Bitcoin Forum

This thread has nothing to do with altcoins and was either mistakenly or intentionally(for unknown reasons) moved to this section by a moderator.

I generally agree with these principles:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes

1) Bitcoin is defined with 21 million units
2) Demurrage is prohibited
3) Rules which increase centralization are prohibited

Additionally, I would like to suggest

4) Any changes which destroy fungibility (I.E..blacklists) are prohibited
5) Any changes which destroy the Pseudonymity of Bitcoin is prohibited

These 5 principles are core ideals which define bitcoin and any divergence from these and I will consider the hardfork an Alt and quickly lose all interest in supporting these changes.

What is listed as disputed involves changing the consensus mechanism away from 100% PoW. As many know I have been very critical of the security weaknesses found in existing PoS implementations so am certainly no alt shill or fanboi, regardless am open to a fruitful discussion of different mechanisms to better secure Bitcoin at lower costs.

Vitalik Buterin has been a great contributor to the bitcoin space and has written a recent article which appears to address many NaS problems:
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/ (https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/)

Personally, I think we should be open to discussing these ideas honestly and don't make any rush decisions in suggesting a hardfork. There are some huge elephants in the room we all must acknowledge between the near impossibility of mining at a profit for the average user, reliance on centralization of pools, and the security costs from disposable ASIC's and electricity.

Discuss....

IMO, if you think Satoshi done wrong, prove it, release alt that corrects all his "errors", then sit back and wait for it to cruise on past bitcoin next week millenium.

The nice thing about Bitcoin consensus is that there are no rules and no prohibitions. Anyone that wants to go against any of your principles and prohibitions is free to do so. The trick is to get people to follow them.

Satoshi was a genius but don't worship him as a god. If you have been paying attention the core developers have been fixing many of his errors for the past 3 years with the sloppy tarball of a coding mess he left behind.

I actually agree with this. Vitalik and others should standardize their proposals, there should be a time period of discussion and criticism. The changes should be implemented on either an alt or sidechain for a significant period of time (1-3 years) to prove itself before we even consider a hardfork with Bitcoin.

The question I have for you is are you completely opposed to a hardfork away from PoW to a provably better mechanism or hybrid PoW/TaPoS consensus algo?

Is PoW a fundamental principle that defines Bitcoin or can bitcoin evolve as needed?

As long as nobody gets screwed over (e.g. ASIC designers) I might be open to this.

Please explain "demmurage" in this context.  I don't know what you mean.

It is a tax applied to a stakeholder of a currency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29

Demurrage is the cost associated with owning or holding currency over a given period.

Freicoin is a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. Demurrage is levied at 4.89% per annum.

Some - artificial in this case - cost of holding.  See freicoin for example for about a 4.9% charge per year.

In other words, just because your coins exist doesn't mean they'll lose value every year due to fees.

One description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demurrage_%28currency%29

I believe you say that problem had been considered by many people, as for why, everyone has their each reason.

I get the impression that you don't understand what the word "consensus" means or how difficult it is to change it once it is established.

I understand exactly what it means and the difficulty in getting most of the community to switch software. What have I said, suggests otherwise?

as I mentioned in the other thread, even if Vitalik's ESS scheme solves the NaS issue,
(meaning people won't be able to vote on multiple chains simultaneously with no penalty)
it doesn't mean (as far as I can tell) that miners won't try to compete with each other
using computing power to form better chains faster than everyone else, and we may just
end up back with a sort of PoW system.  So, it's quite possible there won't be any energy savings,
just complication.

Let me try to translate Vitelik's bulshiteese into more straightforward English:

Quote from: me in somebody's else voice

"I have zero experience in working with actual financial software. I even have no amateur's interest in learning how it works. I'm writing a demagoguery targeted at the lowest common denominator of code monkey: Javascript or PHP programmer for the web services."

                                                                                                                                                                                    ©2112

Are you trying to suggest Vitalik isn't a prolific programmer or hasn't co-developed his own software stack?

https://github.com/vbuterin

I'm saying he doesn't know much about anything.....here is a typical Vitalik statement:

Vitalik Buterin:

"…lower threshold that the total satoshi count manages to fall just below: the largest possible integer that can be exactly represented in floating point format"

Bullshit detector tripped!

Floating point since forever had two flavors: binary and decimal. The most well known standards are: IEEE 754-1985, IEEE 854-1987 & IEEE 754-2008. The only remaining question is which flavor of bullshit is being served here:

1) undereducated/incompetent
2) intentional deception/preliminary setup for future fraud
3) two-for-the-price-of-one mixture of the above

Standard links for those who are not afraid of the truth and not afraid to admit that they may have slept through some lecture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point
http://speleotrove.com/decimal/

                                                                                               ©2112

That's ridiculous.   You don't need to know the history of IEEE standards to be a good programmer,
and even if he did, he may have been speaking loosely.

I'm no fan of ethereum, etc, but to say he doesn't know what he's talking about because he didn't
use the terminology you expected when discussing data types is kinda nuts IMO.


 

Shouldn't this be in the altcoin section?

This topic is about Bitcoin, not altcoins. I don't really care about any alts.

Bitcoin is POW last time I checked.

Thank you for offering your opinion, not everyone agrees that is a defining characteristic of Bitcoin that should never be changed.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes

"Disputed

    Adding alternatives to Proof of Work such as Proof of Stake. This could change core bitcoin too much, but with widespread agreement of some sort might be possible."

If you carefully read my comments instead of having a knee jerk reaction you will see that I am not even suggesting we change away from PoW either. I am merely suggesting we discuss it and be open to learning.

Who is the aurthor of that quote?

I gave you the link already, the author is clearly listed in the wiki - eldentyrell

Bitcoin White Paper
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

HTML Copy
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/

RPOW is used to solve the Byzantine General’s Problem, a problem in ordinary computing that demonstrates through “game theory” how a group of potential co-operators can come to THE BEST CONSENSUS even with the possibility of having malicious operators among them. 
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs614/2004sp/papers/lsp82.pdf

Understood, Your vote has been counted. 100% PoW is a foundational characteristic of Bitcoin according to your opinion and you never want to see it changed even if a better alternative is discovered, one or multiple 51% attacks are successful, and/or other alts are surpassing Bitcoin because they have superior qualities.

Now back to the discussion at hand regarding other individuals opinions, praise or criticism of Vitalik's proposal, and a discussion of hypothetical scenarios when and why we would want to diverge from PoW.

There was this recent thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=860194.0

Which makes some pertinent points.  

Essentially, the arguments posted there can be
summarized as "proof of work is working just fine
and can't really be improved."

Economically, we can't really save money/energy
because people will always compete and spend
resources to make profits.

Centralization/Decentralization is more debatable
IMO.

But, seems that PoW is the simple, straightforward,
proven way to go, and can't be made more "efficient."

I would however be interested in seeing if 51% attack
vectors could be addressed somehow with other elements.

PoW is efficient? Perhaps, you intend to suggest PoW is efficient for a secure distributed system?

This article http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-and-mining/   seems to suggest PoW is superior because of the initial distribution effect and the costs of creating bitcoin are almost as much as the costs to produce them which benefits the community because it allows for a fair distribution based upon investment.

I agree with these sentiments but they present a Fallacy of Limited Choice by not exploring other methods of meeting these goals while increasing security efficiently.

For example: An algo could be designed with vitalik's proposal where a hybrid PoW/ TaPoS algo is used where full nodes or p2p miners are incentivized with part of the block reward and less of an emphasis is placed upon burning more electricity.

Efficient?  Not more so than other schemes, but not less so.   Dynamics of competition mean that the amount spent on security will be roughly equivalent to the rewards given, regardless of the security model.
 

It is precisely Vitalik's point in the paper that you can secure a protocol more efficiently and whether or not the community chooses to invest the same amount to attain a higher level of security is a discussion we can choose to have.

I.E... could a hybrid approach which incentivized the creation of more nodes, p2p pool mining, and a more resilient network be superior vs the current trend of centralization in pool mining and a precipitous drop off in nodes?

when? never.

why? because.

I don't know if that is the thrust of his argument, but if so, I don't think he demonstrated that.  His idea of requiring security deposits may in fact address the NaS issue in that people can no longer vote on multiple chains simultaneously without penalty...but what would stop people from trying to prepare chains in advance and then only pay the deposit when they have a winning chain?  If that happens, then you are back to square one:  People will be spend spending money to build CPUs (or ASICS or whatever) to find better chains, and you will be back to the level of people spending the same amount as the rewards.

@ op

If you want to get consensus from the people about a good bitcoin subject that really needs to be addressed:

The 51% issue and actual possible solutions listed below that actually exist and need to be implemented.

Better way to mine:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=281180.0

Proof of idle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2TPeQ9mnA

I am not suggesting that his proposal is any good or without flaws. I am not even suggesting we diverge from 100% PoW either. However, we need to be open to learning new things and questioning our own biases from time to time.

His paper addresses your concerns with not only deposits but also TaPoS and exponential subjective scoring to address all these possible attack vectors.

Yes, I am familiar with these proposals and think they are great ideas thus is the reason I have been suggesting incentivizing p2p mining pools. This is only one facet of Bitcoin's problems however.

I Agree.



Actually, I don't think it did address my concern.

The bit about ESS is mostly describing how splitting the network would be avoided.
And there's some stuff in there about the consequences of the deposits
(what he's referring to as "inefficieny of sacrafice"), but that is something different.

My concern is that "miners" will try to compete to gain more rewards by
gaming whatever PoS algorithm is in operation...and they will use greater
and greater resources to do so, until is no longer profitable.  Therefore,
there is no efficiency advantage. 

In other words, take away NaS, but what you are left with is
good old fashioned competition.

If you feel he addressed that concern, please reiterate the solution for me.

In his proposal the escalating competition you speak of drives up the value of the coin by more "virtual miners" freezing more assets as deposits and in turn lowering the prices of goods and services for everyone else all without needing to buy specialized asics or burn a ton of electricity.

The costs for security are therefore used in the service as insurance and deflationary benefits and may stabilize the currency a bit more.

But what if they don't freeze the assets until they find the chain they want?  Kind of like selfish mining?

A selfish mining attack can only be successful with a large enough mining pool and why specifically Vitalik's proposal would make this form of attack much more difficult to carry out as no one person owns that amount of stake, not even Satoshi. Another solution is deposits can be taken before, instead of when broadcasting the transaction to prevent this attack.

(Selfish mining in the sense that people are working on chains in private.)

Taking deposits in advance wouldn't address the "issue" either because they
could still work on the chains in private.  The deposits have nothing
to do with that, they just prevent the NaS issue.

To me its not really a "problem" per se, but the implication is that
there's no free ride with proof of stake, at least as far as I can see.

People will still expend energy to come up with the
best solutions and the energy expenditure
won't go down.

Perhaps we are talking past each other but how do TaPoS/deposit miners expend the same or more energy than PoW miners under the same attack?
With Vitalik's proposal their isn't an exponentially increasing dynamic difficulty using more physical resources but only a increasing difficulty either penalizing the miners or taking more deposits, all of which use practically no energy.

I don't really know to be honest, and I suppose it would depend on the specific PoS implementation...
but essentially, its back to the NaS problem of people preparing multiple chains.   The only difference
is that the deposits prevent you from broadcasting them all immediately...but miners could still
spend extra resources and go "outside" the intended system (in a similar way that selfish mining
can happen in Bitcoin outside the intended methodology)..and when that happens, people start spending
extra resources (computing power).

I don't know under what circumstances this would/could happen or not, just putting it
out there as a possible reason why there might ultimately be no efficiency win -- and this
is what the truthcoin article is saying as well.

Extra computing power doesn't help under these circumstance as we are dealing with "virtual miners" using a unique digital asset to create limited "virtual computing power" that cannot be recreated outside the system.

The truthcoin article made some good points but was misleading in suggesting that the amount of "wasted resources" correlates with the quality of security. Security is not directly correlated to wasted resources and only indirectly related.

not so sure about that because someone can always create new transactions and thus new combinations... and in this way they can compute different outcomes...off to bed ....later :-)

PoW allows competition for control to stay an open game for as long as innovation happens (indefinitely).

PoS would eventually concentrate control to a group of major stakeholders and then no amount of innovation will be able to change that. If it's not immediate, then it's the end game of this model.

If you want Bitcoin to bring change, stop thinking profit, think control, think long term.

This is a salient point as one must be fair to all investors and existing businesses who have bet on PoW with capital. I believe that if it is wise one could easily create a compromise where miners and asic manufacturers benefit from any changes.

This is a REALLY good point.  Even if PoS could "save energy",
do we really that kind of system?

Yup!
Let the kings compete for control, while people compete for profit.
Seems pretty balanced and fair to me. This way no one gets bored and turns to evil :)

The law of conservation of energy would make sure that no energy is "wasted" in the process, just transformed.

I noticed the op posted this in a section where gmaxwell is not a mod.....yet his monkey still got spanked :-[

Edit for typo.

I have been highly critical of PoS in the past where large stakeholders are rewarded based upon forging unfairly benefiting the wealthy. This has nothing to do with the conversation though as I have already clearly expressed a prohibition upon any changes that increased centralization and rewarding the largest stakeholders for doing nothing would not only lead to more centralization but present security risks to Bitcoin.

The algo can be designed where the largest stakeholders don't unfairly benefit from sitting on their bag quite easily.



What does this even mean?

i think he's saying centralization is inevitable with most kinds of PoS.

If that is what he is suggesting than it is odd statement to make as it is trivial to design an algorithm which forces or encourages decentralization, even with PoS. What is tricky is combining the right security and incentives as well into the consensus mechanism.

I.E.. having Bitcoin incorporate a hybrid PoW /TaPoS algo where either some of the transaction fees or mining rewards aren paid to full nodes/or p2p miners would both encourage decentralization and make Bitcoin more robust.

I already have some concerns with Vitalik's proposal and am adding more concerns as I review it further but would like to hear more specific concerns rather than knee jerk reactions and generalizations(not coming from you BTW)

It is indeed possible that PoW is superior to everything else and Satoshi got it right the first time. What I find interesting and concerning is that many people aren't even willing to test or study new consensus designs. I have a long history of attacking PoS and many alts in general and am making a very reasonable suggestion of entertaining an idea and studying Vitalik's proposals followed by a very conservative approach of incorporating this algo into an alt or sidechain so it can be tested over the course of years before even thinking about discussing a hardfork and this is the reaction I get.

There appears to be a sense of protectionism, reverence and faith towards Satoshi's original code, which is silly because most of his code has already been thrown out or changed.

I really like the open minded attitude.

For me, I'm not too concerned with centralization or energy.

I would however be interested in discovering if some modifcations
could be made to Bitcoin to make 51% attacks more difficult.

IMO, he coded it as best he knew how, but it's the vision, the economics and the math I think should remain set in stone. I believe he put much more substantial thought, research and effort into the parameters involved, and they should not be idly changed. 21M coins, 4 year block halving, POW, all things that were not just picked out of thin air.

Well the thing is that people can fork Bitcoin to create their own altcoin whenever they want (Bitcoin is open source and anyone can copy/edit it). I think the OP is suggesting certain rules in which that would say whenever certain things are changed about Bitcoin, it will no longer be considered bitcoin anymore.

How much harder would you like it to be? If you were going to attack it out of left field with all new up to the minute hardware, you'd need to add more than 100% of the current network hash, and the power facilities of about 2 of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center or about 1 of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_%28CVN-68%29

edit: clarity, math error
re-edit: no right first time
re-re-edit: srsly FFS I can't count zeros... last time...

You seem to be under the impression that a double spend attack requires a 51% hash rate which is fallacious.

You seem to ignore the risks of centralized pools being targeted by hackers or insiders temporarily attacking the network before enough miners flee.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that many large mining pools own a great deal of their equipment that ultimately they control and the cloud mining clients are powerless to revoke their hashing power in the event of an attack.  

Some homework for you good sir:  https://bitcoil.co.il/Doublespend.pdf

Yah yah, some criminal mastermind can skim a few coins maybe with temporary contrived situations. If you really really want to permanently PWN the network you'll need a solid 51% thoroughly controlled, not some handshake deal with a pool that will chicken out as soon as they see the price dive.

I am not so much concerned about the 2-3 double spends an attacker commits as being the principle threat in itself , but the damage to the reputation and perception which would destroy the trust in Bitcoin for years to come. Mtgox was bad enough and didn't even involve the protocol itself!

The same can be said about the damage done to Bitcoins perception from the "wasted" (not my opinion but others) use of electricity and ASIC's which quickly become worthless.

Satoshi is a genius, Bitcoin is wonderful, but lets not kid ourselves Bitcoin isn't perfect and needs to mature.

To me that's only a couple of a percent chance of being personally affected if you happened to be transferring coin at the time of the attack. Then when it's noticed happening, we point dual Gavins at it and pull the trigger, 48 hour fix even if attacker paid someone to get them drunk at a conference the night before.

We could use some more layers of armor plating, but not sure that switching POW would do anything than expose a whole new set of vulnerabilities, there's a couple of theoretical attacks that require substantial resources and planning. POS seems to presume rational self interest or altruism at a very low basic level, with the POW it's enforced at low levels no way out of it or round it, and it's ONLY when a large amount of resources and planning has been achieved that you can possibly do anything else, at which point everybody is watching you like a hawk. With POS, it seems more like you can 5th column it gradually.

Yes, but Bitcoin will be permanently damaged by by removing the trust we have in the system from such an attack.


Again you seem to be ignoring that a disgruntled employee or outside hacker attacking a large mining pool without a large amount of resources can attack the network.

You seem to be focusing on PoS as well which isn't exactly what the paper is talking about.

"Consensus" for Bitcoin means the people behind enough mining pools to control > 50% of the hash rate. What end users want is irrelevant.

People use the term "attack the network" a lot. Could you give examples, of what can really happen? What do these attacks look like? What damage can these "attacks" really do?

My criticism was directed towards current PoS implementations, where it's not the reward scheme that bothered me, but the fact that stake maintains permanent share of control no matter what, that's the recipe for stagnation and eventual collapse of the system. If you like the words "economic stimulus" you might hear a lot of that in the end game scenario of current PoS implementations.

The alternative mechanism seems to be proposed with PoI, but sustainable network effects might become new dangers of centralization there.

The point with PoW is that money needs to be simple, so that everyone can understand it, don't fix if it ain't broken.

End users have their finger on the price trigger, if they do not like what the mines do, they pull it, bang, crash.

Any successful attack would erode confidence in the network and would cause people to not want to hold/use any coins that are backed by the network. As a result the value of such coin would decline (like to nearly zero).

A likely attack would involve spending the same coins multiple times, resulting in all of the people who thought they received money to actually not receive money.

Regarding various attack discussions.

Remember, the good test for freedom is that it can be attacked, and you need to accept the costs of defending it, sometimes at a loss. If your freedom cannot be attacked, the chances are that you've already lost it somewhere along the way.

Non Sequitor. PoS can easily be designed where the largest stakeholders don't maintain a permanent share of control through Demurrage or a PoSV scheme. Otherwise, PoW within Bitcoin has the exact same problem. Satoshi doesn't need to buy an ASIC to maintain control of his 1 million coins.

Oh no, you don't understand control then.
If current controllers decide to freeze Satoshi's addresses then there is nothing he do about it, other than attempt to challenge the controllers, maybe even at a loss. So you need to keep an eye on mining if you are rich, but you don't get control automatically. PoW ensures competition for control.

Within Bitcoin, full nodes, not miners have ultimate control. Miners have no ability to take or destroy Satoshi's 1 million Bitcoins. An attack can freeze Satoshi from spending his coins temporarily at the cost of destroying the trust of Bitcoin altogether and forcing a fork.

Additionally, you keep on focusing on comparing Bitcoins PoW with simple PoS implementations like Nxt which is outside this conversation. I am not advocating PoS, as a viable alternative.

Perhaps you should read Vitalik's paper to get a better understanding of what this conversation is about.

So, the real threat to Bitcoin is not on the technical site, but on the PR-site. If that would be true, shouldn't we fear more about people bad-mouthing bitcoin? Oh wait, they already do and Bitcoin is still alive, although people believe that the CEO of bitcoin if a magical tux or that bitcoin was already hacked, etc.

No, full nodes have no say in what gets into blockchain and what doesn't, miners do.
My arguments are cast from the position of the end game scenario for each system.

I have to read Vitalik's papers to have an opinion, so this will have to wait a bit, but I would advocate against changing current PoW systems into something else simply because getting rid of PoW would not let it compete with other models on the common ground.

Full nodes have the ultimate control as they can fork the blockchain at whim and leave all the miners behind buring electricity in the service of no one besides themselves.

Why do you insinuate PoW is he only possible method of competition?
PoW doesn't have a monopoly of competition and it is trivial to design an algo which allows for more decentralized competition than PoW.

The basis of threat in attacking confidence within Bitcoin is indeed technical. The fact that Mtgox was able to use transaction malleability as an feeble excuse for being hacked regardless of this "flaw" or "feature" being known of before hand was a technical problem within Bitcoin that caused much damage to our ecosystem.

Sticking our head in sand and ignoring threats will not prevent bad PR or attacks from occurring. Bitcoin isn't perfect and can improve. Whether or not PoW is a perfect consensus mechanism is up for debate.

No it would be a technical issue. If the network is successfully attacked then the network does not protect your money.

It would be much worse then people "bad mouthing" bitcoin or PoW mining.

Bitcoin consensus is controlled by miners, not full nodes.
Miners won't agree to change the status quo, as they would go bankrupt.
Bitcoin will always stay PoW.

This depends upon how one defines consensus. There is a consensus mechanism between full nodes and a consensus mechanism that miners control. Full nodes can remove the power away from miners in an instant with a hard fork.

This hard fork can be protected from any threats from miners with a simple adjustment of the algorithm to remove part or all control ASIC's have over bitcoin.

The bad news for you is that any advantages or features alts have over bitcoin can quickly be incorporated from a consensus between full nodes with or without miners approval.

Anything is possible in theory, but in reality Bitcoin will stay as is, mark my words. Thus this discussion is pointless. You can see that it's pointless from very few people participating, all the early adopters are happy with the status quo. The rest listen to them and never question their authority, end of story. And you're wrong, there is no bad news for me here.

Time will tell but as the poll indicates thus far 58.3 percent of those sampled are open to change if something proves favorable. I expect these numbers to grow with increases in centralization from mining. If mining is decentralized naturally due to economics than that is fine too as this isn't an ideological battle for me between PoW or PoS but a practical battle in having the most robust and efficient system that benefits everyone.


Aren't you a Nxt shill who trolls these Bitcoin forums or do I have you mistaken for someone else? What percentage of your asset portfolio exists in Nxt vs BTC?

In full disclosure I am currently am 99% vested in BTC, and 1% vested in namecoin after selling all my litecoins. I currently do not mine but have in the past as well.

Whichever is better, PoW or PoS is fine with me, there is no bad news for me here, you're wrong.
You're right that as long as it's robust, efficient and secure, that's all that matters.
Please proceed to discuss with other members as we have found consensus )

Are you trying to suggest you are neutral on this subject matter and have posted positive aspects of PoW in the last year within this forum?

What percentage of your asset portfolio exists in Nxt vs BTC?

No, you're mistaken.
Miners produce longest valid chain, full nodes accept it.
Full nodes themselves don't produce any chain at all.

Hard fork wouldn't change much, and it's not as quick and easy as you portray.


The crypto space is a play-field for various models to compete, PoW is not the only option, though it does look quite simple and robust. Replacing PoW with something else would remove it from competition. Why would you suggest reducing the options instead of increasing them?

If it's so trivial to design a new algorithm for distributed consensus with good long-lasting characteristics of decentralization and competition, you should do it.

A hard fork can change as much or as little as it is designed to change and miners have just as much control of this as other full nodes.


Where have I suggested removing 100% proof of work is the best option? I have clearly and explicitly stated that PoW could be the best option but we should be open to testing competing mechanisms and open to the possibility of changing Bitcoin with a hardfork if and only if a better mechanism exists after years of testing.

This doesn't involve decreasing a lack of options because if changes are created as they have been in the past with multiple soft and hardforks it would be different than what currently exists in the marketplace.

What is so controversial about this? Why wouldn't you pragmatically do whats best for bitcoin? Do you have faith that PoW is simply the best because of some reverence to Satoshi's original design?

tl;dr but...

i recall the question being asked previously, and it was ascertained that there was no total agreement, however the majority seemed to react towards leaving the algo as is.

I'm still of a mind that pure POW is the best way to go, but find myself more open to the argument of a slight change towards a minimal POS and for that reason, I've voted the second option in your poll. I'd be willing to listen to any proposed change, but i'd reserve the right to make up my mind at a later date for the reason that since bitcoin is still only in 'phase 2' of mining with 25BTC blocks, it may be a good idea to implement some form of POS (?), but just, not yet.

This is a rational comment I can agree with. I already have a list of concerns with the complicated and yet to be named TaPoS-like design Vitalik has proposed but I am not going to delude myself into thinking Bitcoin is perfect either. Bitcoin has a lot of maturing to do which possibly can happen organically and naturally without any hardforks but we should be open to doing what is right for the ecosystem and supporting these fundamental principles:


1) Bitcoin is defined with 21 million units
2) Demurrage is prohibited
3) Rules which increase centralization are prohibited
4) Any changes which destroy fungibility (I.E..blacklists) are prohibited
5) Any changes which destroy the Pseudonymity of Bitcoin is prohibited


Besides 100% PoW does anybody have suggestions as to the intrinsic properties which define bitcoin that should not be changed?


P.S... Additionally, I think its foolhardy that any change can be incorporated that isn't a hybrid like compromise to appease the vested interests in the PoW mining space. To assume that bitcoin could change to 100% DPoS, TaPoS, PoS, PoI , or anything that doesn't involve PoW is a very unrealistic proposal.

Hard fork can only create new Bitcoin, the inertia of the process will make sure the old network still exists. Convincing users to converge to one or the other is what would make the whole thing quite nasty. Hard fork has never been done before at this level of adoption.


Sometimes staying true to your original core values is the best innovation.

The last Hardfork was in March 2013 and a new one is likely to happen in early to mid 2015. Are you not aware of these facts?


What happens when some of the first design principles conflict with some of the core values, namely decentralization? Would this motivate you to stay with the original design principle or change to fit the original core values?

Some people believe that nothing needs to be changed and economics with solve this dilemma naturally, others see this as a problem which requires changes . I believe there are good arguments to be made from both camps and thus am open to thinking , testing and developing solutions if the latter is true.

I'm aware. BtcGuild saved it. The hard fork wasn't successful as the system reverted to its original mode of operation. It is much easier, than the other way around. There hasn't been a successful hard fork at this level of adoption.


Well, it turns out that the original design principles are still well inline with the idea of decentralization. In case of mining, PoW ensures temporal (along the time axis) diversity of control over the system and allows competition for control to continue indefinitely. I haven't seen other proposals that would be better in this regard.

I suppose we should wait till I am vindicated when the scalability hardfork is implemented next year.


The facts indicate a precipitous drop in active nodes and a centralization of mining. To not acknowledge this means you are in denial. What some suggest is that nothing needs to be done as the laws of economics will eventually reverse this trend. This is a valid argument and the counterarguments have a lot of weight as well.

Do you at least acknowledge centralization of mining and drop off of active nodes?
At what point does one determine that something needs to be changed to reverse this direction?

Yep. We will wait and see.


I do acknowledge the drop in number of full nodes and clusterization of mining. However it seems fairly natural at this level of adoption. It still doesn't prohibit any outside player to enter the economy and challenge the incumbents without permission. If people are not satisfied with the quality of control over the system, they are free to crowd-fund farms or develop innovation and challenge the mining status quo. They are free to run full nodes too.

i don't know of this, can someone explain this please?
why the need to hardfork?

It's the block size increase. Apparently 1Mb is not enough for any serious business, and Bitcoin wants to be serious :)

ah, of course. thanks.

Nonsense. MtGox's claim that transaction marketability was behind a hack in which hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins were stolen is simply not credible. Mark tried a convenient lie to weasel out of a tight spot. I know of nobody that has looked into this claim that believes this to be even a remotely possible explanation.

Read my statement again. I clearly agree with you, but the fact that this "bug" or "feature" existed for so long allowed for Mark to trick many journalists and the public into assuming his exchange was hacked because a flaw in the protocol. Perception matters and we hold some responsibility for the negative PR for allowing a scumbag like Mark to get away with this feeble excuse .

This topic has nothing to do with Altcoins yet was moved to the altcoin section. Seems as if some moderators are heavily vested in mining/POW that they don't even want to consider Bitcoin changing to anything else. Possibly because vested ideological differences or conflicts of interests(This forum is heavily supported by the mining industry).

It is clear that I am not an altcoin shill and am a strong proponent of Bitcoin from reviewing my history and comments within this thread.
Can someone give me a rational reason why discussing the Prohibited and disputed changes of Bitcoin deserves to be in the altcoin section?

If not I am going to stop contributing in any meaningful way to this forum.

Told ya ;)

for the same reason there is still a 'simple machines forum' logo at the top right of the forum pages - becasue moderators don't really give a fuck, and most likely can't read.

- deleted -

What is simple machines?

it's the forum brand. anyone can start a simple machines forum. bitcointalk owners can't even be arsed to make a logo and change from the brand of the company who wrote the code for the forum.

There is some controversy a while ago regarding this forum and the intended 1 million dollars to "upgrade" it:

https://bitcointa.lk/threads/questions-to-theymos-about-the-1-000-000-forum-software-project.256309/

I am split on this as I can see great value in an new open source forum project but the way it was handled was anything but ideal.

According to my limited poll 62.5% of users are open to the idea of exploring other algos for Bitcoin. So the actions of one or a few moderators isn't a reflection upon the community as a whole.

Clue, if you take one pair of wheels off a car and replace them with a single wheel, it becomes a tricycle, no matter how much you want to still call it a car.

I get it that you think 100% proof of work is fundamental to bitcoin. That is fine. That what this discussion was all about. To determine how many people believe this and otherwise. Regardless, it has nothing to do with alt coins as we are talking about how Bitcoin is defined and Bitcoins properties.

completely off topic now, so i won't comment further.

Yes, please search my posts for Myriadcoin, I've always supported its idea. It was designed to fix Bitcoin's flaw of centralization and 51% attack. Here is my most recent post on it:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=855877.msg9534178#msg9534178

If Bitcoiners truely cared about technology and making PoW as secure as possible, there you go, a fine example of how Bitcoin code can be modified or Myriadcoin can be new Bitcoin. But no, bitcoin miners only care that they recoup their ASIC investments, and that's understandable and all, but when they try to cover these vested interests with false claims that PoW is secure and PoS is not, moreover, when they claim that Bitcoin implementation of PoW including the large but centralized mining network is the most secure and oh, so fair, this just stinks of bull.

Myriadcoin is a prime example of how PoW can be made an order of magnitude more secure, but wait, then those sha256 ASIC farms become unprofitable. I am all for the most secure technology, but Bitcoin just doesn't have that security any more. If it was converted to something like Myriadcoin (code), now that would be a different matter. I have been supportive of Myriadcoin technology for quite a while. I don't own Myriadcoin, I did own some in the past. I just don't see miners caring about technology, that's why I think PoW is a short-term play, and that's exactly why nothing will change in Bitcoin algorithm.

I can't believe this thread was moved to the alt section. This forum is unbelieveable.

Good one :)


Bitcoin and PoW is as simple as you can get, hence the forum logo.


Moving this thread around is a way for information to spread. People need to be educated.

At least it wasn't deleted, but I have yet to still hear a rational reason why a thread that has nothing to do with alts coming from someone who has no interest in discussing alts was moved to the alt section.



This topic has nothing to do with Altcoins and thus categorically doesn't belong here and has no use to people searching here. We all know it was moved here to die in the swamp of posts. 

I don't know the actual rationale for moving this thread, but twiddling with various aspects of Bitcoin's fundamental design is exactly the point of many different alts.

yep. sign of bitcoin going stagnant.

If you look at the forum logo, you will see that Bitcoin provides a balance point between money and control, as it allows competition for both to continue indefinitely. Rules of the game need to be stable and not change at a whim of those who don't feel competitive. You are free to create other rules and play other games though.

Bitcoin is a Proof of World system. The World is a fundamentally neutral place, as it is just a mirror. If you don't like a reflection, you don't go and change the mirror, you change yourself.

The point is, moving this highly relevant discussion away is incompetent censorship. It's worse than if the moderater just said, "All who read this in the future get this: POW is not to be changed for bitcoin. This thread is locked." so people will think twice before restarting the same argument again.

i agree. is it so dangerous to have a conversation on the matter? what are they frightened we will do with this discussion?
I recall there was a very in-depth thread on this matter previously, started, and contributed to by some very long standing members, and some core developers also. That thread was not moved to the basement. it's one thing for core developers and another for the insignificant of us.

and don't get me started on the farce that is the 'bitcoin foundation'.

As the recent PoW vs PoS discussion revealed, there are certain hidden aspects of consensus algorithms that might not be obvious to everyone, but have paramount importance in long-term survivability of the system in case where it becomes dominant on the planet and there is nowhere to run.

This is why it's important to keep competition between the systems ongoing instead of changing one system into another. This way all systems will behave and compete for participants.

I believe that moving this thread wasn't an act of censorship, but rather an invitation to experiment with various improvements and let them mature in the alt space.

The experiments have been ongoing and don't need any invitations from the bitcoin community. This thread has nothing to do with PoS explicitly and wasn't even advocating moving away from 100% PoW and I have already stated that it is possible the 100% PoW is the best option forever and Satoshi got it perfect the first time around. The details of experimenting with different algos has absolutely nothing to do with this topic.

This thread had 3 central purposes:

1) Discuss the Prohibited or disputed aspects which define Bitcoin
2) Take a poll on one of the disputed aspects of Bitcoin and see how many people would be open to the idea of a possible future hardfork within Bitcoin.
3) Collect a sampling of data to see how flexible Bitcoin may be in evolving in the future.

I understand some people don't agree with https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes and believe that moving away from 100% PoW should be in the category of Prohibited changes and that is fine because this thread was intended to make their voice heard as well.

The fact that this thread is now in the alt section I can see the stats on the poll are already starting to become an inaccurate representation of the bitcoin community because we have gone from 62% to 65.2% open to the idea of changing bitcoin since this thread was moved. I wanted to take a sampling of data which was more likely to represent a Bitcoin users thoughts and not an altcoin users thoughts.

So instead of a moderator simply expressing his opinion and voting as you have done, he hides this thread in the alt section and thus skews the data from the poll.

i agree that the figures can no longer be representative of those with their main interest in bitcoin.
perhaps just lock the thread?

Good idea, I locked the poll above.
The last accurate representation was 62% of the general Bitcoin community is open to the consensus algo being changed and not the 65% now shown. It is unfortunate that the moderator who moved this thread didn't allow us to get a larger sampling of valuable data before skewing the results.

I would like to hear from the moderator as to why a topic specifically about bitcoin needs to be in the altcoin section.

forking into a new algo is more an altcoin thing (also after 5 years and considering the millions invested in hardware to support the bitcoin network... it would be totally stupid...)
 
not that changing an algo is a bad thing in itself, but for an old coin, this is just plain stupid... (plain stupid ? hmm... that's altcoin vocabulary... this thread belongs to altcoin forum...  ;D)

... depending whether you see bitcoin an interesting hobby project or a collector's item, the older the better, or a living utility that has a mission in the real world.

Interesting way to put it. And I see Bitcoin becoming more of a collector's item as you say as time goes on and cryptocurrency technology advances while Bitcoin stagnates for the most part. I'm sure it will have a solid place for a long time and always have it's name to back it up.