If you know Chia or Spacemesh maybe you can better understand my purpose. The same thing as Chia is that a part of the hash needs to be pre-calculated and stored on disk, and a VDF function is used. But the difference is that I think this part of the hash should not occupy too much disk space. Specifically, the cost of calculating this part of the hash should be much greater than the cost of storing this part of the hash. That is, use hash data as the mining machine instead of the disk. In this way, your mining machine neither needs to consume too much energy nor takes up too much physical space, because in fact they are just some calculated hash data. Of course it is very important not to let this data leak.

The current POW relies on computing resources or storage resources, which will bring relatively high costs to maintaining the hash rate. Once the mining revenue decreases, miners will quit and the security of the network will also be reduced.

Therefore, I believe that as the block reward decreases, if the price of Bitcoin does not increase significantly, it is likely that many Bitcoin miners will have to quit mining. Maintaining a minimum block reward would be a solution, but it would also mean continued selling pressure.

If we can mine with pre-computed data, that is, the data is the mining machine, then even if the block reward decreases or the coin price decreases, it will not cause the hash rate to drop significantly. Because the cost of storing this data is very low.

When the cost of maintaining the hash rate is low, we can lower the minimum block reward as much as possible, which results in a lower inflation rate. And this is good for maintaining a higher coin price.

The same as storage mining, there is a cost to calculate these data, but the storage cost is so low that it can be ignored. Compared with POS, they are both low-energy consumption and low-cost mining methods. But it is obvious that the method based on data mining is more decentralized.

Hope to get your replies and suggestions.

The current POW relies on computing resources or storage resources, which will bring relatively high costs to maintaining the hash rate. Once the mining revenue decreases, miners will quit and the security of the network will also be reduced.

Therefore, I believe that as the block reward decreases, if the price of Bitcoin does not increase significantly, it is likely that many Bitcoin miners will have to quit mining. Maintaining a minimum block reward would be a solution, but it would also mean continued selling pressure.

If we can mine with pre-computed data, that is, the data is the mining machine, then even if the block reward decreases or the coin price decreases, it will not cause the hash rate to drop significantly. Because the cost of storing this data is very low.

When the cost of maintaining the hash rate is low, we can lower the minimum block reward as much as possible, which results in a lower inflation rate. And this is good for maintaining a higher coin price.

The same as storage mining, there is a cost to calculate these data, but the storage cost is so low that it can be ignored. Compared with POS, they are both low-energy consumption and low-cost mining methods. But it is obvious that the method based on data mining is more decentralized.

Hope to get your replies and suggestions.

The problem is not the energy consumption itself, but rather the higher cost of maintaining the hash rate that comes with energy consumption. Based on the principles of mining competition and economics, the cost of acquiring mining machines cannot be reduced. In fact, it will be affected by the mining returns.

The question is how much it costs to maintain the hash rate, which ultimately counts towards the cost of maintaining the blockchain network. For an efficient blockchain network, this cost should be reduced as much as possible.

If we can reduce energy consumption, we can reduce the cost of maintaining the hash rate, which reduces the cost of running the blockchain. Although purchasing storage equipment may be as expensive as purchasing ASIC miner, the cost of keeping the storage equipment running is much lower than the cost of keeping the ASIC miner powered on. Due to the decrease in energy costs, mining machines will not have to shut down due to a drop in coin prices. And this could prevent the hash rate from declining.

Thank you very much for your discussion. In fact, just like you, I don’t think the energy consumption and carbon emissions of mining itself will be a problem.

But we cannot ignore the cost of energy consumption, and this cost needs to be paid by every Bitcoin holder.

Of course, we can think of mining as an investment behavior that requires income and returns. Considering the risks brought by price fluctuations and the increase in the hash rate of the entire network, the annualized return of mining should be higher than other lower-risk activities. invest.

The cost of miners mainly includes equipment and electricity costs. Equipment investment, electricity costs, and miner profits are ultimately paid by Bitcoin holders and potential holders. There is no doubt that electricity bills will eventually become the most significant cost of running the entire network. If we can reduce this cost, fewer miners will shut down after the block reward is halved, and the entire network will be more secure.

Could using non-computing devices solve this problem? Such as storage devices?

Of course, I know that there have been hard disk mining before, but in my opinion they were not successful. There seemed to be some loopholes in the design of the mining algorithm, which caused the storage capacity of the entire network to reach an unrealistic value.

maybe we can solve this problem

Thank you very much for the discussion, and first of all I want to say that I agree with most of your points. I also think POS is far less secure than POW, and POS greatly weakens decentralization, which is the core feature of the blockchain. And I don’t think energy consumption and carbon emissions will be a big problem. But what I care about is actually the network maintenance costs caused by energy consumption. In other words, the purpose of reducing energy consumption is not to protect the environment, but to reduce network maintenance costs.

Because in the long run, energy costs will account for the majority of mining costs, and only when the benefits are greater than the costs will the miners work and the network will be safe. As the block reward is halved, if the price remains unchanged, the miners' income will also be halved. At this time, some mining machines may have to shut down. Bitcoin is unlikely to experience a price surge after every halving. Once the block reward reaches a certain level, it may pose a threat to the security of the entire network. To avoid this, we might have to set a minimum block reward for miners, like Monero does, but I don't think that solves the problem.

What I want to ask is, is there a way for us to continue to use POW and reduce energy consumption without reducing the hash rate ?

1. Can we reduce the energy consumption of POW?
2. Is it valuable to reduce the energy consumption of POW? What benefits will it bring besides carbon emissions and environmental protection?
3. Will reducing the energy consumption of POW reduce security and decentralization?
4. What methods do you think can be used to reduce the energy consumption of POW?

In my opinion, the existing POW algorithm consumes too much energy, and POS weakens decentralization, so we need a more energy-efficient POW algorithm. Disk mining is a good option. But Proofs-of-Spacetime is too complex, and we need a simpler disk mining technology.

Here are my thoughts:
1. First, the miner needs to precompute the hash and store it. In order to prevent miners from giving results through real-time calculations, the hash calculation process must be complex enough so that the cost of storage and query is much lower than the cost of calculation. And the cost of verification must be low enough.
2. We need an ASIC-friendly algorithm because ASICs are more efficient, which means that the data center's CPU or GPU cannot be used to challenge the security of the network.
3. In addition, in the long run, the miner's income must be greater than the energy cost, otherwise the mining machine will be shut down. This means that a fixed number of coins which slightly larger than the mining energy consumption will be sold in the market every day, which is undoubtedly not conducive to maintaining prices. So we are motivated to reduce this energy consumption. In addition to disk mining, using ASIC-friendly algorithms is also a method.

Welcome to receive your discussions and opinions.

1, POW or POS?
2, Limited total amount like BTC or unlimited amount like XMR?
3, ASIC-resistant or ASIC-friendly?
4, With ICO or without ICO?
5, With or without pre-mining?
6, Dose development teams rewarded or not?
7, Or do you only care about price and whether it can bring you profit?

Could you introduce your thoughts? I'm very interested in this

Do you think POS will weaken decentralization?

Does switching from POW to POS significantly reduce gas costs? And significantly improve TPS?

Why do you think ETHW failed?

If there is a new coin that tries to re-provide POW ETH, will you buy it?

I found several POW-based ETH altcoins released recently, do you think these altcoins have a future?

Bitnet:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5459763

RETH:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5462043

This coin has a nice name and I like it.

No ICO, no premine. It's cool. And it's a fair release.

Unlimited supply and constant miner income is a bold attempt, I hope more people can know about this coin.

I don't know how they put up with full transparency on all their bills, the only explanation I can think of is that they don't even think about paying their bills in BTC

In my opinion, there are many reasons that restrict the performance of POW coin, such as bandwidth, storage space, memory size, CPU performance and so on. But these are not the most critical factors, the block time is the key factor.

Nowadays, most POW coins are packaged by a very small number of mining pools and large miners. However, we do not think that this will weaken the decentralization and security of POW coins. So can we also think that even if running a full node requires higher-performance hardware, making most PCs unable to run a full node will not weaken decentralization and security too much.

If the above assumptions are correct, then bandwidth, storage space, memory and CPU performance are no longer bottlenecks, and we can significantly increase the block size to improve TPS. For example, if we limit the annual storage space growth of the blockchain to less than 100T, then it is possible to get 10,000 TPS.

In this case, the block time will become a bottleneck. If the block time can be shortened to 1 second, the transfer process will be very smooth. Imagine that the TPS of a POW coin is 10,000, and the block confirmation time is only 1 second, how exciting that is!

So, is there a way we can get the block times so short?

Privacy is a necessary feature in my opinion, but why hasn't Monero become a main coin?

For POW coins, some people think that only anti-ASIC can be mined fairly, in order to prevent the concentration of hash rate and ensure decentralization. But other people hold the opposite view. They believe that it is ASIC that strengthens the security of coins. For CPU mining algorithms, large data centers or cloud computing vendors can easily launch 51% attacks.

Do you think anti-ASIC is necessary?

Let me talk about my point of view first.

In my opinion, the blockchain has been explored in the following directions:
1. Smart contracts, such as ETH
2. Higher performance is obtained through POS, but at the same time, the decentralization feature is weakened
3. Privacy, such as Monero
4. Stable coins to realize value binding with legal currency

In my opinion, the above four attempts are very valuable, but not all of them represent the evolution direction of the blockchain.
For example, POS, weakening the decentralization feature in order to obtain higher performance is completely against the spirit of the blockchain.
Stable coins still rely on fiat currency, which is more like a compromise and temporary solution when the value of decentralized digital currencies such as BTC is still unstable.
Smart contracts are considered by many to be blockchain 2.0, but I don't think so. Smart contracts cannot constrain off-chain data, which limits the practical application of smart contracts. For example, a decentralized exchange based on ETH smart contracts, when we want to withdraw or deposit non-ERC-20 tokens such as BTC, we still need a centralized organization. Another example, when we want to do product traceability based on smart contracts, we will also encounter the problem of requiring a centralized organization (usually the producer of the product) to write product data into the blockchain. This reliance on centralized organizations has essentially destroyed the decentralized nature of the blockchain, and is no more trustworthy than relying directly on centralized organizations.
But unlike the above three, I think the privacy feature is a correct evolution direction of the blockchain.

In Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision, the blockchain should be able to become "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". Many people also think that we will use blockchain-based payment systems in our daily transactions. But I think that blockchain-based digital token is more likely to play the role of base currency and payment method for large transactions. Blockchain will not replace the existing electronic payment system, nor can it replace commercial banks. It should replace central banks, such as the Federal Reserve. If we hold this point of view, we will find that performance is not the bottleneck of the blockchain, and the existing performance can fully meet the demand.

The above is my personal opinion, and I want to know what you think.

There are already some privacy coins, such as Monero, but they don't seem to be widely popular. At least not as popular as ETH, LTC.
Is it because privacy is not a necessary requirement? Or are existing privacy coins not good enough?
Or is it because of regulation? Or is it that privacy coins make the public feel that they are always connected to criminal activities?

If a coin only hides the transaction amount, will it be popular?

When I was using Monero, I found that for offline cold wallets, it is a troublesome thing to check the balance. You have to wait for the wallet client to scan a large number of blocks to find all transactions associated with the account. If only the transaction amount is hidden, this problem will be solved.
Of course, this semi-privacy coin is also more friendly to supervision.
Will anyone be willing to use this kind of coin ?