Bitcoin Forum

Alternate cryptocurrencies => Altcoin Discussion => Topic started by: fulcare on November 12, 2014, 08:36:28 PM



Title: Why POW is dead.
Post by: fulcare on November 12, 2014, 08:36:28 PM
Think of it like this, we already mined and made the money ie Bitcoin so why keep making/mining more money and all the waste energy that comes with that.

Now it makes sense to use the mined money ie BCT to buy into other currencies or assets.


POW is dead.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: cryptogeeknext on November 12, 2014, 08:45:37 PM
I guess that continuing with the original idea that was put in place by Satoshi is an excercise in discipline.
If we start changing and adjusting the system at our whim then the hard limit of 21 million coins might be the next target and so on.

At some point we will no longer recognize Bitcoin for what it used to be, and the idea of keeping any promise would vanish into oblivion. Would you trust the money system that is constantly changing not keeping the original promise? Sounds a lot like today's politics to me.

Time will tell, but so far the market favors stability.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: rocoro on November 12, 2014, 08:51:03 PM
At some point we will no longer recognize Bitcoin for what it used to be, and the idea of keeping any promise would vanish into oblivion. Would you trust the money system that is constantly changing not keeping the original promise? Sounds a lot like today's politics to me.


You have to take into account simple economics and numbers.  They don't lie.
Bitcoin and other PoW coins are not efficient to mine - if the numbers don't work out and they are not profitable,  eventually there will be no more value in these coins.

Simple as that,  numbers and facts don't lie.



Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: fulcare on November 12, 2014, 08:52:15 PM
I guess that continuing with the original idea that was put in place by Satoshi is an excercise in discipline.
If we start changing and adjusting the system at our whim then the hard limit of 21 million coins might be the next target and so on.

At some point we will no longer recognize Bitcoin for what it used to be, and the idea of keeping any promise would vanish into oblivion. Would you trust the money system that is constantly changing not keeping the original promise? Sounds a lot like today's politics to me.

Time will tell, but so far the market favors stability.


Bitcoin IS the stability. Now we buy other digital assets. Most serious altcoins these days are not really currencies but tokens to be used within a system. When we buy into POS we are really buying into an asset, a company or a service...not a currency.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: belmonty on November 12, 2014, 08:52:22 PM
I guess that continuing with the original idea that was put in place by Satoshi is an excercise in discipline.
If we start changing and adjusting the system at our whim then the hard limit of 21 million coins might be the next target and so on.

At some point we will no longer recognize Bitcoin for what it used to be, and the idea of keeping any promise would vanish into oblivion. Would you trust the money system that is constantly changing not keeping the original promise? Sounds a lot like today's politics to me.

Time will tell, but so far the market favors stability.

The devs cannot change anything unless the majority of bitcoin miners agree to use a new modified wallet. It's the same with POW alts, if the miners reject a change there is no way the devs can force it on them.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: gagalady on November 12, 2014, 08:53:18 PM
Very simple monopoly - Mining Farm


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: onemorebtc on November 12, 2014, 08:55:10 PM
Quote from: fulcare link=topic=855877.msg9524187#msg9524187
When we buy into POS we are really buying into an asset, a company or a service...not a currency.

if thats true why even bother to use something decentralized?
the company or service provider could simple setup a webserver where you see your tokens.
much more effecient...


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: cryptogeeknext on November 12, 2014, 09:14:24 PM
At some point we will no longer recognize Bitcoin for what it used to be, and the idea of keeping any promise would vanish into oblivion. Would you trust the money system that is constantly changing not keeping the original promise? Sounds a lot like today's politics to me.

You have to take into account simple economics and numbers.  They don't lie.
Bitcoin and other PoW coins are not efficient to mine - if the numbers don't work out and they are not profitable,  eventually there will be no more value in these coins.

Simple as that,  numbers and facts don't lie.

Well, the system was designed to be self-balancing, so no worries with the numbers here.
If it's not so profitable to mine, then miners will switch their rigs off, which in turn would lead to decrease in difficulty until it becomes again profitable to mine, and so on.

I think the question of PoW vs PoS is more fundamental. Would you like work to create money or would you like money to create money? I don't have a very good answer to that, but the latter sounds a lot like what we have today with fiat and the former sounds like what we should have in a resource-balanced economy.

Also, check out this thread about PoW, it might be somewhat relevant:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855520.0


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: pedrog on November 12, 2014, 09:52:45 PM
http://forthesakeofscience.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cant-tell-if-stupid-or-trolling.jpg


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: sandor111 on November 12, 2014, 10:06:29 PM
There is more to mining than just generating coins.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Alejandro Taquito on November 13, 2014, 02:01:20 AM
Mining supports the blockchain network too and the transactions.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Don Flamenco on November 13, 2014, 02:19:15 AM
There is more to mining than just generating coins.

Yep.  Exactly.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: hulk on November 13, 2014, 07:22:32 AM
Mining supports the blockchain network too and the transactions.

Not really unless you have a lot of hash, those cloud mining company and manufacturer take up a big portion of the network hashrate. Home miner's hashrate is too little to have any impact..


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: fiatpete on November 13, 2014, 11:29:59 AM
Are there any PoS coins without dev controlled checkpoints yet?


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: devphp on November 13, 2014, 12:12:06 PM
Are there any PoS coins without dev controlled checkpoints yet?

NXT has automatic rolling checkpoints, 720 blocks deep, controlled by software ("automatic rolling"), called blockchain re-org mechanism.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: hack_ on November 13, 2014, 12:24:00 PM
Please understand some basic concepts first like
1) What is PoW and what is PoS
2 ) what is their main function ?
3) what are their respective pros and cons

If you get that then add the monetization factors and consider each model separately as well as the hybrids.

My own findings say that the current implementations of PoS are dead and that PoW still has a ton of life in it.

Security over expediency. Your worry as a miner is how to earn coin, my worry as a developer is how to secure what you do earn.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: KMN on November 13, 2014, 12:29:23 PM
bucause u r proof of shit?


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Wildwest on November 13, 2014, 01:02:19 PM
Guldencoin Devs are building a simulator and then building a new algorithm for Guldencoin, the simulator they will be making open source for other POW coins to test against. Guldencoin will be the test to see if POW will survive or not, I know if it was POS it would probably be top 20 already with everything that it has going for it but multipools keep dumping on it.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: deliciousowl on November 13, 2014, 01:10:52 PM
Well, I really don't get the concept of PoS. Doesn't that violate Godel's Incompleteness Theorem...? How can a system possibly secure itself? I think it's a road to centralization.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Bluestreet on November 13, 2014, 01:11:21 PM
Guldencoin Devs are building a simulator and then building a new algorithm for Guldencoin, the simulator they will be making open source for other POW coins to test against. Guldencoin will be the test to see if POW will survive or not, I know if it was POS it would probably be top 20 already with everything that it has going for it but multipools keep dumping on it.

Guldencoins value is great at the moment. You can buy them and know in a weeks time the price hasn't dropped 50% for no reason. It has enough buy support at these prices and is rising gradually from at one stage ranked 170 and now rank 55. It's going to be top 20 soon, it's just a matter of time especially with all the project coming out before the end of the year.

https://timeline.guldencoin.com/ --> It doesn't matter if it's POW or POS or whatever when you have updates like this.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: devphp on November 13, 2014, 01:12:08 PM
Well, I really don't get the concept of PoS. Doesn't that violate Godel's Incompleteness Theorem...? How can a system possibly secure itself? I think it's a road to centralization.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=848440.msg9529073#msg9529073


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Buffer Overflow on November 13, 2014, 01:53:51 PM
Think of it like this, we already mined and made the money ie Bitcoin so why keep making/mining more money and all the waste energy that comes with that.

Now it makes sense to use the mined money ie BCT to buy into other currencies or assets.


POW is dead.

I don't think you fully understand the role of the miners.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: fiatpete on November 13, 2014, 04:53:03 PM
Are there any PoS coins without dev controlled checkpoints yet?

NXT has automatic rolling checkpoints, 720 blocks deep, controlled by software ("automatic rolling"), called blockchain re-org mechanism.

Thanks for the reply, could you elaborate on how the checkpoints are 'controlled by software'? Is this some sort of consensus amongst nodes to agree the block 720 blocks ago can never be replaced even in a longer chain? Also out of interest how much time does it take to produce 720 blocks and many blocks are staking coins locked for?


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: devphp on November 13, 2014, 04:55:44 PM
Are there any PoS coins without dev controlled checkpoints yet?

NXT has automatic rolling checkpoints, 720 blocks deep, controlled by software ("automatic rolling"), called blockchain re-org mechanism.

Thanks for the reply, could you elaborate on how the checkpoints are 'controlled by software'? Is this some sort of consensus amongst nodes to agree the block 720 blocks ago can never be replaced even in a longer chain? Also out of interest how much time does it take to produce 720 blocks and many blocks are staking coins locked for?

Yeah, it's consensus among nodes. More details in the whitepapers:
https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/nxt-papers-whitepapers-academic-and-economic/
720 blocks on average is about 20 hours.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: neuroMode on November 13, 2014, 05:39:44 PM
POW is only evolving - see Myriadcoin.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: devphp on November 13, 2014, 05:54:31 PM
POW is only evolving - see Myriadcoin.

It always amazes me that PoW fanboys never give a flying f*ck about Myriadcoin. I mean if they truely believed in PoW, they would be supporting Myriadcoin, because it's the most secure of all PoW cryptos, but no, all they do is care about their mining profits, that's why PoW is dead, because miners dump most of what they mine, and that's not going to change.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: thelonecrouton on November 13, 2014, 06:38:07 PM
BTC and most PoW alts have blockchains that are effectively controlled by 3,4, maybe 5 people. Calling this 'decentralised' is a joke.

Centralised mining pools are a complete perversion of Satoshi's vision. They do not 'secure the network' they just provide convenient points of failure for attackers to exploit.

Anyone so inclined could destroy BTC by the simple coercion of 3 individuals whose identity is widely known. This is not security, it's a liability. BTC could be completely tanked for under $10000, depending on how many plane tickets the bad guy had to buy to kidnap the children of those 3 people.

Mention this fact to miners though and you just get a froth of entitled rage, and nonsense about 'biting the hand that feeds you.' You don't need petaflops of compute power to process a few transactions per second and write them to the distributed ledger.

Distributed PoW has value, centralised pools provide none.

If a coin uses PoW, p2pool should be mandatory.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: neuroMode on November 13, 2014, 11:57:49 PM
POW is only evolving - see Myriadcoin.

It always amazes me that PoW fanboys never give a flying f*ck about Myriadcoin. I mean if they truely believed in PoW, they would be supporting Myriadcoin, because it's the most secure of all PoW cryptos, but no, all they do is care about their mining profits, that's why PoW is dead, because miners dump most of what they mine, and that's not going to change.

I can definitely see the point of miner dumping, and I can definitely imagine POW innovation where miner dumping is offset or even minimized. I wrote an article on that here: http://coinbrief.net/myriadcoin-merge-mining/

I think some of the Myriad neglect is just due to people overlooking it or not being exposed to it yet. A lot of the cryptocurrency business here is just "pick a coin or dev it and then do all you can to pump the value then exit". There are the greedy people, tech people, and idealists here. I think Myriad attracts the latter 2 and it is helping the foundation of Myriad continue to progress.

You would think a lot of the new altcoins today will have a hard time "getting to the top" and "staying at the top" if Bitcoiners see it as a threat. Once the dust settles you will see (in my opinion) Myriad rise to the top since it has robust protection against just some huge Bitcoin farm overtaking it while the nethash remains "relatively" low. This is how you cement your path onwards and upwards when starting amidst a craze of coin launches, scams, and different style of blockchain securities.

If you want to see some more of the beauty of Myriad's multi-POW system, just check out this merged-mining p2pool hub for Myriad's 5 algorithms. This is how foundations are built and we push people to p2pool mine over regular pool mining from the start. Bitcoin is heavily reliant on centralized pools to survive. If we begin a p2pool culture with Myriad ON TOP of it's 5 decentralized mining algorithms....I think we have a better future in store. Of course, this isn't going to happen overnight. But I like to think we are ahead of the curve and people will see the virtues of Myriad.

PS This isn't a sheep/sock-puppet post. Myriad has no premine, no instamine, no IPO or whatever.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: Spoetnik on November 14, 2014, 08:26:22 AM
POW gives guys the chance too use existing hardware to start

not dead..


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: zing96 on November 15, 2014, 05:58:29 PM
POW gives guys the chance too use existing hardware to start

not dead..

PoW is not dead, but I think GPU mining is.  I don't know how any little guy with a few GPUs can compete with renting miners, etc.  I packed up my GPUs a while ago.  It's just not profitable.  Even with free electricity, the amount of time to maintain miners is almost not worth it.


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: digitalblock on November 15, 2014, 06:43:17 PM
Well, I really don't get the concept of PoS. Doesn't that violate Godel's Incompleteness Theorem...? How can a system possibly secure itself? I think it's a road to centralization.

I agree with you 100% ;D ;D ;D


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: digitalblock on November 15, 2014, 06:50:54 PM
POW gives guys the chance too use existing hardware to start

not dead..

PoW is not dead, but I think GPU mining is.  I don't know how any little guy with a few GPUs can compete with renting miners, etc.  I packed up my GPUs a while ago.  It's just not profitable.  Even with free electricity, the amount of time to maintain miners is almost not worth it.

Trading is more profitable , when a coin gets on the market wait till they finished having there fun with sayings to the moon. Then when the price drops buy, when the coin hits another market sell at three times. You can make more trading, as I'm stiill mining with asics with wafflepool and gpu mining alts, cpu mining cpu coins and i dont make close to as much i make with trading.  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D


Title: Re: Why POW is dead.
Post by: hack_ on November 16, 2014, 05:11:41 AM
POW gives guys the chance too use existing hardware to start

not dead..

PoW is not dead, but I think GPU mining is.  I don't know how any little guy with a few GPUs can compete with renting miners, etc.  I packed up my GPUs a while ago.  It's just not profitable.  Even with free electricity, the amount of time to maintain miners is almost not worth it.

It all depends on the "miracle" Algorithm of the year, there are a lot of them with GPU implementation so if someone releases a profitable coin (hopefully with merged mining) we'll see them make a comeback.