[ANN] Bitcoin PoW Upgrade Initiative

[Frogolocalypse]

wont it make the network open to attacks if the difficulty suddenly drops low?

Not really.  Until it stabilizes, my expectation would be that you would just need to wait for more confirms before you can be assured that the chain you've put a transaction in hasn't been orphaned.  Now 6, perhaps as high as 20.  When lightning is available, I don't think that's really that much of an issue.

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[muyuu]

There is collateral damage.

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

Right now the mining cartel protects us from any other potential attackers in terms of hashing. Still, not an acceptable situation.

[mmgen-py]

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

This is why a gradual phase-in of the new PoW via PoWA is the best option.

[muyuu]

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

This is why a gradual phase-in of the new PoW via PoWA is the best option.

Yeah, I was talking about changing the PoW generally. Not championing my personal favourite as I'm still reading what others think.

[jornaldobitcoin]

I would like to share an hypothesis.

With enough asics a group of miners could offer/sell an alternative to SWIFT for banks?

The group could settle a secret agreement with some banks to raise a few billion US$ for their hash capacity (they would have to leave bitcoin).
They would need something like 40% to 50% of bitcoin hash rate to avoid attacks (Bitcoin unlimited is in almost 40%?).
 They would have to keep building asics to keep hash capacity in bitcoin level. Or build even more.
Them we would live in a world with 2 major coins. Both only vulnerable to each other hash capacity.
The miner (banks backed) would have lot of budget to keep pumping asics until bitcoin is forced to change POW or other mitigation strategy.
The group would guarantee its future in asics manufacturing and operations and would ´t care if bitcoin fails. Quick $ with low risk. As it would have a signed contract with major banks to back them.
Actually this group of miners would gain with bitcoin suffering.
Banks could have a chance to have its own SWIFT and damage bitcoin considerably, gaining more time for their fiat party, with very low costs for them(comparing to acquisitions we are seeing today and the SWIFT value) .

[Frogolocalypse]

A change of PoW as a quickfix (to fool currently manufactured ASICS) without too much risk of bugs can be as follows:

Instead of checking for n zero bits, implement checking for n one bits instead.

If you are bold, you can have the sequence of leading bits to check to be dependant on the trailing bits of the previous block.

 
I love this one.  

Like you said, but an extension of what you suggest, have the check-bits being searched for as a function of the previous mined block.  Instead of searching for 00000000000 starting at nth 0, search for 76436753432 at nth 7.  Or that at 21, going backwards.  21/20/19/18/etc.  Or pick the Xth prime, and skip the Yth prime of each element, where the primes used is a function of the hash of the previous block.

Introduce them as a randomized instantiation.  ~10/1000 is this new 'format'.  Then, after 1000, it's ~20/1000.   Have a new difficulty setting for these new elements.  Who cares if you get a virtually instantaneous block reward for 10/1000.  No different than chance happening for that normally.  By the time that it got to 100/1000 there would be an entirely new set of miners, on an entirely new set of difficulty settings.

It doesn't punish the miners that are currently mining in an untoward manner.  It gives them an acceptable return on their existing hardware.  That would account for a two year rollover.

Then, let the miners know that the same thing is going to happen again in two years.

It de-incentivizes hardware solutions, but doesn't kill them.  I'm not sure this solve the long-term problem of centralization though.  While the prime thing is good, you want all of that calculation to be done by the miner, with the least amount effort you can come up with so that it can be validated.  This just means that you could have relatively minor modification to the hash validation that current hardware wouldn't be designed for.  I don't actually know how the ASIC's verify that a specific hash meets the requirements of validation.  It might be as simple as updating a single variable within their hardware or software implementation.  Instead of looking for "000000" look for "123456".

[pinkflower]

There is collateral damage.

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

Right now the mining cartel protects us from any other potential attackers in terms of hashing. Still, not an acceptable situation.

If theres a POW upgrade what will happen to the Chinese miners? Will it be possible for them to continue to mine using the old SHA256 and fork away from the upgraded POW algorithm? I think that would be a losing move for the current developers and the ones behind them.

[muyuu]

There is collateral damage.

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

Right now the mining cartel protects us from any other potential attackers in terms of hashing. Still, not an acceptable situation.

If theres a POW upgrade what will happen to the Chinese miners? Will it be possible for them to continue to mine using the old SHA256 and fork away from the upgraded POW algorithm? I think that would be a losing move for the current developers and the ones behind them.

They can try to keep their fork alive but who wants to use a crypto completely dominated by 4 odd dudes from China? Maybe Roger and a few other lunatics? Win-win.

[jornaldobitcoin]

There is collateral damage.

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

Right now the mining cartel protects us from any other potential attackers in terms of hashing. Still, not an acceptable situation.

If theres a POW upgrade what will happen to the Chinese miners? Will it be possible for them to continue to mine using the old SHA256 and fork away from the upgraded POW algorithm? I think that would be a losing move for the current developers and the ones behind them.

They can try to keep their fork alive but who wants to use a crypto completely dominated by 4 odd dudes from China? Maybe Roger and a few other lunatics? Win-win.

exactly!, who wants?
i say Banks or SWIFT!!imagine a new SWIFT based in sha256. As secure as bitcoins(because it would have a considerable hash capacity!), at least for now. 250millions usd$? its a bargain for a startup that aims to detrone SWIFT! People need to prepare , investigate this hyphotesis. we must be negotiating with people(BU miners) that are already out of bitcoin.
Read my post , few posts below, for more info.

[pinkflower]

There is collateral damage.

But the trade-off is this: allow a certain attack from a malicious actor or potentially allow cheaper-than-usual attacks from unknown actors temporarily.

Right now the mining cartel protects us from any other potential attackers in terms of hashing. Still, not an acceptable situation.

If theres a POW upgrade what will happen to the Chinese miners? Will it be possible for them to continue to mine using the old SHA256 and fork away from the upgraded POW algorithm? I think that would be a losing move for the current developers and the ones behind them.

They can try to keep their fork alive but who wants to use a crypto completely dominated by 4 odd dudes from China? Maybe Roger and a few other lunatics? Win-win.

That is your point of view yes, but what about the rest? Will they follow the people who can secure the network or will they follow the new POW upgrade and take the road less traveled? It will be a hard decision but I think the majority will follow the safer road.

[muyuu]

That is your point of view yes, but what about the rest? Will they follow the people who can secure the network or will they follow the new POW upgrade and take the road less traveled? It will be a hard decision but I think the majority will follow the safer road.

If these people believe in security by being under a racket with full control over their currency, let them have their coin. I didn't need BTC for that.

AFAIC their presence is a liability, if they get to influence the decision process.

[pinkflower]

That is your point of view yes, but what about the rest? Will they follow the people who can secure the network or will they follow the new POW upgrade and take the road less traveled? It will be a hard decision but I think the majority will follow the safer road.

If these people believe in security by being under a racket with full control over their currency, let them have their coin. I didn't need BTC for that.

AFAIC their presence is a liability, if they get to influence the decision process.

By that I assume you mean the big Chinese miners. Wasnt the specialization of mining a part of the natural evolution of Bitcoin? There are some people who argue against the POW upgrade because they say they would preferably go with the ASIC miners than the botnet that hackers are known to be using. 

[Carlton Banks]

There are some people who argue against the POW upgrade because they say they would preferably go with the ASIC miners than the botnet that hackers are known to be using. 

Does that argument not favour a hashing algo that does work with GPUs/FPGAs? Is that even possible without the risk of an ASIC being developed?

[muyuu]

By that I assume you mean the big Chinese miners. Wasnt the specialization of mining a part of the natural evolution of Bitcoin? There are some people who argue against the POW upgrade because they say they would preferably go with the ASIC miners than the botnet that hackers are known to be using. 

No, I mean the "coffees in the chain" brigade.

[RGBKey]

I can understand the thought behind wanting to make this change and call me sentimental, but I don't think Satoshi would have wanted this for Bitcoin. Bitcoin still functions as it's supposed to as long as there's not a 51% attack and changing something for people's benefit is still just that.

[pinkflower]

There are some people who argue against the POW upgrade because they say they would preferably go with the ASIC miners than the botnet that hackers are known to be using. 

Does that argument not favour a hashing algo that does work with GPUs/FPGAs? Is that even possible without the risk of an ASIC being developed?

The argument is about the developers who are proposing the POW upgrade shaking the cage too much. Its either theyre an opposition controlled by the miners or just your ordinary Bitcoiners who hate to change the status quo.

[Andre_Goldman]

Here's a schematic of my proposed PoWA (proof-of-work additions) soft-fork blockchain.




New PoW chain is shown in pink, legacy blockchain in blue.

Brief description:

• New PoW miners and legacy miners mine in parallel. Proofs for the new PoW blockchain's mini-blocks are embedded into legacy chain in a special transaction.
• All assembling of TXs into blocks and reorgs happen on the new PoW chain. Legacy miners' role is restricted to finding SHA256 hashes, final block assembly (calculating payouts, creating the coinbase TX) and broadcasting the block.
• Mini-blocks are 100 Kb in size; new PoW blockchain has one-minute block discovery rate (i.e. confirmation time).
• Mini-block headers are like ordinary block headers but with an added payout address.
• New PoW miners mine with no downtime. Legacy miners experience an avg. of 10% downtime while waiting for new PoW miners to mine the next proto-block.
• Initially, 95% of block reward will go to legacy miners and 5% to new PoW miners. Legacy miners' share will be gradually reduced (over a period of years?) until it reaches zero.
• After legacy miner broadcasts a valid block, new PoW miners assemble all TXs from mini-blocks mined so far into a single Bitcoin block with no Coinbase TX (a "proto-block"), solve the block and broadcast it along with mini-block headers to legacy miners.
• Legacy miner adds mini-block proofs, TX counts and payout addresses to the special transaction, calculates payouts (initially distributing 95% of reward to himself and 5% equally among new PoW miners), adds payout outputs to Coinbase TX and then solves and broadcasts the block as usual.
• If new PoW miners solve nine mini-blocks faster than legacy miners solve one block, then they continue mining empty mini-blocks until legacy miners finally solve the block. Thus a block may contain more than 10 mini-blocks.
• In the reverse case, fewer than 10 mini-blocks will be assembled into a block, and the new PoW miner who assembles the block will add as many TXs to the final mini-block as required in order to reach the blocksize limit (currently 1MB).

All of the above is preliminary and subject to change.

Sounds interesting idea. I'm thinking here about 'Parallelism' and 'Message Passing Interface' ( I will review some academics papers and lectures 101 about 'Parallel Computing Theory'  such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1H2UbzeNrY ) after these technical (perhaps some GPU/CUDA?)  ..

then, I will think about

95% reward for legacy miners and the 5% to new POW

... is that roll out would follows the yield curve ?

[mmgen-py]

My soft-fork PoWA proposal has been somewhat revised and expanded:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1833391.msg18344077#msg18344077

Discussion of the proposal on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/62taef/can_powa_proofofwork_additions_provide_a_way_out/

[pinkflower]

Lets pretend Bitcoin really did upgrade to a new POW algorithm and left all the asics and mining farms, mining equipment and whatnot useless. Is this really what Bitcoin needs? I dont think this will have a good image to the general public. It could be viewed much worse than Ethereum's hard fork.

[Rakete4]

Lets pretend Bitcoin really did upgrade to a new POW algorithm and left all the asics and mining farms, mining equipment and whatnot useless. Is this really what Bitcoin needs? I dont think this will have a good image to the general public. It could be viewed much worse than Ethereum's hard fork.

In every job, if you do not do your work, you get fired.
If Miners stop to work on the protocol that the majority of users want, it's only natural to fire the miners and hire new ones.
Can't see anything wrong with that, it will be seen as a strength of bitcoin.