[ANN] Bitcoin PoW Upgrade Initiative

[Transisto]

I would never try to find a PoW that does anything useful but would consider what else the chip doing the PoW can do.

It was one of the reason why I was into Primecoin in it's beginning.

I'm no mathematician but I thought if you can produce an ASIC that find Cunningham Chain Of Primes, maybe that chip can do many different calculation that could be scientifically useful.

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[krile]

Let's change PoW so that anyone with moderate amount of capital can attack us, sounds like a great idea!

Agreed. You can hate ASICs, but they do provide a very robust network, very expensive to attack. Change of PoW would do more harm than good.

[krile]

I would never try to find a PoW that does anything useful but would consider what else the chip doing the PoW can do.

It was one of the reason why I was into Primecoin in it's beginning.

I'm no mathematician but I thought if you can produce an ASIC that find Cunningham Chain Of Primes, maybe that chip can do many different calculation that could be scientifically useful.

For the network to stay secure the PoW algorithm should not be "useful" for anything else. If the price of that other thing becomes higher in the future...the network loses hashrate.

Creating a decentralized payment network is useful enough by itself.

[Transisto]

Let's change PoW so that anyone with moderate amount of capital can attack us, sounds like a great idea!

Agreed. You can hate ASICs, but they do provide a very robust network, very expensive to attack. Change of PoW would do more harm than good.

You are only agreeing on my prelude, I'm for using a PoW that run best on a chip that can do many other things.

The whole point of this thread is to find a replacement PoW not to argument whether it's a good or bad thing to do.

[krile]

Let's change PoW so that anyone with moderate amount of capital can attack us, sounds like a great idea!

Agreed. You can hate ASICs, but they do provide a very robust network, very expensive to attack. Change of PoW would do more harm than good.

You are only agreeing on my prelude, I'm for using a PoW that run best on a chip that can do many other things.

The whole point of this thread is to find a replacement PoW not to argument whether it's a good or bad thing to do.

Oh ok, I missed that Sorry

[sturle]

... I think a large enough economic majority will make the current miners come along in a UASF.  The miners have no interest in mining worthless coins after all.

Sturle, I am not an expert cryptocurrency programmer, but on the topic of business I feel qualified to comment: as a KnC exec said during their company's dying swan song, it's unlikely the Chinese mining operations would be able to operate at their margins unless the Chinese miners receive virtually unlimited funding from a state-level entity (e.g. the government of China or perhaps the PBoC).

I doubt that, but it is a different issue.  I don't think we should base an altcoin on a conspiracy theory.

In my view, the best way to remove Bitmain and other tyrants (for a year or two) is to have the full PoW change, rather than having 50% SHA-256 and 50% a new algorithm.

My point is that you can't change the POW in Bitcoin.  You can make a new coin with a different POW, and you can even carry over all the coins fro Bitcoin in a genesis block or whatever, and fix everything else which is wrong in Bitcoin in the same go, but you can't change the POW agorithm.  It is impossible.  It will become a new coin either you want to or not,  It is just as stupid as those scammers who pretend it is possible to increase the blocksize in Bitcoin.  It will become a new coin either you want to or not.

The only way to upgrade the POW while keeping Bitcoin Bitcoin, is to add an extra POW as a soft fork.

I see there are mostly newbies posting in this thread.  Perhaps you should take some time to educate yourself about how bitocoin and blockchains work.

[forevernoob]

What do you guys think of Bram Cohens Proof of Space/Proof of Time?
I agree with him that PoW is a waste of energy, however all the experts say everything else is a joke and won't work. (Proof of Stake etc...)
So I guess our only option is to use PoW to secure the blockchain. But then again I'm no expert so I don't know if Proof of Space/Proof of Time is feasible or not.

Here he is talking about it on Whale Pool: https://youtu.be/HZOD3ytZLWo?t=2395

[Bitcoinorama]

LOL. Core has offially jumped off the deep end. This proposal is insanity.

Can't win the vote by means that were established since 2009, and for good reasons (The Byzantine Generals Problem) - No Problem! Let's just change the way voting works.

You guys just proved that YOU are the ones trying to take control over Bitcoin. YOU are the ones trying to centralize it. You should be ashamed of yourselves for this blatant attempt to hijack the blockchain.

Go fuck yourselves, you dimwitted fanatics. But what did I even expect from people like luke-jr that officially stated that the Sun orbits around the Earth, and not vice versa? It's like talking to someone that's never even been to a school before.

But hey, be my guest, have fun with your centralized altcoin controlled by Blockstream. Great choice!

FYI: There aren't even any real developers contributing to this proposal - because they are not insane. Nobody with half a brain would put his name under this stinking turd of mental diarrhea. This is merely a marketing ploy to stir up shit. Luke-jr is not a developer, and he is far from being renowned. He's a religious fanatic that's paid to spread propaganda in Core's bitcoin reddit. I can provide you some of his quotes if you're interested. In short, he said that the death sentence is justified, that slavery is not immoral, that gays should not be allowed to marry, that the Sun orbits around the Earth, that masturbation and any kind of sexual relation not leading to procreation is a sin, and many more nonsensical statements like these.

Just google "luke-jr insane religious fanatic best-of quotes" or take a look at this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_a_seriously_a_super_crazy_person_quotes/ - This guy has some messed up views. He is certainly not a developer or contributor. He is just trying to stir shit up because Core is becoming desperate since it's become inevitable that SegWit will not be activated.

THIS!!! So fucking much!

There will be no PoW change, this is merely a propaganda act by Blockstream to spread FUD about Bitcoin Unlimited. Core is about to lose the vote and now they're butthurt about it.

And luke-jr is a despicable idiot. Nothing more. Certainly not a developer of or contributor to anything, other than outdated views and retarded ideas.

Aww cute biased opinions by TWO brand NEW accounts....

For eveyone else guys pllllllease run your own Node at home now.

[tromp]

If anyone's interested Aeternity has a testnet running using Cuckoo Cycle https://github.com/aeternity/testnet

The testnet hasn't implemented Cuckoo Cycle yet; they're running some dummy PoW...

[testerx]

My point is that you can't change the POW in Bitcoin.  You can make a new coin with a different POW, and you can even carry over all the coins fro Bitcoin in a genesis block or whatever, and fix everything else which is wrong in Bitcoin in the same go, but you can't change the POW agorithm.  It is impossible.  It will become a new coin either you want to or not,  It is just as stupid as those scammers who pretend it is possible to increase the blocksize in Bitcoin.  It will become a new coin either you want to or not.

The only way to upgrade the POW while keeping Bitcoin Bitcoin, is to add an extra POW as a soft fork.

I see there are mostly newbies posting in this thread.  Perhaps you should take some time to educate yourself about how bitocoin and blockchains work.

The number of mind numbingly unaware posts here and on reddit has become ridiculous over the last week.  I mean there are people literally suggesting forking to a different PoW algorithm while calling Bitcoin Unlimited the altcoin if it hard forks, etc.  If you're the coin that's forking to a different algorithm entirely and also changing the way transactions are sent then how can you argue that the other coin is the altcoin?

Adding an extra PoW might genuinely help to regain some of the distributed nature of early Bitcoin, but I think that long term this will be just a bandaid again.  Someone somewhere will likely work on an ASIC that's better for any new algorithm and then in a few years we'll again be very centralized.

[Frogolocalypse]

The number of mind numbingly unaware posts here and on reddit has become ridiculous over the last week.  I mean there are people literally suggesting forking to a different PoW algorithm while calling Bitcoin Unlimited the altcoin if it hard forks, etc.  If you're the coin that's forking to a different algorithm entirely and also changing the way transactions are sent then how can you argue that the other coin is the altcoin?

testerx, I believe what is being discussed here is if bitmain decides to attack the bitcoin blockchain.  If they have 51% of the hashing power (and there's no reason to think they don't) they can stop all transactions that they don't want.  In this likelihood, it will be very good to have an alternate PoW available that can be introduced as an emergency fork.

I don't think anyone doubts that this just kicks the can down the road in its current implementation.  It is, however, important that we, the users, protect bitcoin from this hostile take-over attempt.  Maybe if they see the gun cocked at their heads they'll rethink it.  They better.

[Fatman3001]

Wow! A Luke-Jr project!

I've got one of his immortal quotes hanging on my fridge:

"By the way, the Sun really orbits the Earth, not vice-versa. "

Anyhew, Wouldn't it make sense to look some more at PoS, as PoW clearly doesn't scale?

Is it desirable to include some kind of asic resistance?

Also, would it not make sense to make a HF segwit for this and make adjustments to max_block_size, as it would have to be implemented in a HF anyway?

Best of luck with the project!

[Frogolocalypse]

Alternate PoW's.

Would it be possible to have multiple PoW's, where the difficulty reset of each PoW algorithm was dependent upon how quickly they resolved the next block?

Each node has the logic to validate multiple PoW blocks.  At the difficulty reset, the timing for each PoW is calculated, and the difficulty for each PoW is reset based upon how quickly they found blocks for that PoW.  Then, you could introduce other PoW's into the system without negatively affecting (at least too much) existing miners of a specific PoW.  You could soft-fork in a new PoW (like keccak?) which already has miners using it.  I suppose you could also soft-fork specific miners out.  What are the chances of a single miner being proficient in all algorithms?  Not high I imagine.

This has to have been thought of before?

[GamerSg]

PoS doesn't work, see this PDF https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf

It cannot work on it's own as there is nothing at stake, allowing an attacker with large holdings in the future to rewrite the chain at no cost.

However, it can work in a hybrid model, where the sole purpose of POS is to solve the 51% hashpower attack problem. For more info, see Interleaved Mining,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1317240.0

The primary benefit of this approach is to not punish miners who are not hostile. It allows them to retain their investment in SHA256 hashing hardware.

[Fatman3001]

PoS doesn't work, see this PDF https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf

It cannot work on it's own as there is nothing at stake, allowing an attacker with large holdings in the future to rewrite the chain at no cost.

However, it can work in a hybrid model, where the sole purpose of POS is to solve the 51% hashpower attack problem. For more info, see Interleaved Mining,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1317240.0

The primary benefit of this approach is to not punish miners who are not hostile. It allows them to retain their investment in SHA256 hashing hardware.

Casper should be looked at

[rav3n_pl]

How to kill million-dollar industry in one commit (c)LukeJR
Never gonna happen. He can create just another altcoin.
Also, it is old stuff in his own repo "luke-jr committed on 16 Jan 2016", he planned it on beginning 2016 Apr 14
Yet another FUD to play on bitcoin value?

[Frogolocalypse]

No joke as far as I'm concerned.  We have to have a plan in place in case bitmain attacks the network when they don't get their way.  To not have a plan when someone is repeatedly threatening you isn't a good way to manage risk.  I hope it isn't required.  Only bitmain can answer the question about whether it is required or not.

[Last of the V8s]

How to kill million-dollar industry in one commit (c)LukeJR
Never gonna happen. He can create just another altcoin.
Also, it is old stuff in his own repo "luke-jr committed on 16 Jan 2016", he planned it on beginning 2016 Apr 14
Yet another FUD to play on bitcoin value?

This is decidedly not about luke-jr, or 'Core' (as some have suggested) or Jihan Wu.

Others were discussing change of POW at the same time as that github commit:

http://trilema.com/2016/the-necessary-prerequisite-for-any-change-to-the-bitcoin-protocol/

and they still are:

http://trilema.com/2016/the-necessary-prerequisite-for-any-change-to-the-bitcoin-protocol/#comment-121472

[nemgun]

So finally i had the answer to my question in the first page of the thread, i would like to ask for all the Advantages/Inconvenients who could result from an algorythm change,  i am aware of bitmain's attempt, and if ViaBtc is really a child of Bitmain, they will own more then 51% of the network.

If the algorythm change can really bring protection against this situation, then i am totally for algo change. yet i want to know what are the expected effects on the network, users, markets. I don't want bitcoin to turn to BU, both philosophies are different, and opposing at some points.

The recent events should really get every user to think about what would happen if bitmain achieves the 51%+ network hashrate, and to the announcements in the twitter account of Jihan Wu.

I also participated to an interesting survey with live results update : http://www.strawpoll.me/12569383/r

I invite you to do the same as it is related to this project.

[Frogolocalypse]

Don't like the options.  Don't think there should be a hard-fork unless bitcoin is attacked by the china-coin chain.  If they want to fork-off, it is their right.  There's no reason to punish the miners that don't.  While I think a PoW needs to be investigated in the medium to long-term, I don't think it's necessary unless bitcoin is attacked.

This is my take on what would happen if BU forked and took 50% of the hashing power.  It would almost immediately see SegWit being enabled.  That's one thing I would love to see, and I suspect the UASF trigger could make this happen, because you could set the UASF trigger to be the middle of a difficulty epoch.

Let's assume we're talking about mid epoch.  The only thing we can really be sure of, yes?  The average?  For brevity, let's say 1000 blocks.

    1000 blocks : one week. 10 minute blocks.

    1000 blocks : 50% hashing rate. Two weeks. 20 minute blocks.

Three weeks til difficulty reset. Then, because the difficulty calc will include both parts of this (50% full-mine, 50% half-mine), the new lowered difficulty will be 2/3 of the difficulty it was before, with 50% of the previous hashing power. So ~15 minutes blocks.

Off the top of my head, I reckon that would be another three weeks instead of two. Then the difficulty resets to the available miners, and you're back to normal.

So :

Fork happens.

    Two weeks : 20 minute blocks

    ~Three weeks : ~15 minute blocks.

Then back to normal. Assuming miners don't see the potential for huge fees to be had by switching over. Cuz, you know, money. I might be out for a few days or so, but I reckon it'll be about this assuming 50%. Seeing as I think bitmain actually has 50% or so of hashing power, I think I'll be close to right.

It's almost like you want bitmain to fork off. Because blocks will be bigger, so more transactions, but the block creation time will be longer, so less blocks. So less miners creating blocks less often, each with more transactions. Net effect to miners? More total fees in larger blocks and more for each miner. Net effect to users? Same fees for larger blocks that are created less often.

For those five weeks, miners will have a field-day. 50% more profit? Good on em I say.

And if they do attack?  PoW change (to something like Keccak that already has an infrastructure?) and bonza, off we go again, no difficulty reset, and everyone wants to pile into keccak mining.  I really hope we have a real solution to miner centralization instead of kicking the can down the keccak road though.