What if YOU could put 1 feature, change, whatever, into the Bitcoin protocol?

[Pecunia non olet]

I'd reduce rewards and replace halvings with smother reduction of rewards. I would also make it multialgo and implement KGW just in case.

[1715117262]

1715117262

[Wary]

IMO, it's too late to make any changes in protocol. It have solidified and even minor changes would require tremendous efforts. For example, block size limit. At the time it was introduced it was interim, quick and temporary solution with random number (1MB). But even changing this number now takes multy-year discussion.

So we could assume that practically no changes will be made to the protocol.

Therefore, whatever we want to change, have to be done on top of the protocol. It's not easy. How can we decimate block time, how could we spread halving - all without changes in the core protocol? That's the challenge!

[spooderman]

[Btcvilla]

Decrease block timer, decrease reward, it would still make the same amount of Bitcoin yearly, just need to adjust or inflation.

[fryarminer]

Every time a block is found I'd have the official Bitcoin client send a command to a connected 3d pastry printer to print a dozen donuts. Then I'd crowd fund sending a specially designed pastry printer with a client built in to every federal law enforcement office in the USA. Then the Feds would kill to make sure the Bitcoin network is safe. You would start seeing "I Support Bitcoin" bumper stickers on the back of black unmarked SUVs all over the country.

THAT IS AWESOME!!!!

[R2D221]

Most answers show how much people don't know about the details of Bitcoin and the reasons the current features are like that. They try to reduce the confirmation time, because they imagine people waiting in the supermarket line for ~10 minutes, when in reality most transactions today are accepted with 0 confirmations, with little risk (proportional to the supermarket-type purchase, anyway).

[Kprawn]

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining.  

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream.    

[freedombit]

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining.  

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream.    

This seems very important to the infrastructure and trust in the system. Somehow reduce the processing power needs so that a simple smart phone can participate in the P2P verification and message relay processes of the blockchain for decentralization purposes. On that note, is it possible to break up the block chain so that limited data is stored by smaller processing power devices? For example, save only the last "layer" or latest balances of the blockchain. Or possibly only a "regional branch" of the blockchain. Not regional in the geographic sense, but regional in the sense of one branch of the blockchain. I think I've seen both of these ideas thrown around.

[e1ghtSpace]

I would make the mining algo double after 5 years.
It would start at sha128 for the first 5 years. Maybe a few people'll get hacked, it'd be cool.
Then on the 5th year (at this current time) it would be sha256 and everyone will be confident that their coins are secure.
Then on the 10th  year its sha512 and people will be very secure.
And it keeps going up.
Ultimately it'll probably never work. Addresses will keep getting longer and longer. (I think) but hey, it'd be a funny altcoin. I don't know how it would work though.

[R2D221]

Somehow reduce the processing power needs so that a simple smart phone can participate in the P2P verification and message relay processes of the blockchain for decentralization purposes.

As I said before, a network secured by smartphones is way too insecure for me to be interested in it.

[R2D221]

I would make the mining algo double after 5 years.
It would start at sha128 for the first 5 years. Maybe a few people'll get hacked, it'd be cool.
Then on the 5th year (at this current time) it would be sha256 and everyone will be confident that their coins are secure.
Then on the 10th  year its sha512 and people will be very secure.
And it keeps going up.
Ultimately it'll probably never work. Addresses will keep getting longer and longer. (I think) but hey, it'd be a funny altcoin. I don't know how it would work though.

SHA1024? I don't think that exists yet.

[ensurance982]

IMO, the changes should not be on the protocol, but on the team that write the core nodes. In fact, only a few of core devs control the git hub, this means if these people are compromised, then the whole bitcoin project is down. They must get enough protection

Gavin also said that it is difficult to reach consensus between core devs. Since the decision of a protocol change is seldom a technical but a political one, they really need some kind of transparent decision making mechanism

In fact, infrastructure wise the bitcoin has many area to improve to become a truly trusted world currency, there are so many uncertainties in its security model. Today, people just download a software and pray for the rest part, but when a retirement fund wants to put billions of dollar in this currency for 20 years, the bitcoin network is still not enough robust in many aspects. The risk of ruin is still larger than our financial system today

Phew... sophisticated input this early in the morning. Yeah that's one of the real problems. Core devs could be compromised, etc. But I think it's more probable that they don't earn enough for their work on the code and therefore leave. I think maybe... a voting system for which fork to use or which pull requests to implement maybe? Of course PoW-based!

[R2D221]

People saying that we should have an ASIC-resistant algorithm (however that's mathematically possible) kind of reminds me of homeopathy, where “less is better”. In this case, less device power will somehow bring better security.

[ensurance982]

People saying that we should have an ASIC-resistant algorithm (however that's mathematically possible) kind of reminds me of homeopathy, where “less is better”. In this case, less device power will somehow bring better security.

Even if homeopathy is nonsense (which it definitely is), in some cases less can actually be more. The thing with ASIC-resistant is the idea that it's impossible to have such a great advantage (10^3 or more) by using specialized machines, which can put the decentralization at risk!

[ensurance982]

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining.  

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream.    

The idea is very interesting and I think you are trying to tackle a very important problem, but building specialized machines (ASICs) in order to solve a PoW-based task will always be possible, I believe :-/

[Q7]

The only thing I want if let's say modifying the protocol is possible is to make centralized mining become obsolete or in a way turn it to become unprofitable. Something similar like hash rate contribution from the same IP will have less chance of solving the block or maybe there are better mechanisms to prevent this. This will ensure that everyone from the community has the chance to actually mine bitcoin, including a guy who owns a simple mining machine. This will solve on the distribution issue.

[ensurance982]

The only thing I want if let's say modifying the protocol is possible is to make centralized mining become obsolete or in a way turn it to become unprofitable. Something similar like hash rate contribution from the same IP will have less chance of solving the block or maybe there are better mechanisms to prevent this. This will ensure that everyone from the community has the chance to actually mine bitcoin, including a guy who owns a simple mining machine. This will solve on the distribution issue.

Not possible. You can always spread your hash rate across several IP addresses. You are introducing metrics (different IP addresses = better) that can be faked. PoW can't.

[1K]

Most answers show how much people don't know about the details of Bitcoin and the reasons the current features are like that. They try to reduce the confirmation time, because they imagine people waiting in the supermarket line for ~10 minutes, when in reality most transactions today are accepted with 0 confirmations, with little risk (proportional to the supermarket-type purchase, anyway).

Little do these people know the workings of their debit and credit card processing which would take much longer than 10 minutes to confirm. Bitcoin payment processors would be used with most merchants so they'd be ok and insured against any potential problems. One bitcoin has been sent it's as good as received instantaneously.

[ensurance982]

Most answers show how much people don't know about the details of Bitcoin and the reasons the current features are like that. They try to reduce the confirmation time, because they imagine people waiting in the supermarket line for ~10 minutes, when in reality most transactions today are accepted with 0 confirmations, with little risk (proportional to the supermarket-type purchase, anyway).

Little do these people know the workings of their debit and credit card processing which would take much longer than 10 minutes to confirm. Bitcoin payment processors would be used with most merchants so they'd be ok and insured against any potential problems. One bitcoin has been sent it's as good as received instantaneously.

Also, if confirmation times are shorter, the security a single confirmation adds to the transaction is getting smaller and smaller the shorter the target confirmation-time is!

[Soros Shorts]

Block reward down to every year.

You mean block reward halving?

Yes halving, that would cause some fireworks.

You wouldn't necessarily have to cut down the reward in half every year, you could just go and multiply it by 0.9 or something, which would smoothen things up a bit.

The current implementation using an integer shift operation to approximately halve the reward is very simple and elegant to those who can read and understand the code. There are lots of problems associated with replacing that with some kind of floating point operation, the biggest one being that you need to make sure that the reduction of reward is the same across all platforms. This is not as simple as it sounds because different computing platforms have different rounding errors. The second problem is how you would deal with the last few Satoshis? I mean if you were down to 3 Satoshi block rewards you can't reduce it so 2.7 Satoshis at the next reduction.