As I understand, with DPOS the established group of stakeholders with majority vote would be able to maintain total control over the network indefinitely at no cost. It doesn't matter much if control is exerted directly or via delegates, more steps only clutter the mechanics of control and contribute to confusion.

I would not comment on PoI as it is too early. I have concerns if large economic entities would maintain too much importance in the long run (think Facebook, Google), but at least their positions are not set in stone an can potentially be challenged by other players, however social network effects might become a significant barrier to entry. There is no sustainable network effects in mining as hardware is rendered obsolete fairly quickly over time and players need to compete from scratch with every new round of distribution. Also not quite sure if botnets will be able to simulate a lot of activity in PoI by sending random coins back and forth and thus gaining more and more control. It sounds promising, but we will see.

I highly doubt these three are better, as a group of stakeholders with majority vote will at some point maintain total control over the network and can stay unchallenged in this position indefinitely at no cost. This is not possible with Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin fails, it won't be because of the technical issues as those can always be corrected, but because people are not yet ready to understand the mechanics of control over money in the system and often blinded with just possibility for profit. They sell control(freedom) for profit(comfort). Happened before, happens again.

Saying that other crypto might succeed if Bitcoin fails doesn't mean much, because as I already pointed out not all cryptos are in the same league. You can say that today's fiat is also crypto as banks use strong encryption, but that hardly makes any difference.

Sure! Hope I didn't sound too serious or dramatic, lol
Small donation sent, shared on my social account as well.

Cheers!

Great song!

I like the ESC sequence at the end of the address, meaning we are now on escape trajectory from confines of the old system. It is our responsibility to educate future generations about mistakes in the past and not let the new system become our new confinement.

Very symbolic, very timely!
Thanks for your effort.

I need to quote this, it's precious!

Freedom is a choice, but with choice comes responsibility.
That's why there are those who like watching movies and those who like playing games.

On the practical note, there is a project that can contribute greatly towards the freedom of humanity in the future. It's a completely open ISA called RISC-V from Berkeley and a series of open processor designs developed in India called Shakti. Google it. The barriers for entry into hardware design are getting lower, and I thought that bitcoiners might be interested.

We will see if PoA or PoI hold any water, they haven't been battle-tested yet on a large scale.
Maybe the ultimate solution is an intricate combination of them all?

Prove me wrong?
I'm particularly interested in this one with PoS:
once-rich-or-lucky-gain-share-of-control-forever

The "forever" part is what I have the most trouble with, getting rich or lucky is ok.

There are two trains at the station right now and soon leaving:

One will get you to the place, where you can be free if you are willing to take care of yourself (PoW).
Another will take you to a more cosy place, where others take care about you (PoS).

It's not one or the other, they both exist and they are both valid, it's about which one would you ride.

What prevents other players who feel enthusiastic and competitive from challenging the position of that dominant company? The creative urge for innovation is inherently decentralized.


No, rich-get-richer is not my concern, but once-rich-or-lucky-gain-share-of-control-forever is.
So far I haven't seen proven mechanisms in PoS systems that would prevent that.

PoW, on the other hand, is inherently pro-competition as mining is naturally a break-even game.

Ok, my secret inner circle plan will work there too, you with me?


Unlike top PoS stakeholders, top miners need to remain competitive. It means they need to have a revenue stream to perform timely hardware upgrades in order to stay on top of the game. But that's not an easy task because in a balanced PoW system mining is a break-even game, not a revenue stream, unless some shady schemes are employed with various mining derivatives and paper gigahashes for sale. So people need to be properly educated to not fall for this. If you don't own a physical mining equipment it will all end sour, like with paper gold.

In the grand scheme of things miners need to also do something useful for society in order to have a revenue stream and maintain their position (again in a balanced system mining is neither losing, nor gaining money), but doing so would prevent other actors from gaining total control over network. Freedom is vigilance, it's not for free and miner is your weapon.

I have a new PR stunt for you guys:
PoW - Proof Of Warforfreedom
PoS - Proof Of Snakeoilsalesmen

Good day

I knew I was right on the money with Nxt, actaully created my account after learning about it.

EDIT:

A small remark.
With major Nxt promoters' names starting with Evil(Dave), Dark(horseofnxt) and eventually Sad(face) you are making our otherwise secret plan a little too obvious, we need more diversity in PR, devphp is doing good though, definitely a step in the right direction.

Yes and no.
If Bitcoin doesn't screw up with upcoming hard-fork and increasing of the block size limit, and if Satoshi doesn't reveal himself and decide to do something funny with his estimated 7% of coins, then yes Bitcoin might be all you need to care about for the foreseeable future. But you would still need Litecoin to be that number one alternative that always takes a slightly different route just in case something goes wrong.
You know, it ain't fun having dinner alone. Bitcoin's got his little brother for that.

This is how I would conquer the world with Nxt, you might wanna take notes
I would identify major stakeholders and find the way to contact them.
I would establish a secret inner circle of stakeholders, which cumulatively maintain the majority vote.
I would make sure that public doesn't get spooked about the action by keeping a percentage of stake available for free trading on the exchanges to create an illusion of choice.
Now, because technological breakthrough and innovation cannot challenge the possession of stake within the circle to maintain control over transactions, I can now consider the first phase of my plan as stable and concentrate on the rest.

Not getting newer ASICs for free is exactly the point of PoW, because somebody someplace might be developing on-chip photonics that will make existing hardware obsolete. This happened with CPUs, happened with GPUs, will happen with ASICs. Keeping all the innovation within the established inner circle of control is so much harder, because you might never know what a nerdy prodigy kid is working on in his mom's basement.

Bingo!
I'm glad there are still people who get the point!


The overwhelming majority might never feel the need to mine, but knowing that they can if they want to without permission, makes all the difference between PoW and PoS.

If you are in it for a quick buck, you might need to look at some newer alts and learn how to get lucky.

However you might also want to think about it in terms of your share in the future economy, which would rely on the most prominent and stable systems with reasonably fair and unbiased long-term distribution mechanisms, in which case Litecoin looks very strong.

I prefer to diversify enough to not let any personal bias get in the way of my judgement.
But it's not about me and it's not about you either, it's about what we are going to tell future generations.

This is a junction point in history again, when you can become a stakeholder overlord if you want to, but little do those wannabe overlords know that winning in a rigged game ain't fun.


On a certain level it's no longer about wealth, it's about control.
PoS allows to maintain control over money flow at no cost without letting any competition get in the way.
In PoW neutral algorithm judges the competition.

I do think that PoS has merit and a niche in the future. People will find it useful for sub-groups in society and companies will use it for managing their assets and shares. But organisizng an entire universal money system as PoS with select major stakeholders established in the beginning is simply asking for trouble. In that sense PoS is not much different than today's fiat.

It's quite the opposite actually. Pools are dynamic structures capable of restructuring and splitting in response to any hostile outside action. Owning mining equipment now, doesn't make you eligible to receive the improved mining gear in the future, thus you need to stay vigilant and make decisions over time to either reinvest or skip based on your market assessment. Mining is a game of skills.

With stakes however, once acquired, there is no amount of innovation or competition that would allow outside actors to regain control of the money flow from the established stakeholders, while they can maintain their position indefinitely at virtually no cost. Staking is a game of luck.

EDIT:

Regarding "waste of mining", there is a good analogy - "waste of gaming".
A lot of people would consider shooting aliens in a video game utterly useless and wasteful. With hundreds of millions graphics cards sold annually, humanity likely "wastes" an order of magnitude more energy on gaming than it does on mining. However the result of this gaming endeavor is a new breed of energy-efficient processors or GPUs that are now slowly replacing conventional CPUs in supercomputers and aid to solve scientific challenges.

Now, with Bitcoin ASIC chips reported this summer to be the first to come out on a state of the art 20nm technological process, there is a strong indication that mining will create enough incentive to drive humanity towards breakthrough in electronics beyond silicon as well as development of new energy sources. And if you think gaming has a positive social component to it, then you might consider mining as a way for nerds to socialize.

Requiring external energy makes PoW a dynamic self-balancing system and at the same time encourages real-world tangible innovation in energy-efficient computation. Further advancements in electronics beyond silicon will make piles of current mining equipment obsolete, so there is hardly any long-term entrenchment in PoW, unlike PoS, where once established entrenchment would be very hard to eradicate.

The debate of PoW vs PoS is somewhat similar to that of gold vs fiat.
If history has anything to teach us, we should be looking very closely at PoW derivatives and stay away.

PoW is grounded in reality, while PoS seems pretty spineless.
Proof of World versus Proof of Snake?

Good article!
Author obviously gets it.

Mining is not only an initial distribution, but more importantly - control over network.
Keeping that an "ongoing battle" allows future generations to inherit this control on the basis of skills and competition, rather than relying on mere inheritance of wealth within the established bloodlines.

You know why people turn to evil? Because it ain't fun winning in a rigged game.

Remember, freedom requires you to stay vigilant,
and while many people are easily tricked into selling their freedom for a bit of comfort,
at the end of the day it's not important what they do, it's important what you do!