Bitcoin Forum

Does anyone think BTC possibly switching to POS? How can it evaluate / score the stake factor?

This would need to be a hardfork and thus adopted by the entire community (or creating an altcoin named Bitcoin) which is unlikely since Proof Of Stake has nothing to do with the original philosophy behind cryptocurrencies.

Proof-of-Stake is fundamentally broken and does not form a consensus mechanism. It is also too easy to attack, reorganize, create offline chains by accident, faulty nodes keep producing blocks, etc, etc, etc...

There was already a thread about this few weeks ago. No, there will be no switch in Bitcoin to any other PoW algorithm let along PoS.
PoS is definitely not ready for Bitcoin and there is a very good chance it never will. It has to many security issues with it.

Lol. I really don't think so man. And i know that anyone who knows PoS would surely tell you it isn't possible for now and may never be. Bitcoins have enough risks already. It wouldn't be logical if bitcoin goes and add more risks to it by using PoS. Just doesn't make sense dude. But hey, as what people always say: cryptos really are unpredictable.

So should AMD and NVIDIA may have much greater opportunity than Apple in the coming future. It is a battle of hardware capabilities!

I don't think BTC will ever switch to POS

I thought when all the bitcoins that are possible to be mined are mined then it would go over to POS?

I guess no one  in this forum will be alive to see all bitcoins mined.

But maybe in the next decades someone find something to increase the lifespan.
Then the 100 year old members will explain to the 20 year old newbies, why all try to implement a secure POS failed in the last 100 years ;D

No. Miners are supposed to get revenue from the miner fees at that point.

There's extensive literature on why PoS has security problems like nothing at stake and as far as I know it was never solved so I doubt something as basic as PoW will be changed in BTC.


Some people are saying that it may raise some problems by the time we get there in 2140 and even propose introducing a small % of inflation into the total supply, which I think it's total bullshit because we all got there due the scarcity aspect of BTC. I would like to hear from the real smart people (basically Core devs) what they think about it this. Unfortunately we all will be dead by then, but I got into Bitcoin for the long term and I hope the same rules of 2017 are being enforced in 2140, and that of course includes 21 million.

hard fork into memory hard btc mining is better

pos not good

Proof of stake is not congruent with Bitcoin's philosophy

Proof of stake is naive and subconsciously inspired by the old fiat money banking paradigm: the more money you got, the more you can create.
Authoritarians love PoS.
Proof of space, just released by Bram Cohen, is equally naive but much more interesting.

Ah yeah, I remember Bram Cohen (that's the guy from Bitorrent right?) talking in twitter all day how he had a bright idea, I will look into Proof of space later but just by hearing the name I predict the same game theory problems and security exploits that I would think if the proof was harddisk space or something.

Anyway it seems like nobody can come up with a better system tham PoW. When it's all said and done, if you consider the pros and cons, even with all the cons PoW has... it is still the best way to go. The guy that comes up with an objectively better idea than PoW will become a billionaire overnight and so will the early adopters of said coin.. that will be a real altcoin to get into.

50% of the miner would need to approve this I think, so it is very unlikely as they would loose their power to control the blockchain.

Doesn't lightening make Bitcoin work somewhat like POS?  The BTC locked up in the hubs is a form of staking.

No it is not. Clearly you do not understand how Proof of Stake and lightning works. Bitcoin being "locked up" is not a form of staking at all whatsoever (besides the fact that bitcoin is not locked up at all).

I don't know enough about PoS to have an opinion on the technology.  One of these days I'll take a look at some of those coins.

One thing about it that I do find appealing, at least as far as I understand it, is that it has the potential to be more energy efficient.  Proof of Work, while certainly representing the value of electricity as part of its "intrinsic value", per se, does generate enormous sums for electric utilities.

Personally, I'd rather see that value remain in the currency as much as possible.  Either that or have the "work product" represent something that has wider use than just representing a certain amount of essentially useless mathematics.  Something such as a unit of work in a distributed computing system.  I know there's altcoins out there that have gone that route.  I'm not sure how well they've done, etc.

I do believe that something that overcomes large mining operations from holding policy decisions "hostage" needs to be devised for the common good of the community as a whole.  Observing the has effort shift to the BCH chain when it was more profitable to mine drove home for me the lesson that the relationship between miners and the larger user base is very interdependent and has real potential to lead into some rather unpleasant feedback loops given certain conditions.  Something I've been thinking about quite a bit.

Don't see it happening anytime soon... BTC will always be decentralized

never.

BTC build on power.

user - miner - dev build all btc eco-system.

if btc switch to POS, then miner goes where ?

I think we should develop a better system than POS and POW

Proof of Stake Seems like a very bad and dangerous idea. Are there limits placed on the amount of Stake one can own?
What stops a very wealthy person or government from owning large amounts of all Ethereum stakes for example and spreading them around to look like they are owned by many users? .. .  This can't be easily done under Proof of Work..due to the clear boundaries and rules that exist as countries, meaning that the Chinese government/miners/wealthy people can't easily own mines in America likewise Americans owning in China or elsewhere.
Even within a country PoW can't easily be monopolized by the government/wealthy citizen/miner..  Energy costs, land & building ownership/size will certainly have a lot of impact.

While it would be a whole lot greener, the miners would never let this happen anyway.

Not at all. Lightning hubs won't be able to filter transactions, you can always close a channel on your own and do with those coins what you like. They are not anymore locked up by the hub then by the user themselves. Two parties are only able to lock each other's funds for a limited amount of time, if they don't cooperate, after which they can use their funds securely, just like before.


It isn't that mining gives an intrinsic value it is more that it gives you intrinsic security. It doesn't necessarily bind the value of bitcoins to the real world value of electricity, but instead it binds a real world mathematical problem to the security of the network. Bitcoin is secured by real world, but it isn't financially backed up by real world, that is the choice of users.

No need for it. There is too much money in the trading. If I earn 10% even, daily even, on BTC, then I am only going to gain 0.1 BTC per day on 1 BTC and that is nowhere near the amount that the trading power of 1 BTC can generate daily. That is like using paper currency to burn for heat rather than paying for a heater.

No this is a bad idea.

To much bitcoin generating will cause decrease in price.

however,it will increase transaction speed.

I dont think they will add this feature anytime soon.

You all say that this is a bad idea. But what will you do when all Bitcoin coins are mined? Which blocks will the transactions then fall into?
This is a compulsory necessity. And so that the price of bitcoin does not fall, POS can be set at 0.1% per annum.

Miners could go looking for green grass and relax, after years of "hard work".  ;D

Of course, it's very bad idea.
21 Million supply is enough to keep the value in the coin, for decades.
... unless, new technology revolution come, and new Bitcoin will be born.

This is very bad idea.

Why would you give more money to institutions like FBI? They are owning thousands of millions dollars worth of confiscated bitcoin. And POS implementation will require a hard fork which is one very risky intervention.

or use bitcoin on poloniex loan service you still have 10% interest per years so it similar with pos

I think it's about time we addressed the environmental impact mining is having and will continue to have into the future unless a better algorithm is implemented that would not require such vast electrical resources yet still produce valid work that can be validated.

I see people like you connecting PoS with the inflation. PoS is just a consensus algorithm, it has nothing to do with the monetary policy.
You can have an inflation using PoW just as well, and you can have PoS without inflation. They have nothing in common.
There will be blocks in Bitcoin after last coin is mined as well and miners will be only earning from the mining fees of the transactions, which should increase by that time in value.


You make a good point. Governments size a lot of Bitcoin when they raid. This could give them power to censor Bitcoin as well after they raid few big dark markets.


I am afraid that Bitcoin will always produce a lot of electricity. Cost of mining rigs are usually not the limiting factor for big miners, but the actual power that they can get into the building. Some real world resources need to be spent to secure the network, this is the whole point of blockchain, figuring out a way to bind Internet presence with the real world by giving problems that requires real world resources to be solved and it does it all in a decentralized manner. I know this is a pretty radical point of view, but I think that PoS blockchain is not a blockchain. It simply doesn't have any limiting factor that keeps the attackers from spamming the network with malicious votes on what the next block will be. This is better known as "The nothing at stake" vulnerability.

Now we might make a real world resource be something other then electricity, like hardware, but it is the same point. The point is that we need to make electricity production ( as well as all the other productions ) more ecofriendly, not trying to cut costs on security.

No, no one wants it and that is the purpose of other coins, so if that is what you want, there are plenty of them out there, and most of them failed because that is not what the people want. POS is for those that are old and use the "sit around and make little trickles of money" thought forum. This is the place of real money, big money and big dreams, and that is not POS.