Why exactly is Bitcoin clinging to PoW?

[thumamuma]

First of all. I don't agree with MarsMan and I think what he is doing is straightforward market manipulation.

But one thing is o/c right in this whole mess. Proof of Work can't be Bitcoins destination. First of all one question is if it really still fulfills its function for decentralization. Is a system truly decentralized or distributed when there is already just a handful of groups that would just need to agree on common terms?

Energy might be another factor and important as well, so a less power hungry solution might be great, on the other side it could be very healthy to the renewables industry if all miners would be forced to use only green energy, since this would generate a significant amount of money flowing into those industries. But I don't see any technical way to really enforce that.

I am a long term user since Bitcoins inception, but I stopped following the development for some years now and hold most of my assets I bought for a few cents years ago and just do some trading from time to time. So I might be not up to date if there are efforts to move away from PoW. Can someone give me an update on this? If Bitcoin is not considering to move and evolve, what are your takes on this and why would one cling to much to PoW, just b/c of the hard fork it requires? Or are the alternatives still not mature enough?

[DannyHamilton]

But one thing is o/c right in this whole mess. Proof of Work can't be Bitcoins destination.

It is. It always has been. It was the intention from the beginning. It always will be.  Get over it.

If you don't like it, there are thousands of shitcoins for you to choose from.

First of all one question is if it really still fulfills its function for decentralization.

Decentralization has nothing to do with it.  Decentralization means nobody can stop you from creating a wallet and connecting to the system. Whether consensus rules change or not is determined by the consensus of the users, not by some authority.

Is a system truly decentralized or distributed when there is already just a handful of groups that would just need to agree on common terms?

it seems you misunderstand the basics.  The only way to change any consensus rule is for ALL users to agree.

Energy might be another factor and important as well, so a less power hungry solution might be great,

And just how much energy does the world's leading alternative consume??  The energy FUD is a bunch of nonsense.

on the other side it could be very healthy to the renewables industry if all miners would be forced to use only green energy, since this would generate a significant amount of money flowing into those industries. But I don't see any technical way to really enforce that.

No.  Because....  It's decentralized.  There is no authority that gets to decide.  You want to force mining onto renewables?  Make renewables cheaper.  Mining is driven by profit, it will tend towards the cheapest electricity.

I am a long-term user since Bitcoins inception, but I stopped following the development for some years now and hold most of my assets I bought for a few cents years ago and just do some trading from time to time. So I might be not up to date if there are efforts to move away from PoW.

There are not.  There will never be.

If Bitcoin is not considering to move and evolve,

Bitcoin moves and evolves all the time, but it's not going to adopt nonsense just because some people said made up some scary things on the T.V. (or twitter)

[NeuroticFish]

Proof of Work can't be Bitcoins destination.

Yet it is.
Without this kind of PoW, Bitcoin price would have not reached these levels and most probably you wouldn't talk about Bitcoin because you wouldn't have heard about it or your have been abandoning it already.

Also this topic was discussed 1000 times.
Also imho you've posted in the wrong board, this is not that technical...

[thumamuma]

Well those are suprisingly agressive answers...

Maybe I missed the board, but it is called also technical discussion. I am talking about technical details of the implementation, so I might be off but not too far. Sorry if you feel like this ended up in the wrong place.


> And just how much energy does the world's leading alternative consume??  The energy FUD is a bunch of nonsense.

Do you have data to back that up? You seem to be very angry on me, I mean no harm, but clearly seem to have hit a nerve I did not intend to. If it is all FUD all is good, would welcome if you could send me the data that proofs this statement wrong.


> No.  Because....  It's decentralized.  There is no authority that gets to decide.  You want to force mining onto renewables?  Make renewables cheaper.  Mining is driven by profit, it will tend towards the cheapest electricity.

Please calm down... . Can you maybe get your emotions under control and read what I actually write. Everyone including me knows all that. I made the point that the energy consumption of bitcoin could be for good if it is driving development of renewable forward by giving them even more funding.


> There are not.  There will never be.

Why not? That is exactly what I wanted to know, what is the rationale? Is everything bad? If there is an actually feasible alternative, what is bad about adopting it?

> it seems you misunderstand the basics.  The only way to change any consensus rule is for ALL users to agree.

no i did not understand any single thing. Of course I know that.



Whatever, I didn't expect such a toxic answer, I honestly asked what is the state and are alternative considered and if not why not. I really don't know what is wrong with that. This really felt like questioning a religion instead of questioning the status quo.

[BrewMaster]

Bitcoin energy consumption by Andereas Antanopolos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvFqEofdAZ0

Well those are suprisingly agressive answers...

i don't see any agression here. they are correcting the wrong assumptions you've made and the misunderstanding you have of bitcoin, energy production and consumption that lead to your final conclusion about PoW needing a change.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

BTC energy footprint is NOT as bad as the FUDsters like to make it sound. Good comparison to the banking sector energy usage is here. BTC will NEVER change from PoW for the simple reason that PoW is the single best way to ensure the blockchain integrity: Attacking it requires a huge amount of hardware and energy.

Piece Of Shit on the other hand only requires the developers of the coin to simply change whatever they want to, whenever they want to or a single deep-pocket to buy up a majority of coins.

[ranochigo]

If it is all FUD all is good, would welcome if you could send me the data that proofs this statement wrong.

It would be fairer to consider Bitcoin as a currency and compare it to the next best alternative, which is the fiat system. Unfortunately, there really isn't any reliable estimations other than this[1] made about that but I would argue that they contribute far more carbon footprint as compared to Bitcoin mining, considering the numerous banking branches, offices, ATMs, etc.

I made the point that the energy consumption of bitcoin could be for good if it is driving development of renewable forward by giving them even more funding.

Renewable energy in many regions are cheaper than coal and for most parts, the cost of purchasing the electricity offsets the R&D of that as well.

Why not? That is exactly what I wanted to know, what is the rationale? Is everything bad? If there is an actually feasible alternative, what is bad about adopting it?

There is a PoS version of Bitcoin, which I'll argue is a shitcoin. I don't see a need for Bitcoin to change, personally. PoW is working as intended, hence the cries about its electrical consumption (which is arguably overblown by both Elon and the media). In general, Bitcoin has pretty much always adopted the mantra of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". There really isn't any reason as of now (perhaps ever) for any shift to a different algorithm.

[1] https://twitter.com/glxyresearch/status/1393166955864117248/photo/1

[thumamuma]

well the responses were aggressive, the way and tone of communication makes up aggression, not that we disagree or he points out flaws (which wasn't the case, it was stated wrong without added proof).

Thank you for the youtube video, will watch it.

> It would be fairer to consider Bitcoin as a currency and compare it to the next best alternative, which is the fiat system. Unfortunately, there really isn't any reliable estimations other than this[1] made about that but I would argue that they contribute far more carbon footprint as compared to Bitcoin mining, considering the numerous banking branches, offices, ATMs, etc.

Well I would totally agree to that, that should be a fair comparison. Technically, taking mastercard. Their tech and servers probably consumes less energy since those are really cheap operations even considering the grade of HA that is employed, but the whole apparatus around it (offices, workers, gasoline of people driving around, local terminals, ...) probably will be somewhat on par or worse.

To do my best to get the tone on a friendly level. Again thanks for the sources, I am **only** questioning the status quo since I couldn't find the information that I wanted to see proof of either. I do consider the environment in total of course, but I am neither an offender of bitcoin nor of PoW (I actually employ PoW for other things b/c it is a very powerful way to force a system to operate at a given speed without trusting the client to stick to the defined loose standards). I was wondering why Bitcoin is not considering any of the alternatives and that is what I was ultimately asking. I understand that especially due to MarsMan, this topic is escalating, but however I never took him serious or any of his late projects which in the end are not all that good for the world (especially when one is centralizing the internet on a single provider (google)). I am well considering all the information you gave and give me and ahead of reading and watching: thank you for that!

[DannyHamilton]

well the responses were aggressive,

Perhaps you are unaccustomed to people disagreeing with you?  Nothing I said was intended to be aggressive or angry.  Perhaps slightly exasperated, but I've been answering similar questions here for a decade now, so I'm not really bothered by it at all. It's just the same old same old all over again.

There is no need to change Bitcoin away from POW. There are MANY other crypto currencies that use something other than POW, and they've been around for years.  If any of them had implemented a significantly better solution, then it would be the leading cryptocurrency of the world.

Beyond that, the only way to make a change to the consensus mechanism would be a hard-fork.  A hard fork would require overwhelming support from ALL users (consumers, merchants, miners, HODLers, exchanges, etc).  As you can see from the response you've gotten on this discussion board, getting that overwhelming support is going to be effectively impossible.  Especially the miners.  If at least on miner and one user in the ENTIRE world refuse to switch away from POW, then there will still be a Bitcoin in the world that is using POW.  In that case, the new (non-POW) Bitcoin would effectively be an alt-coin, and as I've already pointed out, alt-coins without POW already exist.  Furthermore, how are you going to convince an overwhelming majority of miners, that are making profit from their rigs, that they should just turn those rigs off and let the new (non-POW) Bitcoin take their place?

If it is all FUD all is good, would welcome if you could send me the data that proofs this statement wrong.

Someone on the internet makes an outrageous claim (and one that common sense indicates is nonsense) and the world needs to provide proof that the outrageous claim is false?  Here's a better idea.  Perhaps SOMEONE (anyone?) making the claim that Bitcoin's energy usage is a significant problem can provide the proof that it's actually a problem? Think about EVERYTHIING that goes into maintaining just the U.S. dollar as a trusted medium of exchange (skipping all the other Fiat currencies in the world).  Think about the minting of the physical currency, the securing and transporting of that physical currency, the secret service effort to prevent counterfeiting and fraud, the banking system, vaults, branches, ATMs, tellers, all the fuel spent on all the vehicles by all the employees getting to and from work, all the databases and computers for storing balances all over the world, the networks needed for inter-bank transfers, the consumer level electronic payment systems, card readers, routers, security systems, etc. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought to type just now. Some people might even include much of the U.S. military in calculations on what the U.S. spends to make sure that their currency keeps its status as the reserve currency of the world. Stop and think for just a few minutes about the total amount of energy that the world spends on this one Fiat monetary system.  Do you really believe that the Bitcoin miners in the world are spending more than the entire world is spending on the U.S. dollar system?  If you want to make that claim, then I'd like to see some proof. Otherwise, I'm always going to dismiss that concept with as little thought as I dismiss the flat-earthers and the moon-landing deniers.

[NotATether]

I don't think PoW is the problem (and even if it is it's too late to change it without bankrupting the entire mining industry, it's not like it's a niche like dogecoin mining is), but rather pressure needs to be applied to ASICs manufacturers to make miners that draw less power.

Here in PC and mobile devices land, you can't just make a PSU that pulls as much power as you want because that comes with heavy prices for user experience, cost, and ultimately the revenue and sales.

A possible solution would be to have the EPA regulate the energy usage of miners and ban the product from the US if it fails energy regulations. The US does have some slice of the mining distribution so ASIC manufacturers will want to follow them to be able to sell their miners there.

well the responses were aggressive,

Perhaps you are unaccustomed to people disagreeing with you?  Nothing I said was intended to be aggressive or angry.  Perhaps slightly exasperated, but I've been answering similar questions here for a decade now, so I'm not really bothered by it at all. It's just the same old same old all over again.

This is Danny's normal posting style, you should get used to it 

[thumamuma]

> A possible solution would be to have the EPA regulate the energy usage of miners and ban the product from the US if it fails energy regulations. The US does have some slice of the mining distribution so ASIC manufacturers will want to follow them to be able to sell their miners there.

Yup that would make sense, same could apply to the energy origin, to not allow mining activities if a certain percentage does not come from renewables. But I have doubts that the US government would have just the slightest interest to regulate in favor of crypto currencies. It always looks more that they would just like to ban them.

[NotATether]

> A possible solution would be to have the EPA regulate the energy usage of miners and ban the product from the US if it fails energy regulations. The US does have some slice of the mining distribution so ASIC manufacturers will want to follow them to be able to sell their miners there.

Yup that would make sense, same could apply to the energy origin, to not allow mining activities if a certain percentage does not come from renewables. But I have doubts that the US government would have just the slightest interest to regulate in favor of crypto currencies. It always looks more that they would just like to ban them.

It doesn't have to be specifically the US, if the EU also has a large share of mining farms in its territory then it's more likely than US to push a regulation. See for example GDPR.

Heck even if China was the one making the regulations (though they are notoriously lax regulation-wise on everything) that'll cause a spike of energy savings too given that a majority of hashpower is located there.

[DannyHamilton]

pressure needs to be applied to ASICs manufacturers to make miners that draw less power.

They already do.  This is the main reason that people keep buying the newest generation of ASIC and that older generations become obsolete.

Miners have to pay for the electricity necessary for each hash.  If they use less power per hash, then they can afford to buy more hashes and increase their share of the mining rewards.

Looking just at the Antminer S series, we can see that in 2013 they released the S1 with only 1.8 trillion hashes for each watt hour used.  Over the next few years, they had reduced their power consumption to the point where the S8 could generate 36.7 trillion hashes with the same 1 watt hour. Today, the most efficient miners are calculating nearly 40 trillion hashes for each watt hour.

Miners will always demand more efficient mining rigs.  Competition drives ASIC developers to produce the most efficient rigs that current technology makes possible. If they don't then some other ASIC manufacturer will produce a rig that is slightly more efficient and put them out of business. Regulations aren't going to be a stronger motivator than that.


Note that I'm talking about power in terms of how many hashes you can get from it.  Just a straight limit to total power is useless.  Miners will just buy more units (of the rigs that get the most hashes for that power). So the total power usage will stay the same.

In the end, it's the market value of a mined block and the cost of electricity that determines the total amount of money per hash that a miner can profitably spend on mining. Raise energy prices worldwide, and miners will use less energy overall. Decrease energy prices on renewables, and a larger percentage of mining will happen with renewable energy.

At the current difficulty it takes on average about 108 zetahashes (108,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes) to solve a block, and the average block reward, including transaction fees, is about 6.75 BTC.

If the bitcoin exchange rate drops, then those 6.75 BTC won't be worth as much, so the block won't be worth as much.  Also, in a few years after the next halving, the block won't be worth as many bitcoins.  Both of these factors will result in some miners finding that they are earning less per block than they are spending on electricity (they are mining at a loss) and they will shut down rigs resulting in a reduction in energy usage.

On the other hand, if fees increase or if the exchange rate increases, then miners will find that they can afford to purchase more equipment and there will be an increase in energy usage.

If electricity gets cheaper, then miners can afford more electricity and therefore will buy more rigs.  If electricity gets more expensive, then some miners will be mining at a loss and will shut down their equipment.

Note that the value of the network being secured directly affects the amount of money spent securing it (and therefore the amount of energy used to secure it). I don't think you can say the same about any Fiat currency.

[TangentC]

Here is a question,

what is the PoW supporters plan to stop cities and countries from banning bitcoin PoW mining,
due to their concerns over bitcoin energy usage and carbon footprint?

Because I hear bitcoiners don't won't to switch, OK don't ,
but how are you going to solve the above issues if you don't.
Ignoring it or blaming other industries will make little difference to the Politicians that are banning mining.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/02/china-bitcoin-mining-hub-to-shut-down-cryptocurrency-projects.html
https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-york-bill-proposes-to-ban-crypto-mining-for-3-years-over-carbon-concerns
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/05/bitcoin-btc-surge-renews-worries-about-its-massive-carbon-footprint.html

 

[dkbit98]

what is the PoW supporters plan to stop cities and countries from banning bitcoin PoW mining,
due to their concerns over bitcoin energy usage and carbon footprint?

Because I hear bitcoiners don't won't to switch, OK don't ,
but how are you going to solve the above issues if you don't.
Ignoring it or blaming other industries will make little difference to the Politicians that are banning mining.

You can solve it easy for yourself if you stop watching mainstream media brainwashing or listening elon, and if some city or state ban's Bitcoin mining than miners will simply move to other city or region that is pro Bitcoin.

If some city is using electricity created mostly from coal then they have the problem to solve and move to renewable energy sources, and Bitcoin has nothing to do with that.

 

[Wind_FURY]

OP, plus Bitcoin mining is also a Sybil Attack prevention mechanism, and the incentive-structure works, the Game Theory works, and the network will chug along for many many years. Why change something that already works?

[TangentC]

what is the PoW supporters plan to stop cities and countries from banning bitcoin PoW mining,
due to their concerns over bitcoin energy usage and carbon footprint?

Because I hear bitcoiners don't won't to switch, OK don't ,
but how are you going to solve the above issues if you don't.
Ignoring it or blaming other industries will make little difference to the Politicians that are banning mining.

You can solve it easy for yourself if you stop watching mainstream media brainwashing or listening elon, and if some city or state ban's Bitcoin mining than miners will simply move to other city or region that is pro Bitcoin.

If some city is using electricity created mostly from coal then they have the problem to solve and move to renewable energy sources, and Bitcoin has nothing to do with that.

No offense , but ignoring the energy waste will not make the issue go away,
that is like ignoring that mole that turns into cancer and kills you.

Whether Bitcoiners like it or not , the media is slamming bitcoin for excessive energy usage,
and Bans of PoW mining are growing. If you plan on staying PoW, then you need to figure how you are going to bypass those future bans,
because at some point, their won't be any one allowing PoW mining.
Since increased energy usage does not translate into increased performance only increased security, a PR nightmare is looming for bitcoin.
Ethereum solution to the energy waste issue has been to start a transition to PoS, Bitcoiners don't want that, so you need to make a plan.
Also the growing excessive energy issue has been an issue since 2013 when PoS was created to fix it, so this has been an issue ignored for years already.

FYI:
Even if energy is renewal , it is still a limited supply of a semi-fixed total, by bitcoin using an ever increasing % at a growth rate exceeding all other industries, it is still going to cause problems, such as rolling blackouts , and massive price increases in the cost of electricity for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the same power grid as miners.

[dkbit98]

No offense , but ignoring the energy waste will not make the issue go away,
that is like ignoring that mole that turns into cancer and kills you.

This is probably one of the worst comparison I ever saw in my life, but if you are so big eco warrior that stop driving cars, stop using electricity for anything, and don't use your bank and credit cards because they spend more energy than Bitcoin.
Move to forest, desert or live in some cave to save the earth.

PoS was created to fix it, so this has been an issue ignored for years already.

Proof-of-stake is created only to make owners and whales richer, and it has nothing to do with decentralization, security or saving of energy.

[TangentC]

No offense , but ignoring the energy waste will not make the issue go away,
that is like ignoring that mole that turns into cancer and kills you.

This is probably one of the worst comparison I ever saw in my life, but if you are so big eco warrior that stop driving cars, stop using electricity for anything, and don't use your bank and credit cards because they spend more energy than Bitcoin.

PoS was created to fix it, so this has been an issue ignored for years already.

Proof-of-stake is created only to make owners and whales richer, and it has nothing to do with decentralization, security or saving of energy.

Ethereum and Cardano , the #2 and #4 coins on CMK would disagree with you.
As Cardano Proof of Stake is 1.6 million times more energy efficient than the bitcoin PoW network, and it onchain transaction capacity exceeds btc to the point , they don't need an offchain LN network to help with transactions.

My point , is without PoS conversion, Bitcoiners are just ignoring the problems,
and if you are going to stay PoW, then how will bitcoin avoid future bans on mining, and those bans are coming , no matter what you ignore.
 

[dkbit98]

Ethereum and Cardano , the #2 and #4 coins on CMK would disagree with you.

You clearly don't understand anything and farting about centralized altcoins that mostly run on vps servers and have blockchain size that can't fit on normal hard drives is not decentralization or security.
Anyone can run Bitcoin node even on Pi devices, that is impossible on mentioned coins, and they don't spend any energy because they run on centralized VPS almost as database files.
Not to mention you would need to have huge amount of coins to buy and stake, or issues with premine...

OP, plus Bitcoin mining is also a Sybil Attack prevention mechanism, and the incentive-structure works, the Game Theory works, and the network will chug along for many many years. Why change something that already works?

Change is needed sometimes and anything that is stagnant and not improving can be overtaken, so I would not be surprised if we see some future change in Bitcoin PoW or some better model, but it is certainly not going to be some shitty Proof-of-Stake.