 btc |
| 12NQ9qYw1fgzVxsyKuqhtrwjtQbtXzKjGZ | 0.005 btc |
| 1E8EAM4rhaf26HXBwdBDq3oDRdNRHRLUs7 | 0.005 btc |
So get your deerstalker on, your opium pipe fired up, your Watson ready and identify those addresses!
organofcorti.blogspot.com is a reader supported blog:
1QC2KE4GZ4SZ8AnpwVT483D2E97SLHTGCG
Find a typo or spelling error? Email me with the details at organofcorti@organofcorti.org and if you're the first to email me I'll pay you per ten errors:
Please refer to the most recent blog post for current rates or rule changes.
I'm terrible at proofreading, so some of these posts may be worth quite a bit to the keen reader.
Exceptions:
- Errors in text repeated across multiple posts: I will only pay for the most recent errors rather every single occurrence.
- Errors in chart texts: Since I can't fix the chart texts (since I don't keep the data that generated them) I can't pay for them. Still, they would be nice to know about!
As far as I can see, the more "unknown" the better.
ReplyDeleteI assume single-person mining operations comprise this figure. I wish all the mining power was "unknown".
Interesting - why do you assume this? Following the payments trails for some of them, they appear more likely to be pools or mining ventures with many investors. What made you think they were single-person mining operations?
ReplyDeleteAny reader hoping to claim the bounties, should check the reddit thread.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1v44tv/bounty_for_identification_of_unknown_generation/
So far, one has been found.
1ALA5v7h49QT7WYLcRsxcXqXUqEqaWmkvw
is linked to cloudhashing.com.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317799.0
And well done. bitcointip to you as soon as my client finishes, yet again, rebuilding its index.
Deletedude...you gotta try kryptokit.
DeleteThanks, looks good! I'll have to give it a try.
DeleteMostly I use multibit, but I for old addresses haven't gotten around to exporting keys from my qt client.
Those are solo miners. If I had that much has rate, I would solo mine. 1FkMGVBnckJa8jf6fT7sRiPvchnJivyTqj
ReplyDeleteI don't see the address you posted on the list, and you haven't provided any evidence for your claim. It also has never been a generation address. No bounty for you!
DeleteI had a bit of a search, and 1P8TmD3xqgEvxTqVvMVcY76nt2nLBGFTHs, 1CB2gCFfe25v5Tzrv1nZnahr4FoqWDzwGb, 1Km2nEyMbqKnVMgvagvsHRKzWkhzii2F4d, 1MxTkeEP2PmHSMze5tUZ1hAV3YTKu2Gh1N and some others appear to be the (now named) 500 TeraHash mine.
ReplyDeleteProof: This document: https://picostocks.com/stocks/view/19 provides the investment address 1LyZ2QJDJDJ7Mf8caQb2uRLgBVqBF9GvH4. All those addresses I listed pay to that address directly.