[Bitcoin-development] Decentralizing ming

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@bitpay.com>]

Define acceptable.  The 40% thing is marketing and a temporary
solution.  And people come down on both sides of whether or not
marketing "40%" is a good idea.

I think it is a baby step that is moving in the right direction.  You
want the numbers and sentiment moving in that direction (down, versus
"own the market! </IPO>").

The more critical piece is fleshing out the various proposals and
technical solutions for decentralized transaction selection and other
aspects of SPOF-proofing mining.

Historical note:  On one hand, Satoshi seemed to dislike the early
emergence of GPU mining pools quite a bit.  On the other hand, Satoshi
noted that the network would probably devolve down to a few big
players if we ever reached VISA/MC transaction levels.  Satoshi
clearly never figured this part out :)

Today, there is consensus on the need for a "keep bitcoin free and
open" technical solution, but it remains to be seen how much we
engineers can really do to make life fair.  Making transaction
selection a bit more independent from hashpower seems one step.  There
are several other proposals floating about.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/