Am I the only miner who feels disgusted by the talk of PoW change?

[VentMine]

I've been r/bitcoin and twitter lately and I've been seeing a lot talk of support for a PoW algorithm change in case of a malicious attack after a hard fork. This talk scares the shit out of me, considering my mining equipment would basically become paperweights, and  personally I consider this talk more toxic than even the threats by BU supporters like Jihan about attacking the minority chain.

Am I the only one who thinks a PoW change would destroy bitcoin as we know it? Why would anyone mine and trust the new chain, when at any time the developers might decide to change the algorithm and brick our ASICs? I'll be the only one mining on the old chain if I have to.

I don't even understand the fear. An attacker could not sustain a lengthy attack, they would fizzle out quickly because who can afford that kind of energy cost!? Fuck, it is improbable as it is implausible. Anyone supporting such a change doesn't appreciate how the miners, through their energy consumption, support the bitcoin price in the first place. We make bitcoin stable.

Short sighted, ignorant talk supported by cowards.

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[philipma1957]

I think POW will never work for crypto coins.


edit

fucked up POS WILL NEVER WORK




Now I have gpus for alt coins and s9s for btc.

I have a foot in both camps.

I also think segwit is death for btc

I prefer Bu over over segwit.

And POW is worse then either one

edit

POS is worse then either one

[VentMine]

Phil I'm surprised you don't support PoW as I know you are very active with PoW mining. Do you prefer PoS?

Personally, I don't think crypto-currency can have value without PoW. I believe Ethereum, if it ever changes to PoS, will destabilize as soon as they do (and will absolutely become more centralized). My opinion is that staking energy (PoW) is fundamental to bringing value to the currency. Security and network-effect arguments aside, much of the reason Bitcoin has value is due to miners spending energy on it, a miner will not sell their BTC for less than their energy cost, and hence it puts upward pressure on the price.

A bit off topic but that's the way I see it.

[0xfff]

You're first mistake was going to /r/bitcoin and expecting something coherent. Stay away from that place. It is nothing but garbage. If you really want to stick to reddit, go to /r/btc.

[RentGPU]

I think POW will never work for crypto coins.

Now I have gpus for alt coins and s9s for btc.

I have a foot in both camps.

I also think segwit is death for btc

I prefer Bu over over segwit.

And POW is worse then either one

I can't find any POS coin with good value like any POW coin , it's well known that pos is worse than pow also known to the investors and traders who buy this coins and give it value , in pow you are actually doing some work and building expensive machines which eats alot of power , in pos you are just waiting to get your interest and i believe any thing that relay on interests have to fail at the end.

[VentMine]

You're first mistake was going to /r/bitcoin and expecting something coherent. Stay away from that place. It is nothing but garbage. If you really want to stick to reddit, go to /r/btc.

Both sub's seem littered with trolling to me anyway. I probably will not bother wasting my breath on reddit anymore anyway.

[-ck]

I think POW will never work for crypto coins.

Now I have gpus for alt coins and s9s for btc.

I have a foot in both camps.

I also think segwit is death for btc

I prefer Bu over over segwit.

And POW is worse then either one

You must be confusing your terminology since POW is Proof of Work which is what current bitcoin is and what segwit and BU would still be if either fork activated.

[philipma1957]

Phil I'm surprised you don't support PoW as I know you are very active with PoW mining. Do you prefer PoS?

Personally, I don't think crypto-currency can have value without PoW. I believe Ethereum, if it ever changes to PoS, will destabilize as soon as they do (and will absolutely become more centralized). My opinion is that staking energy (PoW) is fundamental to bringing value to the currency. Security and network-effect arguments aside, much of the reason Bitcoin has value is due to miners spending energy on it, a miner will not sell their BTC for less than their energy cost, and hence it puts upward pressure on the price.

A bit off topic but that's the way I see it.

Completely agree with this.

pow is needed


pos is basically interest in a bank concept  or passive

my bad  on switching it in my head.

[Amph]

actually i like the idea, bitcoin might have more chance to be decentralized, because everyone finally can jump and mine a bit, until the diff go high again with gpu, but gpu the diff will never be as high as high, they are not so efficient

you need million if not billions of gpu to replace current network hashrate, and this is not feasible, there is the chance that BU become the big sha256 alt, and core with segwit will change algo and be the real btc

[icon73]

actually i like the idea, bitcoin might have more chance to be decentralized, because everyone finally can jump and mine a bit, until the diff go high again with gpu, but gpu the diff will never be as high as high, they are not so efficient

you need million if not billions of gpu to replace current network hashrate, and this is not feasible, there is the chance that BU become the big sha256 alt, and core with segwit will change algo and be the real btc

If segwit changes algo, it will not be the real btc because they will force all of the asics onto the BU chain making it longer, and the more dominate.  Core just needs to update their code to accept the larger blocksize, and then turn on their lightning network.  Then both sides can be happy, and I can get back to making money.

[Bitcoiner7766]

I say that anyone who invested some serious amount of money into ASIC's took and ACCEPTED the risk that in one day, his or her bunch of arrays of ASIC equipment might or will become obsolete, Inefficient or worse a bunch of paper weights in the event that the difficulty becomes so great, in the event that changes are made that affect mining performance and ultimately in the event that a big change such as from POW to POS completely renders your ASICs into paper weights and even then, you might consider your ASIC to be a "paper weight" but the truth of the matter is that you can go to coinwarz com website and see a whole bunch of SHA256 altcoins in existence that you can immediately switch to, continue to generate profits, hell even start a pump and dump campaign or organized campaign to get your target coin priced up while you are mining them and then sell them to bitcoin, ICN, Ripple, lisk, eth, INCNT or anything that actually hold its value.

See? Your array of ASIC equipment will never become paper weights.

[Amph]

actually i like the idea, bitcoin might have more chance to be decentralized, because everyone finally can jump and mine a bit, until the diff go high again with gpu, but gpu the diff will never be as high as high, they are not so efficient

you need million if not billions of gpu to replace current network hashrate, and this is not feasible, there is the chance that BU become the big sha256 alt, and core with segwit will change algo and be the real btc

If segwit changes algo, it will not be the real btc because they will force all of the asics onto the BU chain making it longer, and the more dominate.  Core just needs to update their code to accept the larger blocksize, and then turn on their lightning network.  Then both sides can be happy, and I can get back to making money.

wait, they want to change it, only because BU want to do a possible 51% to kill segwit/core chain, that's is the reason and i see it as a valid reason, if the miners care only about their profit, we don't care about them also and an algo change would render them useless

and core don't want to hard fork for increase the block, just want that segwit is activated, even if in the past i remember they said that they were prone to increase the size of the block to 2mb, apparently they changed their mind later...

[-ck]

in the past i remember they said that they were prone to increase the size of the block to 2mb, apparently they changed their mind later...

It's okay to change your mind once you investigate the change and see that it is actually a bad idea to implement it. Too many people are obsessed with a plain block size increase as being some kind of simple change that carries with it no dangers, which we know now is actually completely wrong.

[VentMine]

in the past i remember they said that they were prone to increase the size of the block to 2mb, apparently they changed their mind later...

It's okay to change your mind once you investigate the change and see that it is actually a bad idea to implement it. Too many people are obsessed with a plain block size increase as being some kind of simple change that carries with it no dangers, which we know now is actually completely wrong.

My understanding after 6 months involved in the space is that bigger blocks lend towards greater centralization due to increased costs of running nodes etc (storage, bandwidth).

For this fact alone I would never support a block size increase if there were other viable options available.

[VentMine]

I say that anyone who invested some serious amount of money into ASIC's took and ACCEPTED the risk

No, a PoW change was not a part of the foreseeable risks.

Anyways, I'm confident a PoW change will never take place. And if a minority chain is ever forced to change the PoW, there will be people like me interested in just forking off and defending the chain with our hash.

[-ck]

My understanding after 6 months involved in the space is that bigger blocks lend towards greater centralization due to increased costs of running nodes etc (storage, bandwidth).

For this fact alone I would never support a block size increase if there were other viable options available.

That certainly would be a problem with a substantial size increase, but there is another more immediate problem even at only 2MB blocks - the quadratic sighash scaling problem. It's possible to DoS the network with transactions that are very heavy handed in input/outputs for their size leading to block verification that can take a very long time to complete. The 1MB block that took 25 seconds to verify a while back on fast hardware was an example of that in action at only 1MB blocksizes. The code that does the verification is much more efficient now but still would have taken 11 seconds to verify. Double the size of that and you have a block that takes almost 45 seconds to verify. 6MB blocks and you have blocks that can take longer than the average time between blocks of 10 minutes. Slower hardware would hit that limit at even smaller block sizes. Segwit transactions scale linearly with signature hashes so 1MB of signatures for segwit transactions are a lot faster than 1MB of normal transactions, and linearly for 4MB of transactions, which is the maximum possible allowed with segwit as currently coded. That 4MB of transactions would take less than 1MB of normal transactions to verify. Note that most blocks are NOT that sighash heavy but the fact remains that it is a mechanism to DoS the network.

[Amph]

in the past i remember they said that they were prone to increase the size of the block to 2mb, apparently they changed their mind later...

It's okay to change your mind once you investigate the change and see that it is actually a bad idea to implement it. Too many people are obsessed with a plain block size increase as being some kind of simple change that carries with it no dangers, which we know now is actually completely wrong.

My understanding after 6 months involved in the space is that bigger blocks lend towards greater centralization due to increased costs of running nodes etc (storage, bandwidth).

For this fact alone I would never support a block size increase if there were other viable options available.

the problem is that LN alternative are also centralized with their HUB, at least from what i understood, it seems that you can't preserve the current decentralization if you want to fix the block limit/scaling issue

if they can come up with something better would be good but there is no time anymore, now the choice is based on what is less worse, not on what is ideal

[-ck]

the problem is that LN alternative are also centralized with their HUB, at least from what i understood, it seems that you can't preserve the current decentralization if you want to fix the block limit/scaling issue

if they cna coem up with something better would be better but there is no time anymore, now the choice is based on what is less worse, not on what is ideal

I didn't say anything about LN. Most people think all the transactions will go to LN which is also completely wrong. To start a lightning channel one must create a regular transaction and then only can LN transactions occur, BUT LN will only work for microtransactions. It's not going to be possible to use it for transactions larger than .042 btc. There will still be heaps of on-chain transactions and consequently transaction fees for miners. If LN increases the userbase of bitcoin dramatically by making the proverbial 'cup of coffee transactions' possible by the general public without dumping them all into the blockchain, the overall transaction fees ending up in miners' pockets will go up substantially anyway. Furthermore, most types of LN transactions can still be implemented even without segwit so it's not like signalling segwit is voting for LN. Even if segwit doesn't get activated, LN will be implemented.

Read more about some of the most common misconceptions about LN and mining here:
https://medium.com/@rusty_lightning/miners-and-bitcoin-lightning-a133cd550310#.skccp131t

If miners weren't so quick to jump to conclusions and make wild accusations BU would never have even been considered and subsequently the threat of a hard fork and PoW change wouldn't ever have been discussed. Either way I doubt a hard fork and PoW change are going to happen anyway.

[numismatist]

I think POW will never work for crypto coins.


edit

fucked up POS WILL NEVER WORK

Just a minor fuckup, never mind 

Overly specialized hardware is the problem. Still remembering FPGAs? Probably you do. Or GPUs?
I know this is hard to swallow.

[VentMine]

My understanding after 6 months involved in the space is that bigger blocks lend towards greater centralization due to increased costs of running nodes etc (storage, bandwidth).

For this fact alone I would never support a block size increase if there were other viable options available.

That certainly would be a problem with a substantial size increase, but there is another more immediate problem even at only 2MB blocks - the quadratic sighash scaling problem. It's possible to DoS the network with transactions that are very heavy handed in input/outputs for their size leading to block verification that can take a very long time to complete. The 1MB block that took 25 seconds to verify a while back on fast hardware was an example of that in action at only 1MB blocksizes. The code that does the verification is much more efficient now but still would have taken 11 seconds to verify. Double the size of that and you have a block that takes almost 45 seconds to verify. 6MB blocks and you have blocks that can take longer than the average time between blocks of 10 minutes. Slower hardware would hit that limit at even smaller block sizes. Segwit transactions scale linearly with signature hashes so 1MB of signatures for segwit transactions are a lot faster than 1MB of normal transactions, and linearly for 4MB of transactions, which is the maximum possible allowed with segwit as currently coded. That 4MB of transactions would take less than 1MB of normal transactions to verify. Note that most blocks are NOT that sighash heavy but the fact remains that it is a mechanism to DoS the network.

Holy fork, that's scary. Thanks for this info CK, well explained.