POR - Proof of Representation, blockchain w/o CPU power

[tnxgrid]

I want to propose a new way of building blockchain without relying on CPU power.  It should be as secure as POW.  The consensus of the Bitcoin blockchain is the chain that consumed the most CPU power.  In POR, the consensus is the chain that represents the most miners.  The representation ratio can be quantitively calculated like the difficult factor in POW.  Here is how it works.

Instead of one miner mining a block each time, a fixed number (N) of miners are selected to sign each new block using his private key.  The miners are selected based on his “distance” to the previous block hash

Distance  = hash ( prev block hash + miner’s public key ) / ( number of miner’s Bitcoins )

The first N miners with the shortest distances are selected.  The smaller the sum(N distances) the greater the number of miners (total miner’s coins, to be precise) it can represent - the more miners participate the smaller the sum of the N smallest distances.  At the end of every 10 min the block with the smallest sum is the winner.  In case of a fork, the chain that has the smallest sum(block distances) is the consensus, since it represents the most miners.

If N (around 100) is selected correctly the POR blockchain is very secure.  Like POW it requires more than 50% of the miners (coins) to attack.

For more detail please see http://txngrid.com/txngrid.pdf

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[mczarnek]

So if I understand this correctly, basically you are suggesting that miners mine for short period of time in order to gain proof that they have one work, which increases their voting power?  So it is still just as competitive to win the right to sign, it's just that you can turn off the power every once in a while and coast using just your votes?

Personally, I prefer Burst's method.  Do the POWs once, save them to a hard drive, then pull them off in real time and present them as proof that you are holding on to a certain amount of hard drive space used to store these proofs.  Seems sort of similar in a sense.

If you're worried about power, it turns out that it only uses ~25% more power than POS but is much more secure due to Proof of Stake issues.

And best part, it's already up and running now!

[drawingthesun]

I want to propose a new way of building blockchain without relying on CPU power.  It should be as secure as POW.  The consensus of the Bitcoin blockchain is the chain that consumed the most CPU power.  In POR, the consensus is the chain that represents the most miners.  The representation ratio can be quantitively calculated like the difficult factor in POW.  Here is how it works.

Instead of one miner mining a block each time, a fixed number (N) of miners are selected to sign each new block using his private key.  The miners are selected based on his “distance” to the previous block hash

Distance  = hash ( prev block hash + miner’s public key ) / ( number of miner’s Bitcoins )

The first N miners with the shortest distances are selected.  The smaller the sum(N distances) the greater the number of miners (total miner’s coins, to be precise) it can represent - the more miners participate the smaller the sum of the N smallest distances.  At the end of every 10 min the block with the smallest sum is the winner.  In case of a fork, the chain that has the smallest sum(block distances) is the consensus, since it represents the most miners.

If N (around 100) is selected correctly the POR blockchain is very secure.  Like POW it requires more than 50% of the miners (coins) to attack.

For more detail please see http://txngrid.com/txngrid.pdf

Is there a mechanism to stop someone running a million miners?

[tnxgrid]

So if I understand this correctly, basically you are suggesting that miners mine for short period of time in order to gain proof that they have one work, which increases their voting power?  So it is still just as competitive to win the right to sign, it's just that you can turn off the power every once in a while and coast using just your votes?

Personally, I prefer Burst's method.  Do the POWs once, save them to a hard drive, then pull them off in real time and present them as proof that you are holding on to a certain amount of hard drive space used to store these proofs.  Seems sort of similar in a sense.

If you're worried about power, it turns out that it only uses ~25% more power than POS but is much more secure due to Proof of Stake issues.

And best part, it's already up and running now!

Actually the distribution of voting power does not have to use mining at all.  Mining is just one way of doing it - all the voting power can be mined at the beginning until it is all gone.  Miners with more CPU power will get a greater number of shares.  No more voting power will be added after that.  New comers will buy voting power at open market.  A better way is to distribute the voting power like shares of a company.  Instead of getting more shares with more CPU power, people need to pay more to get more shares.  No waste of resources this way.  The voting power can be distributed in many other ways as well.  For example, anyone with a verified SSN can get 1 share free.  As long as the total shares are tracked and nobody can get a controlling stake.  In this respect, POR is no different from POS.   

What is different is that the method of representation in POR solves the issues of POS like the "nothing at stake" multiple voting problem and long range attacks.

If I understand BurstCoin correctly, its “plot” need to be mined like POW before it is saved to a disk.  This takes time and CPU to prevent it from being created on the fly.  There is some waste here but the real waste is the disk space.  If BurstCoin ever gets as valuable as Bitcoin, the resource waste will be as massive as Bitcoin because people will invest in more disk spaces as long as the ROI is positive.  It is no different than other solutions that require real valuable physical resources like RAM.  In POR security has nothing to do with anything physical.  It is just a algorithm.

[tnxgrid]

Is there a mechanism to stop someone running a million miners?

More precisely the distance should be calculated as

Distance  = hash ( prev block hash + miner’s public key ) / ( miner’s voting power )

The total shares of voting power in POR need to be tracked.  You can run as many miners as you want but the chance of success is always proportional to your total voting power.

[chopper873]

Are you intending to create a coin using this system?

[tnxgrid]

Are you intending to create a coin using this system?

Yes that is the plan.  I will start a open source project.  The system will have multiple currency support - anyone can add his own cryptocurrency.  One special currency will be the "voting currency" that will track the voting power in the system.  Scripts will be enhanced to support multi-currency transactions.

[mczarnek]

So if I understand this correctly, basically you are suggesting that miners mine for short period of time in order to gain proof that they have one work, which increases their voting power?  So it is still just as competitive to win the right to sign, it's just that you can turn off the power every once in a while and coast using just your votes?

Personally, I prefer Burst's method.  Do the POWs once, save them to a hard drive, then pull them off in real time and present them as proof that you are holding on to a certain amount of hard drive space used to store these proofs.  Seems sort of similar in a sense.

If you're worried about power, it turns out that it only uses ~25% more power than POS but is much more secure due to Proof of Stake issues.

And best part, it's already up and running now!

Actually the distribution of voting power does not have to use mining at all.  Mining is just one way of doing it - all the voting power can be mined at the beginning until it is all gone.  Miners with more CPU power will get a greater number of shares.  No more voting power will be added after that.  New comers will buy voting power at open market.  A better way is to distribute the voting power like shares of a company.  Instead of getting more shares with more CPU power, people need to pay more to get more shares.  No waste of resources this way.  The voting power can be distributed in many other ways as well.  For example, anyone with a verified SSN can get 1 share free.  As long as the total shares are tracked and nobody can get a controlling stake.  In this respect, POR is no different from POS.   

What is different is that the method of representation in POR solves the issues of POS like the "nothing at stake" multiple voting problem and long range attacks.

If I understand BurstCoin correctly, its “plot” need to be mined like POW before it is saved to a disk.  This takes time and CPU to prevent it from being created on the fly.  There is some waste here but the real waste is the disk space.  If BurstCoin ever gets as valuable as Bitcoin, the resource waste will be as massive as Bitcoin because people will invest in more disk spaces as long as the ROI is positive.  It is no different than other solutions that require real valuable physical resources like RAM.  In POR security has nothing to do with anything physical.  It is just a algorithm.

On the contrary, first of all, mining with hard drives is 30 times more energy efficient than mining with mining equipment per dollar spent on equipment/hard drives.  Also, many people can mine with their own hard drives, and if you mine from your hard drive during the times you happen to be running your computer anyway then it's free energy as far as Burst is concerned!  Consider data centers which have to have lots of extra hard drives on hand, just in case they suddenly need the extra capacity, and you also have free energy. Which means it's more like 100 to 200 times more energy efficient than BTC.

What you are proposing is basically a different form of POS, except that it isn't necessarily based on stake.  meh.. doesn't get me too excited.

Reason Burst does?  Getting people to mine during the time their computers happen to be running anyway and rewarding them with 'free money' in exchange is an awesome way to get new people initially interested.  Not to mention leading to a more secure coin.

[tnxgrid]

So if I understand this correctly, basically you are suggesting that miners mine for short period of time in order to gain proof that they have one work, which increases their voting power?  So it is still just as competitive to win the right to sign, it's just that you can turn off the power every once in a while and coast using just your votes?

Personally, I prefer Burst's method.  Do the POWs once, save them to a hard drive, then pull them off in real time and present them as proof that you are holding on to a certain amount of hard drive space used to store these proofs.  Seems sort of similar in a sense.

If you're worried about power, it turns out that it only uses ~25% more power than POS but is much more secure due to Proof of Stake issues.

And best part, it's already up and running now!

Actually the distribution of voting power does not have to use mining at all.  Mining is just one way of doing it - all the voting power can be mined at the beginning until it is all gone.  Miners with more CPU power will get a greater number of shares.  No more voting power will be added after that.  New comers will buy voting power at open market.  A better way is to distribute the voting power like shares of a company.  Instead of getting more shares with more CPU power, people need to pay more to get more shares.  No waste of resources this way.  The voting power can be distributed in many other ways as well.  For example, anyone with a verified SSN can get 1 share free.  As long as the total shares are tracked and nobody can get a controlling stake.  In this respect, POR is no different from POS.   

What is different is that the method of representation in POR solves the issues of POS like the "nothing at stake" multiple voting problem and long range attacks.

If I understand BurstCoin correctly, its “plot” need to be mined like POW before it is saved to a disk.  This takes time and CPU to prevent it from being created on the fly.  There is some waste here but the real waste is the disk space.  If BurstCoin ever gets as valuable as Bitcoin, the resource waste will be as massive as Bitcoin because people will invest in more disk spaces as long as the ROI is positive.  It is no different than other solutions that require real valuable physical resources like RAM.  In POR security has nothing to do with anything physical.  It is just a algorithm.

On the contrary, first of all, mining with hard drives is 30 times more energy efficient than mining with mining equipment per dollar spent on equipment/hard drives.  Also, many people can mine with their own hard drives, and if you mine from your hard drive during the times you happen to be running your computer anyway then it's free energy as far as Burst is concerned!  Consider data centers which have to have lots of extra hard drives on hand, just in case they suddenly need the extra capacity, and you also have free energy. Which means it's more like 100 to 200 times more energy efficient than BTC.

What you are proposing is basically a different form of POS, except that it isn't necessarily based on stake.  meh.. doesn't get me too excited.

Reason Burst does?  Getting people to mine during the time their computers happen to be running anyway and rewarding them with 'free money' in exchange is an awesome way to get new people initially interested.  Not to mention leading to a more secure coin.

Well Bitcoin started with free CPU cycles on people's desktops and now it is all expensive ASICs.  Eventually the resource burning rate will be close to what you can get out of mining if security is tied to tangible goods or people will invest more to join the mining race.

Seems to me Burst is more like POS than POW, with disk space as the Stake.  How do you solve the multiple signing problem?  It does not cost much to sign both branches when there is a fork in Burst.
 

[spacerman]

tnxgrid -- do you have a Twitter handle?

[mczarnek]

Well Bitcoin started with free CPU cycles on people's desktops and now it is all expensive ASICs.  Eventually the resource burning rate will be close to what you can get out of mining if security is tied to tangible goods or people will invest more to join the mining race.

Seems to me Burst is more like POS than POW, with disk space as the Stake.  How do you solve the multiple signing problem?  It does not cost much to sign both branches when there is a fork in Burst.
 

Currently we don't.. but keep in mind a 'Nothing at Stake' attack would require more than 100% of the network mining on the alternative chain in order to 51% attack the network. And short term, it makes sense for miners to sign both forks, one will win and the other one dies.  But the one that wins will be stronger for it.  So it's not a huge problem even in it's current form.

However, we do have another trick up our selves to provide extra security though that makes it a non-issue.. give me a few days, maybe till next weekend, and I'll share it with you in that paper I messaged you about.


In POR, how does it provide ASIC resistance?  Wouldn't ASICs still get better POW results and therefore more votes?

[tnxgrid]

tnxgrid -- do you have a Twitter handle?

@txngrid.  Have not started twitting though.