Cobra's open letter to the Bitcoin community to change the mining algorithm

[d57heinz]

Definitely its a matter of serious concern.Already we have faced some critical situations in which some big chinese mining pools deliberately supported BCH and tried to make bitcoin transactions get stuck either by shifting hash power to ine BCH or by sending fake transactions.

Some steps must have to be taken to free bitcoin from both bitmain and china.

It is not that serious today but it might be if Jihan Wu starts to get ideas to stealthily sabotage the network to give Bitcoin Cash the advantage. I believe it would be good if some Bitcoin developers have a "POW change plan" set up in case something happens.

Any I’ll conceived thing you can think of.  Is being thought of as a scenario to be the one that comes out ahead in the end.  Absolutely don’t be naive!   A plan needs to be in place and ready at a moments notice as to deter such thinking.  That’s all

BR

Possibly implemented as such. If a geographical area has x amount of hash based on a percentage of the network. If after so many blocks your node exceeds this amount a hard fork countdown is initiated. Just a thought. Have to be over a range of blocks as to not have a lucky streak cause issue. Maybe isn’t possible idk

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[BitcoinHodler]

Definitely its a matter of serious concern.Already we have faced some critical situations in which some big chinese mining pools deliberately supported BCH and tried to make bitcoin transactions get stuck either by shifting hash power to ine BCH or by sending fake transactions.

Some steps must have to be taken to free bitcoin from both bitmain and china.

It is not that serious today but it might be if Jihan Wu starts to get ideas to stealthily sabotage the network to give Bitcoin Cash the advantage. I believe it would be good if some Bitcoin developers have a "POW change plan" set up in case something happens.

so far every time Lukedash Jr, Cobra,... talk about POW change and threaten the network they are helping Jihan Wu keep his dominance over the market. it is discouraging new companies from entering mining space. there has been a lot of talk from different countries and companies (Japan, Russia, and big GPU manufacturers,...) to start producing ASIC machines, they will not do it if they feel there is a chance of such a big fundamental change in the future.

Bitmain has already made their profit and then some so they don't care if there is a change. they will simply use a tiny part of their massive profit to produce new ASICs to mine the new algorithm and continue their new dominance over the new market and we will be exactly where we started.

[Carlton Banks]

Cobra's started to say slightly weird things recently, but this isn't one of them. Make of that what you will.


Clearly there is no serious immediate threat. If Luke-jr was right about how easy it is to orphan short sections of the blockchain, BTC price would become chaotic if that happened and was made public. Only a miner/pool with a multi stage strategy to destroy Bitcoin could seek to benefit from that (Bitmain springs to mind, sadly).

So on the one hand, a contingency plan is needed to switch to a different PoW (a plan would be needed eventually anyway, as the current PoW algorithm won't be collision resistant forever). Switching to something else would necessarily also have the effect of decentralising mining, as it would make no sense to switch to something for which an ASIC would be cheap or quick to develop.

But on the other hand, Bitmain are becoming a little less dominant over time. Too slowly, but it's happening. If every small electronics producer in the world were manufacturing SHA256 ASICs, we could at least hope there would be a few Venezuelas among them to defy whatever cartel gets formed

[freesia_pnp888]

imo, what he wanted to say was quite on point.

[DooMAD]

Looks like forking in pursuit of ASIC-resistance sometimes has its downsides.  Greater decentralisation isn't always the result, it would seem.  People should strongly consider how much they appreciate and value the security levels Bitcoin currently has.  Not something we should jeopardise lightly.

[Veronicavn1875]

If the new one is better, it will replace the old one. That is the inevitable rule for the development of this society, and the same BTC.

[tanjilrifat]

I believe that PoW might be possible to operate alongside PoS where in PoS miners can vote to validate blocks and maybe simliarly a pool can be created where multiple PoS validators can vote on upcoming proposal kind of like an open Governance there are popular altcoins.

[DooMAD]

I believe that PoW might be possible to operate alongside PoS where in PoS miners can vote to validate blocks and maybe simliarly a pool can be created where multiple PoS validators can vote on upcoming proposal kind of like an open Governance there are popular altcoins.

It's probably possible, but that doesn't mean people would actually want it.  I could be wrong, but I really can't envision a situation where that solution would appeal to a supermajority of users.  Proof of Stake has its own issues.

[maichimoto]

URL to the open letter, https://medium.com/@CobraBitcoin/an-open-letter-to-the-bitcoin-community-to-change-the-proof-of-work-algorithm-12a6545c20d0

I want to emphasize that the blog post was made by "the" Cobra, the co-owner of bitcoin.org and bitcointalk.org.

If this "movement" gathers more and more momentum, I believe we might be split as a community once again like how the scaling debate has split us in the past.

It's a big move. Bitcoiners should tread carefully.

this doesn't really have a chance to go through, although there is a lot of truth to it. But I don't see community seeing the threat as real as cobra does, unless something really happens.

[franky1]

ignoring the btc "price" (that spikes and corrects) there is underlying value (support/sell resistance) made up by mining costs and then can vary based on Hodlers cost of obtaining and the value they are willing to set as their break even/bottomline.

this month the mining costs are above $6k. which helps keep bitcoins price at a certain level as pools wont sell for less than costs.

calculations
hashrate ATH 68,931,000   terra hashrate
4,923,643   asics used
$6,387.51   hardware per btc
$4,103.04   electric per btc
$10,490.55   cost per btc

last 3 day average is ~50thash
50,000,000   terra hashrate
3,571,429   asics used
$4,633.26   hardware per btc
$2,976.19   electric per btc
$7,609.45   cost per btc

3 day low is ~45742000
45,742,000   terra hashrate
3,267,286   asics used
$4,238.69   hardware per btc
$2,722.74   electric per btc
$6,961.43   cost per btc



changing to PoS is moving to a mechanism where by it COSTS NOTHING to validate a block.
EG if you stake 1btc. you dont lose 1btc to validate. when you get the reward.. you get the reward and can get your 1btc back out..

which means a PoS validator will make profit selling that reward at ANY PRICE, including a penny.
now imagine if all PoS validators in 1 day decided to sell their coin at any price.
thats 1800 coins a day willing to be sold for under $6k. and each day this repeats.

looking at the charts of most exchanges selling 1800 bitcoin would drop the price by $200
and if this continued each day. thats a drop of $1k a week give or take other factors.

and even if the price is decreasing PoS validators would happily keep selling down the pric point. even to a penny.

..
so PoS validating is stupid as it erodes the underlying value.

..
also PoS does not mean validating becomes decentralised.
because while a few million coins are locked in exchanges.. the exchanges could separately  state millions of addresses with 1btc and thus chances are exchanges validate  most blocks and exchanges keep the rewards.
..
as for moving to a different PoW algo. thats not changing much. it just means for 6 months the difficulty DROPS. and solving blocks takes longer thus ruining and tarnishing the consumer experience of using bitcoin.. where by it takes a few difficulty adjustment cycles to find the rebalance after many fortnights/months of delays.
and by that time chip makers could have re designed a new ASIC and rebooted the mining farm of new asics. thus solving nothing

[BrewMaster]

the most absurd part of all this is that when the discussion was about another hard fork[1] the arguments were that hard forks are terrible, the worst thing to happen, they are risky and should be avoided at all costs. now we are talking about the same process[2] but the arguments are not softer and it seems like people have forgotten what a terrible thing they are rooting for.


[1] increasing block size, not that i say it was a good idea!
[2] changing algorithm, which is even riskier and more damaging to the whole system.

[franky1]

the most absurd part of all this is that when the discussion was about another hard fork[1] the arguments were that hard forks are terrible, the worst thing to happen, they are risky and should be avoided at all costs. now we are talking about the same process[2] but the arguments are not softer and it seems like people have forgotten what a terrible thing they are rooting for.


[1] increasing block size, not that i say it was a good idea!
[2] changing algorithm, which is even riskier and more damaging to the whole system.

obsurd thing is. luke JR ruled out 2mb legacy blockspace, saying its due to it causing a mandatory hard fork... but
then in summer 2017 luke was directly part of the mandatory fork of threatening pools with banning nodes and rejecting blocks unless they adopt segwit.

luke also likes the idea of changing the algo. and also mssing more with block limits by actually reducing them..

core devs are hypocrits when thy dont first get their own way.
but hey pople will still love those paid by BSCARTEL people.. coz they the kings and btc needs its monarchy

[DooMAD]

obsurd thing is. luke JR ruled out 2mb legacy blockspace, saying its due to it causing a mandatory hard fork... but
then in summer 2017 luke was directly part of the mandatory fork of threatening pools with banning nodes and rejecting blocks unless they adopt segwit.

luke also likes the idea of changing the algo. and also mssing more with block limits by actually reducing them..

core devs are hypocrits when thy dont first get their own way.
but hey pople will still love those paid by BSCARTEL people.. coz they the kings and btc needs its monarchy

Or it could just be that the particular individual you mentioned is being a hypocrite and the other devs aren't, but you just want to take cheap shots at the dev team as a collective because it suits your petty agenda.  

The so called "banning" of nodes occurred because the SegWit2X fork weren't implementing replay protection.  Thus, with the release of 0.15.0, the decision was made to disconnect incompatible clients.  Sorry if you being caught in the crossfire is still causing you tremendous amounts of butthurt.