Proof of Stake Bitcoin?

[d5000]

At this moment, you need about $400-800 million dollars to attack the $44 billion Bitcoin chain (and in PoW too, you can get some or even all of them back by short selling in the right moment).

This $800 million sounds about right, but can you source or show how you calculated this number?

This makes PoW seem way less secure than PoS.

I calculated it based on cloud mining prices, because there should be everything included (electricity, hardware costs etc.). This was in early August, so I guess now the number should be higher - we have a higher Bitcoin price and more hashrate/higher difficulty.

A quick calculation:

- Hashflare, today, prices 10 Ghash/sec (for an 1 year contract) at $1,50.
- Hashrate is at 7,5-9,5 million Thash/sec.

To instantly 51% the network you must have the same hashrate than the current miners. So you would buy $1,50 * 100 * 8500000 = 1275000000 (1,275 billion USD) per year + 2,9 million USD maintainance cost per day.

This is obviously only a rough calculation, because if the attacker buys (or manufactures) mining hardware the attack cost should be cheaper as with cloud mining, but on the other hand it's unrealistic to buy such large amounts of hashrate at once (nobody will be able to sell it to you, neither in the form of hardware nor in the form of cloud mining contracts).

With pure PoS, due to the Nothing at Stake problem, you can attack the network also probably with less than 5% of the current supply, although I estimate that even then, the PoS attack costs should be higher.

[emelnov]

I think it's not possible  switch to POS. Consensus in the community on this issue is not reachable. Fork only.

[kachimasu]

At this moment, you need about $400-800 million dollars to attack the $44 billion Bitcoin chain (and in PoW too, you can get some or even all of them back by short selling in the right moment).

This $800 million sounds about right, but can you source or show how you calculated this number?

This makes PoW seem way less secure than PoS.

I calculated it based on cloud mining prices, because there should be everything included (electricity, hardware costs etc.). This was in early August, so I guess now the number should be higher - we have a higher Bitcoin price and more hashrate/higher difficulty.

A quick calculation:

- Hashflare, today, prices 10 Ghash/sec (for an 1 year contract) at $1,50.
- Hashrate is at 7,5-9,5 million Thash/sec.

To instantly 51% the network you must have the same hashrate than the current miners. So you would buy $1,50 * 100 * 8500000 = 1275000000 (1,275 billion USD) per year + 2,9 million USD maintainance cost per day.

This is obviously only a rough calculation, because if the attacker buys (or manufactures) mining hardware the attack cost should be cheaper as with cloud mining, but on the other hand it's unrealistic to buy such large amounts of hashrate at once (nobody will be able to sell it to you, neither in the form of hardware nor in the form of cloud mining contracts).

With pure PoS, due to the Nothing at Stake problem, you can attack the network also probably with less than 5% of the current supply, although I estimate that even then, the PoS attack costs should be higher.

It's amazing that you can do that for only 400-800M, what if some rich dudes decide to do that just for fun?

What do you think is the solution for PoS to prevent that?

[karmakeddon]

I do not think there will ever be a move to PoS even though there are a lot of benefits on moving to that platform. The infrastructure alone would cost a lot. All the years of hard work of developing bitcoin to what it is now would go down the drain if they ever move to PoS from PoW.

There is a saying, "If it is not broken, do not try to fix it.". And that saying fits perfectly into this train of thought.

[d5000]

It's amazing that you can do that for only 400-800M, what if some rich dudes decide to do that just for fun?

What do you think is the solution for PoS to prevent that?

As I already wrote, at this moment a Bitcoin 51% attack probably costs 1,2-1,5 billion USD (or about 375.000 Bitcoins assuming an exchange rate of 4000/BTC, which are ~2% of the current Bitcoin supply).

In PoS, according to the theory, you can attack the network only with 51% of the supply - BUT that is assuming that all coins are used for "staking". That never occurs. In NXT, some months ago they calculated the staking amount at about 25 to 30% of the total supply.

So with 30% "staking" coins, you could attack the chain with almost 100% success rate if you buy 25 to 30% of all coins (and not 51%), but probably 15-20% would do the trick.

But now comes the Nothing at stake (N@S) problem. This problem enables a series of attacks with less than 51% of the staking coins. The best-known attacks are the so-called "bribing attack" and the "old keys attack" (or "history attack"), you can google them easily. Both involve some social engineering, but could probably achieve an attack with 5-10% of the supply. There are also short-term N@S attacks, that's why in PoS currencies more confirmations are needed to achieve a similar security level.

[QlooQl]

DO you guys ever think that bitcoin will do proof of stake? Just wanted to get some peoples insights on this.

No, because PoS doesn't work as a decentralised consensus. Every single PoS coin is a private club, with trusted owners, much like Visa the company is. When you invest in a PoS coin you are being tricked into thinking you're investing in the future, when actually you're investing something that can never work as designed.

Read this for more details:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1382241.0

Cheers, Paul.

Wow ouch. That's like saying the stock market doesn't work because only the original owners and a few wealthy shareholders get to make all the rules. Shareholders do still put pressure on companies, even small shareholders. I guess if you thought the design of PoS was total democracy you are right...PoS won't create democracy. But heck, neither does the US voting system.

[kachimasu]

DO you guys ever think that bitcoin will do proof of stake? Just wanted to get some peoples insights on this.

No, because PoS doesn't work as a decentralised consensus. Every single PoS coin is a private club, with trusted owners, much like Visa the company is. When you invest in a PoS coin you are being tricked into thinking you're investing in the future, when actually you're investing something that can never work as designed.

Read this for more details:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1382241.0

Cheers, Paul.

Wow ouch. That's like saying the stock market doesn't work because only the original owners and a few wealthy shareholders get to make all the rules. Shareholders do still put pressure on companies, even small shareholders. I guess if you thought the design of PoS was total democracy you are right...PoS won't create democracy. But heck, neither does the US voting system.

All systems would be perfect if all people had good intentions and were not always trying to find ways to crack them, a perfect system is not "perfect" is just a system that can prevent all possible attacks or work arrounds from the society

@monsterer2 what would be your solution?

[Ucy]

I think I Finally understand why Proof of Stake may be a bad idea. No wonder some elites promote Ethereum so much these days. Correct me if am wrong, PoS could sort of encourage centralization of Cryptocurrency.

Better Bitcoin stick with Proof of Work no matter the cost.

[Gotottack]

DO you guys ever think that bitcoin will do proof of stake? Just wanted to get some peoples insights on this.

Hi! Yes, there are possibilities considering the fact that managing Bitcoin is decentralized. Although may I say that it will not happen anytime sooner, I totally stand on the belief that Bitcoin doing PoS in the future is a strong possibility. This way, Bitcoin can attract more investors because the PoS will help the latter preserve their wealth. There may be technical complications at the outset but it will definitely come to pass given the wide parameters of handling the investors' accounts. 

[kachimasu]

I think I Finally understand why Proof of Stake may be a bad idea. No wonder some elites promote Ethereum so much these days. Correct me if am wrong, PoS could sort of encourage centralization of Cryptocurrency.

Better Bitcoin stick with Proof of Work no matter the cost.

Or create another kind of proof that doesn't exist yet...

[savushkinTA]

No block reward
Also, all the digital currencies are previously created in the beginning, and their number never changes.
This means that in the PoS system there is no block reward, so, the miners take the transaction fees.
This is why, in fact, in this PoS system miners are called forgers, instead.

[riils]

Either way, Sha256 PoW or any PoW is not a good solution - it does not provide good decentralization. Essentially, all the power of Bitcoin is in hands of few companies (so few you can count them on your fingers) that have hashing chip designs and fabs. A far cry from the idea of democratized mining of average Joes on PCs. The GPU scene is not too great also - huge farms, huge pools. It's better than specialized chips, but still not very decentralized.

[27aume]

Proof of Stake is definitely superior, that's the reason why ETH will convert to PoS in the future, they are actively working on the conversion currently, with experimental versions already in beta test.

But Bitcoin probably won't, Bitcoin is more decentralized, and the forces against PoS in Bitcoin is too strong, the miners will 100% oppose it. It nearly turned into a figurative thermo-nuclear war for getting a 1 line code change to change block limit from 1MB to larger blocks. It's hopeless to change to Proof of Stake for Bitcoin, you might as well fork Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash did.

Yup, that's what I think
But what is more decentralized in Bitcoin? PoW has miners that we depend on so if they pull out the switch where off.
PoS have the master nodes, but both have the same power of stopping their activity if things don't please them.
POS is more eco-efficient and lets more people take part in the equation. = PoS actually turn your wallet in the most advanced mimic of a saving account at the bank but with way better returns.

[Bitcoinsummoner]

Proof of Stake is definitely superior, that's the reason why ETH will convert to PoS in the future, they are actively working on the conversion currently, with experimental versions already in beta test.

But Bitcoin probably won't, Bitcoin is more decentralized, and the forces against PoS in Bitcoin is too strong, the miners will 100% oppose it. It nearly turned into a figurative thermo-nuclear war for getting a 1 line code change to change block limit from 1MB to larger blocks. It's hopeless to change to Proof of Stake for Bitcoin, you might as well fork Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash did.

Yup, that's what I think
But what is more decentralized in Bitcoin? PoW has miners that we depend on so if they pull out the switch where off.
PoS have the master nodes, but both have the same power of stopping their activity if things don't please them.
POS is more eco-efficient and lets more people take part in the equation. = PoS actually turn your wallet in the most advanced mimic of a saving account at the bank but with way better returns.

But its impossible that Pow algo could converted into Pos bitcoin will never do that and most of the people they don't wanted to let bitcoin convert to pos this is just like other altcoin that you are just let your coin staking and the more you save altcoin in your wallet that more you can stake and gaining interest.. This is what i experience in some altcoin but mostly people are choosing PoW algo due to the price can be increase fast and it is more profitable than PoS.. This is just what i experience so i think PoW is the best for bitcoin since most of the trending coin and in good rankings are Pow Algo's..

[aleksej996]

Either way, Sha256 PoW or any PoW is not a good solution - it does not provide good decentralization. Essentially, all the power of Bitcoin is in hands of few companies (so few you can count them on your fingers) that have hashing chip designs and fabs. A far cry from the idea of democratized mining of average Joes on PCs. The GPU scene is not too great also - huge farms, huge pools. It's better than specialized chips, but still not very decentralized.

It doesn't make sense to say that it is not a good solution when it is literally the only one, the only reason why Bitcoin exists, without PoW there is no blockchain, there is no purpose of it. The whole invention of Bitcoin is the use of the hashcash PoW for it's blockchain, there is no other benefit of the blockchain if you remove it. The whole idea is to bind it to something real, the only more democratic solution is to bind it to something that all people have the same number of, which makes no sense to even look for that and to make it integrated in an efficient way for the computer based system. Unless you want to give each person in this world a key (or they give it to you) with witch they can vote then PoW is as close as it gets. Key distribution (in a way PoS as well) is very hard to do in a decentralized manner.

Yup, that's what I think
But what is more decentralized in Bitcoin? PoW has miners that we depend on so if they pull out the switch where off.
PoS have the master nodes, but both have the same power of stopping their activity if things don't please them.
POS is more eco-efficient and lets more people take part in the equation. = PoS actually turn your wallet in the most advanced mimic of a saving account at the bank but with way better returns.

But PoS is less secure since it costs nothing to try to attack it, unlike in PoW. That is undisputable, you will trade some security for the electricity, whether you think it is worth it is another thing.

[Sweetbtc]

DO you guys ever think that bitcoin will do proof of stake? Just wanted to get some peoples insights on this.

That is never going to happen, it takes away from the trading power that is there. We net around 34% increase on BTC in the trading markets and I have yet to find a person or institution that is going to pop 34% daily compound interest on something as under backed as Bitcoin.

[Ucy]

PoS resembles a ponzi to be honest. ..  if earning lots of coins in an effortless manner or without work can be GUARANTEED I guess something could go wrong.
Taking away hardware mining could make the whole thing look like a pure ponzi scheme.  
What would be your best line of defense if you are accused of engaging in ponzi....like how John McAfee  defended Bitcoin effectively with his "miners invest massive amounts of supercomputing power and electricity in creating Bitcoin"

Gone through some material online to understand the features and benefits of PoS to crypto , still haven't found anything very useful.  Have also looked at the pros and cons.

 Wonder who was the first to propose such idea. It feels like something a tyrannical govt would propose.
Wonder if there are limits placed on the amount of coins one can staked like the limits placed on the amount of Bitcoin that can be produced every 10min
[ OK, looks like this user was the first person to propose PoS: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=27787.0 ]  


Finally..
Here is a PoS excerpt from Wikipedia:
"in PoS-based cryptocurrencies the creator of the next block is chosen in via various combinations of random selection and wealth or age (i.e. the stake)."

Those red colored words are abomination to decentralized Cryptocurrency?

[oogone]

This BitcoinStake recently launched, and I got some from the airdrop.

I do not know how the market will accept it, the airdrop was real fast though and very professional IMO.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2223417.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2313203.0       - new Ann

https://bitcoinstake.net/

[jonnytracker]

Some serious developer says pos coin. Has flaws by design and is not recommended for serious network

[sasha99]

I think it is hard to imagine that they will reach consensus to move to POS after so much money is invested in POW infrastructure.