Bitcoin should be decentralized even further

[dinofelis]

I think the best solution isn't only change algorithm once, but change/update algorithm regularly every few years to prevent company from creating new ASIC. But, i think this won't happen.

Indeed.  But that's not bitcoin any more.  This is a new cryptocurrency, that needs a central hard fork policy.  Ethereum, DASH and monero are such central hard forking currencies.  Bitcoin has no central hard forking tradition and hence has no mechanism in place to "change the constitution", but of course nobody stops anyone from making an alt coin forking off bitcoin.

it has already happened a couple of times actually!
there is one active one currently in altcoins that has forked from bitcoin, the name is even similar it was "bitcoin something that i forgot"
and the funny thing is that they all fail to exist for any meaningful time.

I'm not aware of any, but of course there are so many alt coins...
I know that there are some alt coins that have a mechanism to obtain coins if somehow they prove bitcoin ownership ; that's half a fork, I'd say.

In fact, the notion of forking becomes somewhat vague if one also includes the possibility to exclude bitcoin addresses, and to allow for a new genesis block.  Because then, any block chain like thing can be considered to be a fork of any other block chain like thing that existed at the moment of its creation of course.

Nevertheless, a "bitcoin change of proof of work", or a "bitcoin change to proof of stake" would in fact be nothing else but the creation of an alt coin ; that could, or couldn't, have a success in the market, depending on how the "double coin owners" vote in the market.  Most probably, the "difficulty" in assigning this alt coin the name of bitcoin would be that the old chain wouldn't simply disappear: miners having SHA-256 mining hardware wouldn't see any reason to change their expensive equipment into door steps voluntary.

[Xester]

China having most of the Bitcoin's hashrate is a bad idea for its decentralization. Since Bitmain is one of the largest ASIC mining hardware manufacturers in the world, it is one where it holds the majority of the pioneer cryptocurrency's hashrate.

As a result of this, due to Bitcoin's mining becoming more centralized each day, it is getting harder to reach consensus among the miners, especially with the acceptance of scalable solutions like SegWit. Since miners are mostly in for the profit, they don't care much about expanding Bitcoin's transaction capacity, but rather prefer for the same to keep increasing in transaction fees, so they could earn more money per block mined.

That is why, in my own opinion, Bitcoin's mining scheme should be decentralized even further to prevent big mining companies from taking over the important decisions of Bitcoin, and give the power back to average every day people. Perhaps a switch to a new mining algorithm which would be more resistant to ASIC will be the most viable solution to this problem.

What do you think? 

Well I do agree with that but first and foremost before any decentralization could come in hand I think Satoshi had already placed a standard or guidelines for miners to follow so at this point of time we will not have problems with the fees and slow confirmation. Though bitcoin is decentralized there are a lot of movements to make bitcoins under a centralized control.

[Agrello]

So many people are looking at china and are anxious that they have a greater control in terms of mining and pools. Though not many people realise that even with supercomputers such is the case, they overshadow USA in such things:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

So i am not at all surprised that that is the case with Bitcoin.

It would be nice if a pool could not gain more than 10% control of the network, though in time when Bitcoin becomes more popular it will start spreading into businesses, peoples wallets and similar which should help. Because of its immense power now, Bitcoin will be going through many attacks of people trying to gain control of its network.

[bartolo]

The question of decentralization is not so much about a country but a company, Bitmain. There are other companies that could establish themselves in China and compete with them. Anyway, with the rise of bitcoin price may be companies in other parts of the world that could consider investing in bitcoin mining and in this way the mining power would be more distributed.

[Sniper44]

So many people are looking at china and are anxious that they have a greater control in terms of mining and pools. Though not many people realise that even with supercomputers such is the case, they overshadow USA in such things:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

So i am not at all surprised that that is the case with Bitcoin.

It would be nice if a pool could not gain more than 10% control of the network, though in time when Bitcoin becomes more popular it will start spreading into businesses, peoples wallets and similar which should help. Because of its immense power now, Bitcoin will be going through many attacks of people trying to gain control of its network.

i am not sure what you are trying to say with the supercomputer news, do you think someone is going to use a supercomputer to mine bitcoin? is that it, i don't think it is even possible and if it was it would be waste of resources! and a supercomputer is not something you can buy at a computer shop it usually is only one!

also the pools are not the problem, if miners aren't happy with a pool they will simply switch to another or start a new one and gather around in that new pool.
the problem is the farms and the fact that manufacturing of ASICs is also in China.

[stompix]

That is why, in my own opinion, Bitcoin's mining scheme should be decentralized even further to prevent big mining companies from taking over the important decisions of Bitcoin, and give the power back to average every day people. Perhaps a switch to a new mining algorithm which would be more resistant to ASIC will be the most viable solution to this problem.

What do you think? 

Change SHA-256 Mining Algorithm with other Algorithm which other algorithm that can't be mined with ASIC is great idea, but i'm sure this is controversial topic and current miners won't agree.
But, certain group will work together with CPU/GPU manufacture for cheaper CPU/GPU price by buy lots of them or even try make another ASIC with new algorithm and once more they will have power in bitcoin mining.

I think the best solution isn't only change algorithm once, but change/update algorithm regularly every few years to prevent company from creating new ASIC. But, i think this won't happen.

There is no algo that is ASIC resistant.
No matter how you try to modify it no matter what combination you use (I think there was a coin which combined 5 of them) there will always be an asic that would trash whatever mining power you can get from your videocard.

[dinofelis]

There is no algo that is ASIC resistant.
No matter how you try to modify it no matter what combination you use (I think there was a coin which combined 5 of them) there will always be an asic that would trash whatever mining power you can get from your videocard.

The idea is to change algorithms regularly as hard forks, without people knowing in advance what it will be.  You won't invest in hardware development if every year, another algorithm is chosen, rendering your hardware useless.

That said, the problem with asics is the problem that PoW is used for *consensus*.  That PoW is used for coin creation, is not a problem.  The real problem is that PoW decides on consensus, and hence also on protocol.  If one flips to non-remunerated proof of stake, with PoW only used for coin creation, but not for consensus, then the fact that PoW is in the hands of some would be much, much less problematic.

[nizamcc]

These companies are not just taking all the decisions, but they have also been covering too much hash rate that is not at all a good part here. Such companies having huge hash rates are now taking advantage of the price that they are getting for their mining work and pies that they get from their mining. I don't think that small miners may be getting fair shares for all their efforts they put in mining through buying these expensive hardware from the same companies.

[deisik]

That is why, in my own opinion, Bitcoin's mining scheme should be decentralized even further to prevent big mining companies from taking over the important decisions of Bitcoin, and give the power back to average every day people. Perhaps a switch to a new mining algorithm which would be more resistant to ASIC will be the most viable solution to this problem.

What do you think? 

Change SHA-256 Mining Algorithm with other Algorithm which other algorithm that can't be mined with ASIC is great idea, but i'm sure this is controversial topic and current miners won't agree.
But, certain group will work together with CPU/GPU manufacture for cheaper CPU/GPU price by buy lots of them or even try make another ASIC with new algorithm and once more they will have power in bitcoin mining.

I think the best solution isn't only change algorithm once, but change/update algorithm regularly every few years to prevent company from creating new ASIC. But, i think this won't happen

There is no algo that is ASIC resistant.
No matter how you try to modify it no matter what combination you use (I think there was a coin which combined 5 of them) there will always be an asic that would trash whatever mining power you can get from your videocard.

I terribly disagree with that

First of all, you are confusing the algo with its implementation in hardware. Obviously, these are two entirely different things. Not every algo can be implemented in hardware due to limitations imposed by physical laws, as simple as it gets. Thereby, your claim as such goes straight out the window just on this account alone. Further, I think you can easily come up with a lot of algos that would prohibit parallel execution, which is what asics are all about. And what follows next is the crux of the matter. We already reached physical limits in certain fields. For example, we can't make bigger CPU chips and keep their frequency at the same level for the simple fact that the speed of light is finite. And this is where physical laws make your claim as invalid conceptually. So you are twice wrong, and this is certainly not the case where two wrongs offset each other

[Agrello]

So many people are looking at china and are anxious that they have a greater control in terms of mining and pools. Though not many people realise that even with supercomputers such is the case, they overshadow USA in such things:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

So i am not at all surprised that that is the case with Bitcoin.

It would be nice if a pool could not gain more than 10% control of the network, though in time when Bitcoin becomes more popular it will start spreading into businesses, peoples wallets and similar which should help. Because of its immense power now, Bitcoin will be going through many attacks of people trying to gain control of its network.

i am not sure what you are trying to say with the supercomputer news, do you think someone is going to use a supercomputer to mine bitcoin? is that it, i don't think it is even possible and if it was it would be waste of resources! and a supercomputer is not something you can buy at a computer shop it usually is only one!

also the pools are not the problem, if miners aren't happy with a pool they will simply switch to another or start a new one and gather around in that new pool.
the problem is the farms and the fact that manufacturing of ASICs is also in China.

My point is that people always say "ah we should watch out, China has control" not realising something more important such as the most powerful supercomputers are also in the hands of China. So if they have the most powerful supercomputer, having the most powerful group of miners should not be so surprising.

Also China produces most of the worlds products. Why again is the fact that they also produce miners of a surprise again? This is how it has been for a long time. They worked hard to catch up with the rest of the world, and now they are slowly surpassing everyone on many levels. Though none of this is a expression on my behalf that the mining power should be centralised, just a acceptance of where China has reached.

[btcdevil]

So many people are looking at china and are anxious that they have a greater control in terms of mining and pools. Though not many people realise that even with supercomputers such is the case, they overshadow USA in such things:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

So i am not at all surprised that that is the case with Bitcoin.

It would be nice if a pool could not gain more than 10% control of the network, though in time when Bitcoin becomes more popular it will start spreading into businesses, peoples wallets and similar which should help. Because of its immense power now, Bitcoin will be going through many attacks of people trying to gain control of its network.

i am not sure what you are trying to say with the supercomputer news, do you think someone is going to use a supercomputer to mine bitcoin? is that it, i don't think it is even possible and if it was it would be waste of resources! and a supercomputer is not something you can buy at a computer shop it usually is only one!

also the pools are not the problem, if miners aren't happy with a pool they will simply switch to another or start a new one and gather around in that new pool.
the problem is the farms and the fact that manufacturing of ASICs is also in China.

My point is that people always say "ah we should watch out, China has control" not realising something more important such as the most powerful supercomputers are also in the hands of China. So if they have the most powerful supercomputer, having the most powerful group of miners should not be so surprising.

Also China produces most of the worlds products. Why again is the fact that they also produce miners of a surprise again? This is how it has been for a long time. They worked hard to catch up with the rest of the world, and now they are slowly surpassing everyone on many levels. Though none of this is a expression on my behalf that the mining power should be centralised, just a acceptance of where China has reached.

This is what world think but no one knows that the miner owner by outsider of china and they are. Controlling it they are just set the miner setup in china for low cost in maintenance

[alexsamudra]

If it is necessary to be in decentralized what may make it wider and better for the future.

[soul-impact]

If it is necessary to be in decentralized what may make it wider and better for the future.

 think bitcoin needs to be decentralized, it has an impact on the development and existence of bitcoin, currently, bitcoin is being accepted by governments, which is one of the first steps to bitcoin decentralization.

[ASHLIUSZ]

So many people are looking at china and are anxious that they have a greater control in terms of mining and pools. Though not many people realise that even with supercomputers such is the case, they overshadow USA in such things:
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/fastest-supercomputer-sunway-taihulight/

So i am not at all surprised that that is the case with Bitcoin.

It would be nice if a pool could not gain more than 10% control of the network, though in time when Bitcoin becomes more popular it will start spreading into businesses, peoples wallets and similar which should help. Because of its immense power now, Bitcoin will be going through many attacks of people trying to gain control of its network.

i am not sure what you are trying to say with the supercomputer news, do you think someone is going to use a supercomputer to mine bitcoin? is that it, i don't think it is even possible and if it was it would be waste of resources! and a supercomputer is not something you can buy at a computer shop it usually is only one!

also the pools are not the problem, if miners aren't happy with a pool they will simply switch to another or start a new one and gather around in that new pool.
the problem is the farms and the fact that manufacturing of ASICs is also in China.

My point is that people always say "ah we should watch out, China has control" not realising something more important such as the most powerful supercomputers are also in the hands of China. So if they have the most powerful supercomputer, having the most powerful group of miners should not be so surprising.

Also China produces most of the worlds products. Why again is the fact that they also produce miners of a surprise again? This is how it has been for a long time. They worked hard to catch up with the rest of the world, and now they are slowly surpassing everyone on many levels. Though none of this is a expression on my behalf that the mining power should be centralised, just a acceptance of where China has reached.

This is what world think but no one knows that the miner owner by outsider of china and they are. Controlling it they are just set the miner setup in china for low cost in maintenance

Doesn't look surprising that China holding majority of miners, but the controllability is not anymore in the hands of Chinese miners and exchanges which are the key factors for the circulation of bitcoin among the entire population. Due to advancement and ease of availabilities for equipments China holds a good user base for bitcoin and mining.

[DooMAD]

I'm still not convinced by the supposed "threat" from China, but if I were, I'd be paying much closer attention to geopolitics.  The US and many other Western nations are currently looking inwards, becoming increasingly isolationist and, to a certain extent, navel gazing.  It's almost as though the West has declared war on globalism.  While these countries retreat from the global stage, China, on the other hand, are embracing these ideals and expanding rapidly, with massive investment in infrastructure in not just their own country, but also other parts of world.  This is going to pay off in future.   

China is only going to get comparatively more wealthy as time goes by, because the West has come down with a severe case of the stupids.

And coming back to the subject of Bitcoin, anyone talking about a change of algorithm needs to consider the following:  If you're soiling yourself over the damage a "regular" hard fork might cause (as per the usual narrative in this scaling debate), you should be excreting an order of magnitude more over the damage a change of algo might do if you lack support from the mining community and force their hand.  You can keep repeating your new-found mantra that nodes are the real economic power, but that's all conjecture until you pull the trigger and find out for certain.  The simple fact is, no one has attempted that before and you can't make any guarantees about the outcome.

How brave are you feeling?

What does everyone think of Barry Silbert's proposal of Segwit with a 2mb blocksize? Would that be a start for the big blockers to start listening and start cooperating?

Static limits suck, get behind this instead.   

[iamTom123]

OP, that is very easy to say but maybe very hard to implement in practice. You will start a war with the miners that could end up very badly on the chain with the upgraded POW algorithm. The miners have reached a level where it has money and power as shown in the scaling debate. You do not want to mess with them. A compromise to the compromise would be a better proposal.

You are telling the real situation now with Bitcoin. The miners are now getting to be too powerful and touching them and their earnings can have many repercussions. Sad that it has become this way but we have to find a very acceptable solution to the problem. Now we could not let things go on this way as it is actually Bitcoin itself that will suffer in the long run.

I am interested to know what you mean by "compromise to the compromise"... please explain more.

[stompix]

That is why, in my own opinion, Bitcoin's mining scheme should be decentralized even further to prevent big mining companies from taking over the important decisions of Bitcoin, and give the power back to average every day people. Perhaps a switch to a new mining algorithm which would be more resistant to ASIC will be the most viable solution to this problem.

What do you think?  

Change SHA-256 Mining Algorithm with other Algorithm which other algorithm that can't be mined with ASIC is great idea, but i'm sure this is controversial topic and current miners won't agree.
But, certain group will work together with CPU/GPU manufacture for cheaper CPU/GPU price by buy lots of them or even try make another ASIC with new algorithm and once more they will have power in bitcoin mining.

I think the best solution isn't only change algorithm once, but change/update algorithm regularly every few years to prevent company from creating new ASIC. But, i think this won't happen

There is no algo that is ASIC resistant.
No matter how you try to modify it no matter what combination you use (I think there was a coin which combined 5 of them) there will always be an asic that would trash whatever mining power you can get from your videocard.

I terribly disagree with that

First of all, you are confusing the algo with its implementation in hardware. Obviously, these are two entirely different things. Not every algo can be implemented in hardware due to limitations imposed by physical laws, as simple as it gets. Thereby, your claim as such goes straight out the window just on this account alone. Further, I think you can easily come up with a lot of algos that would prohibit parallel execution, which is what asics are all about. And what follows next is the crux of the matter. We already reached physical limits in certain fields. For example, we can't make bigger CPU chips and keep their frequency at the same level for the simple fact that the speed of light is finite. And this is where physical laws make your claim as invalid conceptually. So you are twice wrong, and this is certainly not the case where two wrongs offset each other

Deisik the 5 liners trikes again... with a load of BS.
No matter what you what type o algo you're using you can create a chip that does that and that alone better than the average computer.
Probably on planet  4linesofbs that is true but here on earth we use common sense.

For example, we can't make bigger CPU chips and keep their frequency at the same level for the simple fact that the speed of light is finite.

I will nominate this to the stupidity of the year awards.
You have no clue what clockrate is and .. speed of light is finite? Are you high or what?

PS.
I beg you to try and answer in less than 4 lines.
Are you allowed?

[deisik]

That is why, in my own opinion, Bitcoin's mining scheme should be decentralized even further to prevent big mining companies from taking over the important decisions of Bitcoin, and give the power back to average every day people. Perhaps a switch to a new mining algorithm which would be more resistant to ASIC will be the most viable solution to this problem.

What do you think? 

Change SHA-256 Mining Algorithm with other Algorithm which other algorithm that can't be mined with ASIC is great idea, but i'm sure this is controversial topic and current miners won't agree.
But, certain group will work together with CPU/GPU manufacture for cheaper CPU/GPU price by buy lots of them or even try make another ASIC with new algorithm and once more they will have power in bitcoin mining.

I think the best solution isn't only change algorithm once, but change/update algorithm regularly every few years to prevent company from creating new ASIC. But, i think this won't happen

There is no algo that is ASIC resistant.
No matter how you try to modify it no matter what combination you use (I think there was a coin which combined 5 of them) there will always be an asic that would trash whatever mining power you can get from your videocard.

I terribly disagree with that

First of all, you are confusing the algo with its implementation in hardware. Obviously, these are two entirely different things. Not every algo can be implemented in hardware due to limitations imposed by physical laws, as simple as it gets. Thereby, your claim as such goes straight out the window just on this account alone. Further, I think you can easily come up with a lot of algos that would prohibit parallel execution, which is what asics are all about. And what follows next is the crux of the matter. We already reached physical limits in certain fields. For example, we can't make bigger CPU chips and keep their frequency at the same level for the simple fact that the speed of light is finite. And this is where physical laws make your claim as invalid conceptually. So you are twice wrong, and this is certainly not the case where two wrongs offset each other

Deisik the 5 liners trikes again... with a load of BS.
No matter what you what type o algo you're using you can create a chip that does that and that alone better than the average computer.
Probably on planet  4linesofbs that is true but here on earth we use common sense.

For example, we can't make bigger CPU chips and keep their frequency at the same level for the simple fact that the speed of light is finite.

I will nominate this to the stupidity of the year awards.
You have no clue what clockrate is and .. speed of light is finite? Are you high or what?

PS.
I beg you to try and answer in less than 4 lines.
Are you allowed?

You are not in the position to ask me of anything

I hope that brings you peace of mind at last. You should also keep in mind that your "nominations" may be interesting only to the trolls of your rank (the lowest rank among forum trolls bordering on outright spamming). I'm not high, it is just you who is as dense and thickheaded as they come. Raising CPU frequency above certain limit is meaningless since the signal wouldn't be able to reach the other end of the chip when another signal is already coming in (which would end in an indeterminate state). This is the absolute physical limit imposed on the size of the chip and the frequency it is clocked at. This example was to show you how physical limits can quickly put an end to your wild fantasies and sick imagination. It is even truer with respect to algos. Since Dino is hellbent on algos and such things, I think he can explain it to you even better than me, probably with some formulas

[stompix]

You are not in the position to ask me of anything

I hope that brings you peace of mind at last. You should also keep in mind that your "nominations" may be interesting only to the trolls of your rank, other than that, I don't think anyone is interested in that. I'm not high, it is just you who is as dense and thickheaded as they come. Raising CPU frequency above certain limit is meaningless since the signal would be able to reach the other end of the chip, this is the absolute physical limit imposed on the size of the chip and its frequency. This example was to show you how physical limits can put an end to your wild fantasies. it is even truer with respect to algos. Since Dino is hellbent on algos and mathematics overall, I think he can explain it to you even better than me, likely with some formulas

Do the world a favor... go to wikipedia and search clock rate or cpu frequency .

Raising the limit is not meaningless at all.
Ever heard of overclocking? Is overclocking meaningless?
Another Darwin award. Congratulations!!!!!!

You have no clue what that "signal" is and how cpus work.
The problem is not about reaching the other end of the chip the problem is the time between pulses.
But that is to technical for a 12 year old  trying to post 4 liners over and over again.

And again, the whole debate is a joke
So what if a cpu has reached maximum speed? Anyone could simply build a miner with 1000 chips that will run at half the power needed by 1000 computers.
And again specialized miners will win.

[deisik]

You are not in the position to ask me of anything

I hope that brings you peace of mind at last. You should also keep in mind that your "nominations" may be interesting only to the trolls of your rank, other than that, I don't think anyone is interested in that. I'm not high, it is just you who is as dense and thickheaded as they come. Raising CPU frequency above certain limit is meaningless since the signal would be able to reach the other end of the chip, this is the absolute physical limit imposed on the size of the chip and its frequency. This example was to show you how physical limits can put an end to your wild fantasies. it is even truer with respect to algos. Since Dino is hellbent on algos and mathematics overall, I think he can explain it to you even better than me, likely with some formulas

Do the world a favor... go to wikipedia and search clock rate or cpu frequency .

Raising the limit is not meaningless at all.
Ever heard of overclocking? Is overclocking meaningless?
Another Darwin award. Congratulations!!!!!!

How long ago did you finish school?

And did you finish it at all? I guess it is you who should read the Wikipedia article about CPU clock rates. Then you might (purely hypothetically) learn why there is an ultimate limit on these frequencies and the size of the chip. Since you make references to overclocking (which is neither here nor there in regard to my point), it is as clear as day that you don't have a slightest clue what I'm talking about. Maybe, a quote from the article mentioned above will help you somehow (emphasis added):

Typically a crystal oscillator produces a fixed sine wave - the frequency reference signal. Electronic circuitry translates that into a square wave at the same frequency for digital electronics applications. The clock distribution network inside the CPU carries that clock signal to all the parts that need it

Now think about that it takes a finite amount of time till this signal reaches all these parts of the chip, and you may finally see the light (and how its speed limit is applicable here). This is the theoretical limit imposed by the laws of nature which you can't escape unless you somehow manage to change these laws themselves