Bitcoin Forum

i was wandering in the future can bitcoin switch to proof of stake?

No. For any fork trying this an altcoin will evolve. Bitcoin will always be PoW.

No, it could switch to POS, POW is waste to much energy, the more important is POS is more secure than POW.

It depends on if Bitcoin is truly decentralized. If it is then it will switch to PoS because PoS is better (from economical point of view, not ideological) than PoW. If Bitcoin is actually ruled by devs and Bitcoin magnates (=centralized) then it will always be PoW.

If the majority decides to support the fork which supporst Proof of Stake, then that what Bitcoin will be. This is a strength, to take the decision of the majority instead of having to accept the order of a central authority.

IMO the reason of thinking to switch btc from PoW to PoS is because the way of mining....with PoW you have to buy a very expensive mining rigs, even we can buy it we can't be compete with the they or the companies who have the giant power of gigahash, and i think only they will have power who can survive to mine bitcoin, and so it will be the centralized not decentralized if we look it from the mining side

You can call it whatever you like but it won't be bitcoin unless the miners all quit mining.

What about the next proposed fork (raising max 1mb block size), if there's 1 small miner who choses to stay on the old fork, which one is the real bitcoin then?

If majority of the exchanges, holders, merchants use it then it will be the real Bitcoin. In the same way the fork which is used by the majority becomes Bitcoin.

You need to convince everyone to switch, including hardware manufacturers (most are also users/merchants), pools and cloud providers. Won't happen anytime soon.

Also the concept of a stakeholder being able to sit back and collect new coins for doing nothing doesn't sit well with many people.

That's a propaganda technique called The Big Lie. It is indeed quite effectively used by tyrants.

You love bold statements my friend...

Maybe not right now because a sudden switch will definitely jolt the market and the community. Also what would be the impact though in terms of price movement. However, having said that, I'm not a "status quo" type of person. If it can help to stabilize the price, become more decentralized, ensure far better distribution, secure the network, then why not. I don't see it happening right now but maybe when mining is finally over and transaction fee is not enough to sustain or the reward is too low.

It wasn't directed at the poster. I was pointing out that mob rule is tyranny.

Maybe, but then all miners would lose on their mining rigs.

I was just pointing that as I noticed you love bold statements.

Nuance should be used sparingly.

Peercoin already takes care of this problem, that is it's purpose - to cover some of the flaws of bitcoin

For big exchanges and even casinos who have alot of funds, they could probably 51% the network without the huge electrical bills.

what makes PoS "better"?

Absence of necessity to burn electricity.

For whom is that better?

Hasn't this topic been rehashed enough?

Bitcoin is currently roughly at block 336000. Someone could easily make a fork of the bitcoin code that says, e.g., starting at block 338000 (in roughly in 2 weeks) this fork is proof of stake. So it starts with the same blockchain as bitcoin. Same reward system (currently 25 bitcoin reward per block) and same limit (21 million). Call the fork bitstake or something. Or, hell, keep calling it bitcoin and if you are pro-PoS then refer to the original bitcoin as "bitwork." Then see what happens.

Just do it. Then see. It seems like doing it is less work than discussing the topic 100 times.

For coin holders.

It's already planned to be done on top of Nxt Monetary System.

How does PoW cost of mining affect me?

Your wealth loses 10% (35% for Litecoin) every year.

I have the same amount of bitcoins. How did I lose any that is related to energy use?

Do you mean there is a planned Nxt asset which will be initially distributed using a snapshort of the bitcoin block chain? Clams did something like that. It's one of the few altcoins I've looked at, simply because it turned out I had some and they are now worth a few mbits each. I'm sure if a Nxt asset does something similar, I'll look into it.

Inflation. The same as with U.S. dollars.

Not an asset, a special feature - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=896520.0

Sounds interesting but unlikely.

You are moving goalposts. Inflation is not problematic because it is mathematically fixed at a known predictable rate. Price is baked in.

Number of Bitcoins today = 13'646'425
Number of Bitcoin 365 days ago = 12'177'500
Inflation = (13'646'425 - 12'177'500) / 13'646'425 = 10.76%

Price of 1 BTC today = 324 USD
Price of 1 BTC 365 days ago = 734 USD

Aye, the price is indeed baked in.

But if adoption sky rockets it will keep going up.
Plus I dont get what you are saying because as time goes out supply shrinks so it should go up (if there is a real use for it and people want them)

The point is that PoS is better from economical point of view because unlike PoW it doesn't require to tithe for mining.

Bitcoin POS version would turn badly very soon.
99.9 % of bitcoiners are POW fanatics, as soon as you gift them a POS coin they would rush to sell it at any price the market is paying for it.
This would probably crash the market cap of the bitcoin POS to 2 or 300k $, as a consequence it will become very centralized in the hands of a few believers, better stick to the oldest POS coins, they are better distributed then any bitcoin POS fork will ever be.

yes
i would love if bitcoin turns POS
we can save the energy

POS interest rates can be same as banks pay us for saving accounts
i think there should be a official poll about this

I suspect most bitcoiners would just ignore the bitcoin-POS fork and I doubt there would be much demand to buy the coins on the fork, at least initially (effectively making the market cap small). This would have the side effect of ensuring the available coins cannot be concentrated in a few hands. 12 million or so of the coins would just sit unmoved like Satoshi's 1 million or so do in bitcoin-POW. I'm curious what would happen in the long term.

I guess we'll never know though, because writing code like

if block >= 338000 then
   checkStake...
else
   ....

where the code for checkStake is ported from some current PoS coin would take a really long time. I guess I could do it, but first I'd need an IPO to raise...1 million dollars.  ;)

POS=no production cost=no value

If I can produce a coin without any cost, why should I pay any thing valuable to exchange it??? I will just go ahead to mine it

Fiat money can have value without production cost, because there is a law to force its circulation, and the cost to make that law can be a war, which costs millions of times more energy than POW mining

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=848881.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=848881.0)

Point 7

Then http://coinmarketcap.com/ gives us incorrect information... or you are just wrong.

I hate to be a wet blanket but I have to inform you that the fork will be done in a manner that won't let you to have both bitcoins - old-skool and new ones.

Unfortunatly a lot of guys here are already involved in asic mining and they have own interests while argueing pointless contra POS:


So when having costs for producing "something", this "something" will automatically get a value?
We are not even talking about human ressource, it isonly a asic-miner standing in a datacenter and wasting energy.
In my opinion this is nonsense, you won´t find such behaviour anywhere in the economy.

POS has the great advantage of decentralising the bitcoin system again, a lot of more nodes will be available.
Anyway I would not stop mining completely, but for example the mining reward could be dropped strongly from the next reward halving and instead POS rewarding could be introduced.

IT WILL NOT HARM THE REPUTATION OF BITCOINS AT ALL BUT STABILISE THE PRICE DRAMATICALLY.

If we could do a community vote it would be great.

Next time use culture agnostic memes, please. Not everyone lives in the USA.

Then you and I were talking about two different ideas.

Someone should just fork bitcoinPOS from bitcoin, including forking the block chain. Both have the same starting base and then everytime someone starts another "Why doesn't bitcoin use POS?" thread someone else can respond: there's already a version that does, and you already have bitcoins there.

I really might do this, just out of annoyance with the same thread being posted over and over and over. I don't have a strong opinion on POW vs. POS. It's more that I'm annoyed that people don't just reply to the hundreds of threads on this that already exist rather than start a new one.

I think you're more skeptical of PoS than I am, but I agree with what you're saying here.

Since you're sure you'll sell the forked coins, I'm curious: have you sold your clams? I get the feeling most people (including me until recently) don't realize they had clams. When I found mine, I sold some and kept some.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/ba/87/40/ba87400863c5063c5f305c170a6b0062.jpg

Sorry, but this is not necessarily true at all,
and getting security with no energy cost is
quite possibly a pipe-dream.

Proof of stake seeks security without cost,
but the laws of economics say that security
costs will always rise to meet the rewards...

Which has been discussed at length here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=860194.0


...And if you don't want rewards to secure the
system, then you'd be taking away one of
the most important aspects of Bitcoin's security model,
which is incentivizing people to honestly participate
in the network instead of attacking it.

One thing is for sure:  Proof of Stake is a radical
departure from Bitcoin as we know it, and would
necessarily have to start as a fork into an altcoin,
at least to prove the new model, because everyone
isn't going to just wake up one day
and decide they all want to switch over.

if you search,

I AM SURE someone will offer you a POS service for your bitcoin. 
send me your coin to my wallet and i will stake it and pay you 1% everyday.

just one caveat, no withdrawal, EVER.

Laws of Economics are not universal, they are environment dependent. Change environment (this is what cryptos do) and you will change the laws.

Right now we observe that there are some PoS systems that consume almost no electricity but have not been successfully attacked yet (and the reward is very appealing). Your statement contradicts to observations and this makes me suspect that you are wrong...



Noone proved that Bitcoin's security model is the only viable one.

It is not labor theory of value, it is a simple fact that people will always select the lowest cost method to get a coin. POS miner can not get it since they think a POS coin could have same political position as fiat money, sadly no one listen to them because they don't have any army

And POS coin is against the nature of decentralized system: It is fixed by a small group of stake holders while the others can never change the system even if the time comes. The POW coins instead will change when the majority of hash power decided that a change is necessary

Yes, those information are meaningless

Imagine that I create a coin with 500 coins total supply, I hold 499.999 and sell the rest 0.001 to my another account at a market price of 1000 dollar, I will get a coin exchange rate of 1 million and a market capital of 500 million. With a small amount of capital and a good scheme I can pump the coin price by 10-100 fold and start to dump the rest of my coins

Controlled hashpower ~ available money. This lead to the conclusion that there is no difference between PoW and PoS except the fact that PoW needs a lot of electricity.

Which will adjust the market cap to corresponding level. The coins on that site already passed this stage and established at some level.

More and more Bitcoin owners are starting looking for alternatives to wasteful PoW, this is the point of this discussion.

And of course he can write his own textbook on economics.

Having a cost does not automatically give something value. However, when something is getting some demand, people will always seek the lowest possible cost to get it, either they mine or they buy. Mining cost is just a indicator of the real demand, if it is too low, capitals will flow into mining, and raise the difficulty to a point that buying cost is almost the same as mining cost

You can imagine, if someone created a very advanced mining machine (like quantum mining rig) thus there is almost no way for normal people to mine the coin without large investment in TIME and R&D, then they can only buy coins from the market. In that case, bitcoin mining can consume much less energy for this specific miner. But as soon as there are other similar companies start to deploy their quantum mining rigs into the field, the situation will change, exactly like what happened in the ASIC mining evolution

PoS domination once established are unchangeable, this is clearly telling late comers: You are too late, don't join this game. However, PoW hash rate domination are all temporary and can be changed quickly, we have seen many times old hash rate king been knocked down by new mining pools/farms

It is not wasteful, it is a must. You can't create money out of thin air like fiat money, that kind of scam must stop, this is the point of bitcoin

So you really think majority of hash power having full control of the protocol is better then stake holders leading the coin development? Are you serious?

While you are here - I'm waiting for your reply on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=905385.msg9950164#msg9950164

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/National_Security_Agency_headquarters%2C_Fort_Meade%2C_Maryland.jpg/769px-National_Security_Agency_headquarters%2C_Fort_Meade%2C_Maryland.jpg

Enjoy your new masters.

Pools... farms... What should I do with my Intel Core i5?

Doesn't Bitcoin do the same - creates money out of thin air? Why the current reward is 25 BTC instead of 17.82 BTC?

Right and PoS always goes up in price, right? Notice that the average yearly price goes up substantially every year.

Price in dollars is irrelevant. In PoS like Nxt you don't pay 10% tithing. This is why PoS is better than PoW from economical point of view (this is why this subdiscussion was started if you remember).

To control the majority of hash power, you must put real resources and might still fail due to slow in movement, it is much more difficult than controlling a few stake holders. Imagine that once bitcoin is becoming POS, then top 10 stake holders will immediately enter the watch list of CIA

I don't recall. You changed your arguments too many times to keep track. Your tithing as you call it is called fair distribution. It allows a small amount of wealth to be seeded and encourage economic expansion. It was all published in Satoshi's 2008 white paper. Without some ongoing distribution, you isolate your ecology so outside entities can be excluded from participating.

The point of bitcoin was to liberate the monetary system from centralized powers (aka the central bankers).  PoS and PoW currencies derive their value from their ability to allow people to escape from centralized monetary systems.  Once a cryptocurrency fails to provide this decentralization and becomes prone to centralization like BTC, the cryptocurrency loses its original value proposition.

This is for PoS coin stake holders :D

Money can change ownership much quicker than mining rigs. It's much easier to find a mining farm if you want to control Bitcoin (hint - it consumes a lot of electricity).

Newbies trolls and sock puppets have killed this thread. They will be ignored because we know who you are.

Point me to the posts that back your words, please.

Don't give up, man. You haven't used all your tricks yet. Try strawman tactics, for example.  :D

Bitcoin has a warning system and block IPs to warn of it happening. What does PoS have?

Just like digging out gold, it seems the labor wasted are unnecessary, but it does solve the origin of value problem: The man who create money must pay fair price to get its ownership, otherwise everyone will be just creating money and no one will be working

I blame mods for taking away newbie jail like we all went through.

Yes i agree with you, it is ACTUALLY more difficult to control majority of bitcoin hash power then a few major stake holders of a 1 year old POS coin.
However it will not always stay the same, as POW mining reward decreases and POS coins get more distributed the former becomes weaker and the latter becomes stronger.
If you try to attack two coins with the same market cap, one is POS and the other one is POW, you will probably end up wasting a lot more resources attacking the POS.
POW ages like milk, POS ages like wine.

Whom this system warn? Gavin Andresen, Satoshi Nakamoto or CIA?

PoS doesn't have such things, it's designed to be more resistant for attacks from the outer world.

To control the majority of stake, you must put real resources behind coercing majority of stakeholders and might still fail due to slow in movement, it is much more difficult than controlling a few mining pools.  Imagine that once bitcoin is becoming POOLED, then top 10 pools will immediately enter the watch list of CIA


Are you telling me that you don't think the NSA could destroy Bitcoin right now if it wanted to?  I hope you aren't this naive.  You don't really think they spend $80,000 on a toilet seat and $50,000 on a hammer now do you?

The value of a coin that is inflating at 10% is pushed down 10% per year against a coin who has 0% inflation, this is done by speculators.
In reality some years the inflationary coin will go down 30% some other years it might gain 10%, but on average the 10% yearly inflated coin will always go down 10% per year against a coin who has no inflation.
In the short term everything can happen but in the long term you might find yourself working hard just to keep up with inflation if all your holdings are in a 10% inflationary coin.
And please don't tell me bitcoin inflation is temporary and it will go to 0, no POW will ever work with 0% inflation.

Resistant isn't immune. In other words it has a fatal flaw that is ignored.

That's why bitcoin block rewards halve every four years.

Originally PoW was used Satoshi as a way to roll a lottery and to protect against a Sybil attack. Later, Bitcoin holders created a myth that resources must be wasted to give value to bitcoins (is anyone surprised by such their behavior? :))

Any limited resource can work as a protection against Sybil attacks (this is called resource-testing). In PoS available balance is used as such the resource.

A currency's value isn't defined by how it was created, but it is defined by its utility to the currency user.

I fail to see your logic of "the man who create money must pay fair price to get it".  That is a subjective statement.  A "fair price" is defined by what the market is willing to pay vs the perceived utility of the item being sold.

Don't forget bitcoin gets a lot weaker at every halving.
Good luck having your wealth in a POW coin with inflation below 2%.

Define "weaker" in your suggested context and provide historical evidence to support this claim.


Great. I would like to hear some of your opinions on what aspects PoW maintains that are superior to PoS, if any.

He means that if the price of Bitcoin doesn't double at every halving then the security of the chain will decrease proportionally with decreasing mining ROI.

It has become easier to destroy a PoW coin now. Because of mining contracts. Also a script kiddy can rent a botnet for a hour and attempt a 51% attack.

What this fatal flaw is?

Hopefully, he doesn't mean this because he is stating it as a fact when it is ahistorical, and rightfully so because of the laws of supply and demand would make it very likely that the price will at least double.

Any clarification on what evidence that bitcoin gets weaker with each halving?

A = resources you have to waste to attack the coin
B = market cap of the coin
k = constant

Y = Probability the coin is succesfully attacked in the real world = k * (B/A)

Since A in a POW coin is proportional to inflation rate you can conclude that as inflation goes down the probability of an attack increases.

PoS currencies naturally decentralize as more and more users join the economy.  This makes it increasingly harder to control a certain percentage of the stake because it requires you to control an ever increasing amount of people.

PoW currencies naturally centralize around large mining groups/corporations as the economies of scale push out smaller miners.  This makes it increasingly easier to control a certain percentage of the hashpower because it requires you to control an ever decreasing amount of miners.

No, it halves to have a fixed supply. In 100 years.

No. The supply was fixed in 2009.

History has shown that B tends increase when inflation drops with Bitcoin. Perhaps it won't always do so in the future, but unless you are claiming to be psychic your comment concerning Bitcoin is ahistorical and fallacious.

Unlike PoW, PoS can't use Simple Payment Verification method. This is where PoW is superior. (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29476/what-are-some-of-the-pitfalls-of-a-100-proof-of-stake-currency-pos-like-nxt/)

You misplaced plans and their realization.

One good point.
I believe there are multiple weaknesses within PoW.
Do you believe there is any security advantages intrinsic within PoW, which PoS lacks? (whether or not PoS is superior to PoW overall is another question)

Let me to disagree with your interpretation of the historical facts. More likely that you overlooked other factors that contributed their [much higher] weights.

I am aware of those variables. Are you aware that neither of us have enough data to give an accurate reflection and projection of the weight of each of these variables?

No, I believe that PoW is equal to PoS if we measure all pros and cons. PoW or PoS is just a matter of trade-offs.

Yes, I think the same.

not sure if you mean reward as in block reward or just the fact that alts have a market value.
eventually Bitcoin will run only on transaction fees, similar to how nxt does it now, in that the
security cost will become equal to the transaction fees in both cases (unless you don't believe
people will try to game the system to compete for maximum profits).  

So, then the question becomes: what is the security cost during the issuance phase?
While it may be true that a major PoS alt hasn't been successfully attacked,
we don't know if this approach can scale or that people want it.  

As others have said, these alt coins already exist, so all we need do
is wait and see what unfolds.  if the PoS system is indeed viable and superior
as some claim, we should see it start to gobble up market share...right?

Yes, I agree that DPoS, TPoS , PoS all have unique security benefits that PoW lacks as well.
PoW has some security aspects that PoS lacks too. Unfortunately(from a perspective of curiosity), since Bitcoin has such a large lead and a much better network effect we are unlikely to see an fair battle between the two as history has shown that technologies must have a significant competitive
advantage to be able topple the established incumbent with such a sizable lead.

I.E.. dvorak keyboard is superior to qwerty but not significant enough to change peoples behaviors.

I am not suggesting PoS is slightly superior either but merely the fact that any alt has to be shown to be significantly superior to Bitcoin in order to catchup.

No one will attack PoS coins, it cost nothing to make, it does not have any value, why attack it? Do you ever want to attack bitcoin when it was worth nothing during 2009? Bitcoin's value grows together with the mining cost, however for PoS coins I can not see how its value can grow without its cost growing. And once it has a cost, it will waste energy

This fallacious and the same flawed line of reasoning goldbugs use against bitcoin when they speak of intrinsic value. PoS coins have value because the marketplace dictates so based upon both utility and speculation.

Even if you believe they lack value and hate them they still have value because someone else values it. If someone dumped 100 paycoins2 ponzicoins on me I would gladly take them because it would be worth my time dumping them for fiat or BTC on an exchange.

The reason why PoS tends to be secure is that with most marketplaces a majority of the coins is held by the founders and developers who have a vested financial and emotional stake in the viability of their project and thus are unlikely to attack it. This also leaves PoS/DPoS with some of the same security vulnerabilities as PoW and centralized mining pools where a small group of people can be compromised to attack the network.

Who's plans were misplaced and where were they supposed to be?

This is mostly true and why I am a big fan of PoS coins. I think every Central Bank should have one.

Fiat really is an archaic form of PoS.  Centralization also has advantages over decentralization. Decentralization is very costly and inefficient.

The price of BTC reflects the current float not the anticipated max 21 million Bitcoin limit.


They already own Bitcoin.  Why not PoS coins too?

This is wrong i think.
Imagine you have two coins only.
Coin A is POW, it is 10 years old, it has 100 billion market cap, it has 5% inflation, it costs 1 billion to attack it and every merchant on earth accepts it.
Coin B is POS, it is 5 years old, it has 1 billion market cap, it has 0% inflation, it costs 1 billion to attack it and no merchant accepts it.
You can switch from one coin to the other one for free or very very cheaply.
In this scenario every rational investor would chose to have most of his savings in coin B and he would switch to coin A only when he needs to spend.
As time goes by almost everyone moves from coin A to coin B, coin B market cap grows to 100 billion, coin A is slowly abandoned, merchants forget about it and start to accept coin B only.
This is why i thin the coin that will win the crypto race is the coin which provides the strongest network at the lowest cost.
Network effect might not be enough to save bitcoin.

Ohh goodness, they really should bring back the rule of sand boxing newbie accounts . You are ignored my friend.

Decentralization is a form of chaos. The Bitcoin ecosystem is complex. Order emerges from complex chaos. It's called fractal.

How is PoS a form of fiat?  The government tells me that I have to use NXT and assigns a value to it?

Decentralization is only "costly and inefficient" in the constructs of PoW.


Uh Oh... I spoke the unspeakable truth.

Bitcoin will have 6 % inflation in 2016, 5% inflation in 2017, 3% inflation in 2019, and 0.5% inflation in 2026

https://i.imgur.com/I4yWe96.png


Well there certainly is a race a foot and we will see if other alts can play catchup when Bitcoin is slowly switching from mining hashes to secure the network to mining transactions to secure the network.

The barbarians are at the gate. I guess it's up to honeybadger now, because the blue tail flies are here and Jimmy crack corn.

You clearly didn't understand what i was trying to say.
POW is not stable with low or 0% inflation and the entire cost of network security pushed on those who make transactions, it simply cannot work properly.
For a POW coin to be stable and reliable cost to attack must be proportional to market cap and it must be paid by stakeholders via a constant inflation.

I understand you, just think you are making up facts and speculating.

Where is your evidence that Bitcoin cannot pay for security with low inflation and high transaction volume?

I'm proposing to really fork bitcoin to create a bitcoinPOS.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=906176 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=906176)

The reason? Annoyance.

I look forward to next week's thread on POS vs. POW in which most of the same people write most of the same things.

This is what we see now, share of PoS coins keeps growing.

A successful attack on Nxt would give you 50'000 USD reward. Still too low for you to bother?

This may well be my favourite quote of the entire year.

I mean that you play with words. "Supply was fixed in 2009" doesn't make much sense. It's plans, the real supply of Bitcoin is very far from being fixed.

Good boy.

NB:

You shouldn't have said this. Basically your phrase means "You won because I'm out of counterarguments."

You overlook an obvious thing:

Transaction fee will increase to compensate subsidy decline. One way or another Bitcoin holders will be paying tithing for burned electricity. The only alternarive is to stop sending transactions but in this case the transaction fees will just go higher.

You don't know what a strawman is. Let's just end this. You win. I will ignore you also.

IMO, it would be better to just switch to a new POS coin. There would be too many problems with miners and early adopters interest in order to make that kind of change in bitcoin. They probably won't allow the change, until it would be late.


Indeed. And if fees don't go higher there won't be enough security in order to protect bitcoin.

The only thing I know for sure is bitcoin mining is doomed for the longterm. It's way too inefficient, old fashioned and tends to centralization. It was ok as a first step or an experiment, but not for a real economy or to go really far.

Bold statement again. It's sad that you'll never reply on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=905385.msg9955204#msg9955204...

We are?   What coin do you see doing well? 
The 365 day chart of NXT is certainly nothing
to write home about.




Hold on, you are mixing PoW/PoS with issuance.

It is possible to have a PoW coin with no more
issuance (Bitcoin will be like that in 100+ years),
and it also possible to have a PoS coin that issues
new coins for a period (or indefinitely).

The shorter the issuance period, the more people
will question if the distribution is fair. 

Personally, when I first heard about Bitcoin, one
of the things about it that sold me was that miners
had to do some actual work to get coins... it wasn't
just some dudes high on a hill somewhere declaring
they invented a currency and saying everyone should
go use it. 

Oh good. Looks like PoS wins and we don't have to redo this thread next week. Excellent.

Ethereum, BitShares, Nxt. They got noticeable piece of Bitcoin's pie.

I have my standards.
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”


Not necessarily so if transaction volume can sustain security. You don't have enough data to know if transaction fees need to increase or bitcoin needs to change its security model to sustain itself. We will cross that road when it needs to be taken. You have a sense of desperation in the need for bitcoin to switch to PoS for some odd reason. How about you focus on making Nxt all that it is claimed to be instead of rehashing old arguments over and over?


You haven't heard? Ethereum is going to be PoW. BitShares is DPoS , not PoS. Nxt is slowly dying and losing place to PoW and Debt based currencies.

Technically you are right, let's put on hold this discussion and come back to it when we have more info.



I'm not motivated enough for that. Being a mercenary I did everything I was supposed to do and then quited Nxt core team.

There is no fundamental difference between DPoS and PoS.

Regarding Ethereum, here is the latest news - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPsCGvXyrP4. It says that Ethereum will be PoS.

Out of the 3, Ethereum clearly is the only one in an uptrend on the 365 day chart.

No, you may want to re-watch it. More specifically, Ethereum will be a hashimoto dagger IO bound PoW consensus mechanism.
The latest under review is here under PoC7:

https://github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum/wiki
http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf

Yes, I agree it is confusing being that Vitalik has gone back in forth between slasher and dagger and the fact that he may eventually switch from PoW to a weak subjectivity TaPoS slasher algo, but for the time being and for distribution it is ASIC resistant PoW.

Read the paper above to verify that it is indeed PoW.

Additionally, there are tremendous differences between PoS and DPoS. NxT and Bitshares have a different security model and concerns. Nxt is slowly evolving to TaPoS model of security which is still much different that DPoS.

So you are ok with DPOS and Etheruem?

Ok, my bad, I don't comprehend spoken English so I just read the video description. Anyway, every new days brings more and more PoS coins.

I like competition and the free proliferation of ideas so why wouldn't I be ok with them?

As long as people openly and honestly discuss these ideas and use these tools without misrepresentations
or by positing assumptions as facts than there is no problem with them co-existing and flourishing.


Wouldn't that be expected being that PoS has a very suitable security model for new coins without many participants.
Expect many more variations of PoS to pop into existence, with most of them being pump and dump schemes with little
technical innovation or development talent ....*ahem* paycoin2

No need to insult cbeast, he is a legendary donator.  :D

This sounds like the majority of alt and clone coins nowadays. As long as you have a fancy name and slick graphics (and a lemming-esque userbase) you are golden.

One of several great things about 100% PoW is that it isn't ideal as a scam/ponzi/P&D coin because distribution is open to anyone doing the work, is expensive and any weak PoW currencies who don't capture the interest of the public with true innovation quickly get attacked because they don't have the mining hashrate to sustain against an aggressor.

You can easily spot a scammy PoW coin by it having a extremely sharp rather than gradual distribution curve - I.E... Quark.

Right. And by the same token PoS absolutely require fancy names like Monero, Ethereum, and Peercoin, and heavy marketing to succeed. Marketing a PoW like Doge gets notoriety, but the notion of actual work kills the romance. Ultimately, future PoS coins will be premined (or pre minted, or pre birthed or whatever) by whatever corporations can afford the best advertising.

When Satoshi finished writing bitcoin and created the genesis block he created a legacy that grows with each miner added. Whomever creates a really cool PoS will have his code cloned and issued by someone with no interest in the coder. That coder will be forgotten because there is no hardware binding users to the genesis block. Why are VCs dumping so much money into work that will be stolen and changed to someone else's advantage?

DPOS makes the blockchain a lot more like a company than the wild west free-for-all of mining/forging that PoW/PoS entails. Block producers are not determined by the stake they own, they're determined by their reputation and trustworthiness in the community, and what they can offer in return for their block production (development, marketing, etc.). Like a mix between NXT and ripple if ripple labs was decentralized and run on the blockchain.

DPOS has no justification to make that claim. DPOS sells votes to the highest bidder. In politics that's called FASCISM. Unless you have a way to positively identify your voter registration, you will never have a fair election.

DPOS and Nxt are two variations of PoS. The D in DPoS is a similar idea to the Economic Clusters in Nxt but different in implementation.

I would summarize things as follows:

Given the same distribution (issuance),
the energy cost is going to be same no matter what
scheme you use, but PoW is the simplest, most
proven, and arguably the most fair.

I've seen you mention that before but can't quite wrap my head around the notion that PoS will use a lot of energy. Can you give a scenario?

Bitshares shareholder voting system is no different than the system used in every single public or private company in the world. Are you saying the system of joint-stock companies are "fascism"? Nice attempt at FUD, though, gotta have to give you a 2/5.

It's explained in this article: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-and-mining/

It depends on implementation of the coin, but something like making
alternate chains or addresses...spending CPU power to compete for
the rewards until its no longer profitable to keep doing so.

This is completely clueless. A simple block production bond system makes it unprofitable to ever attempt to produce blocks on more than one chain at a time. This is actually yet another permutation of the naive nothing at stake "problem" that has been solved ages ago by DPOS.

It's quite amazing that people are so emotionally invested in proof of waste that they continue to cling on to these non-issues in desperation.

OK, I get that.

Yeah, um VMs would do the trick. Also it appears your solution is to increase energy requirements anyway.

I'll refer to the article again:


https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6096.45

The bottom line is:  if there is money to be made,
people will do whatever is possible to compete for it.
You really can't stop competition and people trying
to game the system in some way.  

To put it more concretely with DPOS:  If Bitshares
really took off and was generating a million dollars
worth of rewards everyday like Bitcoin does now,
don't you think people would be trying to become
delegates?  Don't you think certain motivated
people or groups would try to get 5, 10, 25, 50,
or more of the delegate slots?

What would stop them from investing money to
do so, given that the payouts would be enormous?

Furthermore, why wouldn't a delegate re-invest
his profits into trying to acquire more delegate spots?

On a side note: Security deposits may solve an aspect of the "nothing at
stake" issue, but they do not stop competition.

Alt coins seem to become more and more trashy.

Quoting a FUD thread won't win any credibility.

It seems to me that (unlike PoS) PoW must be a ponzi scheme or ever-inflating, otherwise it will be unsustainable.

Boys and girls, don't argue with this guy, you will simple waste your time. I quoted yet another example (among 1000s) when he creates strawmen  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)and then successfully attacks them.

Distribution model (rate of issuance) and security model (PoS vs PoW) are two different things.  And "Ponzi scheme"
is something else entirely.

PoW is not a ponzi, if you have any understanding how PoW works then you will know this is the case.

PoW will only be inflating until all of the units have been received via the block subsidies at which point the miners will receive block rewards from TX fees, which is the same how PoS coins reward their "miners"

If people stop buying BTC then miners will stop mining. How is it different from a ponzi scheme?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Is_Bitcoin_a_Ponzi_scheme.3F

The link doesn't asnwer, also Bitcoin Wiki is not a credible source of information on anything that criticizes Bitcoin.

If people stop valueing a coin, yes it becomes worthless, duh.  True for PoW,PoS, proof of whatever...

That's not what a ponzi scheme is.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

Read http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm and ask yourself - what if Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme but "mutated" because Bitcoin is a decentralized entity.

The SEC page says essentially the same as the wikipedia page:


If you want to mutate the definition of a Ponzi scheme, than anything could be one.
I'm not going to debate "is Bitcoin a ponzi scheme".

Aye, we derailed the thread.

Really .... really?  ::) Ok, you cannot possibly be that ignorant, being around this long.
You are just trolling and I have better things to do than play games.

I understand the point you are trying to make but you are doing so in the worst possible way by suggesting all those coins are PoS.
Ethereum will be PoW.
Monero is PoW
Peercoin is PoW/PoS
Out of all the examples given you just had to use the few PoW examples which invalidated your argument ?

I think this thread should be moved to "Bicoin Discussion."

Taking into account your signature:

I don't think this thread shouldn't be removed from "Bitcoin Discussion".

Right?

I think people are forgetting one simple fact about PoS, it saturates.

It means that even if all people on the planet are given equal amount of coins in a PoS system, the competition will make some of them richer and others poorer. At some point a group of wealthiest stakeholders will maintain the majority vote in the system. No one can outrun their blockchain. That's where Snake awaits them with the offer they can't refuse.

The wealthiest few will be approached individually with a choice - rule with us or be ruled over. Thus inner circle of control is completed and the system becomes a private enterprise. That's when zoo cages are closed and the hunger games can begin. People are brainwashed enough to not see the cage for all the food. I mean it's not called Proof of Snake for no reason.

PoW stays in PoWer :D

Very compelling argument.  Can we end the thread now?

With all the hundreds of altcoins who can keep them straight? Many of them are hybrids but lean toward PoS. Ethereum waffles but will probably be PoS. I should have looked up the names rather than pull them out of memory, but this topic makes me weary. I prefer to let the market decide.

Fair enough, but Ethereum is going to be PoW:

 Ethereum will be a hashimoto dagger IO bound PoW consensus mechanism.
The latest under review is here under PoC7:

https://github.com/ethereum/cpp-ethereum/wiki
http://gavwood.com/Paper.pdf

So WTH were ethers for? Well, if a better PoW comes along, then Bitcoin can adapt it. I try to listen to Buterin, but while he understands the mechanics of these technologies, his ideology is inconsistent. That's just his youth and I don't hold it against him personally, but until you have the kind of resolve Satoshi has, you cannot be truly innovative.

Well, that's a very big conversation. I can assure you there is technological merit to ether and important use cases. Obviously, since there was a crowdfunded ICO this was a partially premined PoW coin.



I am not so sure about that. For the best or worst there is some deeply entrenched interests and it is doubtful that the main consensus mechanism is likely to change for Bitcoin.


If you have been following his thought processes and papers he actually has been really consistent about testing and formulating different consensus mechanisms. The reasons why it seems like he has been inconsistent is because he was doing what he is paid to do and research different algos as chief scientist in a thorough and neutral manner whether it is DPoS/TaPos or PoW.

If you fear the threat of innovation from Ethereum and don't have the time to read through Vitalik's long papers than I would just summarize that Bitcoin could handle some of the features and abilities that Ethereum will handle with sidechains and oracles --
http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2014/06/bit-thereum.html

I think much of Vitalik's work is helpful and fascinating but I would bet upon bitcoin and oracles handling complex code more efficiently as Gavin makes a fair observation above.

What you call oracles, I call social constructs. I agree. They will evolve organically. Complex technologies must be modular and based on simpler, more adaptable mechanisms. That's why Bitcoin shines. I still think someone needs to find a way to make transaction malleability a useful tool. The design is elegant and the exploit shows its undeveloped versatility as metadata. Developing such a tool would flood out attackers.

Sure.
Honey BTCadger eats $nakes for breakfast, people seem to forget:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

So some people argue the switch to POS will be end of 2015 and others are saying mid 2016. There are good arguments on both sides. I don't know but I would bet end 2016.

Do we need a vote to settle this once and for all?..

February 29, 2015.  ;D

Ok, I'll put you down for the day after 28th Feb. Far too early if you ask me...

I never new POS was unforkable too. That's why I like these threads with all the smart guys in, it is eye opening.

PoS already exists. Buy all you want. Nobody cares but you.

I don't follow. The 'Hunger Games' argument is only possible because POS is unforkable, right? How does me buying anything relate to this?

Ur post seems off topic. Don't worry, I won't report you ;)

I don't gamble, or trust any prediction market service either , but think your expectations are extremely "optimistic".

Bitcoin will either never change to PoS or such a change won't occur till 2024 and beyond.

I suggest you gamble all you want with PoS. Seem like you are a Nxt proponent.... that currency is dying right now if you haven't noticed. Dropped from spot 5 to 8 in market cap and soon to be overtaken by Bitcoin assets like Counterparty! Ethereum, Counterparty and possibly Storj will likely overtake Nxt in 2016, expect it will drop further in market cap.

Yes, guilty. Sorry, maybe I should put something in my sig

Nothing to be ashamed of and nothing you need to place in your sig. PoS proponents actually do have some valid criticisms of Bitcoin.
 IMHO these aren't insurmountable.  You picked that horse and can choose to cut your losses and come back whenever you want.
We will have open arms and a cup of warm tea ready(heated by asics of course).
 :-*

Uh...no.  Anything open source is forkable.

The 'Hunger Games' argument is about permanent centralization of authority.
Yes, we could always fork, but why go down the path of centralization
based on stakes at all?

Very nice of you to say. A true gent.

I only really like these threads to watch people get into a fluster talking to CfB and see it descend into passive aggressive quips dripping with disdain  :D and watching the little bits of cement and the odd brick fall from ivory towers  ;D :D :D  :D

If you can fork it, how would it ever become centralised? Would the majority prefer the hunger games over other alternatives?

Whether or not one stack is centralized has nothing to do with its forked child.

Anyone can fork a code repository...But getting everyone
to agree to use any one particular fork is hard.  Therefore,
forking is not a good solution in general.  And what would they
fork to?  If you know that a problem exists, it is better to solve
it up front and just have everyone use the updated code from
the beginning.  

What you are saying is in effect: "Can't we just start with
a bad system, and then switch to a better system later?"

Bter was hacked. Forgers in Nxt were given the choice: accept the hack or forge a forked client that didn't recognise the hackers stake, cutting them out. They had 720 blocks to decide before the rolling checkpoint prevented reorgs. Forgers chose to accept the hack.

Replace 'bter hack' with 'hunger games scenario' and only masochists would have remained forging with the original version.

Far from being a bad system, it is an example of decentralised decsion making.

Well, it is true that consensus to a forked version is more likely during extreme circumstances,
but my point still remains:  What do you fork to?  Unless you fork to something other than PoS,
the hunger games scenario can happen again and again.

And as long as the majority are not masochists, hunger games will never last. It would probably never occur, a different path would be taken at a less severe stage. You fork to 'the same minus the stuff the majority don't want'

I don't follow what you're saying.

If the hunger games argument is that proof of stake causes centralization of power,
how do you "minus that out" while still keeping proof of stake?

The '1%' have 51% of the stake. The 99% with 49% of the stake decide they don't like being ruled and fork the client. Their 49% becomes 100% in the forked platform. The 1% are left with nothing of value.

I'll catch up later. Gotta go paint a donkey.

That's insane.  First of all, good luck getting the 99% to agree on forking when they are getting paid by the 1%.
Even if you did, in a year you'd have a new 1%.  What, are you gonna fork it every year?  In a decade you
have 10 different forks, all which will have compatibility issues.  Not to mention that who is going to participate
in a coin where there's planned forks like that?  Sorry, but I don't think this idea can work.

Sorry to derail the thread but you realize that's a pyramid scheme in your sig,  jonald_fyookball?

Call me naive but I don't think pyramid schemes are great ways to introduce people to Bitcoin.

https://i.imgur.com/KKucbGP.jpg

The solution to the Hunger Games is getting a boyfriend that is willing to die for your love. I mean seriously, what kind of attack is this? 51% attacks in PoS will normally be anonymous double spends. They will not tell you that they have 51%.

Correct. This also doesn't factor in other possibilities like large stakeholder defection or sabotage and hackers compromising large stakeholders computers or accounts . In the end the same psychological reasons that keep a mining pool operator from attacking bitcoin is the same reason why a PoS whale is unlikley to attack his own network. The point is with security you have to research and protect against edge cases and unlikely scenarios.

hmmm.... well it could be, but it seems sustainable...
I'll make a decision in the next few days whether
I should remove it.

Its not about attacking the network necessarily...You can dominate the network and get massive fees.

Sustainable?

There is no business model , service or product... it is a simple playing hot potato pyramid scheme.
That business model is a pyramid scheme in its purest sense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme

Worst still there is a high incentive for the creator of the site to treat it as pyramid-ponzi hybrid where they run off with the funds when they have a critical thresh-hold of deposits.  Anonymous creator no accountability, another easy theft.

may have been started by this guy who is a scammer-
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=150446

There's an option to not see signatures.

Thanks, but I would rather see the scams so I can warn the user who was duped into the signature campaign and other newbies who may fall for it as well.
It is a public service.

It doesn't matter. The mods are dead.

But we have each other, with or without the authoritarians who rule this realm.

https://i.imgur.com/xRfiqy4.gif

You just don't get it do you?  Bitcoin is becoming more centralized as time goes on.  Mining is becoming increasingly corporatized.  The users of Bitcoin are separated from the security of the chain.  This is against everything Satoshi wanted in a currency.  The goal of Bitcoin was to place the monetary power back in the hands of the people.  Bitcoin has evolved into the monster it was meant to replace.

You can criticize NXT's initial distribution and claim it is "centralized" because initially the currency was held by 73 individuals, but at the end of the day PoW vs PoS argument comes down to trust.

Do you trust external agents not to overpower BTC's hashpower?  Only a fool would believe that a government doesn't have the resources to control Bitcoin.  The bitcoin hashpower held by individual people (not corporations or pools), who are legitimately concerned with securing the chain and not merely profits, will never be enough to prevent an attack on BTC.  The BTC chain might not be destroyed by these "attackers" but altered or restricted.  What if a government decided to freeze certain accounts?  They could easily coerce the corporate and pool miners to enact these changes.  The individual miners and currency users would be helpless to stop it.

Do you trust that the original NXT stakeholders are actually individuals committed to decentralization and continuing the legacy of bitcoin?  Seeing that the NXT IPO drew very little attention, I figure that the original stakeholders are actual individuals and not corporations, bankers, private equity or governments.  That means the chain was originally secured by individuals who were drawn to the movement by the original ideals of Bitcoin.  Since the start of NXT, the holders have obviously changed.  A good portion of the original stakeholders have sold out.  Who did they sell to?  Do you think they sold to the corporations, bankers, PE and governments?  I'm sure some did, but does this allow for these entities to attack the chain?  If together and working in concert these groups acquired over 500 million NXT, then yes.  If not though, the chain is secured by decentralized individuals.  The more individuals that join NXT the stronger and more resistant to attack it becomes.  Soon it becomes extremely difficult to purchase enough stake to attack without driving up the price to a ridiculous amount and it becomes equally difficult to coerce enough individuals.  When NXT forms its economic cluster, the stake requirements to attack will rise to 90%.  This makes acquiring the required stake to launch an attack practically impossible especially if you consider that some stakeholders will just never sell.

So, do you trust external agents to not to overpower BTC's hashpower or do you trust that NXT's stakeholders are actually legitimate individuals?

First to Market is Usually Not Best in Market

There is a very common misconception in the innovation world that being first to market translate to being best in market. However there seems to be a much more decisive factor to being best in market and that is best-fit-implementation.

Similar to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution the best fit survive. Here are some out of many examples of very successful companies/products that were far from being the first to market:

Microsoft — DOS (Disk Operating Systems) IBM had DOS for its then-small System/360 mainframes as far back as 1964 Microsoft did not invent it but provided better implementation (some would argue that J)

Facebook- was not the first social network

Google- was not the first search engine

iPhone — was not the first Smartphone (remember Blackberry?) Actually the first Smartphone (that also had touch screen!) was by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator (1994).

Chrome — was not the first Internet Browser (Remember Netscape?)

Point being that rather than focusing only on being first to market we should place more weight on understanding/ figuring out the best implementation that provides the fittest product/value to user’s need. Proof of Stake is the best implementation imo.

BlackCoin started off as POW for about one week then switched to full POS after all coins were mined.

This thread clearly shows how bored people are these days, trying to generate value by talking  ;D

While you are talking the price is declining. Shut up and do anything.

You are conflating companies/sites/applications with protocols, with the latter benefiting greatly from being first to market with a large userbase.

I'm so bored I'm going through old threads.

Do people here really care about technology? What I see here is that people (the establishment) are full of wishful thinking and just tried to protect their investment. There is nothing wrong with that.

But you can not stop other people to explore new opportunities by new technologies. We all want to be rich, don't we? You will be rich until you have large amount of coins and convert your coins into the hard cash or the coin you bet on becomes to a real thing like Facebook or Google.

Wish yourself lucky enough to bet on the right one.

No, nothing wrong with that at all. I personally care more about the emerging technology than I do becoming the next bzillionaire.

Sometimes in this crazy world of cryptocurrency it is hard to see the forest for the trees.

It seems that no one could come up with a valid counterargument to my statement.  When all you get are responses like this:


You know you hit the nail on the head.

It is unfortunate that some individuals who are obviously invested in Bitcoin denounce a cryptoplatform like NXT which was born out of the Bitcoin movement.  They act if as though there weren't exchanges to sell their BTC for NXT and that NXT is a private club which they cannot join.  It looks to others as if they are upset that they didn't invest in NXT earlier.  These peoples' jealousy towards NXT clouds their judgment and makes them fail to see that NXT is simply a continuation of the original Bitcoin movement.  The people who founded NXT were originally Bitcoiners and shared their hopes and aspirations for a decentralized economy controlled by the people.

Some Bitcoiners claim that NXT is trying to destroy decentralization.  We are not.  The truth is we are trying to save and uphold the ideals of the original movement.  Most miners no longer care about decentralization; they only care about profits.  The ability of a currency holder to secure his investment is at the very core of decentralization.  Allowing external actors to infringe upon a currency holder's right to secure their chain results in the currency no longer being decentralized.  A system must be designed to resist external actors if a currency is to remain autonomous.

BCNext (BitCoinNext) created NXT not to undermine Bitcoin, but to continue its legacy.  We share the same cause.  We are allies in the same fight.

Long live decentralization!  Power to the people!

BitcoinDark is an interesting proof-of-stake coin that I am just getting into.

Its most groundbreaking feature, in my opinion, is the teleport feature.

This feature will allow you to teleport BTC between addresses without leaving any connection between the addresses.

This will eliminate the need for using centralized mixers to conceal BTC movements.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=684090.0

Proof of stake mining of bitcoin

=====

Hasn't this been done ( several times over ) already ??
Though I suppose you could fork BTC at block X with whatever POS scheme that floats your boat
OR .. Just buy/support PeerCoin ( PPC ) the original POS BTC clone ..


Triff ..

12 pages of mostly bullshit and everyone ignores the important thing

with pos only miners lose out and the rest of us get rich as every new penny that gets invested into btc goes to hype up the value of our coins instead of trying and to keep pace with inflation caused by mining, isn't getting rich why we're all here?

This may shock you, but no that isn't everyone's motivation for being here. Quite a few people that frequent this forum are already rich. Some are here for the technology and the possibilities that it opens.

The scenario is rather simple. A few with majority vote have power to freeze accounts at will, as only they decide which transactions get into the blockchain and which don't. It means they can write laws now and have instruments in their hands to enforce it. Your account can be permanently or temporary frozen if you disobey an arbitrary law that the few in power came up with (hunger games situation).

PoS is not suitable for global money system, no need to switch from PoW.

You make some good points.
 
Protection against 51% attacks is a concern.
For those unaware, there have been some serious
hybrid PoW/PoS proposals for Bitcoin, which you can find here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake

Right now, there doesn't seem much talk about implementing
these ideas, and I'm guessing the reason is that governments
intent on attacking Bitcoin would have
the resources to do so regardless.

I suspect that when Bitcoin becomes bigger,
these will get more attention.

In the meantime, if you really like Proof of Stake, feel
free to invest in and promote NXT, Peercoin or anything
else.

51% mechanism is what allows to challenge the status quo, thus enabling competition for power.
Just sitting on your money in PoW does't give you control over the system, just engaging in the competition for control doesn't bring you money as mining is normally a break-even game. Thus money and control become orthogonal, which results in a dynamic system without asymptotes. In PoS you get both in a nice single package, which saturates fairly quickly.

Hybrid systems are more tricky beasts, thus they need to be studied closely. I'm concerned that saturation in PoS aspect of the hybrid will at some point begin to negatively influence the competition on PoW side.

Sites and applications are just as likely to benefit from being first with large userbase as a protocol.  LOL.

I agree they both benefit , but protocols in which many people, businesses , and systems are dependent upon benefit far more from the network effect and are thus much more difficult to supplant than simply switching  to a different website.

I.E... Even if the community wants to and needs to move off an old protocol we still cannot after over 30 years -- IPv4

Right. And unlike PoW, PoS is much easier to hide that you have a large percentage of the total stake. It is very easy to create multiple nodes with a PoS coin that are geographically disbursed via the use of VPS, while you will need to broadcast a newly found block with a PoS coin via a node that is connected to your miner and if the node is too geographically far from your miner then you will have more orphaned blocks

Meni's hybrid Pow PoS proposal seems great. 

Has this been implemented in an alt?

What aspects of it can be implemented in bitcoin without a hard fork?

This? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=169204.0

Thanks for the link, but no this is something different and
is a lot more complicated than Meni's simple idea, which
is basically just PoS checkpoints layered on top of the
basic PoW security.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake#Meni.27s_implementation

51% PoW mechanism is what allows malicious agents to challenge the legitimate miners, thus overpowering them via a hashpower coup d'etat.

Do you really think that the legitimate miners in Bitcoin can prevent a government from forcing their rules on the Bitcoin network?  Mind you, the NSA had a $10.7 Billion USD budget in 2013.  The only way to prevent such actions from external actors is via PoS.


If you are interested in using PoW as a distribution mechanism and PoS as a security mechanism, NXT's monetary system (https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issue/205/monetary-system-documenation) offers such a solution.

interesting, but I'd rather add some PoS checkpoints on top of bitcoin than use nxt as a platform to launch a new Pow currency.  I still think PoW should be the main security mechanism.

plus generally, I'd prefer to go with Bitcoin over any alt as it has a much better network and adoption. 

I doubt that ever happens.

It is generally accepted that any crypto coin that uses mining algorithm that is not pure PoW will not be considered "Bitcoin". This is true even if "Bitcoin" forks into something else, if PoW is not exclusively used, it will no longer be Bitcoin

Bytecoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=169559.0) launched 2 years ago was a 100% copy of Bitcoin with another genesis block. Was it actually Bitcoin?

perhaps.

ultimately it is what users want and agree to.

but I think adding some poS checkpoints a la Meni
is a far less radical change than many other proposals.

My paintings have a price of 100 billion each. I have 500 of them. My paintings have a market cap of 50 trillion.

You make a common mistake here.

PoS has a production cost. To invent a working PoS system, you need to do brainwork. To generate a PoS block, you need to do CPU cycles (and you need to have stake of course).

But that doesn't matter, because production cost != value

Bwaaahahahahaha!

Are you saying you could create a POS coin that could stay in the top 10 for a significant amount of time doing this?

You might I suppose if you kept 100% of the coin. But then you would have to show all others on CMC are doing the same. You're a sly one cbeast  :D :D borderline troll, the best lies are those very close to the truth ;D

What features do your paintings offer that might be desirable to me? Do they offer an asset exchange? That's always a good start. 50 trillion seems a bit steep tho... I think I'll wait for the dump  :D

What I'm saying is your exchanges are toys made by children like Zhoutong, and Karpeles. They are insignificant in the world of finance. What they do is set unrealistic values to technologies that await official government sanction and regulation so serious exchange can happen. Until then, there is no realistic price discovery.

I see that integrity is not the strongest of your qualities...

Pos concept still needs electricity to keep the computer on for a certain time period before the reward comes. There are certain systems that dictates at least minimum 2 hours so there is still some cost of production attached to here

So you are saying paintings doesn't have an asset exchange?..


I thought places to exchange shares and currencies are very important in finance... but what do I know  :D :D

You should check out the Jinn asset ;D It is a physical ternary processor aimed at the 'Internet of Things' revolution that we are told is coming down the track with a free and paid emulator for distributed computing. It is arguably external from crypto.

It doesn't require permission from anyone to exist or progress. Each update increases its value and that of the platform it is on. Market prices can exist without regulation. And regulation doesn't prevent fear and greed volatility and unrealistic prices. I bolded it so it must be true  ;) You can ask any technical questions you have about Jinn in this thread, the dev might pick them up  :D :D :D


But I this is getting away from your proposition of your paintings with nothing to offer = POS platforms that support the development of real projects  ;D

Your. Trolling. Is. Just. Too. Powerful... aaaarrgghhhh!!!!

Truth hurts?


  :D

What would you know of truth?

Evidence suggests it is true you try to play to the crowd when your points get rebutted. Maybe you are losing your ability to tell people what to think?

First you claim market caps denote the value of a cryptocurrency. I refute that point by explaining that all cryptocurrencies markets without exception are unregulated and therefore unreliable. I also demonstrate that with the paintings analogy. That threw you for a loop so you ignored the analogy and started talking about the art market. That's called a red herring by the way. Then you said

which is simply hyperbole. I can appreciate that.

But then you have to go and defend your champion CFB. You consistently and completely ignore my rebuttals and instead use fallacies. Now you accuse me of social engineering.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Comments about market cap was your starting point, not mine. My first post was that you were making a false comparison > Your paintings = POS. (I'll wait while you go back a read my post, it starts "bwaaaahahahahaha... "   ;D)

Your paintings = POS is a strawman as the two are definitely not equivalent (unless paintings does have an asset exchange?  ;) ) and you successfully attacked your false representation. Rather than attack the reality of POS (see the bit about Jinn and value not being depending on regulation or acceptance from authority). Far from ignoring your point, I addressed it directly. That was the starting point.


You put the paintings analogy in the middle of our conversation, not at the start. Your version of events doesn't correspond to our conversation and that makes me think you aren't interested in honest discourse, only trying to 'win'.


CfB doesn't need me or anyone else to defend him, he already does a sterling job of that himself  ;D This thread is a good example  :D

But excuse me for the rest of today, I have to go comb my couch.

So why don't you go ahead and mine it? There are several valuable PoS coins, more valuable than PoW coins in fact if you discount Bitcoin.

You are stuck with common misunderstanding that mining increases the Bitcoin value. It goes the other way, difficulty, or rather the energy spent (difficulty also depends on the generation of hardware) increases or decrease with what the market speculates the value of the coin is. The value certainly doesn't depend upon the mining cost.

You're inserting judgement into equation.
PoW rules are neutral - run the algorithm faster and you win. Does that make you malicious?
It is like saying, countries can be attacked by other countries, thus countries are bad. Planets can be attacked by aliens - planets are wrong. Universes can collapse in a Big Crunch - universes are evil.

PoW 51% mechanism is what sets things in motion, PoS saturates towards centralization of power and stays there.


PoS security mechanism is that of a private enterprise. It works well when there are other enterprises to run to. Network effects work great with money, thus global money system is better served with PoW as it can stay robust all by itself by allowing competition for both money and control within the system.

It is if the market values it so. Now I don't know you personally and you may very well be a great painter, but its more likely they will be going for dime a dozen in which case your paintings will have a market cap of $4.

Mea Culpa, it was CFB that brought up the market cap, but it was you that responded to my counterpoint. I presume it was also your argument as you were defending it. But excuse me for the evening. I must attend my party guests.

PoS = PoW with one level of indirection removed.

Instead of
PoS offers

Comparison with a private enterprise is incorrect because you compare only few aspects ignoring the others.

I could say that Bitcoin = FED because miners print money if I followed your tactics.

Dollars, hmm... never heard of them, you mean $nakes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

By the way, we are talking about forking "bicoin" here.
Is it some form of hidden g@y propaganda? I'm straight, so I'm out :D

Have you just attempted to insult ~10% of BTT users?

Yes, but with PoW, you need to keep consuming
an external resource, so the two aren't exactly
comparable.  I'm not going to debate the implications
or pros and cons, as its all been said before, just
pointing that out.

Of course not, everyone has a right to choose what they prefer, bicoin is cool, let's furk it! :D


So you equate PoS cryptocoins to dollars, which is correct as both have stakeholders at the center of their security model, while recognizing that PoW makes a difference, which I fully agree with.

Like it or not, some variation of PoS is going to dominate. The general opinion is slowly being aware that the money given over to the electricity and the hardware companies is better off being utilized to develop the coin itself.

uh, pretty sure we've been debating that for 14 pages...but feel free to stroll in and give your word as gospel.  :D

No one is forced to give any money to anyone, people exercise their own choices.
Competition requires energy, no-competition doesn't.

So which of the competition is better suited - the one which is spending resources to keep the network running, or the other which is using the same resources in improving itself?

No, I could use BTC instead of USD.

Again, confusing security model with distribution model.

Security costs depend on distribution rewards (issuance of new coins),
not whether the coin uses PoS or PoW.

You can buy miners and spend electricity and earn coins.
You can go to an exchange, spend money and buy coins.

Not really sure your point.  Mine is that cryptos like NXT
can claim lower security cost because they aren't issuing
new currency.  Very simple.

I doubt thats what NXT is claiming, though I can't attest to that. I was thinking more is terms of the Bitshares model where new coins are generated by elected delegates and awarded to all those working to develop and improve the coin.

We might have a different definitions of improving.

Improvements in PoW come in a form of advancements in energy-efficient computation, new types of power sources and research of cryptographic hash functions. These improvements are tangible and can be applied to other areas of human life.

Improvements in PoS only benefit the few in power as any innovation will be privatized and used to further strengthen the control grid.


In BTC large coin holders need to decide what percentage of their wealth they will keep in coins and what they reinvest in mining so that competition for control keeps the system robust.

Investing the whole stake is risky as mining farms can burn or become obsolete as new tech emerges, so some balance need to be sought. This is what separates PoW from PoS. It is much more dynamic system without obvious asymptotes of power saturation. It is possible of course that PoS system stays robust and honest for a long time without spending any energy, but it's better to have alternatives where competition is more welcome. PoW provides that.

You mean improve on how to waste energy more efficiently?

Energy cannot be wasted, just transformed.
Do you play computer games, do you watch tv, engage in sports maybe?

Do you realize how much energy humanity 'wastes' by simply existing?
Yeah, the whole Universe is just an utter waste of energy, this needs to stop, teh Big Crunch will save us :D

Obvious? I'm not sure that such an asymptote even exists. Provide more info, pease.

Even bigger asic mining company CEO being truthful about what is happening actually.

MegaBigPower’s CEO Dave Carlson about centralization with asic bitcoin mining:

Centralization remains an issue

The rise of the ASIC and the profitability shifts for mine operators has resulted in what can only be called the death of the retail bitcoin miner, according to Carlson.

“The market for retail miners has all but disappeared,” he explained. “The amount of power required to make a relevant amount of bitcoin has pretty much just left the larger operators who can run at scale using cheap power.”

Calling large mining pools a "direct threat to bitcoin’s future", Carlson said that the community should be as much against the existence of several large mining entities as they are about one huge one.

He said:

    “Each and every investor, owner, entrepreneur or bitcoin enthusiast should be concerned that having two large pools and one 'Unknown' does not ensure the healthy future of the bitcoin ecosystem.”

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-2014-game-changer-bitcoin-mining/ (http://www.coindesk.com/megabigpower-2014-game-changer-bitcoin-mining/)

I wonder how much energy has been wasted in this circlejerk of a thread.

You should watch Hunger Games, it's one heck of a movie, that's the asymptote I refer to.


That's why PoW provides a 51% mechanism.
It works both ways, any 51% attack can be 51% attacked.


You're probably saying that we've had a lot of fun here.
I don't know about you, but I'm mining the heck out of JoyCoin:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=905184.0

I was indeed saying that, and I made extra popcorn. I enjoy all this fun.

Hope JoyCoin is being good to you. I haven't heard of it but will check out the thread you posted later.

Is the sci-fi movie the only thing that backs your words?

I think he means greater actual security with the same security cost.

People keep making the claim that PoS offers lower cost.
This is only true (as far as I know) if the currency issuance
is lower, due to competition.

But, even if we can lower security cost, the question
remains if PoS is a fair system, as it tends to "ossify nobility"  
as Vitalik would say, and makes the rich richer, eventually
culminating in the hunger games :)

It may be true PoS offers some higher security though,
which is why I'd be interested in this:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake#Meni.27s_implementation

It's becoming quite popular to compare movies to coins. Let's talk about Bitcoin and Snowpiercer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX5PwfEMBM0). Guess who play the miner roles...

Another 15 pages of POW vs POS debate, such WOW!  ;D

In the end the truth is bitcoin is consuming 10% of its market cap each year (500 million $) to mantain a decentralized (not so decentralized lately) ledger.
That means if you have 100k $ of wealth in bitcoin you need to pray that the USA government don't change its mind about bitcoin while you work hard to earn at least 10k $ per year if you do not want to lose purchasing power. :-\
Or...
you can just buy all the NXT you can for the current extra cheap price, sit on them and enjoy all the benefits of a natural steady deflation which increases your purchasing power. 8)

Then that cost will decide its value. For PoS coins' value to rise, the mining cost must go up, and eventually it will be as energy hugry as PoW coin

If people can both mine coins and buy coins, they will always select the cheapest method to get coins (provided coins have some use). So eventually the mining will become so energy consuming that it costs almost the same as coin's market price, which makes PoS coin the same as PoW coin. Actually I don't think you can design a scheme to overcome this basic market behavior, unless you can make a law to force people to use PoS coins

And the concept of "stake holder" is so legacy: This concept typically coming from a very centralized organization in old times. With concentrated power comes more corruption and political unease, they are all against the idea of decentralized consensus spirit of bitcoin. Satoshi invented bitcoin to be a different alternative to legacy financial system. However, PoS designer walk the same path of legacy financial system, they even use the concept of interest to simulate the existing financial system, all these sounds very outdated and not well thought

No, I'm just saying that trying to furk bicoin might result in bi-furk-action.
So, bi careful and don't furk it up! :D

Well sort of.  A coin's value is determined by supply and demand, not the mining costs; it is the mining costs that are determined by the value of the new coins being issued..

PoS coins like NXT have essentially no mining (minting) costs because they issue no new coins.

10% a year today,  6 % in 2016, 5% in 2017, 3% in 2019, and 0.5% in 2026.

That something I like about Nxt. Bitcoin is Disinflationary, while nxt has no inflation besides the ICO. This may be its undoing though because distribution wasn't the best initially. The nxt currency isn't deflationary in of itself .... are there any true deflationary currencies in existence? (I am not talking about deflationary in reference to minting vs adoption)

One interesting thing about PoS, is that the only known way
around the nothing-at-stake problem is to use bonds (security
deposits).  However, this seems to further exacerbate the
wealth centralization issue, as now you need to not only
be a stake holder, but one that has enough capital to
continually post bonds every block.  Maybe its not a huge
deal?

The 10% will not decrease, as shown by the last halving. If it decreased to 0.5% in 2026, then it will only cost 0.5% to attack the Bitcoin network, which is laughable as security.

The amount of CPU power necessary to generate a PoS block is nominal at most. A single very old computer would be able to handle creating every single block of a PoS coin.

If it does not cost anything to produce a PoS coin then it does not cost anything to attack the network. As a result any PoS coin can be attacked for free

yes, that is the so called nothing-at-stake issue.

And now that I think about more, I don't even
think security deposits solve the issue.

Blah blah blah, do it!


I think you can actually try an attack spending 2 or 3% of the bitcoin market cap.  
When inflation drop to 0.5%, 0.1% of the bitcoin market cap will do the job, maybe even less then that if the mining has centralized further.
By then, not the government, not a terrorist organization, not an asteroid but speculation will have destroyed it.
And for those who think transaction fees will be enough to pay for the security i want to ask them how useful is bitcoin if you must spend 2 or 3 $ to do a transaction.
The bell shaped curve of yearly transaction revenues from fees, has a point of maximum which is not proportional to the market cap of the coin, if you raise fee beyond that point revenues will drop and the same will happen if you set minimum fee too low, i don't know how much total revenues from fees could be at best, but i'm sure it will not be enough and it is a very stupid idea imposing 100% of the costs on those who make transactions and will porbably result in a disaster.
Cost of security in a POW must be proportional to market cap, and must be paid by stakeholders via inflation like it's happening today.
That's why bitcoin economic model is actually working, neverending inflation is necessary for POW to continue working properly.

Looks like you prefer to joke instead of defending your point of view. Ok, never mind.

Your claim perfectly explains why I've seen several successfully attacked PoW coins and none PoS ones. /sarcasm

Don't make me laugh.  You think you can 51% the government?  lol

"Money's value is decided by supply and demand", this statement comes from legacy financial book, and they forgot to mention the most important prerequisite of this statement: You must be monopole in making such money and force it upon its users. For commodity money like gold/silver, its value typically tied to production cost because of free flow of capitals

I can create a PoS coin and hold majority of the coins or even all of them and hope others to use it, thus give it demand and increase its value. However in open source world the competition is almost instant, if it is enough profitable, some others will also do this by using similar code, and possibly with a even higher marketing effort, eventually the demand will be spread in many different coins thus each coin's value becomes diluted

The problem in the above PoS clone scenario is inflation: If there are so many different clones out there, then the aggregate inflation will destroy each coins value and people will just leave. Many people come to cryptocurrency world seeking for protection from inflation, they will evaluate the situation and eventually only select one currency with limited supply to achieve that goal. From this point of view, any clone (including PoW coin clone) will only get minimal capital inflow

If you really want to see energy waste, go check out reddit.com/r/bitcoin.

It is one huge circle jerk, and r/buttcoin makes fun of them (us)

Yet another with no idea how it works. If it can be attacked for free how are those coins surviving? Take a look at Coinmarketcap, the top list is dominated by non-PoW coins. Surely, if its that easy they would've been attacked by now - the incentive is there.

well, sort of.  doge, lite coin, and bitcoin are still on top.  you can't even count stellar and ripple as they aren't decentralized.  paycoin is new, but partially poW anyway.  

As far as attacking, yes you do need some stake at least initially to attack a poS coin, so it's not truly free.  probably you would need something on the order of a 1% stake.  But on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily mean poS will work at larger scales; many have serious concerns about the security model.  You are right that the concerns are theoretical as of now.

That's why we have an anarchy of competing governments.
Putting governments' spending onto blockchain would allow for greater transparency and accountability.
BTC blockchain might become the DNA of humanity, as a single healthy organism, that would evolve beyond the confines of a single planet.


I have rehashed most of my arguments up thread. Provided that this isn't the first time there is a discussion on the topic, there isn't much to add. I'm glad that debates have continued, though. Debates is what keeps us alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpMPu5p_QXU

By the way, you might notice some parallels in the video above and the movie I referred to earlier, so my concerns are not completely unfounded. PoW and PoS may and should co-exist and can even be friends :)

Obviously this part is too technical to some people here though it tells a simple truth.

Logic flow:
Dollars -> aerospace engineering research -> intergalactic travel
therefor dollars -> intergalactic travel
who needs rocket scientists, right?  ::)

Bitcoin is very hard to upgrade but you can hold bitcoin on a DPOS (delegated proof of stake) chain on BitShares as bitBTC and earn interest.  So individuals can choose to upgrade but the network itself can't.

This is an obvious troll thread that belongs in alt coins. Bitcoin has never considered any other design. Please move this thread.

Who is this bitcoin you speak of and when can we get an official statement?

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

I like your sense of humor. Your claim about the logic flaw is logically flawed. But mistyping "o" instead of "a" you made it double-twisted.

If this was true then it would mean that Bitcoin is centralized. Whom do you refer to by calling them "Bitcoin"?

This is like saying Kodak was never considered to move to digital cameras. If bitcoin don't evolve it will get outdated.

I can't believe how bitcoiners blame so hard people not willing to evolve and move to bitcoin, but at the same time they hate so much other innovations that could provide better service.

True.

From what I hear though, there has been quite a bit of discussion about
Proof of Stake among the core developers...its not like they are ignoring
the issue...Its just that so far, they don't see that it will make Bitcoin
more secure.

fify.

There is nothing stopping you from making a hard fork. This isn't even a dispute. I don't know why the wiki says such nonsense. Good luck getting miners to switch to your fork.

Non Sequitur. Pointing out that your statement is delusional and a defensive act of Repression has nothing to do with how I feel about PoS or if it is likely Bitcoin will switch consensus mechanisms.

There are plenty of developers who have considered other designs and are still considering other designs for bitcoin. This is a simple fact. I understand you will not call such a hardfork bitcoin, but you must acknowledge you are not bitcoin.


Who is this bitcoin you speak of and when can we get an official statement?

p.s..... Don't read into my statements either as I am not advocating for such a fork.

Bitcoin cannot change to PoS. It is impossible. Why don't you understand? Bitcoin is the collective of users. Is that concept too difficult for you? Your "official statement" is a strawman.

I do not represent bitcoin but am just one user of the protocol so cannot give an "official statement" and never suggested as much.

So you are suggesting that if a majority of the developers and community decides to do a hardfork from PoW to PoS this wouldn't be called "bitcoin" because you don't agree?

The wiki says adding Proof of Stake elements to the Proof of Work would be a disputed change...because it is.  Why is that nonsense?

Exactly. The fact that we are discussing the possibility of it here is proof that it is disputed possibility. Bitcoin is an open source protocol and will be changed to whatever the users want it to be changed.

I suppose it is more of an inherent question of what defines "bitcoin" and some purists believe that we can never stray from Satoshi's original consensus mechanism, while other purists say we must see the forest for the trees and define bitcoin as the currency which follows Satoshi's original philosophy and if another algo accomplishes that than this is also acceptable.

Claiming something and doing something are two different things. Apparently this is the wiki author's opinion. That doesn't make it so. If someone wants to do it then they should go ahead and do it. Unless what you mean is that begging everyone to follow you is a bad idea. The begging part is in dispute.

Ok fair enough, but then by the same token, we can also say that the assertion "it is nonsense" is simply your opinion too.  Agree?

Technically rejecting an unsubstantiated argument doesn't require evidence.

sorry if this has been mentioned in this thread in the past, but how would PoS actually work ? Wouldnt that benefit existing holders of bitcoin ?

Holders - yes.
Miners - NO.

You're not making sense.

The wiki says this.


I think that's pretty accurate.  You can disagree, but so far you haven't convinced me why you're right and the wiki is wrong. 
What would you change it to?

obviously that would make it non-lucrative for miners... how exactly would that work ?

I concede the point because I don't understand it. Maybe someone should write a white paper on how it would be done so I have facts to deal with.

There is no white paper because the wiki is speaking in general terms.
One example is Meni's implementation of adding proof of stake
checkpoints.... One of the key words here is adding proof
of stake, NOT replacing proof of work entirely.

If you were meaning to say that replacing proof of work entirely
with proof of stake shouldn't even be considered (rather than
being in the category of "disputed"), then I would generally
agree, as it is too huge of a change.

And by the way, this is a perfect example.  Meni's idea sounds
appealing, but the core devs (and even Meni) dispute it being
implemented because they do not believe it will make bitcoin
more secure.

Imagine that every bitcoin is a virtual mining rig and they can mine new blocks by taking part in a provably fair lottery.

I think Meni had an ulterior motive for including it in the wiki. Perhaps he will remove once PoS has found its niche.

He is probably asking how the migration would be possible with vested interests and he brings up a fair point. Migrating away from PoW for Bitcoin probably isn't likely unless there was a 51% attack.

my question was a combination of a) how exactly does PoS work and yes, b) WTH would people do with their mining equipment ?

OK, let's wait for a lower Bitcoin price that will force some miners to switch to other coins.

read this:  http://peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf

What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin or people just used it with the Bitcoin protocol. This may happen in the future.

What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.

So a TaPoS blockchain could indeed supplement Bitcoin and at the same time would not change any of the core principles like disinflation 21 million , PoW, ect..

The fact that this can be done does not bode well for Nxt or Bitshares and should have them concerned.

I am agnostic on side chains. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat.

Would it help mitigate 51% attacks?

Depends upon what you mean by a 51% attack. It would not protect PoW layer at all directly but would protect the end user because after you receive payment you could depend upon the combined trust(with both the strengths and weaknesses of both consensus algos) of both systems. So If a 51% attack was occurring on the mining pools and the nodes on the TaPoS blockchain were not confirming than one could delay accepting and trusting the transaction until the community figured out what the problem was.

This brings up many other complicated questions though like if it is an act of supererogation and introducing new potential attacks but overall the benefits could be really nice as it would bring a lot more decentralization back into bitcoin, increase security overall, allow for decentralized instant confirmations,  and act as a backstop against the asic manufacturers or mining pools from any mis-behavior.

So the mass-debating continues :)


I wonder what happens if stakeholders hire a small group of miners and simply start checkpointing the blockchain they produce, even though it's not the longest one?


51% attacks is a cornerstone of PoW design.
If attack is not possible then the entity/mechanism preventing the attack becomes the central point of failure.

SlipperySlope started a project to implement PoS in Bitcoin. Looks like he gave up and tries to make his own new coin now: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584719.0

Edit: Actually he didn't give up but is just going another way to make Bitcoin a PoS coin.

Super! I wish his project well.

Implementing PoS in Bitcoin is indeed a SlipperySlope :D
Nothing is coincidental.

Or this: https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Whitepaper:Nxt#Proof_of_Stake


Also I would straight up say: Switching bitcoin will be impossible. How would a transition even work without compromising the security of the network? What will happen to all the gear?

I think it's a good example of the problem of divided incentives. Should POS in theory prove to be better for the coin, the miners would still block it - and rather harm the coin to prevent their financial loss. They will have the ultimate decision.

Governments aren't going to be 51% attacking each other to protect BTC users' autonomy.  The majority of governments work in concert with each other.  "Competing governments" are an illusion.

You're giving miners way too much credit for being able to decide on the protocol specifications. If some significant part of the community decides that they would prefer a POS based bitcoin and to change to POS at blockheight x then the miners have no real power to combat this change. They can only decide on whether or not they think it is still profitable to keep mining on the POW fork of "bitcoin".

I don't think that is necessarily true.  If a government were to coerce or more likely impel pools and mining corporations to act a certain way, for instance, freezing some peoples' accounts, would the currency users running the TaPoS chain not abide by the PoW chain and revolt?  I think that would be very unlikely, because the PoW chain will still dominate.  The mass majority of TaPoS nodes will fall in line with whatever "rules" the PoW chain decides to enforce, because if they don't, they will fork and lose their investment.

... unless governments themselves become BTC users, which they should.

It's a good question though. In the scenario of a single totalitarian world government PoW might not be the best option and instead a myriad of anonymous PoS coins will serve better. Though it would not be a perfect global money system for variety of reasons. This solution is temporary and so is the one world government. Once it falls apart PoW provides a neutral playground for competition.

We are far from the scenario described above, because there are clearly big countries who agreed to disagree. We need both systems as each serves its own purpose, so we will see how this plays out.

I am not seeing any realistic hopes of Bitcoin switching from PoW.

Who is that "significant part of the community"? If it excludes most core devs (who seem to hate POS) and most miners... which also means most big exchanges, since they have massive mining ventures too - e.g. Huobi and BTC-China. Adding then that most users are unmotivated to look into any of those issues, then we talk about a tiny minority that has to take over the system.
Technically possible - but improbable close to the point of "never gonna happen". And if it would (maybe because of a government attack), it will be major chaos.

It seems much more logical that people who don't like the system switch to an alt with the desired properties.

First of all, I definitely agree that it's unlikely to happen due to the reasons you've just given (and because I don't think POS is a viable alternative [currently] but that's beside the point). I was only trying to point out that it's not a decision the miners have some ultimate say in. If a part of the community forks the bitcoin blockchain at some blockheight and changes to POS, there is little the miners can do about it. That being said, if such a fork would occur in the near future there probably wouldn't be a lot of support for it from the current userbase (partly because currently miners are also related to other parts of the ecosystem as you stated).

It would need significantly more than 1% stake. Again, I am thinking in terms of DPoS, as I don't have a thorough knowledge of the alternatives.

Whether the security remains as robust with scaling remains to be seen, but that is only possible when it gets big. I haven't seen any good theoretical attack vectors which may compromise it on a bigger scale. In case it does, the developers have to look at improving the solution, like DPoS itself was an evolution through a series of steps.

DPoS (aka Delegated PoS) is a joke because it adds a social construct to chain security which is easily manipulated.  This makes it susceptible to Sybil attack and breaks it.  There is no way to prove the delegates are unique individuals.  THIS IS A FATAL FLAW!

An individual can create multiple delegates and get stakeholders to approve them via deception.  This gives the illusion that there are 101 unique delegates when in reality many delegates are in fact one individual.  When you consider that multiple individuals could collude to create these faux delegates, it becomes obvious that gaining control over 51% of the delegates would not be that difficult.  It's even more vulnerable because Bitshares is trying to attract "businesses and developers" as delegates.  All someone would have to do to get voted in as a delegate is to post a convincing but fake business plan or resume and the stakeholders would eagerly pull in the Trojan horse.

Some Bitshares' users ask about how to tell if delegates are unique (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=11249.0), but they get no response from the devs.

Bitshares has already had a Sybil attack occur earlier this year (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10937.0;all) when it was uncovered that an individual named "sfinder" actually controlled the TOP 5 DELEGATES!

It becomes laughable when the main Bitshares' dev, Daniel Larimer (aka Bytemaster), appears in the thread and starts asking if anyone else knows what other delegates "sfinder" controls. (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10937.msg144404#msg144404)  The Bitshares' devs obviously know about this problem, but they still have the audacity to say that "Bitshares is your gateway to the decentralized world!"

The truth of this matter is, that as everyone knows who was around in 2013, Bitshares was originally going to be PoW.  The Bitshares' devs only decided to switch to PoS after they saw the success of NXT.  In a flawed attempt to look original, they added "delegates" to PoS which effectively destroyed it by adding centralization and opening it up to the aforementioned Sybil attacks.

There is no need to 'upgrade' Bitcoin now as such. A non-PoW complement to Bitcoin already exists in BitBTC, though granted at this particular moment the peg is not holding too well (it needs more volume). It can be used as BTC with bells and whistles and will also allow users to see how a non-PoW option works.

I eventually see Bitcoin moving on to a different scheme, whether its completely non-PoW or partly PoW. I expect Bitcoin holders to be not too happy in the future when they realize that they may not need to pay this much to secure the network thus reducing inflation.

Epic fail.  I knew it.  Not to mention that even if the delegates are known,
then they become subject to manipulation.

How did they uncover this "sfinder" character?

Why is having multiple delegates belong to one person bad?
Or are you saying that 101 is indeed the magic number, and anything less is too centralized? What if we coalesced redundant delegates into single nodes?

Sfinder was found and voted out successfully. 

It is almost impossible for full pay delegates to be the same person.  Unless they are superhuman and able to complete multiple jobs at the same time.  You can view the work delegates are doing.  They have to be transparent and productive or they are voted out.  It's simply not possible to all be the same person because 1 person cannot do 101 jobs.  And there are huge incentives to not do this.

Delegates are one of the great features of BitShares.  It's creating a thriving community and a whole new type of decentralised organisation.  Not to mention the unique identity verifying features being developed.   DPOS is an amazing, fascinating and powerful invention which is going to re-structure society itself.  Constructive criticism is always welcomed, but please keep it real.

Certainly more difficult than one individual or group running several pools and getting control over 51% hashrate. Imagine having around 10 delegates, imagine that the delegates have power proportional to the votes, imagine that 2-3 of the top voted delegates have control due to the proportionality factor - well, you get Bitcoin.

DPoS concedes that some degree of gravitating towards a few concentrated points is always going to happen, as was clear in the Ghash success, and later seen in NXT forging pools too. It attempts to regulate this behaviour by making it inbuilt in the protocol itself and trying to make sure that there is no more centralization than is necessary.

You make it sound so easy. Its interesting how preference sways our judgement. For instance, I can easily say the same for PoW coins:

All someone has to do is operate a pool which rewards block finders generously and has 0 fees, and the miners would eagerly pull in the Trojan horse

If anything, the Ghash incident showed that miners are not pro-active in protecting the network and it leaves PoW coins vulnerable. Will shareholders be more careful when it becomes larger and the voting is more distributed? Well, only time will tell.

This is the same problem being mulled over with my coin.  (Search RPCD ANN)

According to my analysis Bitcoin has incentives to centralize as market cap goes up, especially as long as block rewards are relatively high. You can't risk orphaned blocks mining on your own little home based node and p2p pool doesn't seem to be as efficient either.

Where with DPOS it seems all the centralization should occur early on and then as market cap grows, the largest reason for multiple delegates per person decreases because each can pay a fair amount of compensation. At that point shareholders (which POW miners are not) will be incentivized to keep the network decentralized because NETWORK SECURITY WILL DEMAND IT !

Epic fail is exactly right.  It's disingenuous, in every sense of the word, that the Bitshares' devs continue to lead people to believe that Bitshares is "decentralized" and I quote "Safer than a Swiss bank account!"  Obviously, they care more about getting investors' money than protecting it and creating an actual decentralized system.

The Bitshares' devs didn't find "sfinder" on their own accord.  Daniel Larimer (aka Bytemaster), the main Bitshares' dev, even voted him into multiple delegate positions.  It was some individuals in the Chinese community that found out about his multiple delegate positions.


I'm going to assume the first question is a joke.  I'm saying regardless of how many delegates you have 11, 101 or 1001, DPoS is fundamentally flawed because you geniuses forced a social construct onto chain security which opens you up to Sybil attacks.


Are you sure about that?  Prove it.  Oh wait... you can't because it is IMPOSSIBLE to in Bitshares' DPoS mechanism.


Yes, because we all know that all investors are diligent and have the experience necessary to ensure that they don't fall into a trap.  Also, we all know that scammers never, ever work together, right?  lol

How are you going to verify a delegate is doing his due diligence as a business if his progress can't be determined solely based on code commits?


I am "keeping it real".  Everyone involved in Bitshares that supports these claims of it being "decentralized" and "Safer than a Swiss bank account" is misleading those who don't know any better.  Bitshares destroyed PoS by adding delegates.  What is worse is that imo the real reason the Bitshares' devs added delegates was to steal NXT's PoS mechanism and try to make it look like they were "innovative" when really they just wanted to ride on NXT's success.  It is clear (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10937.msg144404#msg144404) that Daniel knows that it is IMPOSSIBLE to ascertain the identities behind delegates, but they continue on this "decentralization" charade, imo purely to capitalize on the uninformed.

Now the Bitshares' cheerleaders will tell you, "What does it matter if the delegates are the same person?"  Surely, they jest.  The ENTIRE REASON behind ALL consensus mechanisms is to prevent SYBIL ATTACKS!  PoW does this with hashpower.  PoS does this with stake.  DPoS claims to be able to do this with "delegates", but this is impossible because multiple delegates can be controlled by one individual.  Some of you might say, well, with NXT's PoS, you can lease your forging power isn't that the same thing?  The difference is this.  NXT doesn't force the social construct onto the chain.  You DON'T have to lease your forging power to anyone!  There is NO reason to lease your forging power to anyone unless you want to receive the tx fees you earn on a more consistent basis at the cost of paying the forging pool operator a fee.  Leasing in NXT was created so you could lease your stake to YOURSELF and keep your main account offline.  Therefore allowing you to protect the network and not keep your main account open on your computer.

Anyone who supports Bitshares' DPoS consensus mechanism is either disingenuous, delusional or severely misinformed.


Nice try, but NXT's forging pools never got remotely close to GHash's hashpower concentration.  NXT also has way more than 101 forgers securing its chain.


I make it sound "easy", because it is "easy" to mislead and manipulate people who are uninformed.  Have you seen the scams that are being pulled over on people in the altcoin section (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0)?

This is a ridiculously naive argument with no appreciation for the reality of people's greed,
and 100% wrong.
 
The people that would abuse the system to gain multiple delegate spots
are NOT going to say "you know what, I'm being paid a fair amount already,
I don't want more than my fair share."

The more money there is to make, the MORE motivated everyone will be to cheat.
 

That's the most ridiculous thing to say in the internet age. Of course one person can do millions of procedural tasks at once. If you can't write software to do it you hire cheap tech support in Mexico or India and script them. Break them up into teams for each delegate pseudonym and offer compensation based on productivity.

Point taken there can be subcontracting. 

Mathematically proving delegates are different people isn't necessary.  Incentives work strongly against any attacker.  They would have to spend months developing (via subcontracting or doing it themselves) a bunch of features for BitShares to win voter approval to take multiple positions or they would have to buy a massive amount of BTS to be able to vote themselves in, only to then attack themselves by attacking the network.  The cost of attack is already very high.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with having a social construct be part of the mix.  Lets compare it to massive warehouses filled with asics run by a handful of mining pools.  Both methods are worthy experiments and no one knows what POW or DPOS will lead to in the future.

But isn't the attack a double spend? It can more than make up for lost revenue. If you run enough double spend scams for awhile you can always sell your position down and quietly exit.

You realize by saying this you are no longer a "cryptocurrency" and are now akin to Ripple which makes you trust that nodes (aka delegates) won't collude against you.


The cost of attacking Bitshares is extremely low.  It has already been done once. (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10937.0;all)  How much did it cost "sfinder" to attack?  What makes you think it won't happen again?  What makes you think others delegates aren't currently deceiving people?  How much does it cost to mislead people through deception?


There is absolutely something wrong with introducing a social construct into chain security and then misleading people to think the system is "decentralized" and "Safer than a Swiss bank account."  Imo, PoW is evolving into a centralized system but it is still more decentralized than DPoS because it is mathematically provable through PoW that the chain is secured by a verifiable amount of hashpower.

If I want to attack Bitcoin's PoW algo, I have to acquire 51% of the hashpower.
If I want to attack NXT's PoS algo, I have to acquire 51% of the stake.
If I want to attack Bitshare's DPoS algo, ALL I have to do is LIE.

throw your pentium 4 to garbage (bitcoin) and buy an i7 (nxt)

edit : nxt is core i5 and nem is core i7 ! now that's better !

afaik sfinder didn't attack the network, he just ran several delegates while spreading bearish sentiment.  sfinder is a case of successful identification and removal out of malicious delegates.

You don't just have to lie, you have to convince stakeholders to vote for you enough times to win the majority of the delegate positions. The votes can be withdrawn and the delegates removed if an attack is made.  Any attack attempt may result in making BitShares immediately stronger as devs typically have to do some work in advance to get voted in.  They would have to do this 50+ times to have a chance at doing a double spend.  Basic block singing delegates are voted in more easily but they can still be kicked out and they will decrease in number as time moves forward.

Also there is an unique individual verification system being developed by http://followmyvote.com/ who are part of BitShares which could be used to ensure delegates are unique individuals and make it even stronger in the future.

This is perfect example of why DPOS works so well. We literally have a situation where the network autonomously removed a block producer the community identified as being malicious. With POW or POS there is no such possibility, if you have a malicious stakeholder/block producer you simply have to accept that they will stay so forever.

The fact that one individual was voted into multiple delegate positions is a breakdown of chain security.  Just because he didn't attack doesn't mean that he couldn't have or that someone in the future won't.  You can't say that "sfinder is a case of successful identification and removal out of malicious delegates" because YOU DON'T KNOW IF HE CONTROLS OTHER DELEGATES.  No one can be sure how many delegates are controlled by one person because DPOS IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED.


After an attack is made, it is too late.  No one will care if the stakeholders remove their votes from the attacking delegates.  People will have lost money.  Who is going to be responsible for replacing investors' lost money?


This doesn't sound very "decentralized" to me.  It sounds like a system to bring about "approved validators" which is extremely similar to Ripple but more centralized.

Wrong.  This is a perfect example of why DPoS is broken.  We literally have a situation where the security of the network is at the mercy of stakeholders trusting delegates not to collude against them.  How can you be sure that other individuals aren't currently posing as multiple delegates?  YOU CAN'T!

With PoW or PoS, I can't control 51% of the hashpower or stake with the moving of my lips.

Lol. How can you be sure that 51% of all bitcoin mining power isn't controlled by a single person, or that 51% of all NXT isn't held by or leased to a single person? Nice try at FUD, though.