[ANN] Bitcoin PoW Upgrade Initiative

[Cryptorials]

We all have incentives to rob, murder and rape people all the time. We generally don't do it though, and to assume that people are doing that is not a good thing.

you're one of those people who think crime is as depicted on TV; crime occurs, victim is able to phone the police, and the police turns up just in time to catch the blundering criminal? Grown ups are talking

I have difficulty making out what point you are trying to make, other than that you are trying to insult me in some very strange way.

You are saying that because police can't prevent crimes we should just assume everyone is a criminal and act accordingly? If so that is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

No, but its unreasonable to assume that because they have an incentive they must be doing it. You seem to have seen a possibility and jumped from it being possible (but quite unlikely) to saying it must be true.

We all have incentives to rob, murder and rape people all the time. We generally don't do it though, and to assume that people are doing that is not a good thing.

State involvement creates a strong enough incentive to override all others against (mining revenue, ethics, etc)

This is a reasonable assumption when planning a POW change, since the only reason to do so would be in response to a 51% attack. Why bother otherwise?

I do not agree that we would all be raping and murdering all the time if it wasn't for the all powerful government putting us in our place.

It is reasonable to plan a PoW change in response to a 51% attack. It is unreasonable to suggest that Bitmain are mentally deranged and intent on destroying Bitcoin for no reason and that we should pre-emptively attack to punish them for something you have no evidence for.

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[Mashuri]

Why would it be too late after an attack to HF? A few txs get stolen or blocked?

For a similar reason you're giving not to pre-empt it: building support for the new idea. It's possible that too many people will be psychologically impacted by the success of the attack, and consequently do what you're suggesting is wrong with my approach (despite the fact I've made no emotional arguements at all): allow emotions to dictate their decision instead of reason.

If we engage people to support pre-emptive action, a determined mindset would replace a fatalistic reaction. It's about harnessing a positive psychological feedback loop instead of a negative psychological feedback loop.

By my estimates 95% won't preemptively fork the PoW algo ... do you really think you can convince them all to preemptively HF?

Including Bitmain's current hashrate %? Clearly not. A PoW fork only needs to get the support of the miners who don't want to be ruled by a malign majority, although I'm seeing an obvious problem; how to measure that. Setting a block height activation would invite counter measures. Not sure how it could be achieved.

It seems like you're calling for a marketing campaign. You may be right that this is what needs to be done, but I don't think a bunch of technocrats will be able to successfully carry it out.

[Carlton Banks]

I have difficulty making out what point you are trying to make, other than that you are trying to insult me in some very strange way.

You are saying that because police can't prevent crimes we should just assume everyone is a criminal and act accordingly? If so that is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

This isn't relevant, create a thread in the Politics section for your derailing

[Mashuri]

I do not agree that we would all be raping and murdering all the time if it wasn't for the all powerful government putting us in our place.

It is reasonable to plan a PoW change in response to a 51% attack. It is unreasonable to suggest that Bitmain are mentally deranged and intent on destroying Bitcoin for no reason and that we should pre-emptively attack to punish them for something you have no evidence for.

You completely misunderstood my point. State involvement doesn't keep people from raping and murdering. It actually tends to do the exact opposite. If the people running Bitmain are primarily funded by government, then they are acting in their government's best interest. If you can't see how this is a mortal threat to bitcoin, there's no point discussing it further in this thread.

[mmgen-py]

https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.fv0s8ll36

Thank you, this is basically the kind of randomized PoW I had in mind. The author's objection to memory-hard functions is that they're susceptible to botnets. However, if the memory requirement were made really big (>16GB, say), the number of infected computers that could run the PoW (and undetected by their owners all the more so) would be more-or-less insignificant, I think.

[bit_me]

I agree let them try and fork first. Imo bitcoin community is very resilient.

They have been dumping trying to drive the price down and pumping shit corporate coin like zcash (where Ver and pboc by proxy are investors and receiving a portion of every block mined).

Bitcoin is fine - have pow ready (memory Intensive) stick to it and announce it so the bitcoin faithful know what to expect. And if pboc want to fork off let them. No users that understand what bitcoin really stands for will be following them no matter how many threats they make. This is very simple.

Side note I never bothered posting on here but I signed up in 2013. Bitcoin will be just fine. Buy cheap coins spend and replace and hold on. They will keep throwing their money away till they have none left. Bitcoin is an idea And you can not kill it. You can only replace it with a better one and that one is not centralized mining.

Memory hardened is not susceptible to bot nets if the memory requirement is adequate. That is the fud gpu farmers push. Higher memory requirement would eliminate that non issue.

[Carlton Banks]

if pboc want to...

[snip]

They will keep throwing their money away till they have none left.

You do realise that the PBOC prints electronic fiat at zero cost?

[Cryptorials]

I have difficulty making out what point you are trying to make, other than that you are trying to insult me in some very strange way.

You are saying that because police can't prevent crimes we should just assume everyone is a criminal and act accordingly? If so that is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard.

This isn't relevant, create a thread in the Politics section for your derailing

Please don't try to bully me, because it won't work.

You were trying to suggest a pre-emptive PoW change because you believe that Bitmain are irrational actors who were only interesting in trying to destroy Bitcoin. I pointed out you have no evidence for that and its irrational to proceed on the basis on something for which there is no evidence. You then started ranting about police; I just said I didn't understand what (relevant) point you were trying to make.

I suggest if you want to engage in exploring unfounded conspiracy theories you take that to the politics section.

I do not agree that we would all be raping and murdering all the time if it wasn't for the all powerful government putting us in our place.

It is reasonable to plan a PoW change in response to a 51% attack. It is unreasonable to suggest that Bitmain are mentally deranged and intent on destroying Bitcoin for no reason and that we should pre-emptively attack to punish them for something you have no evidence for.

You completely misunderstood my point. State involvement doesn't keep people from raping and murdering. It actually tends to do the exact opposite. If the people running Bitmain are primarily funded by government, then they are acting in their government's best interest. If you can't see how this is a mortal threat to bitcoin, there's no point discussing it further in this thread.

Perhaps I did misunderstand your point then, but I think you also haven't recognized mine: It is possible that the Chinese government could be exerting pressure on Bitmain and the fact that it is a possibility should not be ignored, but it is very dangerous to make the jump from it being possible to assuming that it is true.

I understand that many of you may be engaged in security type work where you have to see any threat and assume that it will happen. But when dealing with people that is a very dangerous way to act. It is a big mistake to assume the worst possible scenario and act accordingly, because you are assuming significant costs associated with your actions which are most likely uneccessary.

Also if you want to assume the worst, the conspiracy theory about Blockstream trying to take over with their lightning network is just as plausible. At some point we have to all back down from the extremes and stop creating more problems that there needs to be.

[BitUsher]

if pboc want to...

[snip]

They will keep throwing their money away till they have none left.

You do realise that the PBOC prints electronic fiat at zero cost?

Ok, this is getting offtopic ... whether some people want to fork before an attack can be discussed later as the first step must be deciding upon the algo , finishing the code, peer review, creating a testnet , testing , compiling the binaries...

So we should probably compensate some devs to incentivize quick execution on some of the above. We need a mutisig address with three known non anonymous trusted member of the community to accept donations like with UASF and a list of tasks to get started ... I'll be more than happy to donate.

I beg of you to put off this debate until after we have completed the tasks above.

[bit_me]

if pboc want to...

[snip]

They will keep throwing their money away till they have none left.

You do realise that the PBOC prints electronic fiat at zero cost?

You do realize that the main fiat currency btc is exchanged for is usd?
By your logic China can just print 20b usd equivalent in yuan and just buy every bitcoin. Not gonna bother explaining why that wouldn't work.

Sorry mate the sky isn't falling.

[Mashuri]

if pboc want to...

[snip]

They will keep throwing their money away till they have none left.

You do realise that the PBOC prints electronic fiat at zero cost?

Ok, this is getting offtopic ... whether some people want to fork before an attack can be discussed later as the first step must be deciding upon the algo , finishing the code, peer review, creating a testnet , testing , compiling the binaries...

So we should probably compensate some devs to incentivize quick execution on some of the above. We need a mutisig address with three known non anonymous trusted member of the community to accept donations like with UASF and a list of tasks to get started ... I'll be more than happy to donate.

I beg of you to put off this debate until after we have completed the tasks above.

I'm game but if the devs need extra money to motivate them, then I'm not sure we'll get the code we want. Better to have devs that feel just as threatened as us. The motivation is already there.

[Carlton Banks]

whether some people want to fork before an attack can be discussed later as the first step must be deciding upon the algo , finishing the code, peer review, creating a testnet , testing , compiling the binaries...

So we should probably compensate some devs to incentivize quick execution on some of the above. We need a mutisig address with three known non anonymous trusted member of the community to accept donations like with UASF and a list of tasks to get started ... I'll be more than happy to donate.

I beg of you to put off this debate until after we have completed the tasks above.

I agree.

But we must keep in mind the serious nature of who our opponent/s really are. All we know about the opponent/s is that it's unlikely to be Bitmain operating on it's own, and that they're very determined (considering the overall confluence of pressures being exerted against Bitcoin over the past 2.5 years, if they're not all working together, they may as well be), and so therefore must have some incredibly strong incentive to achieve their goals.

That taken together makes the unknown opponent dangerously adept and unpredictable IMO. Planning for the full range of "IRL side-channel attacks" is potentially vital, and I'm very concerned that an opponent sufficiently formidable may throw everything they have at their problem if their efforts are continually frustrated (and it looks to be emerging that way, I can't see the Bitcoin economy getting behind BU as things stand, our opponent/s are likely more pissed than the last time it failed)

[mmgen-py]

Memory hardened is not susceptible to bot nets if the memory requirement is adequate. That is the fud gpu farmers push. Higher memory requirement would eliminate that non issue.

Then this would seem to be the way to go, since functions like Equihash are already available for use as drop-in replacements for SHA256. A randomized GPU PoW would be much more work to implement.

[tenletters]

Memory hardened is not susceptible to bot nets if the memory requirement is adequate. That is the fud gpu farmers push. Higher memory requirement would eliminate that non issue.

Then this would seem to be the way to go, since functions like Equihash are already available for use as drop-in replacements for SHA256. A randomized GPU PoW would be much more work to implement.

Could someone fork Bitcoin-core and make the necessary changes so we can have a bitcoin-equihash-testnet?

Also might be worth considering a fork for sha256+equihash, so we can evaluate one of the popular propositions here (i.e. so as not to totally destroy the friendly miners (BitFury, BTCC, et al.)).

[Mashuri]

I think a hardfork change is too drastic, and will certainly end in a contentious hard fork.  A POW change light can be implemented as a soft fork by a requirement for an extra proof of work of a different type in the coinbase transaction or in another special transaction.  This will encourage cooperation between miners having lots of specialized SHA256 hardware and users mining the extra proof of work on their CPUs.  If miners behave badly, users will turn their backs to them, and it will become more difficult/expensive for the miners to create new blocks.  Another important advantage is that old nodes and wallets will still work, as long as the majority of the hashrate is behind the soft fork.  Still safeguards must be put in place to stop someone with a very large SHA256 hashrate to overtake the main chain at a later time when the extra POW difficulty is high, since a SHA256 only chain will still be valid for old nodes and SPV nodes.

Good thoughts but miners will never approve this proposal with BIP 9 and I doubt even 51% so would need to be a UASF , whicj will likely end up as a HF only . This proposal is more of a HF in reaction to a 51% attack from miners which would not be as controversial.


Judging from this latest tweet, we may need to prepare for the worst...


https://twitter.com/JihanWu/status/843341104531427336

I found that the HF future contract of Bitfinex is very unfair against big blocker. 2 support BU supporter, HF should be accelerated.

Couldn't this be implemented as a UASF instead? The SHA256 side can be rendered insignificant from the get-go and blocks would still be backwards compatible.

[muyuu]

Couldn't this be implemented as a UASF instead? The SHA256 side can be rendered insignificant from the get-go and blocks would still be backwards compatible.

That would be pretty risky on a flag day without knowing which side every service and exchange would take. The argument for a HF is politically harder. This is silly, but it's the current status of the Bitcoin culture.

Maybe as a progressive but relatively quick PoW switch as a SF, it could be done. As Maxwell describes here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/60j1zi/bram_cohen_bittorrents_creator_a_soft_fork_change/df6snyy/

[Mashuri]

Couldn't this be implemented as a UASF instead? The SHA256 side can be rendered insignificant from the get-go and blocks would still be backwards compatible.

That would be pretty risky on a flag day without knowing which side every service and exchange would take. The argument for a HF is politically harder. This is silly, but it's the current status of the Bitcoin culture.

Maybe as a progressive but relatively quick PoW switch as a SF, it could be done. As Maxwell describes here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/60j1zi/bram_cohen_bittorrents_creator_a_soft_fork_change/df6snyy/

This may be the best way to get a POW change started as it gets everyone used to the idea. If things go south quickly, I'm sure the transition could be accelerated through another SF (more palatable at that point) or even an emergency HF.

[Bitcoinreminder.com]

Damn... think about it: this is the key for decentraliced mining? OR?

With hybrid PoW (POWA) you could have 2 algos: an ASIC friendly one that counters botnets and a CPU friendly one that allows decentralized mining. Nether alone is even capable of a 51% attack.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/60k5ya/powa_with_hybrid_pow_you_could_have_2_algos_an/

[tenletters]

Damn... think about it: this is the key for decentraliced mining? OR?

With hybrid PoW (POWA) you could have 2 algos: an ASIC friendly one that counters botnets and a CPU friendly one that allows decentralized mining. Nether alone is even capable of a 51% attack.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/60k5ya/powa_with_hybrid_pow_you_could_have_2_algos_an/

Bram Cohen makes the (possibly true) claim that [BrCoh1] cuckoo cycle is one of the most ASIC-resistant algorithms usable as a Proof-of-Work function. It would be interesting if anyone had the tools/ability to test (or at least heuristically justify) this claim.

[tenletters]

BitClub just mined a block signalling both BU and Segwit: http://archive.is/1RXeH