Bitcoin Forum

Perhaps the next addition to bitcoin or some altcoin should have methods to dissuade miners from switching chains

A few ideas:

The probability of mining a block depends on a moving window that determines how many blocks have been previously mined by that address.

Reward for addresses who mine regularly are higher

Some sort of PoS and PoW combination (PoS alone will lead to miners building on competing chains simultaneously).

Any other suggestions?

Addresses really should not be reused, including addresses that receive the block reward from the coinbase transaction.

If you give advantages to existing miners, you would only encourage further centralisation of mining.  Changing the reward also results in issues with the 21 million total capitalisation.  Screwing with the current formula should be done with extreme caution, if it even has to be done at all.  There's a pretty large chance of making a mess that can't be fixed if we get that wrong.

The best way to discourage (because no one should be trying to prevent things in a permissionless system) switching chains is to give this chain the best natural incentives to mine.  Trying to lock miners in against their will probably isn't the best way to go about incentivising them.  Generally that just means making sure this chain maintains the most economic activity and maybe, just maybe, not polarising the blocksize issue so much that it results in a near-miss of a permanent split in the community.  It's not entirely fair to blame them wanting to switch chains if we completely disregard their views on how this chain should go forward.  You can't have your cake and eat it.

yes that's why its probably going to be an altcoin since it requires major changes. Also, I see nothing wrong in forcing someone to behave according to protocol. For instance signatures force people to not steal funds.

Any barrier that discourages new entrants to the mining field is bad for Bitcoin in my opinion.

Miners are already forced to follow the rules within the protocol.  What you're talking about is trying to force them to stay confined to one protocol, preventing them being able to leave it and use another protocol.  That's something else entirely.  How would you like it if someone tried to force you not to sell your BTC for altcoins?  That's no one else's decision but yours.  Similarly, it's no one else's decision but the miners where they point their hardware at any given moment.

I wish you all the best in launching your "sign up for slavery" altcoin.   ::)

You cannot fight personal Greed...

There are visible drawbacks, though.  The Emergency Difficulty Adjustment BCH implemented has resulted in them being (at the time of writing) 9773 blocks ahead of the BTC chain, which means, causally, they've also altered their distribution and supply rate.  BTC has a circulating supply of 16,683,150 BTC, whereas BCH currently has 16,805,300, over 100k extra coins in circulation.  Being able to make credible and predictable guarantees about the total supply is an important aspect of Bitcoin's overall appeal.

I don't think it is humanely possible to control someone's mining interest and it's not right as well. However, among the ideas listed by you, I can say rewarding a long term and good miner with incentives can prevent their will to go for another coin. The first idea will discourage the miners and that is bad for the bitcoin eco system. But incentive is the only thing that can keep the miners glued to a single coin.

correct me if i'm wrong: the problem is the "sudden" increase or decrease of hashpower. Most particularly a sudden "hidden" increase like a selfish mining attack. And that would be unnoticeable until too late.

I support this idea, but only because I feel that miners are misusing their power to force people to do what they want. You

can have the choice to decide what you want to mine, but then you have to stick to that. This jumping between forks is

only benefitting them and millions of people are suffering because of that.  >:(

addresses should not be reused.

Sounds like a double standard when you've got an Ethereum-related sig.  You have the choice to decide what coins or chains you want to transact on, but you aren't limited to one.  So if you don't have to stick to one thing, why should they? 

And the more important point you need to consider is that carrots are generally considered a better incentive than sticks.  If you make Bitcoin so restrictive that miners have no freedom of any kind, other chains/coins will definitely start to look more appealing by comparison.  If you successfully implemented something like this, you might get the opposite effect to what you intended.  More miners may leave, and for good this time.

I'm confident you won't get past the brainstorming phase with any of this, because it's not even remotely practical and would likely have too many negative consequences to be worth the risk.

lol :D quickseller's post copy pasted by bots blatantly in the same thread and even on the same page

anyway... back on the topic
next difficulty is based on total last hash power solving the last block, am I right?
is it possible to make the difficulty adjustment more responsive and adapt faster?
by the recent event, I can see the difficulty stayed high even when lots miners abandoned BTC
that resulted a big gap between blocks because the imbalance of hash power and current difficulty
is there a way to improve difficulty retarget so that miners hopping would be less profitable

No. Its the average time interval between each of the generation of the last 2016 block at the point of difficulty adjustment.
Yes. You have to switch to a different algorithm like Kimoto Gravity Well which does have quite a few downsides. It isn't especially useful for Bitcoin and it should not be implemented nor anything regarding the difficulty should be changed.
Uh. It was more about the rise in the price of BCH. If it were to keep rising, miners wouldn't consider mining Bitcoins at all.

I dont think this is a good idea since addresses should be generally only used once. And additionally this leads to centralization of mining.
Big miners get higher probabilty of mining the next block.. thats a catch-22.


Thats basically like the first point? I don't see a considerable difference. Leads to centralization and not the way bitcoin is intended to be used.


There is nothing which speaks against miners who mine on different chains simultaneously, as long as its PoS.

Its kind of hard to get miners stop switching from BTC to BCH mining and vice versa. The easiest way would be for one currency to use a different algorithm.
But since BCH follower think its the "real" bitcoin (until it crashes to 10-200$.. which very likely will happen) there won't be any updates to mining algorithms.