Bitcoin needs to move to POS. Thoughts?

[Zoomer]

Moving bitcoin to POS will make it dead, bitcoin POW mining is what makes it price stable and worth,if bitcoin algo changed to POS then its price will drop because if there will no investment and cost to mine people will start dumping it for lower then market price that will make it dead.

[nihilnegativum]

Sorry OP you are not Satoshi here. What Satoshi did was right and is still working immensely worldwide.

What Satoshi did was dead when wallet mining was dead.


CIYAM are you working on usable computation of pow, improved pos or something else?

[fbueller]

There seems to be a consensus of some people here that PoS is not secure, but I didn't see anyone elaborate as to why. Is it the monopoly problem or is there something else?

Please (really, pretty please) don't send me to Google it. I'm a newb, I admit, but I also spent a while reading the PoS vs. PoW posts and articles, and couldn't find any other consensus argument beside the monopoly problem.

IIRC there are some academic papers on the topic, however I don't have any interesting links to hand.

There are some deep problems with POS. The election of who should stake *should* be a lottery that participants have no control over. One vulnerability arises because the election process relies on the block chain to generate entropy. Elected people get to write to the block chain, thus changing who should stake next.

Without something like POW, it's possible for someone to retroactively take the block chain, alter it so *they* are chosen, and then they can create the next block. He can even produce a block that allows him to stake again.. and so on.

POW prevents this, making more difficult with every block to rewrite the chain. POS doesn't have anything like this, the CPU power required to grind variations of the chain which favour the attacker is rather small.

[cr1776]

Sorry OP you are not Satoshi here. What Satoshi did was right and is still working immensely worldwide.

What Satoshi did was dead when wallet mining was dead.


CIYAM are you working on usable computation of pow, improved pos or something else?

Satoshi discussed and anticipated the issue, so saying what Satoshi did was dead when wallet mining was dead is not a factual statement.

Some of what Satoshi said at various times in 2010:

...
The design outlines a lightweight client that does not need the full block chain.  In the design PDF it's called Simplified Payment Verification.  The lightweight client can send and receive transactions, it just can't generate blocks.  It does not need to trust a node to verify payments, it can still verify them itself.

The lightweight client is not implemented yet, but the plan is to implement it when it's needed.  For now, everyone just runs a full network node.

I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less.  It will reach an equilibrium where it's not worth it for more nodes to join in.  The rest will be lightweight clients, which could be millions.

At equilibrium size, many nodes will be server farms with one or two network nodes that feed the rest of the farm over a LAN.
...
The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate.

[cr1776]

...

Regardless, the only way to settle it is to fork and let people decide for themselves. A top down, enforced approach has no chance of success in convincing everyone.

I wonder what fork the miners would choose...
There will never be a chance for bitcoin to go to PoS, it was too late since before PoS was created.

Obviously miners will choose the POW fork since the PoS fork doesn't need them.

If PoS was really a better solution a fork of the bitcoin software and then a fork of the block chain at some future specific point would easily be possible and is not dependent on the miners.  Both forks would continue for some unknown period of time, perhaps forever running in parallel with different transactions, balances and the like.

[CIYAM]

CIYAM are you working on usable computation of pow, improved pos or something else?

What I am working on is a method to reduce the amount of "work" required for a POW implementation by limiting the work to instead be more of a "proof of active account" (with all blocks needing to be minted by such proven active accounts).

One way to picture this would be if we had 1 in every 1,000 blocks requiring proof from every possible minting account and the blocks between these proofs being minted in accordance with a PRNG that will determine the "best account" for producing each block.

So it doesn't attempt to replace POW with something else but instead "spaces that work out" allowing for much greater energy efficiency (with the trade-off being that it does require the use of accounts for minting).

I certainly wouldn't expect Bitcoin itself to use this approach, however, it might be something that will appear in a side-chain down the track.

[DumbFruit]

There have been a lot of great criticisms; PoW work isn't a "waste", PoS doesn't do the same thing PoW does, Nothing-at-Stake has shown for a long time that distributed consensus isn't possible, markets have not been convinced the PoS is superior, and cartelization.

I'd just like to point out that if you want to dive into this pool despite all the warning signs, you might want to consider what you're getting for this high risk. In the best case scenario we're looking at a currency that, by design, is controlled by a benevolent handful of wealthy stakeholders. Doesn't that sound familiar? There's only maybe a hairs difference between the objectives of PoS and actual existing financial institutions today, except these financial institutions are faster, cheaper, and more secure.

If you're willing to give up decentralized consensus and rely on benevolent stakeholders in your design of a currency, then there are much better ways to do it than PoS.

[nihilnegativum]

Satoshi discussed and anticipated the issue, so saying what Satoshi did was dead when wallet mining was dead is not a factual statement.

Oh, I wasn't aware, thanks for correcting me.

What I am working on is a method to reduce the amount of "work" required for a POW implementation by limiting the work to instead be more of a "proof of active account" (with all blocks needing to be minted by such proven active accounts).

One way to picture this would be if we had 1 in every 1,000 blocks requiring proof from every possible minting account and the blocks between these proofs being minted in accordance with a PRNG that will determine the "best account" for producing each block.

So it doesn't attempt to replace POW with something else but instead "spaces that work out" allowing for much greater energy efficiency (with the trade-off being that it does require the use of accounts for minting).

I certainly wouldn't expect Bitcoin itself to use this approach, however, it might be something that will appear in a side-chain down the track.

Neat, its like pos integrated inside pow instead of the usual pow/pos combo. Does this mean that the new money supply would just be created by minting, and mining would just be a requirement and not actively rewarded with fees and new money supply?

[CIYAM]

Neat, its like pos integrated inside pow instead of the usual pow/pos combo. Does this mean that the new money supply would just be created by minting, and mining would just be a requirement and not actively rewarded with fees and new money supply?

I wouldn't use the term POS as *stake* has nothing to do with it (i.e. how many coins you do or don't have is irrelevant) so it would require a new initialism (perhaps "proof of account" although I think POA has been used to mean other things already).

But yes the proof is only used to create/verify a new/existing minting account and results in no direct reward itself (any rewards for fees and/or new money supply are simply awarded to valid minting accounts in what is effectively a random manner).

[maokoto]

Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

[bob123]

Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.

[Grctest]

In a hypothetical scenario where the consensus mechanism has become too centralized, a move to POS instead of another POW mechanism would be beneficial for BTC, IMO.

[ernez]

Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.

How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.

[lewis.jr]

Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.

How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.

not sure at all.....

[Testing Crypto]

Bitcoin POS mmmm that would be nice and allow much more people to "mine" which (I think) it was one of the beauties of Bitcoin at the beginning.

Still.. this would destroy bitcoin at the current stage.

How can POS destroy Bitcoin? If Bitcoin move to Staking, Im sure the price will go high and it will be fair to everyone.

not sure at all.....

Would one be able to code Windows 10 on Windows XP (Old to New Apple & Linux codebase applies as well)?
Think that time has long passed (1Mb anyone)?
Having the idea of producing an interest rate from a 7+ year old prototype (sure 3rd parties, as the prototype holds the most value in prestige working condition)?
So research could be very much WoW (thinks about users who think Sha256 or Scrypt is still the only codebase over the years)?

Code:

Code has been tested with many of PoW to PoS for a reason (seen so many different tests on 1000+)?

[arnbrd]

Mining is fun (well, most for the little miners, and more in the past, but that's still that). I helped a lot I think. Also, what to do with all the people that bought mining hardware ? What to do with the fex companies living of mining hardware sales and exploitation ? That's facts that need to be taken into account.

[PinkLlama]

Maybe switching to POS would be a good idea in 100 years once the 21,000,000BTC have been mined. But, right now? Nah.

[funkenstein]

I think that there are a number of reasons this would be beneficial but the main one would be a reduction in the huge amount of energy wasted in mining

explain the nature of this so-called "waste". I'm going to give you a head-start: you can't

Carlton Banks has it. 

PoW is built to run on any amount of excess energy.  Any epsilon will do.  Bitcoin would run on a microjoule per year if that was all we could spare. 

It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy.  Of course PoS is much better than fiat, which ties everything to fraud, but that's another story. 

[nihilnegativum]

It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy. 

What do you mean?

[funkenstein]

It is PoS that encourages more waste of energy resources, as tokens are not physically tied to energy. 

What do you mean?

I mean that if you can exchange currency tokens for energy (i.e. "buy gas") you will do so with consideration for how easy it was to obtain said tokens. 

Right?  If you had to bust your ass for a few proof of work tokens, you might be less willing to spend them all on joyriding in a gas-guzzler. 

Now consider if you received the tokens not because of work, but simply because you had previously obtained a stake.  Now, you (not everybody, but you) got quite a few tokens without doing any work. 

How about that joy-ride in the gas guzzler now?  Still not?  Maybe with a bit of peer pressure from that special friend? 

The point:  Free money leads to wasteful spending decisions. 

Unlimited private free money leads thusly always to unmitigated disaster, but that's called "fiat" and is another story.