Bitcoin Forum

Hi everybody,
What i really don't like about bitcoin is the waste of computing power (= waste of resources) it needs to secure the network, and how things would get worse the more bitcoin becomes successful.

Because of this I was wandering which are, actually, alternative mining alghoritms that you are aware of, and possibly their pros/cons.
I'd mantain such list in this OP and maybe group them up in a website if it could be useful, and discuss about mining alghoritms here to maybe come out with a new greener mining alghoritm or best block generation approach

If a post like this already exists (or website links) then please point me to it
thanks

Anything that doesn't have a name as "BTC" is some sort of different algo than SHA256. closest thing for almost all of them in one place that I could find is here.
https://www.nicehash.com/index.jsp?p=calc

what I'de like to have (or do it myself) is a place where mining alghorits are described, anyway that link is a start to have a little list of alghoritms to research, thanks

I think you have to step back and ask yourself if it really is a waste of computing power, or if it is an essential part of the manufacturing process. Most mining operations become more expensive as the resource becomes more desirable, and easy sources are mined. Fracking is one example in the oil industry.

First of all, ALL mining algorithms will be a "waste of computing power" at the scale of Bitcoin. Secondly, the amount of power consumed by all Bitcoin mining is very low, and most of the power consumed is excess electricity produced by hydroelectric dams in China.

Mining is an essential part of the Bitcoin industry. Would you consider manufacturing a waste of resources? Likewise, mining is the process of securing the network and producing more Bitcoin, so it really is not a waste of resources.

So, let's accept the false premise that Proof of Work is wasteful.


It's not your waste to condemn. If one does not like the perceived wasteful behaviour of others, there is little that can be done about it without violating their property rights. So you're on a one-way ticket to an alt-coin exchange (and you're pretty much forced to buy Bitcoin in order to buy non-POW altcoins, so you must support the "wasteful" enterprise at least that much for the time being).


Back in the real-world, people that understand the purpose of POW know that every single block-solution attempt expended that does not meet the difficulty threshold is important, as together, those hashes that did not meet the difficulty represent the amount of energy (measured in kW/h) that miner's currently deem Bitcoin to be valued at (mining Bitcoin would be an exercise in throwing all your money away if that were not the case). And in addition, it is an important demonstration of the amount of hashing an adverse blockchain would need to rewrite Bitcoin's blockchain at that blockheight.

Despite the fact that in every enterprise the cost to run the enterprise has to be lowered as much as possible, and a system that scale up in cost isn't a solution that anyone would like to adopt, my point here isn't about arguing if the mining process is good or not (and tbh I know it's necessary to secure the network), but about collecting the various mining alghrithm available, not necessarily for bitcoin itself.

Moreover i'd like to know if someone ever attempted to do some kind of mix of alghoritms where you don't need to find the zeores required, using just scrypt, or sha or whatever, but a mix of those (so a miner couldn't run just a CPU miner, or a GPU miner, but need both or even more systems). I'm not talking about dual alghos coins, because afaik those are using 2 separate alghoritms that generate blocks on alternate rates (e.g. on huntercoin/namecoin sha and scrypt are set to generate a block every 2 minutes, but it's perceived as a coin that generate a block every minute

I think that having a wide range of mining alghoritms ideas could be beneficial, if not for bitcoin, at least for a generic blockchain technology

There is http://cpucoinlist.com/cryptocurrency-algorithms/
for supposedly CPU-friendly proof-of-work schemes, but I believe
it's no longer maintained and somewhat outdated.

What about something like Primecoin, a "dual use" of mining so to speak? http://primecoin.io/index.php

how you can say its waste of time i am not agree with you. what's your experience ? . i start earning btc from computing .anyways you have to make aim in your life . if you make an aim about making btc with the help of Computing power. you'll surly gain success

From a personal economic point of view - yes, but the computing power could be used for something more than just processing the Sha hashes.
I like the concept of "folding coin".