Complete dezentralisation of mining possible ?

[cocos]

IMO the key to total decentralisation would be a mining revard system which pays equal reward to each miner, no matter how much hash the miner contributes. Of course there should be a minimum hashrate to get rewards.

This would kill the arms race, but I dont think its possible.

Yes, also a good idea is to mine with a fixed small hashrate.

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[TransaDox]

This is just the sort of discussion I've been  hoping for. Decentralisation is a requisite, IMO and I'm extremely excited by the work being done here.

I'll ease myself in slowly, so to speak  

I think we need to think outside of just the game theory for incentives. You can spot the almost religious fervour by phrases such as rational miners. Whilst there is some merit in the ideas, people are not rational - as Nash finally accepted after he had done his stint in a mental institution. If game theory did work as taught then advertising wouldn't work and open source software would be an ideal mental exercise.

Participation is a strong driver. You can see this is MMORPG (different kind of game threory   ) and the demand for online games against real people. What if
a) all clients were miners and
b) The incentive for running a full node was the ability to send and receive transactions at almost zero cost.

Hang on though. Didn't we already have that a while ago?
Yes we did until the block chain file got too big and to mine you had to have warehouses full of specialist machinery.

I'm very excited that we are talking about the mining being on every client again - where it needs to be. That means that everyone is a miner and everyone can put transactions on the block chain. I'm not interested in the mining for new coins, only in the ability to place transactions in the block chain.

If we can separeate the new coins generation from the inclusion in the block chain or make mining a reality on resource restricted platforms, then from there, we get to single transactions in a block which makes the current block war moot and seconds for confirmations given enough client connections.

[monsterer]

I'm very excited that we are talking about the mining being on every client again - where it needs to be. That means that everyone is a miner and everyone can put transactions on the block chain. From there, we get to single transactions in a block which makes the current block war moot and seconds for confirmations given enough client connections.

The trouble is, how do you deal with the block reward? If the difficulty adjusts due to hash rate, then it is possible that a low power machine would be unable to send a transaction (since they must be mined by the sender).

One solution would be to make the block reward a parameter (which is proportional to difficulty) such that even weak miners can still mine their own transaction by specifying a tiny reward.

[TransaDox]

The trouble is, how do you deal with the block reward? If the difficulty adjusts due to hash rate, then it is possible that a low power machine would be unable to send a transaction (since they must be mined by the sender).

One solution would be to make the block reward a parameter (which is proportional to difficulty) such that even weak miners can still mine their own transaction by specifying a tiny reward.

I think it depends.
If mining for new coins must remain an intensive operation and transaction mining can be split out into a simpler, easier operation even for something like Raspberry Pis, then the miners keep the rewards as it is. The clients' reward is zero transaction costs and convenient transactions. The pre-requisit of that participation is they mine transactions even if they cannot generate new coins.

If they cannot be split, then it is a harder problem and reduced mining difficulty all round is probably the only way forward unless there are other ideas. I have read about a few of those and like the ideas being floated here.

[monsterer]

If they cannot be split, then it is a harder problem and reduced mining difficulty all round is probably the only way forward unless there are other ideas. I have read about a few of those and like the ideas being floated here.

I don't think you can split it, so there needs to be a way for the sender to select their difficulty/block reward at send time, while also making sure that global difficulty adjusts correctly... maybe you make sender's difficulty = global difficulty at 1.0 coins of block reward, and have it be proportional for all other block reward values.

Obviously chain selection then has to follow the chain with the most work done, rather than simply the longest.

[TPTB_need_war]

You are getting closer to my design. But you are still missing far too many radical epiphanies to realize how to crack the nut.

[monsterer]

You are getting closer to my design. But you are still missing far too many radical epiphanies to realize how to crack the nut.

I'm not thinking about your design tbh - just random ideas that I've been mulling over for a while

[Blawpaw]

Of course, complete decentralization is possible. However, the interested parts need to agree in protecting the network, or as we are seeing with bitcoin, there will be always a risk of someone or a group trying to take over

[TransaDox]

I don't think you can split it, so there needs to be a way for the sender to select their difficulty/block reward at send time, while also making sure that global difficulty adjusts correctly... maybe you make sender's difficulty = global difficulty at 1.0 coins of block reward, and have it be proportional for all other block reward values.

Obviously chain selection then has to follow the chain with the most work done, rather than simply the longest.

The reward is the transaction fee. This is the same scenario for the future of miners when the 21mil has been reached and there are no more blocks to mine. It could even be a relationship between the fee and the difficulty so that low hash power devices process low fee transactions while mining warehouses get the higher fee transactions. What it shouldn't be is that the higher the fee, the less you get ignored!

The purpose is to not exclude any clients from participating in verifying transactions for inclusion in the block chain and using low resource clients as a sort of load sharing scheme for the transactions so even if miners do concentrate on high paying fees, there is probably a few clients nearby that will take anything if they are not busy. The engineering goal is for the network to still function as a payment system in the absence of dedicated infrastructure such as miners. I'm not necessarily proposing that dedicated hardware cannot profit more, just that numbers of clients dictate the operational health, stability and speed of the network transactions not an elite group of resource rich entities with a high barrier to entry into the club.

Can you expand on your earlier statement:
* Only you can mine blocks you produce

[monsterer]

I'm not necessarily proposing that dedicated hardware cannot profit more, just that numbers of clients dictate the operational health, stability and speed of the network transactions not an elite group of resource rich entities with a high barrier to entry into the club.

Can you expand on your earlier statement:
* Only you can mine blocks you produce

I was thinking more outside the bitcoin 'box' as it were, since this would be a huge change. The trouble still lies with the difficulty - if you and only you can mine your own blocks, then it must be possible to send (and therefore mine) a transaction within, say 1 second, which means very low difficulty. This is incompatible with network security.

[funkenstein]

You are getting closer to my design. But you are still missing far too many radical epiphanies to realize how to crack the nut.

Did I miss a release?  Just checking...  I'd love to hear your ideas on this.  

I don't why simply leaving the coinbase TX outside of the to-hash-for-POW bit would be a problem.  This would make pools a lot harder to run..  so if that were your goal..  

thanks --  f_t_d

[monsterer]

I don't why simply leaving the coinbase TX outside of the to-hash-for-POW bit would be a problem.  This would make pools a lot harder to run..  so if that were your goal..  

Well, that would mean that anyone could simply modify a valid block and send the coinbase to themselves, creating an infinite number of forks.

[funkenstein]

I don't why simply leaving the coinbase TX outside of the to-hash-for-POW bit would be a problem.  This would make pools a lot harder to run..  so if that were your goal..  

Well, that would mean that anyone could simply modify a valid block and send the coinbase to themselves, creating an infinite number of forks.

A ha.  Yes thank you Monsterer.  Broadcasting that newly found block would be.. lets say, a delicate affair.  I've been going around in circles on this topic.  Now I see again what the spreadcoin guys were up to and various others with this addition into PoW hash of a nonce signed by the coinbase key.  Makes pools a bitch but doesn't make distribution of a new block such a bitch.  However I am still looking for TPTB_think_they_need_war_but_really_dont's input  on this one, or anybody else's really. 

[monsterer]

Makes pools a bitch but doesn't make distribution of a new block such a bitch.  However I am still looking for TPTB_think_they_need_war_but_really_dont's input  on this one, or anybody else's really. 

If you want to get rid of pools, make it so that only the sender of a transaction can mine that transaction (this relies on there being 1 transaction blocks).

[zimmah]

There used to be a thing called P2Pool, a peer to peer mining pool, no idea what happened to it though.

[funkenstein]

Makes pools a bitch but doesn't make distribution of a new block such a bitch.  However I am still looking for TPTB_think_they_need_war_but_really_dont's input  on this one, or anybody else's really. 

If you want to get rid of pools, make it so that only the sender of a transaction can mine that transaction (this relies on there being 1 transaction blocks).

Thanks!  Have you taken a look at the spreadcoin implementation thereof?  Or heard of any others? 

[achow101]

There used to be a thing called P2Pool, a peer to peer mining pool, no idea what happened to it though.

It still exists, you can find it here: http://p2pool.in/

[letsplayagame]

Complete decentralisation:

* Single transaction blocks
* Sending a transaction produces a block
* Only you can mine blocks you produce

There are a number of problems with this, but that is one way to have complete decentralisation.

Speed will be a big problem here. So long as bitcoin is being used often there will constantly be a problem of the previous block not being able to propagate the network before the next one is found creating all kinds of security and technical problems.

[monsterer]

Speed will be a big problem here. So long as bitcoin is being used often there will constantly be a problem of the previous block not being able to propagate the network before the next one is found creating all kinds of security and technical problems.

Depends on how you organise your concensus. If you just have a plain chain, then yes, it would be orphan hell.. but if you move to a tree, or a DAG things become much more tenable.

[funkenstein]

Makes pools a bitch but doesn't make distribution of a new block such a bitch.  However I am still looking for TPTB_think_they_need_war_but_really_dont's input  on this one, or anybody else's really. 

If you want to get rid of pools, make it so that only the sender of a transaction can mine that transaction (this relies on there being 1 transaction blocks).

This is an interesting idea; certainly gets rid of mempool issues too doesn't it   and TX relaying incentivization.  And TX fees, well sorta. 
However, totally impractical for a normal-use coin.  Might be interesting to see what happened though are you planning to start one to see? 

What do you think about just making it so that the miner of a block must have the coinbase private key?  Doesn't that get rid of pools?