[ANN] Spondoolies-Tech - carrier grade, data center ready mining rigs

[Biodom]

So,
My estimation is that Core team will split. Some will continue to work on Core but on Classic chain, buy some will prefer to do PoW (and Transaction ID) change rather to submit to the new governance.

Guy

Edit: Interesting times. I think that two competing Chains is the favorable outcome. Each will be entitled to the name "Bitcoin" since both came into existence after hard-fork.

are you kidding? favorable to what? maybe to development in some sense, but not bitcoin's value.
Imagine the nightmare of having an "old" bitcoin in a wallet and then deciding on what chain to spend it and have change deposited to.
90% of people will simply sell or do NO transactions altogether and wait until one chain would be dominant.
In addition, say, i decided to sell carbonated sugar syrup and call it "Coca Cola next generation".
Do you think that I would be able to do it?

[Guy Corem]

So,
My estimation is that Core team will split. Some will continue to work on Core but on Classic chain, buy some will prefer to do PoW (and Transaction ID) change rather to submit to the new governance.

Guy

Edit: Interesting times. I think that two competing Chains is the favorable outcome. Each will be entitled to the name "Bitcoin" since both came into existence after hard-fork.

are you kidding? favorable to what? maybe to development in some sense, but not bitcoin's value.
Imagine the nightmare of having an "old" bitcoin in a wallet and then deciding on what chain to spend it and have change deposited to.
90% of people will simply sell or do NO transactions altogether and wait until one chain would be dominant.
In addition, say, i decided to sell carbonated sugar syrup and call it "Coca Cola next generation".
Do you think that I would be able to do it?

You might want to read Meni Rosenfeld: http://fieryspinningsword.com/2015/08/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-fork/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3i9eiv/how_i_learned_to_stop_worrying_and_love_the_fork/

[Guy Corem]

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/f-pool-chinese-pools-will-stick-with-bitcoin-core-1453395328

[dogie]

Memory bound hashing is very good suggestion: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

Is that really any better?

High end GPUs (still costing the same as a CPU) run it 5x quicker and that amount is forever going to diverge. So again its not 1 CPU 1 vote, its 1 CPU and back to the 6 GPUs on ribbon risers and 31 votes. Then you have the problems that RAM isn't an infallible resource - PCI-E based SSDs are getting closer and closer to RAM but with 100x the capacity. I am aware even commercial 4x PCI-E SSDs have 250-500x higher latency than core RAM but what could we do if that was the actual objective? It won't take long for a Spondoolies-Tech V2 to work out a Cuckoo42 ASIC.

Edit:
Seems like you're more concerned with getting the previous pages of discussion buried, I don't think you believe what you're posting. Are the investors calling?

[tromp]

Memory bound hashing is very good suggestion: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

Is that really any better?

Quoting a recent Hacker News comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tromp)

Bitcoin mining could be more decentralized if it better resembled a lottery, where huge numbers of people play for an expected loss.

In other words, the lack of people mining at a loss makes mining profitable and hence subject to forces of centralization.

There are several reasons why mining as a lottery substitute is rare, a major one being that commodity hardware is inefficient by many orders of magnitude, making even a botnet next to useless.

Perhaps, if a proof of work, whose efficiency gap (with custom hardware) is at most an order of magnitude, were adopted (or slowly phased in), enough lottery players would arise to make mining unprofitable at scale.

Botnets should then just be welcomed as a modest increase in decentralization.

However I don't expect Spondoolies-Tech to support this vision of unprofitable mining...

Disclaimer: I designed Cuckoo Cycle

[Guy Corem]

Memory bound hashing is very good suggestion: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

Is that really any better?

Quoting a recent Hacker News comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tromp)

Bitcoin mining could be more decentralized if it better resembled a lottery, where huge numbers of people play for an expected loss.

In other words, the lack of people mining at a loss makes mining profitable and hence subject to forces of centralization.

There are several reasons why mining as a lottery substitute is rare, a major one being that commodity hardware is inefficient by many orders of magnitude, making even a botnet next to useless.

Perhaps, if a proof of work, whose efficiency gap (with custom hardware) is at most an order of magnitude, were adopted (or slowly phased in), enough lottery players would arise to make mining unprofitable at scale.

Botnets should then just be welcomed as a modest increase in decentralization.

However I don't expect Spondoolies-Tech to support this vision of unprofitable mining...

Disclaimer: I designed Cuckoo Cycle

Hello John, nice to meet you in our little thread. Mind the dog.

[Fatman3001]

Memory bound hashing is very good suggestion: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

Is that really any better?

High end GPUs (still costing the same as a CPU) run it 5x quicker and that amount is forever going to diverge. So again its not 1 CPU 1 vote, its 1 CPU and back to the 6 GPUs on ribbon risers and 31 votes. Then you have the problems that RAM isn't an infallible resource - PCI-E based SSDs are getting closer and closer to RAM but with 100x the capacity. I am aware even commercial 4x PCI-E SSDs have 250-500x higher latency than core RAM but what could we do if that was the actual objective? It won't take long for a Spondoolies-Tech V2 to work out a Cuckoo42 ASIC.

Edit:
Seems like you're more concerned with getting the previous pages of discussion buried, I don't think you believe what you're posting. Are the investors calling?

I read the Toomin vs Corem pastebin thingy. Is this a flamboyant ragequit or has Guy lost his marbles? Again?

[OgNasty]

Quoting a recent Hacker News comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tromp)
 Bitcoin mining could be more decentralized if it better resembled a lottery, where huge numbers of people play for an expected loss.

Ya, lets make it so the people who are the backbone of Bitcoin all lose money in a gambling ring!  That's the solution!

[Guy Corem]

Memory bound hashing is very good suggestion: https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo

Is that really any better?

Quoting a recent Hacker News comment of mine (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tromp)

Bitcoin mining could be more decentralized if it better resembled a lottery, where huge numbers of people play for an expected loss.

In other words, the lack of people mining at a loss makes mining profitable and hence subject to forces of centralization.

There are several reasons why mining as a lottery substitute is rare, a major one being that commodity hardware is inefficient by many orders of magnitude, making even a botnet next to useless.

Perhaps, if a proof of work, whose efficiency gap (with custom hardware) is at most an order of magnitude, were adopted (or slowly phased in), enough lottery players would arise to make mining unprofitable at scale.

Botnets should then just be welcomed as a modest increase in decentralization.

However I don't expect Spondoolies-Tech to support this vision of unprofitable mining...

Disclaimer: I designed Cuckoo Cycle

Hello John, nice to meet you in our little thread. Mind the dog.

Although I really like Cuckoo Cycle, memory bound hashing is too much susceptible to BotNets, unlike GPU hashing.

The biggest problem with PoW change in general is hash-rate oscillation. Emin Gün Sirer just solved it for me. I'll publish my suggestion soon.
In an essence, It allow automatic change of PoW with only one Hard Fork needed.

Guy

[Guy Corem]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:
https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.u3mah7u5q

[dogie]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:
https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.u3mah7u5q

I think the question everyone has been asking is, why are you advocating for PoW changes that delete your own company?

[el_rlee]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:
https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.u3mah7u5q

I think the question everyone has been asking is, why are you advocating for PoW changes that delete your own company?

Bizarre.

Can we take it as granted, that there will be no SP50? It's a real pity watching!
 

[tromp]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:

...
prepare a large set of cryptographic hash functions, at least 100 or more initially. Any simple (not memory hard) function will do
...
Each PoW function actually serves for 5 months
...

This proposal if implemented correctly, will bring a never ending GPU mining on Core chain.

Won't this centralize on private armies of GPU programmers hired to optimize all these hash functions, which they then of course will keep private?

Or perhaps it will centralize on private armies of FPGA designers and (access to) FPGA foundries?

Who will be responsible for developing the GPU code that the public at large is supposed to run?
Will they cater to all the different GPU architectures and models?

[Guy Corem]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:

...
prepare a large set of cryptographic hash functions, at least 100 or more initially. Any simple (not memory hard) function will do
...
Each PoW function actually serves for 5 months
...

This proposal if implemented correctly, will bring a never ending GPU mining on Core chain.

Won't this centralize on private armies of GPU programmers hired to optimize all these hash functions, which they then of course will keep private?

Or perhaps it will centralize on private armies of FPGA designers and (access to) FPGA foundries?

Who will be responsible for developing the GPU code that the public at large is supposed to run?
Will they cater to all the different GPU architectures and models?

Hi John,
Yes I agree there will be race to develop GPUs (and maybe FPGAs).
There will also be massive deployments of GPUs farms.
I don't see the above as bad things.

Guy

[el_rlee]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:

...
prepare a large set of cryptographic hash functions, at least 100 or more initially. Any simple (not memory hard) function will do
...
Each PoW function actually serves for 5 months
...

This proposal if implemented correctly, will bring a never ending GPU mining on Core chain.

Won't this centralize on private armies of GPU programmers hired to optimize all these hash functions, which they then of course will keep private?

Or perhaps it will centralize on private armies of FPGA designers and (access to) FPGA foundries?

Who will be responsible for developing the GPU code that the public at large is supposed to run?
Will they cater to all the different GPU architectures and models?

Hi John,
Yes I agree there will be race to develop GPUs (and maybe FPGAs).
There will also be massive deployments of GPUs farms.
I don't see the above as bad things.

Guy

Maybe I'm a bit naive, but isn't the hashpower keeping the network safe? So nobody can take it over? Aren't ASICs doing that job pretty well?
Changing the PoW - that's an altcoin then. The current miners will not follow, so it's gonna split into two - of which only one has powerful ASIC mining which is doing above mentioned job pretty fine.
Is there something I don't get?

[Guy Corem]

Lesson learned from the Classic coup attempt or why Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW:

...
prepare a large set of cryptographic hash functions, at least 100 or more initially. Any simple (not memory hard) function will do
...
Each PoW function actually serves for 5 months
...

This proposal if implemented correctly, will bring a never ending GPU mining on Core chain.

Won't this centralize on private armies of GPU programmers hired to optimize all these hash functions, which they then of course will keep private?

Or perhaps it will centralize on private armies of FPGA designers and (access to) FPGA foundries?

Who will be responsible for developing the GPU code that the public at large is supposed to run?
Will they cater to all the different GPU architectures and models?

Hi John,
Yes I agree there will be race to develop GPUs (and maybe FPGAs).
There will also be massive deployments of GPUs farms.
I don't see the above as bad things.

Guy

Maybe I'm a bit naive, but isn't the hashpower keeping the network safe? So nobody can take it over? Aren't ASICs doing that job pretty well?
Changing the PoW - that's an altcoin then. The current miners will not follow, so it's gonna split into two - of which only one has powerful ASIC mining which is doing above mentioned job pretty fine.
Is there something I don't get?

Please read the article. The scenario I'm describing is AFTER Classic was activated.

[OgNasty]

Can you imagine giving ASIC manufacturers the power to influence a PoW system?

[Guy Corem]

Can you imagine giving ASIC manufacturers the power to influence a PoW system?

Have you read the article ?

[p3yot33at3r]

Hello Guy,

Nice to see you back  

Interesting subject & conversation. Personally, I'll go with whatever the concensus is regarding Bitcoin but what I'd like to see, in whatever client is adopted/survives is that any block that contains zero transactions be rejected by the network. This would not only help speed up transactions, but also give the badly coded/lazy/greedy pools a kick up the backside to sort their act out. If there is an algo change, so be it, the huge asics farms can mine other SHA256 coins, which will create competition & thus encourage innovation. I'm sure it won't be the last time a change is implemented by whoever or for whatever means, it's evolution. Nothing stays the same, especially in the coding/crypto world. If it did, it would be surpassed by a more forward thinking & innovative coin & die.

There seems to be a lot of panic & agendas regarding what's going to happen, but I think it's mostly unfounded & Bitcoin will do what it has always done - find a way & overcome any hurdles it comes across on this fun & interesting journey we're on.

[tromp]

any block that contains zero transactions be rejected by the network. This would not only help speed up transactions, but also give the badly coded/lazy/greedy pools a kick up the backside to sort their act out.

Sadly, they will just change from 0 tx blocks to 1 tx blocks (in addition to coinbase), where the single tx is not even from the mempool, but their own private spend that doesn't need checking for validity.

You can't force miners to add useful transactions. You can only provide incentives.