If bitcoin mining will be based on POW+POS..

[ricardobs]

If bitcoin mining is based on POS, we may not have hard volatility in bitcoin markets like how we are experiencing now.

 - We do not need to make ASIC manufactures billionaires.
 - We never need to sell mining rewards to recover setup costs.
 - When miners are not dumping, I could not imagine where bitcoin prices would have been trading right now.
 - Imagine when 40% to 60% of so-far mined bitcoins are locked for staking, where will be bitcoin flying ? Beyond moon ?

 - Now a days ASIC based mining is not feasible to every common people. We need industry scale of investments  to start. At the same time, if bitcoin mining is based on POS, I guess we may not afford to buy one FULL BITCOIN as only financial institutions or corporate may afford to buy that.

If bitcoin was based on POS, bitcoin might be having value by this time around $1M too but I am sure the basic infrastructure needed for a payment system would not have been developed as only very few people might have been involved into bitcoin related activities including adopting bitcoins just for store of value (the least application of bitcoins which is possible even for haters of bitcoins). This might be a reason why Mr.Satoshi have chosen POW. But, POW has its own cons like described above.

Basically, I mean POW encourages money to flow out of bitcoin ecosystem but it has brought some balances to bitcoin ecosystems in terms of price levels as well as it has helped for spreading bitcoins into rest of people. It means people will believe that bitcoin will go to value up to $100k or $1M but it must be available right now for $3k so that they will risk their $100 or daily one hour of time to accumulate some bitcoins. If bitcoins is valuing for $10M right away, then most people will decide bitcoin is not for them like it is meant only for early adopters or for millionaires.

So, what is my point ?
POW will be a all perfect thing for all the future ? It may not be. Changes are inevitable everywhere. If POS was perfect in last 10 years of bitcoin's life cycle, now we may need POW+POS based hybrid mining algorithms as we may not leave off POW completely but we need to fix the drawbacks of POW too.

With POS, we may reduce volatility of bitcoin markets as it will encourage people to continue holding for staking.

When bitcoin market is having less volatility yet providing promises of reaching million dollar values, I guess bitcoin may hit main stream adoption more easily. I believe POW+POS based mining may help for hitting main stream adoptions at significant levels.

[Febo]

If bitcoin mining is based on POS, we may not have hard volatility in bitcoin markets like how we are experiencing now.

 - We do not need to make ASIC manufactures billionaires.
 - We never need to sell mining rewards to recover setup costs.
 - When miners are not dumping, I could not imagine where bitcoin prices would have been trading right now.
 - Imagine when 40% to 60% of so-far mined bitcoins are locked for staking, where will be bitcoin flying ? Beyond moon ?

Bitcoin was not invented to make people rich fast. Bitcoin was made to give us secure payment platform. So far networks secured with Proof of Work proved to be way more secure.   I also dont understand why you posted this technical question suggesting to move to PoS in Economic/Speculations part of forum.

[exstasie]

We never need to sell mining rewards to recover setup costs.

Doesn't this create questionable incentives? In either POW or POS, there is always incentive for miners or validators to steal money. With POW that incentive is thwarted by the immense cost of producing blocks. How is this problem solved in POS? What is the cost? Why won't validators band together to attack the network?

Imagine when 40% to 60% of so-far mined bitcoins are locked for staking, where will be bitcoin flying ? Beyond moon ?

I think you've stumbled onto the main reason why POS coins were invented!

Anyway it definitely won't be integrated into Bitcoin. You can't just rip out the consensus system and drop in another one. Thousands or even millions of users will disagree when the fork happens, especially because of how weak the theoretical security is.

I won't be running your client.

[thecodebear]

yeah Bitcoin will always be POW. Switching the type of consensus it does would be far too big a change for the user base to agree to. It would split Bitcoin and nobody wants that. Let stuff like Ethereum that is tightly controlled by its dev team with a hard forking update path do stuff like switch consensus algos. Bitcoin will stay Bitcoin. No reason for it to change. It is secure basically against any attack that could possibly happen, no reason to endanger that.

[ricardobs]

Bitcoin was not invented to make people rich fast. Bitcoin was made to give us secure payment platform.

I never mentioned about any scheme or programs which is about making you rich FASTER. But, if bitcoin is trading stable, you may not be writing here. Moreover, bitcoin was designed to have huge value over time so that it will be adopted widely. Limited supply and halving are included to implement this.

So far networks secured with Proof of Work proved to be way more secure.

So far, none of POS systems are proved weak too. I read there is no vulnerability of 51% attack in POS. Moreover, I am speculating about hybrid hence there will be no compromise on security features.

 I also dont understand why you posted this technical question

Posted here to have views on volatility of bitcoin markets. If this sounds too technical, I guess mods will move.

In either POW or POS, there is always incentive for miners or validators to steal money. With POW that incentive is thwarted by the immense cost of producing blocks. How is this problem solved in POS?

Why the incentive should be thwarted ? What problem you are exactly referring ? I believe the miners and holders should be encouraged by incentives and this is what POW and POS are doing.

Thousands or even millions of users will disagree when the fork happens

No one will oppose when both backward and forward comparability will be assured. Remember all the forks are not leading to split. Even "upgrading" is also termed as fork.

I won't be running your client.

I remember I had said the same in 2010 .

[pooya87]

you are wrong.

first of all price is not determined based on miners, price is determined in the market (mainly on exchanges) and with people buying and selling. miners aren't even selling on exchanges, they mostly do OTC trades which won't affect the price on exchanges. as a result price will continue being volatile as long as market is small and order books on exchanges are small.

secondly if anything PoS is going to harm the price even more because whales would be making more if we switch to PoS and we all know whales manipulate the price not miners. so imagine a whale having a lot of bitcoin that would be receiving a lot more free reward for just owning bitcoin and doing nothing else!!! now he  can have extra bitcoin to dump on the market and he does whenever he wants to short bitcoin.

So far networks secured with Proof of Work proved to be way more secure.

So far, none of POS systems are proved weak too. I read there is no vulnerability of 51% attack in POS. Moreover, I am speculating about hybrid hence there will be no compromise on security features.

yes, there is no 51% attack in PoS but there are lots of other weaknesses in it.
your argument in here is like saying iron corrodes in acid so since there is no corrosion in plastic it must be better than iron so we should use it in our constructs (imagine a plastic ship, or a bridge,... with your logic )

[wuvdoll]

POW will be a all perfect thing for all the future ? It may not be. Changes are inevitable everywhere.

I agree here. Changes/enhancements are always avoidable. I am always worrying on "green-house" impacts due to bitcoin mining. It was not covered by you still this may become one of the reason if bitcoin will adopting POS. We have passed 10 years with POW among many fluctuations and it may continue for another 10 years also before peoples will be realizing about the importance of encouraging people to store bitcoins to have huge/stable markets.

[davis196]

If you are such a big PoS supporter,why don't you just create your version of bitcoin with a PoS blockchain and hard fork it from Bitcoin Core.I'm not a huge fan of hard forks,but it's proven that they pump the price of bitcoin core,because of the "free altcoins named after bitcoin" that the noob will get for nothing.
It's a win-win.BTC price goes up,and you get your own PoS pseudo-bitcoin.

[ricardobs]

miners aren't even selling on exchanges, they mostly do OTC trades which won't affect the price on exchanges.

You got any solid proof for those OTC trades will always end up into cold storage and never hit the exchange by any means ?
It is too easy to call anyone wrong .

imagine a whale having a lot of bitcoin that would be receiving a lot more free reward for just owning bitcoin and doing nothing else!!!

Owning bitcoins in big number itself a big task to deserve huge rewards. The real world banking system too is working this way. DO NOT call they are doing nothing, they have done enough to deserve something.

now he  can have extra bitcoin to dump on the market

Dumps are REAL opportunity for others to enter into. It will always happen until bitcoin gets widely spread out to world population.

there is no 51% attack in PoS but there are lots of other weaknesses in it.

I am here because POW is also having lots of weakness. Maybe POW+POS will be a solution. Like 70% of mining rewards to POW and 30% to POS.

[NeuroticFish]

If bitcoin mining is based on POS, we may not have hard volatility in bitcoin markets like how we are experiencing now.

Indeed. Bitcoin will go to nearly 0 value and the volatility will become very low. Great plan!
Let me elaborate a little: all the coins I got to know and were/are using PoS or PoW/PoS are economically doomed to fall. People buy coins at start then just leaving them in the wallets and sell the free coins they get from PoS.

Bitcoin has a very good balance. I don't like the fact ASICs took over Bitcoin mining, but hey, it works out good.
So no. But you can do something else. Make your own coin (or fork, since they are so popular), test your idea and if it's proven to work better than what Bitcoin has currently, you have better chance to convince people adopt it into Bitcoin too.


And something else:

Owning bitcoins in big number itself a big task to deserve huge rewards. The real world banking system too is working this way. DO NOT call they are doing nothing, they have done enough to deserve something.

Banks invest that money and that's why they reward people for that money. Banks depositing gold into other banks' vault are paying a depositing (and guarding) fee. How about that?

[fabiorem]

If bitcoin was based on POS, it would be zero already at 2013, and this forum wont exist.

[ricardobs]

all the coins I got to know and were/are using PoS or PoW/PoS are economically doomed to fall.

Not just due to POS or POW, all the coins which are not having/developing real world usage may get into zero value one day or another. Please note, I am talking about 10 years old coin which has proven real world applications and having well developing infrastructures to be used as payment processor but you are surprising me by comparing a 10 years old coin with all other shitcoins. Bitcoin with hybrid mining must be all new different case.

People buy coins at start then just leaving them in the wallets and sell the free coins they get from PoS.

No one could do anything about when people will be selling of their POS rewards. It is just an opportunity for a new people to get into bitcoin adoptions and POS.

Bitcoin has a very good balance. I don't like the fact ASICs took over Bitcoin mining, but hey, it works out good.

I do not have any second opinion on this. But, adding some 30% POS may bring new magics in bitcoin markets.

Banks invest that money and that's why they reward people for that money

POS based miners are getting their reward as they are also contributing in securing network and relaying tx.

[1Referee]

If bitcoin was based on POS, it would be zero already at 2013, and this forum wont exist.

That's unlikely, but the way things work, exchanges holding the far majority of the coins would dictate Bitcoin's roadmap then.

Coinbase owns 5% of the total number of coins ever to be in circulation as we speak. It would make them one of the most important entities/contributors, and we all know what happens when you allow Coinbase to do its thing.

People don't understand how hostile everything around Bitcoin is. Ethereum doesn't have to deal with that, and I'm sure that whatever they end up doing, it will be a smooth transition. In Bitcoin's case, everyone wants a piece of it, and we have seen several attempts already of how ugly things can be in here.

[buwaytress]

It may very well be that PoS, or some form of it, or some other algo or hybrid may have to be considered, but not at this point. For all the dastardly negatives of PoW, POS implementations haven't exactly won people over. I know as well as I have had my share of staking experiments. Fun and satisfying but none a shade of Bitcoin's use so never really able to test its limits.

As 1Ref points out, and as the layperson like me would think, why would be take away Bitmain's dominance only to hand it over to Binance?

Why would anyone want to sell to small fish like me when they can just hanker down and wait til demand far outstrips supply?

[Kevin77]

Bitcoin had a trouble sustaining the fee's during the 20 thousand dollar times even with a POW system, making it POS would make it even slower and in return means we couldn't really afford the increases anymore. If you could find a way for lightning network and at the same time POS and combine them to work together than we could have a chance but technologically (which I am not really wise enough to talk about) it appears PoW is the only way we can afford right now until a better technology comes.

Hopefully one day we can make bitcoin PoS because miners right now cornering the bitcoin market more than the whales with billions in their pockets, people who mine are controlling the price whenever and however they want and that goes against the decentralized idea of bitcoin, it is just about time we figure out a way to get rid of them.

[Kopyleft]

There is no guarantee that if bitcoin was using PoS algorithm, the price would be morning constantly.
PoS favours scalability and ease of transactions, at the expense of security, while, PoW prioritizes security at the expense of scalability.
If POS was a quick route to high prices, all projects would be opting for it.

[fullhdpixel]

I don't think anyone would propose to make that upgrade in the bitcoin ecosystem because POS is still relatively new and still undergoing a test process, I don't know if it would be possible to make such a major upgrade without creating an hard fork because as a developer, I can tell you that it will cost a lot of time and also resources to begin to change the mining algorithm of bitcoin to POS instead of POW.

[exstasie]

In either POW or POS, there is always incentive for miners or validators to steal money. With POW that incentive is thwarted by the immense cost of producing blocks. How is this problem solved in POS?

Why the incentive should be thwarted ? What problem you are exactly referring ? I believe the miners and holders should be encouraged by incentives and this is what POW and POS are doing.

The problem of double spending, which is theft. The reason Bitcoin was invented in the first place was to fix the double spending problem through economic incentives. Bitcoin wasn't the first peer-to-peer currency, it was just the first one that worked.

How do you stop validators from double spending in POS? In Bitcoin, you have to mine a longer chain to defeat honest miners and succeed in attacking the network. That costs lots of money so it deters miners from trying.

How do you fix this problem in POS?

[pooya87]

miners aren't even selling on exchanges, they mostly do OTC trades which won't affect the price on exchanges.

You got any solid proof for those OTC trades will always end up into cold storage and never hit the exchange by any means ?
It is too easy to call anyone wrong .

of course not, because i am not running a blockchain analysis service
but logically someone who is buying OTC is not doing it to go ahead and dump it on exchanges! there is no point in that. they do it because they don't want to buy on exchanges (wanting more privacy,...)

imagine a whale having a lot of bitcoin that would be receiving a lot more free reward for just owning bitcoin and doing nothing else!!!

Owning bitcoins in big number itself a big task to deserve huge rewards. The real world banking system too is working this way. DO NOT call they are doing nothing, they have done enough to deserve something.

that is why we created bitcoin, because banking system is flawed. the bitcoin design is that you should get paid for your "work" not for "being rich".
and i still emphasis the same thing: they are doing nothing and you should never be paid for just having a lot of money!

there is no 51% attack in PoS but there are lots of other weaknesses in it.

I am here because POW is also having lots of weakness. Maybe POW+POS will be a solution. Like 70% of mining rewards to POW and 30% to POS.

you can never find a perfect solution, there will always be flaws. thinking other algorithms are safe just because they are different is a bad way of thinking. so unless we can find and actually better solution the damage of changing the algorithm is far more than the possible benefits of it.

[BitHodler]

If POS was a quick route to high prices, all projects would be opting for it.

Exactly. In fact, if we look at every POS coin, they have tanked well under their previous all time highs well before we actually went through 2018s correction. In other words, there is more proof of failure than success.

It's easy for people to demand a coin to do this or that. People sit at home and wait for an opportunity to present itself and then buy in. Once they sold they don't even care anymore about POS or POW. They'll move to the next coin.

If people here we're even remotely interested in the underlying tech, they wouldn't see POS as a solution. Everything comes at a risk and has a lot of negative side effects. There is no magical solution to make coin x perfect.