[Megathread] The long-known PoW vs. PoS debate

[BlackHatCoiner]

This thread is a tribute to all the discussions that have been made regarding these two mechanisms. As a PoW enthusiast, I'd like to explain why PoS is an inferior mechanism for such protocol as it loses in both centralization and capability of producing consensus, two of which are necessary for an innovative kind of money of this character.

But, before I move onto anything, I think that it's very important to understand what's centralization. It can be described as:

The action or process of bringing activities together in one place.

As you may get, centralization is a vague term and it's nowadays misused either unwittingly or to favor benefits. One may say that Bitcoin is less centralized in contrast with an altcoin, because its hash rate is distributed more properly, but they'd also be as correct as one saying that it's less centralized, because it has a better wealth distribution (no ICOs etc.). An other may say that few pools own the majority of the hash rate and hence, it's centralized; they may disagree that centralization can be measured etc.

Therefore, we need to precise what exactly we'll call centralization. My definition goes as following:

Centralization is the situation where few people (can) have a great affectation to the final outcome of our economy.

So, the more something's centralized, the more those few can affect it. They're analogous values. These people can either be developers or regular users.


Proof of Work
How it works in theory: (With lottery tickets as metaphor)

• Everyone can generate lottery tickets.
• Scratching those requires spending of computational power.
• There's no way to know if a ticket is a winning one unless you scratch it.
• Each ticket has a rarity.
• If someone proves they scratched a ticket whose rarity was one-out-of-one-trillion, they essentially reveal that they have searched one trillion tickets on average.
• The network decides what rarity is required for a ticket to be a winning one.
• Whoever scratches such ticket gets a reward.
• The required rarity changes based on the frequency of the winners.

Proof of Stake
How it works in theory:

• Owners of the cryptocurrency lock up their funds.
• They vote by proving their financial bond with a digital signature. The greater the bond, the more the votes.
• The block with the most votes is considered the valid one.

A valid transaction is a transaction that complies with the consensus rules and has been included into a block. For example, if you try to spend a transaction output that has already been spent, then the transaction is invalid as it goes against the rules. Satoshi Nakamoto solved the double-spending problem in the following way:

• Require all the transactions to go through a ledger. Any transaction that is not written in it is ignored.
• When there are two conflicting transactions, the "correct" one is the one that was published first.
• To determine time, you need a timestamp server.
• To have a timestamp server, rely on proof of work.

That way you can ensure for the validity of the ledger, without being present all the time. Consensus takes place when the transaction ordering problem is resolved in a decentralized way. That's essentially Bitcoin. That's the Byzantine generals' concerted strategy.

Why Proof of Stake cannot produce consensus
Punishment plays a big role in this system. Our wealth is protected solely from a game theory: One or more entities are discouraged to cheat. Why that happens? Well, besides that:

The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth

There's also one thing our fellow forgot to mention (or emphasize): Energy. If one's behavior is dishonest towards the network, they're forced to pay for acquiring energy whether their attack is successful or not. They're punished outside the system.

This is not true in proof of stake and you'll understand why that's bad along the way. Nonetheless, there has to be a way to discourage cheaters, even if they're punished within the system's borders, and there is: Security deposits. Once nodes stake their money, the network can use those to punish them in case they misbehave.

While the mechanism uses the users' money to avoid double-spending it suffers from the so-called "double-signing problem". In other words, the system isn't objective in broad terms:

However, new nodes joining the network, and nodes that appear online after a very long time, would not have the consensus algorithm reliably protecting them. Fortunately, for them, the solution is simple: the first time they sign up, and every time they stay offline for a very very long time, they need only get a recent block hash from a friend, a blockchain explorer, or simply their software provider, and paste it into their blockchain client as a “checkpoint”. They will then be able to securely update their view of the current state from there.

Remember, we use consensus to ensure that a newbie who just installed a client, syncs without doubt of whether what they're receiving is valid or not. Their node demands from the rest to send blocks, it verifies the validity of every block and transaction and it'll initially reach to the last block of the chain with the most work. That's essentially the purpose of consensus; to avoid having unreliable actors.

When it comes to unreliability, our newbie is definitely safe in the PoW environment, but not in the PoS'. You see, since there's lack of objectivity, the weaknesses already seem to show up. If, say, one wanted to attack, they could gain much influence by liquidating their stake and proceeding to the abuse of their own keys. Any blocks that had been signed by them would be vulnerable and they'd have nothing to lose. That's known as "Nothing at stake problem".

PoS cryptocurrencies attempt to solve this problem by either punishing the attackers with the deposits' loss if they sign another block during a particular period of time or by ignoring a block that is signed a certain period of time later. The problem is that you can only do the latter if you were there from the start. If you had your node syncing, you'd have no way to know which of the two identical blocks is the correct one. As I've already said to have a timestamp server you need to rely on proof of work.

Why Proof of Stake centralizes the system
Because, the sources to contribute to the network aren't available outside the system. The "underpinnings" are in the stakers' fate. In proof of work, when you setup your ASICs and start mining you're, intentionally or not, subsidizing decentralization as the rest of the miners suddenly have less power. The opposite happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you increase their gains.


I address to PoS-ers to come to this thread and constructively argue with the above assertions or if they don't disagree, to spell out why PoW is worse. This was just my opinion; anyone's free to support the other side. I didn't type this title for no reason.

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[garlonicon]

An other may say that few pools own the majority of the hash rate and hence, it's centralized; they may disagree that centralization can be measured etc.

• Everyone can generate lottery tickets.

Yes, everyone can do that, but not everyone can generate "shares". This problem can be partially solved by Merged Mining, but it is still not yet ready in production, because if/when it will be, we will no longer have those huge pools: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/security-budget-ii-mm/#f-the-trilemma

[PrimeNumber7]

With PoW, a miner needs to make an investment in mining equipment for to mine the cryptocurrency. If that equipment cannot be used to mine that cryptocurrency, there is no other way for the equipment to create value for its owner. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the mining algorithm could be changed, and the mining equipment would become worthless.

Similarly, with PoS, a miner must "lock up" their coin in order to receive mining rewards. This is similar to a miner buying a miner, except without the mining manufacturer. If a PoS "miner" were to produce invalid blocks, their "locked up" stake would be lost. It would be up to the other PoS "miners" to determine if another miner is producing invalid blocks. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the value of the coin would become worthless.

In both PoS and PoW, if the miners as a whole act badly, they will lose their investment. However, with PoW, the underlying coin will survive. This is an important distinction. If a large PoS miner were to successfully act badly, they could potentially enter into derraritive contracts to offset the coin they have "locked up" that is mining. This removes the requirement for a PoS miner to actually invest in their "mining" operation. OTOH, a PoW miner cannot easily hedge their investment if they intend to act badly while mining.

[dkbit98]

Why Proof of Stake centralizes the system
Because, the sources to contribute to the network aren't available outside the system. The "underpinnings" are in the stakers' fate. In proof of work, when you setup your ASICs and start mining you're, intentionally or not, subsidizing decentralization as the rest of the miners suddenly have less power. The opposite happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you increase their gains.

I can't believe some people are still thinking that Proof of Stake is the future, just because it spends less energy than Proof of Work, and it fits the green narrative propaganda.
Just look what happened with fake news about ethereum switching over to eth 2.0 that is probably never going to happen, except maybe in metaverse space
Intel just entered Bitcoin mining with new power saving dedicated chips and it's not impossible to think that in future we are going to have even more improvements in this field.
Real question is if enough people care about decentralization and proof of work, or they just want quick gains and fake promises.

[PrimeNumber7]

I can't believe some people are still thinking that Proof of Stake is the future, just because it spends less energy than Proof of Work, and it fits the green narrative propaganda.

I think this is what is behind the recent push to get bitcoin to convert to PoS. There is not a technical rational behind wanting to switch. There is a desire to implement the green new deal.

[pooya87]

they'd also be as correct as one saying that it's less centralized, because it has a better wealth distribution (no ICOs etc.).

It should be clarified that there is a difference between "wealth distribution" and not having an "ICO, premine, etc.".
Having an ICO means initially there were coins that were created out of thin air by the creator and sold to people so that the creator can make money for something that doesn't yet exist. That is a big centralization sign.
On the other hand, wealth distribution means how the circulating supply is distributed among adopters. I'd argue that it has no effect on decentralization. Simply because you can't affect the network with whatever amount of bitcoin you have (bitcoin is PoW after all). Which brings us to the fundamental flaw of PoS.

Centralization is the situation where few people (can) have a great affectation to the final outcome of our economy.

Why "economy"? It is limiting the definition. I'd say the network as a whole not just the economy. For example the "economy" was centralized back in 2013 when there was one major bitcoin exchange (MtGox) controlling more than 85% of the total trading volume and it was manipulating the market. Yet bitcoin was still decentralized.

P.S. Here is a realistic risk of PoS: a lot of people have proven to see cryptocurrency as a trading tool and they will deposit their coins on a centralized exchange. All of a sudden we have one entity with a huge amount of coins aka stake that can control the PoS too.

[LegendaryK]

One could enter this debate, but their is little reason.
If the person supporting PoS is winning the debate, then the mods lock the topic.
If the person supporting PoW is winning the debate, then the mods allow it and others point to it as proof.

The Truth is these random arguments no longer have any weight in the real world.

In the real world. The top 12 coins on coinmarketcap.
#1 on CMK: Bitcoin is the only PoW coin
#2 on CMK: Ethereum is switching to PoS.
#3, #4, #5: Are Tokens
#6 on CMK: Ripple is neither.
#7 on CMK :Cardano is already PoS.
#8 on CMK: Solana is a version of PoS
#9 on CMK: Tera Luna is a version of PoS
#10 on CMK: Avax is a version of PoS
#11 on CMK: Token
#12 on CMK: Polkadot is a version of PoS

Of the top 12 coins
1 is PoW , 4 tokens, 1 custom XRP
The other 6 are PoS.

So no matter anyone's opinion here for or against, the marketplace has already chosen.
And their is an undeniable lean toward PoS or anything other than PoW.

Does Bitcoin have to move to PoS, absolutely not.
To be honest, bitcoin low number of coins makes it unsuitable to be a proof of stake coin.

PoW does have issues and something will have to be done at some point.
The current Bans and the future bans, because of the limits of the modern power grid to support the ever increasing energy requirements of the PoW miners.

Their will be no green energy solution fix to the above, as China one of the largest hydro energy producers was the 1st to have banned PoW mining.
Europe could ban PoW mining by 2025.  

Most other coins will switch to PoS, as ethereum is doing.
So they will avoid the bans.

Your only real concern , if you are dead set on wanting Bitcoin to be PoW and still be used.
Is what will you do when PoW mining is banned world wide?

Brainstorming answers for PoW real problem is what you should be focused on,
because the PoW verses PoS debate is dead.

Ethereum, Cardano, Algorand and all of the other PoS designs will continue regardless of what happens with PoW or bitcoin.

The final question coming is will the world government let your PoW survive, and that is what you need to worry about if you want PoW mining to continue.

[vjudeu]

To be honest, bitcoin low number of coins makes it unsuitable to be a proof of stake coin.

Technically, we can move to fractional satoshis when needed. Also, in LN you have millisatoshis, so it is possible to increase coin precision without changing the main layer.

Is what will you do when PoW mining is banned world wide?

That's why mining decentralization is important. When a lot of computers will be mining single satoshis or millisatoshis, then they can collectively mine new blocks. In case of huge computing power drop, it will be needed to somehow "push chain forward", so trusting "the strongest shares" will be needed. If it happens gradually, it will be similar to gradual computing power increase, but just in reversed direction. That way or another, it will be a failure of Proof of Work, and then trusting "shares" is needed to do anything without a hard fork and hacking the difficulty.

The final question coming is will the world government let your PoW survive, and that is what you need to worry about if you want PoW mining to continue.

As long as Open Hardware and Open Software exists, I think we are safe. The government can block huge miners, but they cannot block millions of CPU's. If they will, PoW mining will be the least important thing of our problems, because then all wallets can be considered unsafe.

[LegendaryK]

To be honest, bitcoin low number of coins makes it unsuitable to be a proof of stake coin.

Technically, we can move to fractional satoshis when needed. Also, in LN you have millisatoshis, so it is possible to increase coin precision without changing the main layer.

Is what will you do when PoW mining is banned world wide?

That's why mining decentralization is important. When a lot of computers will be mining single satoshis or millisatoshis, then they can collectively mine new blocks. In case of huge computing power drop, it will be needed to somehow "push chain forward", so trusting "the strongest shares" will be needed. If it happens gradually, it will be similar to gradual computing power increase, but just in reversed direction. That way or another, it will be a failure of Proof of Work, and then trusting "shares" is needed to do anything without a hard fork and hacking the difficulty.

The final question coming is will the world government let your PoW survive, and that is what you need to worry about if you want PoW mining to continue.

As long as Open Hardware and Open Software exists, I think we are safe. The government can block huge miners, but they cannot block millions of CPU's. If they will, PoW mining will be the least important thing of our problems, because then all wallets can be considered unsafe.

So you are proposing that PoW algo be changed to something that can only run on CPUs as a way to spread out mining and the energy usage.
Doubtful the ASIC miners would agree.
The days of the PC are numbered for the average person, as normal people switch to smart phone or tablets,
the increased heat and faster destruction of said devices , would prevent the majority from mining , plus you have a new strain on the wireless cell towers to content with.
And illegal botnets would have a major advantage in PoW mining.
If a business still used PCs, they would still concentrate the devices to one area to save housing costs and you are right back where you started.
Plus any new CPU PoW algo can have a ASIC designed for it, so you still don't get off the asic treadmill.

[tromp]

I'm as pro PoW and anti PoS as anyone, but your case is not strengthened by the sloppy reasoning at the end:

In proof of work, when you setup your ASICs and start mining you're, intentionally or not, subsidizing decentralization as the rest of the miners suddenly have less power.

The same thing happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you buy stake from existing stake-holders, who end up having less power.

The opposite happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you increase their gains.

Financial gains has little to do with it. If you buy ASICs from another miner, then you also increase their gains.

[witcher_sense]

What I don't understand is that if a proof-of-stake "consensus" algorithm alone is not sufficient to reach consensus, especially when it comes to those nodes that have just joined the network or been offline for a long time, then how can we call it a consensus algorithm in the first place? And if it is not possible to reach a consensus with a pure PoS, then the whole debate becomes meaningless: it simply cannot compete with PoW due to its inherent drawbacks that cannot be fixed except through relying on some less secure punishment mechanisms or timestamp servers based on, again, PoW algorithms.

The same thing happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you buy stake from existing stake-holders, who end up having less power.

The trouble is that current stakeholders aren't incentivized at all to sell their stakes for they would make more money and would have more power by just doing nothing. No rational player will give up their power and ever-increasing amount of money for the sake of short-term yields. You aren't incentivized to make others more powerful by selling them tokens either.

So no matter anyone's opinion here for or against, the marketplace has already chosen.

Clearly, the market has chosen bitcoin with its PoW since it holds first position, above all shitcoins with PoS you enumerated.

[NeuroticFish]

I see PoW vs PoS also in a philosophical way: it's meritocracy vs oligarchy.
For PoW one has to work hard and good to obtain rewards and trust.
For PoS the rich ones rule; you have no other choice than just trust them because they've bought that coin.

I know that PoS lovers will come and tell that ASICs can also be bought on big numbers by the rich. Still not the same. PoW is the right direction.
The only thing I'd like to see more is that large ASIC farms start building their own sources of regenerable energy (although I know that the PoW vs Environment drama is fake)

[Quickseller]

I'm as pro PoW and anti PoS as anyone, but your case is not strengthened by the sloppy reasoning at the end:

In proof of work, when you setup your ASICs and start mining you're, intentionally or not, subsidizing decentralization as the rest of the miners suddenly have less power.

The same thing happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you buy stake from existing stake-holders, who end up having less power.

The opposite happens in proof of stake: To acquire voting power you increase their gains.

Financial gains has little to do with it. If you buy ASICs from another miner, then you also increase their gains.

This.

I am not aware of any serious argument that suggests PoS will result in mining to become centralized, over time or otherwise.

Bitcoin PoW mining today is not controlled by any single entity, but the number of major miners has decreased from what would have been predicted even a few years ago. There have probably been times in which a small group of unrelated entities could theoretically band together to execute a 51% attack on the network, but the economic incentives around PoW seem to have held up and we have not seen that.

[ABCbits]

It's been long time since i saw PoS discussion on this "Development & Technical Discussion". I hope there won't be any chaos.

P.S. Here is a realistic risk of PoS: a lot of people have proven to see cryptocurrency as a trading tool and they will deposit their coins on a centralized exchange. All of a sudden we have one entity with a huge amount of coins aka stake that can control the PoS too.

And it already happened several times. For example, Binance, Houbi and Poliniex helped Tron foundation to perform hostile takeover on Steem network[1]. Binance only apologize[2] while Houbi make an excuse[3] without any real action.

[1] https://cryptoslate.com/big-exchanges-conduct-a-hostile-takeover-of-steem-blockchain-following-tron-acquisition/
[2] https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2020/03/binance-apologies-for-its-role-in-justin-sun-s-steem-takeover/
[3] https://coingape.com/huobi-exchange-responds-steem-network-takeover-by-justin-sun/

[Quickseller]

It's been long time since i saw PoS discussion on this "Development & Technical Discussion". I hope there won't be any chaos.

P.S. Here is a realistic risk of PoS: a lot of people have proven to see cryptocurrency as a trading tool and they will deposit their coins on a centralized exchange. All of a sudden we have one entity with a huge amount of coins aka stake that can control the PoS too.

And it already happened several times. For example, Binance, Houbi and Poliniex helped Tron foundation to perform hostile takeover on Steem network[1]. Binance only apologize[2] while Houbi make an excuse[3] without any real action.

[1] https://cryptoslate.com/big-exchanges-conduct-a-hostile-takeover-of-steem-blockchain-following-tron-acquisition/
[2] https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2020/03/binance-apologies-for-its-role-in-justin-sun-s-steem-takeover/
[3] https://coingape.com/huobi-exchange-responds-steem-network-takeover-by-justin-sun/

Couldn't you replace the exchanges in question with major PoW miners? The exchanges in question hold customer money, and customers could trivially move their crypto to their own wallet, or another exchange.

There are still pools today, but mining has become increasingly done by entities that own large amounts of mining hardware.

[NotATether]

With PoW, a miner needs to make an investment in mining equipment for to mine the cryptocurrency. If that equipment cannot be used to mine that cryptocurrency, there is no other way for the equipment to create value for its owner. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the mining algorithm could be changed, and the mining equipment would become worthless.

Similarly, with PoS, a miner must "lock up" their coin in order to receive mining rewards. This is similar to a miner buying a miner, except without the mining manufacturer. If a PoS "miner" were to produce invalid blocks, their "locked up" stake would be lost. It would be up to the other PoS "miners" to determine if another miner is producing invalid blocks. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the value of the coin would become worthless.

In both PoS and PoW, if the miners as a whole act badly, they will lose their investment. However, with PoW, the underlying coin will survive. This is an important distinction. If a large PoS miner were to successfully act badly, they could potentially enter into derraritive contracts to offset the coin they have "locked up" that is mining. This removes the requirement for a PoS miner to actually invest in their "mining" operation. OTOH, a PoW miner cannot easily hedge their investment if they intend to act badly while mining.

Maybe some algorithm that doesn't utilize cryptographic algorithms (I.e. energy) or tokens is what is necessary to create a low-energy PoW alternative that doesn't put your coins at financial risk (locking tokens I.e. POS).

For example - Proof of Time (I made this one up).

Most operating systems support nanosleep(2) for pausing execution for a certain amount of nanoseconds.

So instead of solving a problem where you must find successively smaller hash inputs, we turn it into a problem of sleeping for a random amount of nanoseconds (1 second = 1 billion nanoseconds) up to a certain target.

The idea would be that the network keeps a global 256-bit counter that tells how long all of the nodes have slept, and that all of the nodes will compete with each other to sleep, each amount of time slept increments the global counter, and the node that whose sleep time causes the counter to hit the target will get the block reward. Then the counter time is reset to zero and the target is increased or decreased based on a difficulty adjustment algorithm similar to the ones in Proof of Work.

The sleep time will be hardcoded, to e.g 100ms.
A "stale message" multiplier will also be hardcoded, e.g 20.
This means that nodes have 2 seconds to sleep for 100ms and relay the messages over the network to other peers before they start rejecting the message.

So, what happens after a node sleeps (it actually doesn't have to sleep, it just need to wait for the sleep time doing something else but the only logical activity that wakes programs up after particular intervals is sleeping), then it sends this message to all of its network peers, with the following content:

{
current_UTC_datetime: string
public key: string
hash: ECDSA signature of current_UTC_datetime against private key
}

A message with datetime in the future is rejected.
Messages with datetime more than (sleep_time * multiplier) nanoseconds in the past are also rejected.
Otherwise, the sleep time is added to the global counter, stored in a ledger I.e. an array of entries that look like:

{
current_counter: 256-bit int
message: {above message embedded here}
}

If the node finds that their public key is associated with an entry that has hit the target, then it generates a block reward for itself (as the consensus is coded in the program) .

Then each node only does one ECDSA operation per "sleep time" interval instead of several trillion SHA256d iterations, while keeping a decentralized blockchain.

This schemes relies on a majority of nodes being honest in relaying the correct time, just like PoW. But it neither uses vast amount of energy (ASICS are made redundant for this), nor locks up finances.

[Wind_FURY]

I’m the stupid one in the forum, but from learning, listening, and reading what the smart people say and write in interviews or technical papers, their description of Proof of Stake drew this picture in my mind.  



Another image in my mind is a cat chasing its own tail.

[vjudeu]

So you are proposing that PoW algo be changed to something that can only run on CPUs as a way to spread out mining and the energy usage.
Doubtful the ASIC miners would agree.

Not at all. I thought about solo mining a fraction of the block reward without trusting centralized mining pools. ASIC miners could agree to that, because they would get more satoshis than their competitors mining on their CPU's. The algorithm should be left as it is, as long as it is not broken. The only problem is splitting the coinbase transaction to move from a "winner-takes-all" to "miners-take-shares" system.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Why "economy"? It is limiting the definition. I'd say the network as a whole not just the economy. For example the "economy" was centralized back in 2013 when there was one major bitcoin exchange (MtGox) controlling more than 85% of the total trading volume and it was manipulating the market. Yet bitcoin was still decentralized.

It was decentralized, but less than it is today. If we're going to agree with my centralization definition, then it's true; few people who owned an exchange had a fortune of 850,000+ BTC. The manipulation was easier and more intensive than it is today. Charts speak themselves.

Economy isn't a strictly connected term with money. It's related with administration, in general.

P.S. Here is a realistic risk of PoS: a lot of people have proven to see cryptocurrency as a trading tool and they will deposit their coins on a centralized exchange. All of a sudden we have one entity with a huge amount of coins aka stake that can control the PoS too.

Don't you choose a pool to stake?

One could enter this debate, but their is little reason.
If the person supporting PoS is winning the debate, then the mods lock the topic.
If the person supporting PoW is winning the debate, then the mods allow it and others point to it as proof.

This place is known for its freedom of speech. If you don't want to try, then don't blame mods. The mods don't lock topics subjectively. Only if it's against the rules.

Of the top 12 coins
1 is PoW , 4 tokens, 1 custom XRP
The other 6 are PoS.

So no matter anyone's opinion here for or against, the marketplace has already chosen.
And their is an undeniable lean toward PoS or anything other than PoW.

Which proves what exactly? The market had also chosen to put a dog-looking coin in the third position. Is that what you want? To simply reach a certain position among other currencies? Is that your project's goal?

Their will be no green energy solution fix to the above, as China one of the largest hydro energy producers was the 1st to have banned PoW mining.
Europe could ban PoW mining by 2025. 

And now you're comparing China with Europe...

The final question coming is will the world government let your PoW survive, and that is what you need to worry about if you want PoW mining to continue.

Okay, so... May I assume you didn't read my writeup, right? I've detected flaws to your mechanism and you keep avoiding them. You're the one who asked for serious conversation, troller.

Financial gains has little to do with it. If you buy ASICs from another miner, then you also increase their gains.

You do have the option to not buy them from another miner, though.

[pooya87]

Couldn't you replace the exchanges in question with major PoW miners? The exchanges in question hold customer money, and customers could trivially move their crypto to their own wallet, or another exchange.

You can't even begin to compare a "major miner" with an exchange that holds a lot of users' funds. A miner has spent a lot of money and put a lot of effort to acquire that large hashrate while the exchange has done virtually nothing. Not to mention that the miner has a lot at stake while the exchange doesn't.

Don't you choose a pool to stake?

No.

[larry_vw_1955]

I address to PoS-ers to come to this thread and constructively argue with the above assertions or if they don't disagree, to spell out why PoW is worse. This was just my opinion; anyone's free to support the other side. I didn't type this title for no reason.

i'm not going to argue for proof of stake because i know it's not the real deal. only something that requires physical resources and expends them at some cost is something you can take seriously. even then, there's attacks like 51% attacks but i'll take that risk anyday over the bad things that can happen in proof of stake fairy tale systems. that's all they are is a fairy tale. just ask jimmy song.

[LegendaryK]

I could, but my point is PoS give lots of power to centralized exchange. Not only they control user fund, they could use it to manipulate the network or earn more profit (by staking the coin) while user only receive none/small percentage of the profit.

Cardano has countered that concern with the following.
https://www.coinbase.com/cloud/discover/solutions/cardano-stake-pledge-margin

Cardano has two protocol‐set parameters to prevent centralization. These control how much ADA — Cardano’s native cryptocurrency — and how many pools each stakepool can control. They are the k parameter and the a0 parameter.

The Saturation Parameter (k) controls the number of stake pools in the network, and increases decentralization by creating incentives to create more stake pools.

The parameter determines how much stake in a single pool will earn rewards. The higher the k parameter, the lower the maximum stake cap per pool. Any stake above the maximum does not qualify for additional rewards.

As far as the user % of profit, the user can always withdraw their coin to another exchange or pool, just as a miner can switch to another pool if unhappy.

I've detected flaws to your mechanism and you keep avoiding them.

One: I did not invent PoS, that was Sunny King in 2013. So 9 years later and no one has killed it yet.
Two: Not avoiding , but ignoring since in the earlier post I showed the majority of coins are PoS based. (Which means their developers share none of your concerns.)
If you truly have a major flaw in PoS, then feel free to destroy all PoS coins to prove that what you speak is fact and not imagined conjecture.
Until then as a pronounced PoW supporter, don't be surprised that PoS developers/users simply ignore your concerns.
Kind of the same way all PoW supporters ignore that only 3 or 4 mining pool operators could 51% attack bitcoin at any time over the last 5 years,
and yes the miners could dump any corrupt pools but only after the damage is done, not early enough to prevent it.

The main issue you keep ignoring are the government bans of PoW because of energy consumption.
No matter what happens with PoS, a world wide ban of PoW mining before 2030 is very probable, and that is a very real danger not imagined conjecture.

Thanks to the ever growing supply chain issue, energy is getting harder to come by, so letting PoW miners draw large % of energy will be focused on by everyone.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/largest-ever-power-cuts-hit-turkey-s-industrial-production-report-122012500009_1.html

Turkey slashed electricity supplies to industry after Iran announced a temporary halt in natural gas exports, a move that threatens to hit critical sales abroad.
The government has imposed three days of power outages a week in the country’s hundreds of organised industrial zones.

Imagine anyone PoW mining in that industrial zone, profit potential just got slashed.

https://gadgets360.com/cryptocurrency/news/iran-bitcoin-mining-ban-power-usage-electricity-shortage-2692287

Iran Imposes 3-Month Ban on Authorized Bitcoin Mining Facilities Due to Excessive Power Usage

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/25/kazakh-crypto-miners-cut-off-from-electricity-supply-until-end-of-january/

A memo from national grid operator KEGOC, dated Jan. 21 and seen by CoinDesk, said that "the planned supply of electricity to persons engaged in digital mining is completely canceled" from Jan. 24 until midnight Jan. 31. Kazakhstan's energy grid has been struggling to meet power demand, especially during the winter.

[tromp]

You do have the option to not buy them from another miner, though.

Well yes, you could in theory design and build your own ASICs.

In practice though, you'd buy them from the likes of Bitmain,
which really is another miner as much as an ASIC manufacturer.
There's no telling how long the ASIC they ship you has been "tested" by them.

[vjudeu]

Well yes, you could in theory design and build your own ASICs.

That is quite important difference: in PoW in case of 51% attack, "you could in theory design and build your own ASICs". On the other hand, in PoS in the same case, when someone will have 51% of the coin supply (that can be unknown, because someone may have many wallets), it is impossible to compete, even in theory.

[BlackHatCoiner]

[...]

In PoW, there's a significant percentage of uncertainty. For example, you can't know for sure what will be your earnings in the future. You don't know if it's in favor of you to sell the ASICs or to keep them for yourself. On the other hand, in PoS, you know exactly the coins that suit you and you're not going to sell them unless one appears who's willing to pay you at least your future earnings.

Therefore, one owning the 1% of the computational power is more likely to vanish than one owning the 1% of all the coins in circulation.

Two: Not avoiding , but ignoring since in the earlier post I showed the majority of coins are PoS based. (Which means their developers share none of your concerns.)

This is false. They very much do, which proves you haven't actually read my writeup.

Vitalik, summing up that there's sacrifice in security:

Because of all the arguments above, we can safely conclude that this threat of an attacker building up a fork from arbitrarily long range is unfortunately fundamental, and in all non-degenerate implementations the issue is fatal to a proof of stake algorithm’s success in the proof of work security model. However, we can get around this fundamental barrier with a slight, but nevertheless fundamental, change in the security model.

Until then as a pronounced PoW supporter, don't be surprised that PoS developers/users simply ignore your concerns.

I don't care what they do. I created this thread to share my thoughts.

Kind of the same way all PoW supporters ignore that only 3 or 4 mining pool operators could 51% attack bitcoin at any time over the last 5 years

This problem exists in PoS systems too. There are much greater whales in Cardano than in Bitcoin.

No matter what happens with PoS, a world wide ban of PoW mining before 2030 is very probable, and that is a very real danger not imagined conjecture.

You can't realistically stop PoW, by banning it. There'll always be people who'll have access to computational power and therefore, can always use it to mine cryptocurrencies. Besides, isn't it already proven that the majority of the hash rate comes from renewable sources?

On the other hand, in PoS in the same case, when someone will have 51% of the coin supply (that can be unknown, because someone may have many wallets), it is impossible to compete, even in theory.

The attack doesn't have to retain; if one ever reversed a transaction x blocks deep, the game theory would have failed. The moment they did, Bitcoin would have lost all its value. Economically-wise, a 51% is easier in PoW, but that's unless there's a terrible wealth distribution which happens to be the case in most cryptos.

[NotATether]

No matter what happens with PoS, a world wide ban of PoW mining before 2030 is very probable, and that is a very real danger not imagined conjecture.

You can't realistically stop PoW, by banning it. There'll always be people who'll have access to computational power and therefore, can always use it to mine cryptocurrencies. Besides, isn't it already proven that the majority of the hash rate comes from renewable sources?

Energy prices going up => Electricity prices rising => Government announces planned power outages. Which are terrible because they wreak havoc on filesystems in Linux (non-RHEL) machines even if they are shut down cleanly and are backed with UPS'es (wrong freed block/inode counts galore  )

I have just recovered from the 3rd power outage today. It wasn't fun at all. I have no idea if there's a huge mining presence where I'm living now, but these kinds of governments are usually the first to take an action against PoW coins. A reduction in mining difficulty corresponding to a ban would almost certainly see BTC's price go down by some significant percent (we are talking between 20-30% depending on the severity of the ban).

It doesn't have to be PoS but any other proof that does not rely on using coins to influence difficulty can be dropped in-place of Bitcoin's PoW (such as my example proof of time) in a scheduled hardfork if the time comes.

[PrimeNumber7]

With PoW, a miner needs to make an investment in mining equipment for to mine the cryptocurrency. If that equipment cannot be used to mine that cryptocurrency, there is no other way for the equipment to create value for its owner. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the mining algorithm could be changed, and the mining equipment would become worthless.

Similarly, with PoS, a miner must "lock up" their coin in order to receive mining rewards. This is similar to a miner buying a miner, except without the mining manufacturer. If a PoS "miner" were to produce invalid blocks, their "locked up" stake would be lost. It would be up to the other PoS "miners" to determine if another miner is producing invalid blocks. If the miners as a whole were to act badly, the value of the coin would become worthless.

In both PoS and PoW, if the miners as a whole act badly, they will lose their investment. However, with PoW, the underlying coin will survive. This is an important distinction. If a large PoS miner were to successfully act badly, they could potentially enter into derraritive contracts to offset the coin they have "locked up" that is mining. This removes the requirement for a PoS miner to actually invest in their "mining" operation. OTOH, a PoW miner cannot easily hedge their investment if they intend to act badly while mining.

Maybe some algorithm that doesn't utilize cryptographic algorithms (I.e. energy) or tokens is what is necessary to create a low-energy PoW alternative that doesn't put your coins at financial risk (locking tokens I.e. POS).

For example - Proof of Time (I made this one up).

<>

If you remove the requirement that a miner/node needs to "work" in order to find a block, it will become trivial for a single entity to create an ~unlimited number of "miners" from a small number of computers.

Regarding your specific proposal, network connections among all nodes are not going to have a small enough latency for it to work. Also, it is not uncommon for different nodes to have a slightly different times for a variety of reasons. Bitcoin's implementation of PoW, for example, allows for nodes to have their time be by up to 2 hours.

Your proposal also made me think of another reason why PoS is inferior. With PoS, if you are connected to a set of nodes, you have no real way of knowing if you are receiving a valid copy of the blockchain. More specifically, if you receive two copies of the blockchain, you do not have a good way to validate which copy is correct. With PoW, if a node is sent two copies of the blockchain, it is trivial for the node to determine which version is valid because it can trivially calculate which blockchain has the greater amount of total work.

[NotATether]

If you remove the requirement that a miner/node needs to "work" in order to find a block, it will become trivial for a single entity to create an ~unlimited number of "miners" from a small number of computers.

A very large number of "VM" miners but not unlimited - this kind of proof is actually designed to push people to develop efficient VM and container images just for sleeping - but like ASICs there's probably a performance ceiling to how many you can run at a time. In fact it could be the long-term heir to ACISs, since it will cause CPU cores and threads to be hoarded instead of GPUs, FPGAs, and energy-eating ASIC miners, which are rendered useless for a proof of time or proof of idle model.

Regarding your specific proposal, network connections among all nodes are not going to have a small enough latency for it to work. Also, it is not uncommon for different nodes to have a slightly different times for a variety of reasons. Bitcoin's implementation of PoW, for example, allows for nodes to have their time be by up to 2 hours.

My parameters for sleep time and timeout are going to have to be tweaked to accommodate this.

With PoW, if a node is sent two copies of the blockchain, it is trivial for the node to determine which version is valid because it can trivially calculate which blockchain has the greater amount of total work.

I thought PoS also adhered to the "longest chain" principle?

[LegendaryK]

With PoW, if a node is sent two copies of the blockchain, it is trivial for the node to determine which version is valid because it can trivially calculate which blockchain has the greater amount of total work.

I thought PoS also adhered to the "longest chain" principle?

PoS security is the Longest Chain with the Highest Difficulty.
Difficulty is determined in some cases by Number of Staking coins * Age of coins since last staked
PoS implementations are incredibility versatile, so different coins may have other variables that determine difficulty factoring in pool variables.
Note: Some PoS coins ignore coin age altogether. It all depends on the specific code design for a specific coin.

[pooya87]

Another issue with PoS is lack of commitment.

A PoW miner has to plan ahead, crunch numbers, prepare the operation, install ASICs and cooling, etc. and in the end they can't just dump their ASICs any time they want and buy it back later if they changed their mind. If someone starts mining something like bitcoin, specially with large operations, they commit to it. "In sickness and in health"!

In case of PoS they have no commitment whatsoever. They can buy the coins and become a big stakeholder with virtually one click and at any moment they can dump it and get out. For example if the PoS coin starts dumping they can sell it immediately effectively abandoning the coin.

[LegendaryK]

Another issue with PoS is lack of commitment.

A PoW miner has to plan ahead, crunch numbers, prepare the operation, install ASICs and cooling, etc. and in the end they can't just dump their ASICs any time they want and buy it back later if they changed their mind. If someone starts mining something like bitcoin, specially with large operations, they commit to it. "In sickness and in health"!
 Until the power company turns off their power for non-payment or the Banks seize their asics from not keeping up on the loan that purchased the asics.
ie: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2019/12/05/canadian-government-assisted-bitcoin-miner-files-for-bankruptcy-owing-millions/

In case of PoS they have no commitment whatsoever. They can buy the coins and become a big stakeholder with virtually one click and at any moment they can dump it and get out. For example if the PoS coin starts dumping they can sell it immediately effectively abandoning the coin.
If they purchase a huge amount they drove up the price per coin and if they dump, they are guaranteed a loss, and someone else would just buy the dump coins for cheap. Not really much different than bitcoin there, $62K down to $35k, now back to $45K. *Note PoW coin dumping does lower PoW miners profit %*

Or to rephrase
Staking PoS is Versatile and fluid while mining PoW is rigid, and extremely wasteful.  

Example,
China Bans PoW mining or PoS staking

PoW miners face enormous costs and head aches in moving your PoW operation, not to mention the hardship of getting an industrial energy contract in the new country.
Takes weeks especially, if caught off guard about the ban.

PoS stakers can just move their laptop, or move their coins to a pool outside the country, at almost zero cost and within 2 hours all finished.

However if they wished, a PoS Staker can hide in any country and never be discovered since the energy efficiently hides them from all electric utilities.
PoW miners however, draw more power than residential use, and the electric utilities can pinpoint their location at a minute's notice.

Another example:
Say you are in the Ukraine, and a missile just destroyed your warehouse full of PoW mining ASICS.  You are officially now done and bankrupt.
However say your PoS Staking Laptop was destroyed.
PoS Stakers can go buy any cheap $500 laptop, restore their coins from their encrypted offsite backup and be back up and running in 12 hours.

In survival situations, those that are versatile and adaptable are better able to survive than those unwilling or unable to adapt to a changing environment.

Production of ASICS is even wasteful,
ASICS usually only mine a singular PoW algo , requiring purchase of a different asics for other PoW algo.
The useful life spans of ASICS are only 1 to 2 years before you are best to turn it into scrap and have to buy all new ones.
Any Laptop running multiple PoS coins, can run a full 7 years or longer before needing to be replaced.
Or a PoS staker could use a VPS or a staking pool in a friendly country.

[pooya87]

Or to rephrase
Staking PoS is Versatile and fluid while mining PoW is rigid, and extremely wasteful. 

That is not rephrasing, that is called twisting my words.

Example,
China Bans PoW mining or PoS staking

China bans what is popular because nobody is using an unknown altcoin that is created and exists only on exchanges for trading. China bans a currency they can not control and could potentially undermine the same cryptocurrency their central banking system is working on.

PoS stakers can just move their laptop, or move their coins to a pool outside the country, at almost zero cost and within 2 hours all finished.

If there is a ban, it is trivial for the government to force the person to hand over all the PoS coins they own or face prosecution. How long it takes to move it elsewhere is meaningless.

Another example:
Say you are in the Ukraine, and a missile just destroyed your warehouse full of PoW mining ASICS.  You are officially now done and bankrupt.
However say your PoS Staking Laptop was destroyed.
PoS Stakers can go buy any cheap $500 laptop, restore their coins from their encrypted offsite backup and be back up and running in 12 hours.

If we are talking about hypothetical situations, then there is no need for a missile, a simple free malware can destroy the PoS staker's funds without any way to recover it.

[LegendaryK]

If there is a ban, it is trivial for the government to force the person to hand over all the PoS or PoW coins they own or face prosecution. How long it takes to move it elsewhere is meaningless.

So you will be handing over your bitcoins instead of facing prosecution. How very agreeable of you.
You missed the part about storing the PoS coins in friendly country.
PoS coins can stake as easy on a laptop in the house or on a VPS or an exchange pool in a crypto friendly country.
Tell those PoW miners how meaningless those thousands of Dollars they lost from downtime and shipping cost and new location costs,
I imagine they would disagree with you.

Which is easier
hiding staking PoS coins or a warehouse full of ASICS drawing the power of 15000 homes from the grid?

Another example:
Say you are in the Ukraine, and a missile just destroyed your warehouse full of PoW mining ASICS.  You are officially now done and bankrupt.
However say your PoS Staking Laptop was destroyed.
PoS Stakers can go buy any cheap $500 laptop, restore their coins from their encrypted offsite backup and be back up and running in 12 hours.

If we are talking about hypothetical situations, then there is no need for a missile, a simple free malware can destroy the PoS staker's funds without any way to recover it.

You kind of missed the point of encrypted offsite backups.
As a PoW supporter you should at least know how to backup your private keys, why do you think such a simple thing is beyond a PoS staker.
Note: Well Designed PoS coins stake but won't allow sends without the encrypted passwords, and what simpletons don't protect their system from malware and viruses.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The core principle of having a cryptocurrency is to avoid central points of failure; in other words, it's decentralization. As I've already mentioned:

The point of it is decentralization. There's literally no other reason to distribute a database if it's not to avoid the central point of failure. If this isn't your project's priority, then you're doing things wrong.

If the mechanism that is used centralizes the economy, then the system is faulty. I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but in the long term, it's going to be problematic. We've already covered that PoW decentralizes the economy due to uncertainty and mitigation of voting's unequal distribution. It has already been underlined that it's resistant to subjectivity opposed to PoS.

In which of the above do you disagree?

PoS coins can stake as easy on a laptop in the house or on a VPS or an exchange pool in a crypto friendly country.

Which introduces trust, a problem that is meant to be solved. That's the purpose of a cryptocurrency after all.

[LegendaryK]

The core principle of having a cryptocurrency is to avoid central points of failure; in other words, it's decentralization. As I've already mentioned:

The point of it is decentralization. There's literally no other reason to distribute a database if it's not to avoid the central point of failure. If this isn't your project's priority, then you're doing things wrong.

If the mechanism that is used centralizes the economy, then the system is faulty. I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but in the long term, it's going to be problematic. We've already covered that PoW decentralizes the economy due to uncertainty and mitigation of voting's unequal distribution. It has already been underlined that it's resistant to subjectivity opposed to PoS.

In which of the above do you disagree?

PoS coins can stake as easy on a laptop in the house or on a VPS or an exchange pool in a crypto friendly country.

Which introduces trust, a problem that is meant to be solved. That's the purpose of a cryptocurrency after all.

You are trusting only 3 to 4 mining pool operators for the last five years to not 51% attack bitcoin.
Yes Miners can switch pools , but they only know to do so after an attack, so trusting the pool operators you are.
So I would say PoW bitcoin supporters are more trusting than any PoS supporter.

When the rich became the only ones that could afford warehouses full of ASICS, bitcoin decentralization died.
Ask yourself how many blocks did you mine today, this month, this year, security of bitcoin is in the hands of the elite, same as banking regulations.

https://www.investopedia.com/tech/are-large-mining-pools-bad-cryptocurrencies/

Cons of Mining Pools:  Centralization and Control

Ethereum is slowly transitioning from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Under proof-of-stake, mining pools are not as profitable, but staking is—in brief, staking is holding your cryptocurrency so that it can be used as a transaction validator. The theory is that proof-of-stake will reduce energy consumption and decentralize cryptocurrency again.

[BlackHatCoiner]

[...]

You didn't answer to my question. I asked you if it's desirable to have a structure that brings centralization over time. Your response has to do with the "gathering" of the hash rate while it's been repeatedly told you that it's a false way to detect faulty behavior.

By the same reasoning, I also trust the government for not deciding to allocate the required resources to destroy Bitcoin. It's a game theory.

[LegendaryK]

[...]

You didn't answer to my question. I asked you if it's desirable to have a structure that brings centralization over time. Your response has to do with the "gathering" of the hash rate while it's been repeatedly told you that it's a false way to detect faulty behavior.

By the same reasoning, I also trust the government for not deciding to allocate the required resources to destroy Bitcoin. It's a game theory.

Sure I did, you just don't like the answer.
Bitcoin PoW Mining Pools are Centralized.
Proof of Stake is far more decentralized than PoW mining pools, which is one reason why ethereum is switching.

https://cardanians-io.medium.com/cardano-pos-vs-bitcoin-pow-a14aa6c746b5

Cardano will be more decentralized than Bitcoin.
Decentralization is not only about protocol but also about democratic governance but let’s focus on the networking level in the article

[n0nce]

I can't believe some people are still thinking that Proof of Stake is the future, just because it spends less energy than Proof of Work, and it fits the green narrative propaganda.

I think this is what is behind the recent push to get bitcoin to convert to PoS. There is not a technical rational behind wanting to switch. There is a desire to implement the green new deal.

If they really cared about the environment, they (Ethereum guys etc) should build mining plants that run on renewables or maybe even develop something that ordinary people can buy and run their miners off-grid. Or something else entirely; what I'm trying to say is that there are much better ways to work on a PoW cryptocurrency to make it impact climate less.

To me, this just seems like a cash grab. The founders know exactly that they have a large amount of coins, while probably not running a single miner. With their greed increasing, they want more coins, so now they're trying to convince people to sell their mining rigs and pump more money into founders' pockets by acquiring large amounts of coin and 'staking' it.

Don't you choose a pool to stake?

No.

In ETH you do, if you don't have enough coin to stake by yourself (which many don't, I suspect).

Two: Not avoiding , but ignoring since in the earlier post I showed the majority of coins are PoS based. (Which means their developers share none of your concerns.)

To be honest; it's great for Bitcoin that when ETH switches to PoS, it will be the only remaining, relevant PoW coin. It will have no competition at all at that point.
The move to switch ETH to PoS is kind of a way to admit they lost, that a 'flippening' that they so so wished for for years, is not going to happen and that they will just compete with the lot of PoS coins since they're easier rivals.

No matter what happens with PoS, a world wide ban of PoW mining before 2030 is very probable, and that is a very real danger not imagined conjecture.

You're very worried about governments, aren't ya? This, my friends, is PoS mindset. PoW people don't care about 'probable' 'worldwide' 'bans'. Yes, I put everything in quotes since you and I know it will not happen. Besides the fact that there will always be countries not banning it; the power of decentralization is that governments simply can't know if you're running a miner in your basement.
While they can ban large mining plants, that will be great for Bitcoin, since the gear will be sold to ordinary people at low prices (demand < supply) and decentralization of hash power will reach all time highs!

[...]

In PoW, there's a significant percentage of uncertainty. For example, you can't know for sure what will be your earnings in the future. You don't know if it's in favor of you to sell the ASICs or to keep them for yourself. On the other hand, in PoS, you know exactly the coins that suit you and you're not going to sell them unless one appears who's willing to pay you at least your future earnings.

Essentially, and that's a point I don't hear often, PoS coins are 'money printing machines'. You put in a certain amount and you're guaranteed to get out a larger amount.
As always, when someone proposes a money printing machine, you should be cautious. Especially asking: 'if you have a money printing machine, why are you selling it to me and not using it yourself?'.
In PoS, that's exactly what happens though. Sure, the developers allow you to print money as well (limited though; certain minimum of stake etc), but due to them holding the majority, they basically have the largest amount of 'money printers' out of the box. Because why wouldn't they.

Vitalik, summing up that there's sacrifice in security:

Because of all the arguments above, we can safely conclude that this threat of an attacker building up a fork from arbitrarily long range is unfortunately fundamental, and in all non-degenerate implementations the issue is fatal to a proof of stake algorithm’s success in the proof of work security model. However, we can get around this fundamental barrier with a slight, but nevertheless fundamental, change in the security model.

This is hilarious and simultaneously the biggest red flag I've ever seen for anyone investing in cryptocurrencies. If your new system doesn't meet the security requirements, you do not change the security requirements! What is wrong with people?

A very large number of "VM" miners but not unlimited - this kind of proof is actually designed to push people to develop efficient VM and container images just for sleeping - but like ASICs there's probably a performance ceiling to how many you can run at a time. In fact it could be the long-term heir to ACISs, since it will cause CPU cores and threads to be hoarded instead of GPUs, FPGAs, and energy-eating ASIC miners, which are rendered useless for a proof of time or proof of idle model.

That's an interesting idea; however, ASICs also already push for efficiency for obvious reasons. If the algorithm works, you will get people (companies) building specialized computers with the bare minimum required computing power to run a shitton of VMs, which again run extremely stripped-down and minimal OSes which will do nothing else than running your mining program; since they consume so little electricity, people will just fill warehouses with them, and... well, energy consumption will add up and you kind of get to the same point you're at now.

I spent a bit of time looking into Chia mining (proof of space and time) and while the cryptographic idea is that 'computation is free', in reality it's not. In practice, Chia mining rigs are computing new shares all the time on tons of threads and cores, which eats a lot of energy.

[NotATether]

A very large number of "VM" miners but not unlimited - this kind of proof is actually designed to push people to develop efficient VM and container images just for sleeping - but like ASICs there's probably a performance ceiling to how many you can run at a time. In fact it could be the long-term heir to ACISs, since it will cause CPU cores and threads to be hoarded instead of GPUs, FPGAs, and energy-eating ASIC miners, which are rendered useless for a proof of time or proof of idle model.

That's an interesting idea; however, ASICs also already push for efficiency for obvious reasons. If the algorithm works, you will get people (companies) building specialized computers with the bare minimum required computing power to run a shitton of VMs, which again run extremely stripped-down and minimal OSes which will do nothing else than running your mining program; since they consume so little electricity, people will just fill warehouses with them, and... well, energy consumption will add up and you kind of get to the same point you're at now.

Not really. CPUs have a significantly lower clock frequency they step into when they are idle, turning off things like turbo boost as well. A single ASIC uses somewhere in the ballpark of 1-2kW. A low-power desktop PSU draws around 300-500W. As higher-wattage PSUs are more expensive than lower watt ones, and the devices manufactured are just going to be used for "sleep-mining" with no peripherals connected to the PCI board other than CPU, Ethernet, and perhaps a serial port. So they will save money on parts by using low-power items that don't draw that many watts. The form factor of these "sleep-miners" shouldn't be too much smaller than an ASIC, so datacenters can be filled with slightly more of these miners than ASICs and ultimately the datacenter draws less megawatts of power - which make all the difference.

I spent a bit of time looking into Chia mining (proof of space and time) and while the cryptographic idea is that 'computation is free', in reality it's not. In practice, Chia mining rigs are computing new shares all the time on tons of threads and cores, which eats a lot of energy.

Chia is actually getting people kicked off of datacenters because it's taking a toll on their hard disks. So that's not exactly how you want to introduce an energy-efficient mining algo.

[n0nce]

A very large number of "VM" miners but not unlimited - this kind of proof is actually designed to push people to develop efficient VM and container images just for sleeping - but like ASICs there's probably a performance ceiling to how many you can run at a time. In fact it could be the long-term heir to ACISs, since it will cause CPU cores and threads to be hoarded instead of GPUs, FPGAs, and energy-eating ASIC miners, which are rendered useless for a proof of time or proof of idle model.

That's an interesting idea; however, ASICs also already push for efficiency for obvious reasons. If the algorithm works, you will get people (companies) building specialized computers with the bare minimum required computing power to run a shitton of VMs, which again run extremely stripped-down and minimal OSes which will do nothing else than running your mining program; since they consume so little electricity, people will just fill warehouses with them, and... well, energy consumption will add up and you kind of get to the same point you're at now.

Not really. CPUs have a significantly lower clock frequency they step into when they are idle, turning off things like turbo boost as well. A single ASIC uses somewhere in the ballpark of 1-2kW. A low-power desktop PSU draws around 300-500W. As higher-wattage PSUs are more expensive than lower watt ones, and the devices manufactured are just going to be used for "sleep-mining" with no peripherals connected to the PCI board other than CPU, Ethernet, and perhaps a serial port. So they will save money on parts by using low-power items that don't draw that many watts. The form factor of these "sleep-miners" shouldn't be too much smaller than an ASIC, so datacenters can be filled with slightly more of these miners than ASICs and ultimately the datacenter draws less megawatts of power - which make all the difference.

I'll run the numbers; just ballpark calculations.
A single general-purpose motherboard with a single extremely multithreaded CPU and a PSU costs a whole lot less than a 2kW miner, right? A Ryzen 5950X costs around 600€, so with motherboard and PSU under one grand. Instead of a $10k S19, you could get 10 of these, then. They have 16 cores and 32 threads, so they should be well suited. In idle, it pulls just 54W, so at the wall, with RAM and everything, it will be 60W. Ten of these will be 600 watts, instead of 1 or 2 kW.
Definitely an improvement, but not the order of magnitude type improvements that one might wish for when thinking about 'idle mining', am I right?

Edit: It's also not about physical size really; if you're concerned that 10 miners take up more space than 1, they will probably put them closer together (less heat issues with low-power miners) and / or build more facilities.

I spent a bit of time looking into Chia mining (proof of space and time) and while the cryptographic idea is that 'computation is free', in reality it's not. In practice, Chia mining rigs are computing new shares all the time on tons of threads and cores, which eats a lot of energy.

Chia is actually getting people kicked off of datacenters because it's taking a toll on their hard disks. So that's not exactly how you want to introduce an energy-efficient mining algo.

Yeah right; I just wanted to show another existing example of a mining technology that at first, on paper, the cryptography looks good and it seems it should barely consume any electricity, but ends up pulling lots of power in the end anyway.

[NotATether]

~

I'll run the numbers; just ballpark calculations.
A single general-purpose motherboard with a single extremely multithreaded CPU and a PSU costs a whole lot less than a 2kW miner, right? A Ryzen 5950X costs around 600€, so with motherboard and PSU under one grand. Instead of a $10k S19, you could get 10 of these, then. They have 16 cores and 32 threads, so they should be well suited. In idle, it pulls just 54W, so at the wall, with RAM and everything, it will be 60W. Ten of these will be 600 watts, instead of 1 or 2 kW.
Definitely an improvement, but not the order of magnitude type improvements that one might wish for when thinking about 'idle mining', am I right?

Edit: It's also not about physical size really; if you're concerned that 10 miners take up more space than 1, they will probably put them closer together (less heat issues with low-power miners) and / or build more facilities.

In Proof of Sleep/Time/Idle (I really want to use Sleep but I resigned to the fact that the acronym would get confused with Proof of Stake) we don't need CPUs that fast because the cores will be asleep the vast majority of the time, even when you take into account the dozens of containers running in the background - ultimately, make the sleep time long enough and they will collectively yield some processor time to idleness (there's a memory limit to max #containers).

So instead of a Ryzen or a Threadripper, old Opterons and Xeons that draw less power would be more favored. Clock speed doesn't matter at all here, just the number of threads - which you can quickly multiply by accumulating several cheap processors. There will be no motherboard or PSU shortage because there are several vendors who make generic parts for servers & server CPUs. Theoretically you could design a chassis that squishes together multiple machines in the same chassis, but that would suck up too much money in R&D - It would be far better for manufacturers to simply use horizontal 1U/2U/3U etc. racks instead.

So as long as the servers stacked vertically (or horizontally) on each other draw less than 1/3 the power of ASICS, energy is saved, assuming three of these take as much space as a single ASIC. This should be the case in practice considering the enormous power that popular modern miners such as Antminer S17 draw (over 2kW in the case of S17).

I'm not sure how many old xeons I could buy with 1 grand (including associated memory sticks, HDDs and racks) but I'm pretty confident it's going to assemble more than 10 servers. If we get mobos with extra sockets that pushes the core count up even more.

[n0nce]

I'm not sure how many old xeons I could buy with 1 grand (including associated memory sticks, HDDs and racks) but I'm pretty confident it's going to assemble more than 10 servers. If we get mobos with extra sockets that pushes the core count up even more.

But then didn't I even give more optimistic numbers than what you're suggesting? Sure, old chips might draw a bit less, but not by a lot. By them being significantly cheaper than the latest and greatest Ryzen, you can get a ton more of them at the same cost of a specific ASIC, so even if they draw a tiny bit less, in total the consumption will go even higher than the 600W/$1k I suggested.

This page suggests a Xeon E5-2620 pulls over 50W in idle and it only has 6c/12t. But of course significantly cheaper than a 5950X.
https://www.servethehome.com/dual-intel-xeon-e5-2620-v1-v2-v3-compared/intel-xeon-e5-2620-v1-v2-v3-power-consumption/

It's on Amazon for $80. So instead of paying around $1k for 16 cores, the same money here would get you 7 chips (with hardware needed) with each 50W, in total 350W. Multiply by ten to reach $10, it's 3.5kW.
Nothing gained compared to ASIC? Not sure...

Seems to me like getting lots of old multicore chips would be the best strategy to make money here; but it would push energy consumption since you can get many and less efficient ones (32nm and other limitations).

[NotATether]

I'm not sure how many old xeons I could buy with 1 grand (including associated memory sticks, HDDs and racks) but I'm pretty confident it's going to assemble more than 10 servers. If we get mobos with extra sockets that pushes the core count up even more.

But then didn't I even give more optimistic numbers than what you're suggesting? Sure, old chips might draw a bit less, but not by a lot. By them being significantly cheaper than the latest and greatest Ryzen, you can get a ton more of them at the same cost of a specific ASIC, so even if they draw a tiny bit less, in total the consumption will go even higher than the 600W/$1k I suggested.

That's a good point. For a new algo to get widely adopted, there has to be a resource surplus that can be used. With PoW it used to be various ASIC models and electricity supplies.

You wouldn't want to utilize an already scarce resource such as GPUs, because that will cause vendor backlash (nvidia crypto mining throttling comes to mind).

Nobody has a need for old CPUs and servers so there's a surplus of them, and that's the only reason why I suggested them.

For something like this to work, there would have to be a new system design where all the parts use less power. But this drifts into ASIC-like territory, and particularly with things such as CPU dies, are hard to manufacture because foundries such as TSMC impose quotas on how much you can order (built-in scarcity => less adoption). The last thing a new algo would need are its custom miners getting delivered after 3-6 months, this doesn't make them any better than PoW ASICS in that regard.

[n0nce]

Nobody has a need for old CPUs and servers so there's a surplus of them, and that's the only reason why I suggested them.

I mean, it's not a bad idea, but if the concern is power consumption, in many cases in the end the lower-power devices cost less so you can buy more of them and end up consuming the same amount. Pretty sure it's also the case with GPUs and other mining techniques that are supposedly better than Bitcoin ASICs.

For something like this to work, there would have to be a new system design where all the parts use less power. But this drifts into ASIC-like territory, and particularly with things such as CPU dies, are hard to manufacture because foundries such as TSMC impose quotas on how much you can order (built-in scarcity => less adoption).

Yes, of course, ASICs are the most energy efficient electronic device you can make to solve a task.

[NotATether]

Yes, of course, ASICs are the most energy efficient electronic device you can make to solve a task.

I need to find a wall somewhere to hang this quote on. 

[garlonicon]

When it comes to Proof of Stake, there are some networks where we have "validators", so that only some selected nodes can mine. So, my question is: why those developers create their own coins out of thin air, instead of creating two way peg-in with BTC? Because it is possible to have a federation, a "signet sidechain", just some Bitcoin address that can represent the whole status of their chain, and then it is possible to convert between BTC and ALT in 1:1 ratio, just by creating a Bitcoin transaction!

Taproot even make things easier, because Schnorr signatures can reduce any N-of-N multisig into a single key. So, if there are some "validators", then they can join their keys, create a Taproot address, and mine by moving coins to and from Bitcoin, creating any altcoin blocks by merged mining (or rather: merged signing in this case). Users are going to trade that altcoins for Bitcoin anyway, so why not batch all of those transactions as a part of the protocol?

[MrSolo]

I might not be the best PoS enthusiast but i'm definitely not a fan of Pow, today a new bill was introduced into the EU parliament named (MiCA) legislation, the bill lost votes but it had 28 votes, this bill says that All tokens to stay Legal must move away from the high energy consumption it currently has, I suggest all the PoW people to stop dragging BTC to the mud because of their pride and ruin the whole cryptocurrency movement. this is a dark point in the history for crypto people. Energy isn't free and Bitcoin uses lots of it. and we are playing Russian roulette because bills like MiCA will keep coming and oneday one will pass and it would be too late.

[pooya87]

this is a dark point in the history for crypto people. Energy isn't free and Bitcoin uses lots of it. and we are playing Russian roulette because bills like MiCA will keep coming and oneday one will pass and it would be too late.

No offense but your post is very naive.

For starters the point of bitcoin was to create a decentralized, censorship resistant currency. If such bills in such a small part of the world were to be able to stop bitcoin, that would have meant bitcoin's failure regardless of its mining protocol.

Secondly you think the issue that EU has with bitcoin is energy related. It is not, not even a little bit. They are using it because the FUD works and it is easier to make people believe that than telling them they hate bitcoin. Their issue with bitcoin is a decentralized related one. To put simply, they can't control bitcoin so they want to ban it. It has been like this ever since bitcoin started gaining traction.

[LegendaryK]

I might not be the best PoS enthusiast but i'm definitely not a fan of Pow, today a new bill was introduced into the EU parliament named (MiCA) legislation, the bill lost votes but it had 28 votes, this bill says that All tokens to stay Legal must move away from the high energy consumption it currently has, I suggest all the PoW people to stop dragging BTC to the mud because of their pride and ruin the whole cryptocurrency movement. this is a dark point in the history for crypto people. Energy isn't free and Bitcoin uses lots of it. and we are playing Russian roulette because bills like MiCA will keep coming and oneday one will pass and it would be too late.

Your Post is reasonable, but you won't get a logical reply from illogical people that support PoW flawed design.

Just do your crypto trading in preparation for what you see as the conclusion of the folly know as PoW mining.
At some point in the future, a worldwide PoW ban will be in effect, because if they don't, the miners greed will destroy their power grids.
Destruction of a power grid is not fud, it is a massive death toll for the citizens of any country dumb enough to not ban it.

Only BTC & LTC are refusing to evolve , so take that into consideration during your trading.

Ethereum and the rest of the coins will be unaffected by POW Bans, because they are willing to Evolve to a better system.
Even Doge is moving to PoS.
https://www.binance.com/en/news/top/6912062

It is officially confirmed that Dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocoin, will now migrate from POW to the POS model.
It is because the POS offers an unmatched advantage over the POW model
It was confirmed by Vitalik Buterin, who said he is helping the Dogecoin Foundation migrate the doge consensus method to PoS.
Buterin also pointed out that most major crypto assets are slowly migrating to the POS model.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is the main driving force behind ETH 2.0 update.
The major update aims to migrate the second-largest crypto asset in the world from the current proof-of-work (PoW) model to proof of participation (PoS).
Other significant crypto assets are also contemplating making the switch.
Last year the Dogecoin Foundation, the organization responsible for developing DOGE, had already reported that it was counting on Buterin’s help to make the migration. Buterin, in an interview with UpOnly, confirmed the news that he was involved in this project, saying that virtually all cryptocurrencies will follow the same steps.
Buterin added that all major cryptocurrencies are switching to Proof-of-Stake and Dogecoin’s plans are more advanced, and Zcash’s plans are more advanced.

[n0nce]

Only BTC & LTC are refusing to evolve , so take that into consideration during your trading.

Amongst other reasons, one of the issues any other cryptocurrency has is that they have known founders and developers, where governments can put pressure. They are at much higher risk, because faces are known. Furthermore, for example in the case of Ethereum, the main motivation for the switch is not the environment or some government bill, but rather the fact that Vitalik and his friends hold a large part of the coins and with PoS that will grant them full control over the network.
Doesn't sound that advanced to me.

With PoS you go actually a step backwards. These people make it sound as if PoS was more advanced, since it came after PoW. That's like saying Litecoin is more advanced than Bitcoin, because it was started after BTC. Nothing indicates me that PoW is a 'more advanced' (this implies 'better') system. We had enough good posts in this thread explaining why.

One last point: a really advanced and smart cryptocurrency shouldn't care about a government bill. The whole sense of cryptocurrencies is that they can't be censored, no matter how much anyone wants it. And that they can't be stopped or shut down, no matter who wants that. This is the power of decentralization. If you think bills like this can / should influence Bitcoin, you haven't understood decentralization.

[MrSolo]

Your Post is reasonable, but you won't get a logical reply from illogical people that support PoW flawed design.

Just do your crypto trading in preparation for what you see as the conclusion of the folly know as PoW mining.
At some point in the future, a worldwide PoW ban will be in effect, because if they don't, the miners greed will destroy their power grids.
Destruction of a power grid is not fud, it is a massive death toll for the citizens of any country dumb enough to not ban it.

Only BTC & LTC are refusing to evolve , so take that into consideration during your trading.

Ethereum and the rest of the coins will be unaffected by POW Bans, because they are willing to Evolve to a better system.
Even Doge is moving to PoS.
https://www.binance.com/en/news/top/6912062

It is officially confirmed that Dogecoin, the meme-based cryptocoin, will now migrate from POW to the POS model.
It is because the POS offers an unmatched advantage over the POW model
It was confirmed by Vitalik Buterin, who said he is helping the Dogecoin Foundation migrate the doge consensus method to PoS.
Buterin also pointed out that most major crypto assets are slowly migrating to the POS model.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is the main driving force behind ETH 2.0 update.
The major update aims to migrate the second-largest crypto asset in the world from the current proof-of-work (PoW) model to proof of participation (PoS).
Other significant crypto assets are also contemplating making the switch.
Last year the Dogecoin Foundation, the organization responsible for developing DOGE, had already reported that it was counting on Buterin’s help to make the migration. Buterin, in an interview with UpOnly, confirmed the news that he was involved in this project, saying that virtually all cryptocurrencies will follow the same steps.
Buterin added that all major cryptocurrencies are switching to Proof-of-Stake and Dogecoin’s plans are more advanced, and Zcash’s plans are more advanced.

I think in the future we will look back at this moment either in sorrow or as a moment of change and admitting that pow is like coal and we either change with the times or be left behind, bitcoin holders have a moral responsibility to be aware of the impact mining does to grids.

[n0nce]

I think in the future we will look back at this moment either in sorrow or as a moment of change and admitting that pow is like coal and we either change with the times or be left behind, bitcoin holders have a moral responsibility to be aware of the impact mining does to grids.

Sorry, this had be done...

[tromp]

one of the issues any other cryptocurrency has is that they have known founders and developers

Most Bitcoin developers are known; see the bottom "credits" section of [1] for instance.
An unknown founder is not unique to bitcoin either [2].

[1] https://bitcoincore.org/en/releases/22.0/

[2] https://docs.grin.mw/about-grin/story/

[BlackHatCoiner]

Your Post is reasonable, but you won't get a logical reply from illogical people that support PoW flawed design.

What does it sound more "logical", as you say, to you? Rewarding someone with new coins if they prove that they did a costly process or rewarding someone with new coins if they prove they own coins? Honestly, besides the arguments that have been numerous times told, what sounds more rational to you?

If I was a person who didn't know what's a cryptocurrency, I'd suggest that the latter lacks in some parts, even if I couldn't indicate where exactly. My common sense would say that there's something problematic.

[n0nce]

one of the issues any other cryptocurrency has is that they have known founders and developers

Most Bitcoin developers are known; see the bottom "credits" section of [1] for instance.
An unknown founder is not unique to bitcoin either [2].

I know; though it's harder to put pressure on a project by going for individual independent developers. A Core dev could just stop working on Bitcoin (it happened already in the past) to stop being harassed from government / politics.
Compared to a project that has a designated 'head' like Vitalik, if one such developer has to stop its engagement with the project due to political pressure, it will have little to no effect on the project and the valuation. That's why I believe projects without 'known founder' and without a very centralized, known team (I don't mean a GitHub contributor list - I mean e.g. a company which is behind some cryptocurrencies), are more resiliant to censorship and political influence.
Since most cryptocurrencies do have a fixed team behind it, it's super easy for politicians to put pressure on those companies / CEOs / founders.

It doesn't mean that all coins without a known founder are definitely good and definitely secure and all that, though. An implication doesn't have to be an equivalence..

[LegendaryK]

Your Post is reasonable, but you won't get a logical reply from illogical people that support PoW flawed design.

What does it sound more "logical", as you say, to you? Rewarding someone with new coins if they prove that they did a costly process or rewarding someone with new coins if they prove they own coins? Honestly, besides the arguments that have been numerous times told, what sounds more rational to you?

If I was a person who didn't know what's a cryptocurrency, I'd suggest that the latter lacks in some parts, even if I couldn't indicate where exactly. My common sense would say that there's something problematic.

Common Sense would be listening to repeated warnings and at least preparing a plan of action to protect btc investors.
Bitcoin PoW supporters deny all PoW ban warning as fud, as you can see from the pic by n0nce.

Kind of like the claims that the China PoW mining ban was fud and would never happen, until it did.  

[n0nce]

Kind of like the claims that the China PoW ban was fud and would never happen, until it did. 

First of all, China is a dictatorship so anything can happen, and happen quickly - while in democracies the population must (directly or indirectly) decide about something such as a PoW ban.
Secondly, this ban showed us very nicely how censorship-resistant Bitcoin is. The hashrate dropped a lot and nothing changed. Difficulty adjusted, miners moved around the world, started back up, all working as designed.
Therefore, I'm not concerned a single bit about PoW bans honestly.

Furthermore, bans of industrial mining (how would you stop home mining?) wouldn't even be that bad. Satoshi's original whitepaper intended mining to take place in everybody's home (on CPU back then).
It would be worse for the environment though, since industrial miners tend to have access to cleaner energy than normal households. Industrial miners also put less stress on the grid than if every household suddenly had a 1-3kW miner running 24/7, because they don't have their own power lines.

So, for the sake of the energy grid and the climate, both of which you seem to care a lot about, it would be better to let these mining companies do their thing.
Either way, Bitcoin doesn't care where the hashpower comes from and it can't even be stopped if a country as large as China bans it. That should be proof enough, isn't it?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Common Sense would be listening to repeated warnings and at least preparing a plan of action to protect btc investors.

There have also been warnings that Bitcoin is only used by criminals, that it's solely a speculative bubble, that it's a ponzi, that the government will shut it down, that it fails as a currency, that it can't scale, that is controlled by China, that it can be killed by quantum computers etc., and I've concluded that all these are stated without further study of the subject.

You say that China forbid mining; I say, why not going one step further and forbid its use too? Maybe even take the heads of the disobedient? That should definitely discourage the rest do so. Why should the people use a currency that decentralizes the economy when their political regime requires the exact opposite? Trust to the pigs.

So, here's my counterexample to your assertion: What if China decides to ban every cryptocurrency, including the PoS ones, as a cause that it's a threat to (their) people?

Satoshi's original whitepaper intended mining to take place in everybody's home (on CPU back then).

True, but they also stated it wouldn't work that way in the long term.

For now, everyone just runs a full network node.

I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less.  It will reach an equilibrium where it's not worth it for more nodes to join in.  The rest will be lightweight clients, which could be millions.

At equilibrium size, many nodes will be server farms with one or two network nodes that feed the rest of the farm over a LAN.

[pooya87]

bitcoin holders have a moral responsibility to be aware of the impact mining does to grids.

It's funny how you guys keep mentioning China PoW ban and only see the ban not the afterwards. This supposed "impact on the grids" never existed as it is evident from China and how their energy crisis didn't even change. In fact the stats suggest after China banned bitcoin mining the electricity usage kept on rising instead of having even a small drop!

Basically when it comes to this news you only ate the FUD and didn't even analyze what happened. For example the fact that the hashrate drop was very small and didn't change anything apart from affecting newbies who believed the FUD to panic sell and cause a crash that led to a bigger drop in hashrate than the ban itself!

The meme @n0nce posted is very apt.

[LegendaryK]

Kind of like the claims that the China PoW ban was fud and would never happen, until it did.  

a PoW ban.
miners moved around the world, started back up, all working as designed.
Therefore, I'm not concerned a single bit about PoW bans honestly.

(how would you stop home mining?)  
Industrial miners also put less stress on the grid


Either way, Bitcoin doesn't care where the hashpower comes from and it can't even be stopped if a country as large as China bans it.
That should be proof enough, isn't it?

You rambled a little, so I cleaned it up for the reply.

China did ban PoW mining.    Fact
PoW Miners did leave China.  Fact
You are not concerned,
1. You did not have to relocate.
2. You did not live on the same grid, where the PoW miners drove up the price of electricity for everyone on the specific grid not just other miners.
3. You did not suffer rolling blackouts during the cold/heat because of the PoW miners using excessive amounts of energy compared to the local populace.
4. You think calling everything FUD that is bad Public relations for BTC , will help make you rich. (Good Luck with that.)

Last Fact for you Governments won't care what you think when their energy resources are being exhausted and power grids are in danger of collapse.
Which is why their will be more PoW Bans , and more moving of miners, until they run out of places to move.
Will it take 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, or longer for a worldwide PoW ban, but that is undeniably the final destination of PoW,
which is why any coin with a sane development team is moving to Proof of Stake.
As it happens a worldwide PoW ban would only ban bitcoin, as likely litecoin PoW miners just slowly go bankrupt after Doge evols to Proof of Stake and leaves them.

Home PoW mining was stopped by the Elites centralizing PoW mining and going industrial ,
Home PoW miners that were spread further across the power grids, actually put less strain on individual grids,
mainly because they did not use industrial transformers limiting their ability to waste energy of only a single household.
The Elite Miners would rather take the whole btc chain down with them than promote a longer run by returning to CPU only PoW,
but what do you expect when the PoW miners whole motive is pure greed.

Actually considering China is a major hydro power producer and they still banned PoW,
only proves that all countries will have to at some point ban PoW mining, for the same reason China did, to protect their power grids.

PoW miners have only just started moving to Texas,
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/texas-crypto-mining-power-grid-b2004745.html

Texas Governor Greg Abbot reportedly urged crypto miners to shut down in the event the state’s power grid appeared to be failing due to bad weather as it did in February last year, leaving hundreds dead.

Best case Texas bans PoW mining within 2 years,
Worst case Texas power grid collapses within 4 years, and Texas needs ~5 years to restart the power grid, if and only if China sells them the replacement transformers. Expect a worldwide PoW ban in less than 6 months if that happens.

[MrSolo]

It's funny how you guys keep mentioning China PoW ban and only see the ban not the afterwards. This supposed "impact on the grids" never existed as it is evident from China and how their energy crisis didn't even change. In fact the stats suggest after China banned bitcoin mining the electricity usage kept on rising instead of having even a small drop!

Basically when it comes to this news you only ate the FUD and didn't even analyze what happened. For example the fact that the hashrate drop was very small and didn't change anything apart from affecting newbies who believed the FUD to panic sell and cause a crash that led to a bigger drop in hashrate than the ban itself!

The meme @n0nce posted is very apt.

Saying that crypto mining has no noticable affect on the grid is like saying that cars cause no pollution, it's just false, from the hashrate you can estimate that Bitcoin currently consumes around 110 Terawatt Hours per year — 0.55% of global electricity production  and that's just for BTC, there is ETH which also consumes so much electricity, LTC, BCH...etc

[pooya87]

Saying that crypto mining has no noticable affect on the grid is like saying that cars cause no pollution,
0.55% of global electricity production

You answered yourself.

there is ETH which also consumes so much electricity, LTC, BCH...etc

Shitcoin hashrates are a joke when compared to bitcoin hashrate and you already admitted that bitcoin power consumption is miniscule.

Code:

BTC 215,000,000 THS
ETH         995 THS
LTC         443 THS
BCH   1,400,000 THS

[n0nce]

Good sir, I think you ate really too much of that FUD. Let me show you.

1. You did not have to relocate.

Did someone ever have to relocate because Bitcoin mining 'took away their electricity'? I have never heard of that. Any source?
Or you mean the miners relocating? By that I don't mean that Chinese mining operators had to travel; they just sold their stock, that's what miner relocation means. The miners moved into other countries and also many people's households as I explained.
Please read: https://www.econoalchemist.com/post/home-mining-for-non-kyc-bitcoin

2. You did not live on the same grid, where the PoW miners drove up the price of electricity for everyone on the specific grid not just other miners.

Even if miners were to drive up electricity prices, what's the issue? This is capitalism. If I want to run a miner or any other industrial machine in my home, and the electricity price will rise because of that, that's what happens in a free market. Are we going to restrict usage of other heavy equipment like lathes, CNCs etc. because electricity price for other residents might rise?
Also, this is absolute FUD because miners don't like high electricity price. If it's not very very low, they rather put their own solar on the roof or rent a facility near to a hydro power station like in northern Italy.

3. You did not suffer rolling blackouts during the cold/heat because of the PoW miners using excessive amounts of energy compared to the local populace.

Where did this happen? In fact, large Bitcoin miners were amongst the few companies who paused operation a few times already when there were power outages due to natural desasters: https://www.fxempire.com/news/article/major-texas-bitcoin-miners-close-operations-ahead-of-winter-storm-886454

4. You think calling everything FUD that is bad Public relations for BTC , will help make you rich. (Good Luck with that.)

You are constantly speaking about 'investors' and 'making people rich'; why are you so focused on this? I don't even consider myself an investor honestly. You seem to care a lot about the investors though (no mention of Bitcoiners or people who legitimately want the best for the future of Bitcoin - like myself).

preparing a plan of action to protect btc investors.

Last Fact for you Governments won't care what you think when their energy resources are being exhausted and power grids are in danger of collapse.

First of all, what do you mean 'their energy resources'? If I pay for the electricity, shouldn't I be able do with it whatever I want. Shouldn't it become 'my energy resource' as soon as I pay my electricity bill?
Secondly, you showed nicely that Bitcoin mining energy consumption is a very very small amount globally, so especially if it's distributed evenly (e.g. 1 miner per household instead of 1 large container in a location), it won't be noticeable anywhere. Neither on the total global power consumption nor on the environmental impacts.

Will it take 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, or longer for a worldwide PoW ban, but that is undeniably the final destination of PoW,

Besides the fact that this won't happen since not all countries in the world are authoritarian dictatorships, how are you going to stop home miners?
Apollos, small S9s, and even a bunch of Compac Fs plugged into random kids' PC ports. You can't stop this dude. Unless you have something like DDR Stasi going through millions of homes and checking what hardware people are running in their homes (again, I told you most countries are not authoritarian dictatorships).
Furthermore, even today we have countries that are basically lawless if you bring with you enough money; hence people have their bank accounts in such countries and register companies there - no reason why large miners who don't want to stop operation would set up a facility over there.

which is why any coin with a sane development team is moving to Proof of Stake.

No, as we showed you, PoS is definitely not a solution; even if PoW needed to go. I think BlackHatCoiner already posted this, but maybe try to read this: https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-people-promoting-it-are-scammers/

Home PoW mining was stopped by the Elites centralizing PoW mining and going industrial ,

How's that? It's just a free market; and you do have an advantage with larger operations due to economy of scale. But there is no conspiracy 'Elite' stopping PoW in the homes deliberately. Especially if there were government bans and if large operations would have to shut down, the profitability of home mining would rise again. The 'stopping' (it never stopped, but let's say so) of home mining isn't irreversible, you know.

The Elite Miners would rather take the whole btc chain down with them than promote a longer run by returning to CPU only PoW,
but what do you expect when the PoW miners whole motive is pure greed.

Dude 'pure greed'... It's just business man. Get a grip. Then I'll say the 'whole motive' of you going to work is 'pure greed'?

Actually considering China is a major hydro power producer and they still banned PoW,
only proves that all countries will have to at some point ban PoW mining, for the same reason China did, to protect their power grids.

How hard is it to understand that they did not have to ban it; not for the sake of any power grid or environment. Their authoritarian dictators don't care about people's access to electricity or the environment; I can tell you that. They care about total control of the population; and Bitcoin can't be controlled, that's what scares them so much about it.
In comparison, they can much easier control a PoS currency by e.g. buying out its market cap. If that gets too expensive, they will just ban that, too. It's not about energy, it's about control.

PoW miners have only just started moving to Texas,

So? Nothing changed for Bitcoin. Even if a large part of miners goes offline: difficulty will adjust and everyone still mining will start making more money. This will motivate more people to start mining and they'll try buying miners as well. It all self-stabilizes. Bitcoin doesn't care.

Best case Texas bans PoW mining within 2 years,
Worst case Texas power grid collapses within 4 years, and Texas needs ~5 years to restart the power grid, if and only if China sells them the replacement transformers. Expect a worldwide PoW ban in less than 6 months if that happens.

Bitcoin don't care. Difficulty keeps adjusting, miners keep getting more efficient, hashrate keeps decentralizing; wonderful.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Last Fact for you Governments won't care what you think when their energy resources are being exhausted and power grids are in danger of collapse.

Yeah, Bitcoin will collapse the entire world, who's going to think of the children, right? People can use their energy however they wish. It's theirs. If the energy exhausting rises the electricity prices, it'll push them into cheaper sources, such as renewable ones. It's already well-known that more than half of the hashes that are done, are green. Periodically, Bitcoin becomes even more environmentally friendly.

I'm now even more disgusted by those PoS supporters. They abuse your humanistic feelings (such as the environmental awareness) for improving their persuasion. And they're calling you greedy... Keep your "government regulation", I'll keep my decentralization, thanks.

[vjudeu]

but what do you expect when the PoW miners whole motive is pure greed

Talking about greed is quite funny in context of Proof of Stake, where whales can print money, just because they are whales. Also, even if you can produce some kind of Proof of Stake that would be honest, then it will work just like some obfuscated Proof of Work, like in this table: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/#nonproductive-investments-are-wasteful

[tromp]

Code:

BTC 215,000,000 THS
ETH         995 THS
LTC         443 THS
BCH   1,400,000 THS

Comparing hashrates of different PoWs is quite meaningless...

If you want to compare mining efforts, use something more meaningful like daily dollar issuance;
see the column labeled "PoW Produced (24h)" in https://www.f2pool.com/coins

[LegendaryK]

Good sir, I think you ate really too much of that FUD.

You Dear Sir,
Are full of something, I suggest using it in your garden, instead of spewing it in your posts.

Biden new execuitive order on digital assets that no one read had the following line:
Climate and Pollution—The United States also has an interest in reducing “negative climate impacts and environmental pollution” from “some cryptocurrency mining.”

In case you don't get it, this is the starting point of a US PoW ban within 3 years.
Your Greedy PoW miners better start looking for a new home, until their are none left.

but what do you expect when the PoW miners whole motive is pure greed

Talking about greed is quite funny in context of Proof of Stake, where whales can print money, just because they are whales. Also, even if you can produce some kind of Proof of Stake that would be honest, then it will work just like some obfuscated Proof of Work, like in this table: https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/#nonproductive-investments-are-wasteful

Anyone can pool coins and stake them, where as only the elite can afford to PoW mine.
How is having a consensus where only the rich can afford to participate in printing money as you say , not greed and keeping the common man down.
You make such a silly argument, please list the address of the warehouse you own that is participating in bitcoin PoW mining.

Last Fact for you Governments won't care what you think when their energy resources are being exhausted and power grids are in danger of collapse.

Yeah, Bitcoin will collapse the entire world, who's going to think of the children, right? People can use their energy however they wish. It's theirs. If the energy exhausting rises the electricity prices, it'll push them into cheaper sources, such as renewable ones. It's already well-known that more than half of the hashes that are done, are green. Periodically, Bitcoin becomes even more environmentally friendly.

I'm now even more disgusted by those PoS supporters. They abuse your humanistic feelings (such as the environmental awareness) for improving their persuasion. And they're calling you greedy... Keep your "government regulation", I'll keep my decentralization, thanks.

You have centralized PoW mining for the elite only.
And the only disgusting thing is your greed, as you are not even an elite PoW miner, but a mere pup crying for scraps at the elite PoW mining table.
The confusion , more energy will just be produced shows a level of ignorance of the power industry as no other.
Bitcoin PoW energy drain doubles every two years or so, energy resources from all new renewables is maxing out at 4% increase per year.
It would take 25 years for renewals to match 1 bitcoin energy waste doubling, which is why their is not an energy solution to the PoW dead end.

[garlonicon]

please list the address of the warehouse you own that is participating in bitcoin PoW mining

You don't need a warehouse if you can mine fractional satoshis with your CPU. If someone will succeed at shutting down huge ASIC miners, then the difficulty would drop, so small CPU and GPU miners will start mining. Also, it will make more pressure for decentralizing PoW mining.

For example:

network target: 0000000000000000000a37730000000000000000000000000000000000000000
reward per target: 6.34333655 BTC (basic block reward plus fees)
target for single satoshi: 00000000000182482072fc950000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (network target * number of satoshis)
target for single millisatoshi: 0000000005e4e9bec12aa6080000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (target for satoshi * 1000)

As you can see, single millisatoshis could be mined today on CPU's, if miners could be rewarded proportionally to their mining power. Banning ASIC's is just pushing us faster to that scenario.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Anyone can pool coins and stake them, where as only the elite can afford to PoW mine.

Rich people can afford more than the poor, capitalism 101. The difficulty changes based on the rich and that is true for everything in life. The "sharpest" criticisms of capitalism lie on this fact. Unfortunately for us, humanity is a clustered phenomenon.

What you fail to understand is that PoS will get much more centralized in the course of time, because the stakers are encouraged to continue earning their share than to dump it. There's no uncertainty. And new stakers can't enter the system if those few decide to remain.

If I found out Bitcoin in 2009, figured out that you can mine with GPUs and had one third of the total hashrate for a little while, I couldn't keep it mine, because there were newcomers I could not control of. It wasn't down to me to approve them. On the other hand, if I somehow acquired 10% of the total coins in circulation, of a PoS crypto, it'd be like I owned a part of the network... Forever.

Staking is progressive. The greater the economic base, the greater the individual's economic growth. Mining is inversely progressive. The greater the economic base, the worse the individual's economic growth. (Macroeconomically)

Whoever wants to mine is in no miners' question to do so. Mining, by design, reduces the network portion of each miner, over the long term.

[stwenhao]

which is why any coin with a sane development team is moving to Proof of Stake

Bitcoin could move to Proof of Stake naturally, by using Merged Mining (or rather "Merged Signing", because it would be based on Bitcoin signatures, not block headers). There is no need to make new coins out of thin air, each participant could join just by owning bitcoins. Bitcoin transactions could be reused to push the new chain forward, and then the economic majority would decide if they want to stake their coins or not. It is protected from pushing random transactions to such chain, because that altcoin could have consensus rules based on commitments, and public keys cannot be tweaked after sending some coins to them.

Also, things like slashing are possible, because it could be done by putting commitment in some pre-calculated R-value of the signature, so that two signatures would reveal the private key of the cheating staker, that could cause not only loss of altcoin, but also loss of Bitcoin, so it should be enough to discourage signing more than one chain.

[tromp]

if I somehow acquired 10% of the total coins in circulation, of a PoS crypto, it'd be like I owned a part of the network... Forever.

So exactly the same as if you somehow acquired 10% of the total supply of a capped PoW coin...

[n0nce]

if I somehow acquired 10% of the total coins in circulation, of a PoS crypto, it'd be like I owned a part of the network... Forever.

So exactly the same as if you somehow acquired 10% of the total supply of a capped PoW coin...

No, not at all! That's exactly the difference. Acquiring e.g. 2.1 million Bitcoin will give you no power over the network, will not allow you to mint new coins and won't allow you to decide who enters the network or not.
In contrast, acquiring 10% of capped PoS coin will basically give you 10% of the hashrate forever, how BlackHatCoiner nicely put it. Whereas owning a warehouse of GPUs which in 2009 would have represented 10% of the hashrate (voting power, coin minting), just a few years later would be useless. Today, a ~10W USB stick ASIC can probably outperform an entire such warehouse. So the ones who 'invested early' (into hashrate) don't get anything anymore out of it right now, whereas in PoS that would be the case.

[pooya87]

Comparing hashrates of different PoWs is quite meaningless...

It is very meaningful, it is comparing the number of hashes that are being computed every second in algorithms that sometimes are roughly the same too (SHA256 vs SHA3-256 vs scrypt) that in turn shows number of miners hence the total power consumption.

If you want to compare mining efforts, use something more meaningful like daily dollar issuance;
see the column labeled "PoW Produced (24h)" in https://www.f2pool.com/coins

Just because it has the word "PoW" in it doesn't mean it is related to power consumption or hashrate!
They are taking the total new coins produced that day and multiplying it by the price.

Code:

BTC:  6.25 *  144 * $41,000 = ~$36.89 mil
ETH:  2.00 * 6500 * $ 2,700 = ~$31.81 mil
LTC: 12.50 *  550 * $   109 = ~$ 0.75 mil

[LegendaryK]

What you fail to understand

Failing to understand,
that is the problem, but it is bitcoin PoW supporter's problem.
Governments declare and warn they will ban PoW mining, due to the dangers to their electric grid collapsing.
Numerous new articles point to the energy problems, from numerous countries.
And what does the bitcoin PoW supporter cry FUD, FUD, FUD.
It is like PoW supporters have some cognitive impairment that prevents rational thinking.
A sane person when forewarned of an potential threat, plans a defensive , PoW supporters cry fud.

if I somehow acquired 10% of the total coins in circulation, of a PoS crypto, it'd be like I owned a part of the network... Forever.

So exactly the same as if you somehow acquired 10% of the total supply of a capped PoW coin...

No, not at all! That's exactly the difference. Acquiring e.g. 2.1 million Bitcoin will give you no power over the network, will not allow you to mint new coins and won't allow you to decide who enters the network or not.
In contrast, acquiring 10% of capped PoS coin will basically give you 10% of the hashrate forever, how BlackHatCoiner nicely put it. Whereas owning a warehouse of GPUs which in 2009 would have represented 10% of the hashrate (voting power, coin minting), just a few years later would be useless. Today, a ~10W USB stick ASIC can probably outperform an entire such warehouse. So the ones who 'invested early' (into hashrate) don't get anything anymore out of it right now, whereas in PoS that would be the case.

You know you just pointed out how wasteful even the PoW ASICS are, less than 2 years and they are nothing more than paperweights.
Only 4 mining pool operators determine what bitcoin transactions are allowed.
Their are No PoS networks that are as centralized as bitcoin PoW.
As far as a PoS coin, 10% would give 10% of the staking rate, but they have to sell coins against fiat to make a profit,
meaning they sell their stake amounts, and if others don't, then that 10% staking rate drops over time, as it becomes less than 10%.
PoW is pure waste, ASICS (2 years and toss) and the energy drain, all waste and no performance increase when you waste more energy,
not even transaction finality in 4 hours.
While Algorand a PoS coin has transaction finality in 4 seconds, and massive onchain transaction capacity, that bitcoin PoW can't even hold a candle too.
Bitcoin PoW onchain transactions are so limited, that they want people to use offchain 3rd party networks such as LN or Liquid to compensate for btc onchain weakness. (Lame)

[tromp]

algorithms that sometimes are roughly the same too (SHA3-256 vs scrypt)

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
A scrypt hash is 4 orders of magnitude harder to compute than a SHA3-256 hash.

Daily dollar emission on the other hand is a good proxy for how much energy will be spent competing for those rewards.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It is like PoW supporters have some cognitive impairment that prevents rational thinking.

You seem to be the only irrational here, buddy. I've already answered you about these "warnings". @n0nce also did; it's not about ethics or economic damage. It's about control.

A sane person when forewarned of an potential threat, plans a defensive , PoW supporters cry fud.

A sane person filters what's been served to them by the media. If by "cry fud" you mean "resist to propaganda", yeah, I've seen this behavior from Bitcoiners very often.

[n0nce]

You know you just pointed out how wasteful even the PoW ASICS are, less than 2 years and they are nothing more than paperweights.
Only 4 mining pool operators determine what bitcoin transactions are allowed.
Their are No PoS networks that are as centralized as bitcoin PoW.
As far as a PoS coin, 10% would give 10% of the staking rate, but they have to sell coins against fiat to make a profit,
meaning they sell their stake amounts, and if others don't, then that 10% staking rate drops over time, as it becomes less than 10%.
PoW is pure waste, ASICS (2 years and toss) and the energy drain, all waste and no performance increase when you waste more energy,
not even transaction finality in 4 hours.
While Algorand a PoS coin has transaction finality in 4 seconds, and massive onchain transaction capacity, that bitcoin PoW can't even hold a candle too.
Bitcoin PoW onchain transactions are so limited, that they want people to use offchain 3rd party networks such as LN or Liquid to compensate for btc onchain weakness. (Lame)

So many words and so much nonsense.


'Wasteful ASICs' - that's the whole thing this thread is about. Without waste, no value. In other words, PoS is also wasteful since there is no incentive not to lock up funds forever (it's a free money printing machine with guaranteed returns). ASICs don't guarantee returns.

Centralization aspects due to mining pools are debunked over and over; yet you argument that in PoS you can pool your stakes, so on one hand you're against pools, while on the other hand you encourage them. Sounds odd.

Stakers don't have to sell their stakes to make a profit. In the real world, rich people don't e.g. sell shares to live off of, instead they borrow money against those shares. Same thing does / will happen with PoS holders. They just get richer and richer by design, guaranteed and will never sell off anything if they are smart. I'm sure they'll convince you that the only option to realize profits is to sell, because they don't want you to have a lot of stake and have it all for themselves. Bitcoin miners don't have to sell their machines to make a profit, for the record. They can sell the coins or hold them, both options are open.

There is no value without waste. There are many articles about it. Either your coin is worthless or waste is happening in a different way (not directly through power consumption or electronic waste).

Transaction finality in 10 minutes is easily quick enough compared to what Bitcoin is competing against (the fiat system). I understand that altcoins compete against each other so they have to come up with something to be 'the best' so they push for something like unnecessarily short confirmation times. Since you can achieve shorter conf times with PoW just as well as with PoS, the debate against a shorter confirmation time is a different one than the one we are having here, so I'm not going to go into more detail on this.

What you call on-chain weakness is what we call on-chain security and stability. Firstly, if we changed something drastic in Bitcoin (such as much faster confirmation time or switch to PoS) and for whatever reason the new code is buggy, leading to BTC's demise, all of your little altcoins will go down with it. Secondly, layers make sense. If you don't have much experience in computer science, everything we use today is based on layers. Nobody writes in assembly code anymore; instead we write in high-level languages which are compiled once or multiple times until they become machine readable. This results in more efficient computations and less development times, as well as lower risks in terms of security and safety. Or the network stack. We speak of five to seven layers of abstraction, which allow us to send encrypted emails back and forth with a few clicks and no thoughts about protocols, IP addresses, ports, MAC addresses or physical electrical signals in the cables.

Daily dollar emission on the other hand is a good proxy for how much energy will be spent competing for those rewards.

That's true, under the assumption that energy costs are roughly equal to the mining rewards. In reality though, they're often not. So daily dollar emission can be a very rough indicator at most, in my opinion.

[pooya87]

algorithms that sometimes are roughly the same too (SHA256 vs SHA3-256 vs scrypt)

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.
A scrypt hash is 4 orders of magnitude harder to compute than a SHA3-256 hash.

Apparently you forget what we are discussing here yourself. We aren't just comparing computational cost. We are comparing all values at the same time.

SHA2 and SHA3 have almost identical computational cost. Yet the "PoW Produced (24h)" in that chart is almost the same and ETH hashrates is 4e-6 times bitcoin hashrate.
Scrypt has higher cost than SHA2/SHA3 (4 times according to you) but the "PoW Produced (24h)" in that list is only 0.02 and hashrate (LTC) is 2e-6 times bitcoin's hashrate.

Daily dollar emission on the other hand is a good proxy for how much energy will be spent competing for those rewards.

The most accurate estimation of electricity cost is always going to be hashrate since hashrate is directly related to hardware that consumes the energy.

[BlackHatCoiner]

So exactly the same as if you somehow acquired 10% of the total supply of a capped PoW coin...

There's difference between owning a trillion dollars in cash and owning the FED's printing machine with a trillion dollars. With the latter you exert much more influence to everyone who's using the currency. Let alone, you vote against the collective carryout of the transactions.

Apparently you forget what we are discussing here yourself. We aren't just comparing computational cost. We are comparing all values at the same time.

Isn't computational cost part of "all values"? From my understanding, we can't divide the "PoW Produced (24h)" with hashrate to find which one has the most effort, because of different hashing algorithms.

[tromp]

SHA2 and SHA3 have almost identical computational cost. Yet the "PoW Produced (24h)" in that chart is almost the same and ETH hashrates is 4e-6 times bitcoin hashrate.

You REALLY have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
ETH's PoW is not SHA3, it's ethash.
Computing a single ethash hash involves two SHA3 hashes, along with many other MUCH more expensive computations (computing the DAG whose values are sampled during an ethash hash involves tons of SHA3 itself, but that is done offline once every 30000 blocks).
An ethash hash takes at least 4 orders of magnitude more energy to compute than a SHA3 hash.

A scrypt hash is 4 orders of magnitude harder to compute than a SHA3-256 hash.

Scrypt has higher cost than SHA2/SHA3 (4 times according to you)

It's embarrassing how you don't even know what order of magnitude means.

[n0nce]

Our two PoS proponents here weren't able to reply to my last post, apparently. However, I found them (and everybody else reading) another great article about this exact topic. 'Anti Bitcoin environmentalists' are literally scamming you guys, actually directly making money off of spreading this FUD.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/questionable-ethics-of-bitcoin-esg

[pooya87]

Isn't computational cost part of "all values"? From my understanding, we can't divide the "PoW Produced (24h)" with hashrate to find which one has the most effort, because of different hashing algorithms.

My point is that if you want to compute cost you should do it based on hashrate. Basically the method is to take the total hashrate and then come up with an estimation of the hardware that is used to produce that hashrate (GPUs and ASICs in case of ETH for example) then try to come up with an estimation of electricity cost and other possible costs and finally compute the total cost based on previous values.

ETH's PoW is not SHA3, it's ethash.

Ethash uses SHA3 or Keccak256 under the hood!

along with many other MUCH more expensive computations (computing the DAG whose values are sampled during an ethash hash involves tons of SHA3 itself, but that is done offline once every 30000 blocks).

Only updated every 125 hours!

It's embarrassing how you don't even know what order of magnitude means.

It is not embarrassing when English is my second language.

I have to benchmark the algorithm to know more, which I won't waste time on; but the code[1] only shows 2 SHA3 computations on random chunks with additional steps that don't look computationally expensive (only expensive memory-wise). However expensive it is, I don't get how you come up with 10k Considering as I said, SHA3 has an almost same computational cost as SHA2.

[1] https://eth.wiki/en/concepts/ethash/ethash

[goldkingcoiner]

Their will be no green energy solution fix to the above, as China one of the largest hydro energy producers was the 1st to have banned PoW mining.
Europe could ban PoW mining by 2025.  

And now you're comparing China with Europe...

Well no, he is quite accurate. Aside from the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake technical pro and contra arguments we need to keep an eye on the regulatory side as well. Europe is going against PoW and just because they failed to have it banned this time does not mean they will not succeed in the coming years. I find the entire green argument to be bull because from a starting point, because the way we produce energy is the problem, not PoW miners using that energy.

But politics follows mostly emotional arguments instead of logical ones. So we should really be prepared to see a PoW ban in the future.

Also, China does not give a damn about the environment. The ban I suspect was more poltical.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Europe is going against PoW and just because they failed to have it banned this time does not mean they will not succeed in the coming years.

Europe is not the European Union. Furthermore, they've also tried to ban Bitcoin with the alibi that it helps criminals. They'll always step on a supposedly validly-sounded argument to control you!

They don't care about the environment; their harmful activities can prove it. They don't care if 1% of the users use it for illicit activity; they want to control that 99%. It's the same reason why Binance, Coinbase etc., require KYC. They don't care for those few who'll avoid taxes; there are no studies that reveal tax avoidance reduce due to KYC requirements. They do it to control you.

Also, that EU bill was rejected few days ago.

Our two PoS proponents here weren't able to reply to my last post, apparently.

One's LegendaryK. Who's the other?

[goldkingcoiner]

Europe is going against PoW and just because they failed to have it banned this time does not mean they will not succeed in the coming years.

Europe is not the European Union. Furthermore, they've also tried to ban Bitcoin with the alibi that it helps criminals. They'll always step on a supposedly validly-sounded argument to control you!

They don't care about the environment; their harmful activities can prove it. They don't care if 1% of the users use it for illicit activity; they want to control that 99%. It's the same reason why Binance, Coinbase etc., require KYC. They don't care for those few who'll avoid taxes; there are no studies that reveal tax avoidance reduce due to KYC requirements. They do it to control you.

ago.

Well lets not argue semantics, but yes I meant the European Union, not all of Europe it itself. I am well aware of their BS excuses and political emotional propaganda that they use to get what they want. Its poltiics, baby.

I completely agree with what you are saying, especially about KYC, which is the enemy of decentralisation and goes against the very idea behind Bitcoin itself. And we should fight it. But that does not mean they are not going to manipulate the masses until they get what they want. And history has taught us they probably will get what they want.

The reason why? Because (large) mining efforts are a centralised effort which can be attacked by the government, and easily so...

From my perspective its only a matter of time.

[LegendaryK]

Our two PoS proponents here weren't able to reply to my last post, apparently. However, I found them (and everybody else reading) another great article about this exact topic. 'Anti Bitcoin environmentalists' are literally scamming you guys, actually directly making money off of spreading this FUD.

It is apparent , you and blackhatcoiner have drank the bitcoin kool-aid
and are just waiting for the untold riches, that your deity Bitcoin will deliver to you as you spread the word of it's mystical supernatural powers.

That was sarcasm since your reasoning skills seem compromised.

PoW supporters see Fud , everywhere.
Their was no need to reply to your earlier posts because,
1. You are wrong, and your myths of bitcoin greatness, waste everyone time, since you are unable to tell the different between a product and a deity.

2. More Government PoW Ban are coming, they are inevitable, ignore them at your peril.

3. PoS supporters don't really care what PoW supporters do, we moved on and outperform PoW on everything that matters.
    Plus the future worldwide PoW bans have no effect on PoS coins.  
    Which is why ethereum and doge are jumping on the PoS train, to avoid the crash of PoW deadend tech.

[garlonicon]

One's LegendaryK. Who's the other?

I guess stwenhao.

1. You are wrong, and your myths of bitcoin greatness, waste everyone time, since you are unable to tell the different between a product and a deity.

Even if they are wrong, if you really believe in Proof of Stake and you really want to do it on Bitcoin, then go on, use some existing proposals, even that "Merged Signing". If you are wrong, you will see it clearly by putting your own coins at stake. And if you are right, then it will be beneficial to have some working and well-tested transition plan (also in case of a success you will gain more by being involved from the very beginning; not to mention that such system would work even if miners will disagree, because the only way to stop that is censoring transactions, including those that are not staking anything).

3. PoS supporters don't really care what PoW supporters do

If you don't care, then why do you want to implement Proof of Stake on Bitcoin? And if you do, then you should start making transition, before it will be harder (because if Proof of Work will be more decentralized, it will be harder to move to Proof of Stake, because it may be easier to convince few mining pool operators than thousands of individual miners; the smaller ones are more resistant to changes, as you can see during soft-fork signalling).

[LegendaryK]

One's LegendaryK. Who's the other?

I guess stwenhao.

1. You are wrong, and your myths of bitcoin greatness, waste everyone time, since you are unable to tell the different between a product and a deity.

Even if they are wrong, if you really believe in Proof of Stake and you really want to do it on Bitcoin, then go on, use some existing proposals, even that "Merged Signing". If you are wrong, you will see it clearly by putting your own coins at stake. And if you are right, then it will be beneficial to have some working and well-tested transition plan (also in case of a success you will gain more by being involved from the very beginning; not to mention that such system would work even if miners will disagree, because the only way to stop that is censoring transactions, including those that are not staking anything).

3. PoS supporters don't really care what PoW supporters do

If you don't care, then why do you want to implement Proof of Stake on Bitcoin? And if you do, then you should start making transition, before it will be harder (because if Proof of Work will be more decentralized, it will be harder to move to Proof of Stake, because it may be easier to convince few mining pool operators than thousands of individual miners; the smaller ones are more resistant to changes, as you can see during soft-fork signalling).

I only buy Proof of Stake coins.
I don't care if bitcoin PoW is banned.
I don't care if bitcoin PoW suporters refuses to switch to PoS.

I just want to point out the PoW zealots have no plan to deal with the impending doom of their deadend PoW tech.
They stick their collective heads in the sand and cry fud denying every bit of reality that shows them to be fools.
Notice they have no idea what to do when a worldwide PoW ban is enacted.  
PoW miners can't hide their energy waste, so they are a easy target for the government,
and they have no way to improve PoW to protect it, which is why it is a deadend tech.

PoS is energy efficient, higher onchain transaction capacity, more decentralized, greater adaptability, and able to achieve transaction finality.
All of the above is fact , not conjecture , which is why there are so few PoW coins left and getting less by the day, because even the developers who look at the code more than everyone else and the ones with high IQs are switching.

The Marketplace has already chosen PoS as the superior technology , PoW has been a dead man walking for years.
Which I pointed out here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59381537#msg59381537

[BlackHatCoiner]

Notice they have no idea what to do when a worldwide PoW ban is enacted.

You're foolish. And you're foolish not because you support PoS. You're foolish because you don't zoom out.

You're crazy enough to believe that a worldwise PoW ban is likely to be enacted, but not a worldwide crypto-ban, which would make more sense from a government's point of view. You're foolish, because you're not afraid of the scenario that PoS comes next, with your privacy and freedom of choice followed. You hope, cravingly, that the governments will take care of it. A hope for your own pit.
 
Haven't you yet understood that Bitcoin is more than just a currency? It's also a movement.

[n0nce]

Well no, he is quite accurate. Aside from the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake technical pro and contra arguments we need to keep an eye on the regulatory side as well. Europe is going against PoW and just because they failed to have it banned this time does not mean they will not succeed in the coming years.

Please seriously consider: what is the value of a cryptocurrency if its whole existence depends on it being supported / allowed by nation states?
In my opinion, one of the main motivations for all this is free money. Free in the sense of freedom. If the ability of a blockchain to continue operation completely depends on regulators, your blockchain is doing something wrong.

The reason why? Because (large) mining efforts are a centralised effort which can be attacked by the government, and easily so...
From my perspective its only a matter of time.

Hobby miners rejoice! Cheap gear and higher payouts, plus more decentralization - what's not to like!

It is apparent , you and blackhatcoiner have drank the bitcoin kool-aid
and are just waiting for the untold riches, that your deity Bitcoin will deliver to you as you spread the word of it's mystical supernatural powers.

Still so fixated on us wanting to become rich through Bitcoin. Maybe someone's projecting here?

Plus the future worldwide PoW bans have no effect on PoS coins. 
Which is why ethereum and doge are jumping on the PoS train, to avoid the crash of PoW deadend tech.

Is it hard for you to envision that the motivation for governments going against Bitcoin is fear of losing control over people?
Is it hard to understand that the same motivation can and will be used against other cryptocurrencies if they gain any relevance?
Bitcoin being targeted while your favourite shitcoins aren't, are clear evidence that they're not afraid of said coins, while they are of Bitcoin. By not going against those, they are in a way dismissing them as irrelevant.

PoS is energy efficient, higher onchain transaction capacity, more decentralized, greater adaptability, and able to achieve transaction finality.

Even if all that were true (it's not), what does it help if the whole thing is a scam?

All of the above is fact , not conjecture , which is why there are so few PoW coins left and getting less by the day, because even the developers who look at the code more than everyone else and the ones with high IQs are switching.
The Marketplace has already chosen PoS as the superior technology , PoW has been a dead man walking for years.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Few PoW coins left isn't a result of PoS winning against PoW, it's a result of Bitcoin beating any other PoW coin.
Its biggest contender, Ethereum is essentially admitting defeat by going PoS and competing for #1 in the 'PoS coins' since it can't get #1 in 'all cryptocurrencies' against Bitcoin.

Regarding 'high IQs switching', I noticed that real cypherpunks are in large part substituted by greedy (you like this word, I know ) companies / start-ups trying to make some good ol' cash. That's capitalism in a way, and as described in the article linked before, can be called a scam. You could also call it genius. I'm pretty sure PoS creators believe they're geniuses, for getting people to buy their 1000th token / coin / NFT.
If someone's a real cypherpunk but sees some flaws in Bitcoin, they would start working on it with BIPs and code instead of forking some coin and slapping a new logo onto it (I know some have new algos like Chia but for the most part... not), premining (or just assigning) a ton of coins to their account and then hyping the shit out of it. I know, it's more profitable to do this..

[goldkingcoiner]

Well no, he is quite accurate. Aside from the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake technical pro and contra arguments we need to keep an eye on the regulatory side as well. Europe is going against PoW and just because they failed to have it banned this time does not mean they will not succeed in the coming years.

Please seriously consider: what is the value of a cryptocurrency if its whole existence depends on it being supported / allowed by nation states?
In my opinion, one of the main motivations for all this is free money. Free in the sense of freedom. If the ability of a blockchain to continue operation completely depends on regulators, your blockchain is doing something wrong.

The reason why? Because (large) mining efforts are a centralised effort which can be attacked by the government, and easily so...
From my perspective its only a matter of time.

Hobby miners rejoice! Cheap gear and higher payouts, plus more decentralization - what's not to like!

Yeah looking from that perspective, I guess my own subjective view was a bit too pessimistic. In fact, the fact that they would ban and dissolve large mining operations would quite literally be better for Bitcoin. We do need to shake off the centralised parts of the whole. And in the face of pushback from the government there would come more innovation and new technologies. Although if you look at China, can Bitcoin be called a door to freedom when your entire internet is monitored and controlled by the government and even VPNs become almost impossible? Is mining even feasible in China? 20% of the Bitcoin Network remains in China under so-called undergroup miners. So I am guessing, yes.

I would be more impressed if Bitcoin turned out to be untouchable in North Korea. I think that would be the ultimate testimony for the impossible regulation of blockchain.

I guess we just need to see what the future of blockchain will be. Regulators will not give up, thats for sure.

[LegendaryK]

Notice they have no idea what to do when a worldwide PoW ban is enacted.

You're foolish. And you're foolish not because you support PoS. You're foolish because you don't zoom out.

You're crazy enough to believe that a worldwise PoW ban is likely to be enacted, but not a worldwide crypto-ban, which would make more sense from a government's point of view. You're foolish, because you're not afraid of the scenario that PoS comes next, with your privacy and freedom of choice followed. You hope, cravingly, that the governments will take care of it. A hope for your own pit.
 
Haven't you yet understood that Bitcoin is more than just a currency? It's also a movement Deity.

Yeah , I guess when all of those news articles talk about the blackouts , the temporary & permanent PoW bans by governments,
the threat to the power grids, they are making all of that stuff up just to stop your deity bitcoin from saving the world.  
All Hail Bitcoin PoW mining, PoW does not waste electricity, it runs off an endless supply of methane from unicorn farts.
*More sarcasm*  

No worries, because unlike PoW miners, PoS miners don't need to beg power utilities for an industrial power feed.
Which is why governments can't control a PoS network like they can a PoW network.
The public electric utilities can't tell if someone is staking , or playing on their xbox, but they can pinpoint a PoW miner location in 30 seconds by a quick look at where the most electricity is going.

Is it hard for you to envision that the motivation for governments going against Bitcoin is fear of losing control over people?
Is it hard to understand that the same motivation can and will be used against other cryptocurrencies if they gain any relevance?
Bitcoin being targeted while your favourite shitcoins aren't, are clear evidence that they're not afraid of said coins, while they are of Bitcoin. By not going against those, they are in a way dismissing them as irrelevant.

Do you see your arrogance, any coin not bitcoin is a shitcoin.
Have you been on planet earth this past 2 years, did you see the pandemic.
Where the world governments in unison bent the fearful, those with hero complex, and threaten career loss on supposed free people to use an untested vaccine in the blood streams of billions.  Where was your so-call deity: bitcoin during that protecting people from the government control, probably hiding in a cave carving tablets saying everything not bitcoin is fud.

Reread what I told blackhatcoiner above, PoS network can't be shut off , by a guy flipping a breaker switch, your precious bitcoin PoW miners can.
While you want to ignore all of the actual power outages caused by the miners, and want to pretend it is pure conspiracy.
Even playing the conspiracy game, Bitcoin PoW mining is the weak leak, and going after bitcoin 1st is taking out the easy prey (that can't hide), not the stronger harder to find more evasion and adaptable PoS networks, that can hide from Excessive Government Control.
But in reality , maybe the problem is PoW just wastes too much power, and that is really the only bone Governments have to pick with it.

PoS is energy efficient, higher onchain transaction capacity, more decentralized, greater adaptability, and able to achieve transaction finality.

Even if all that were true (it's not), what does it help if the whole thing is a scam?

Anything not PoW is fud, right.
More sacrasm

You can tell you did not research the author of that ridiculous blog link.
Yanmaani is a know namecoin supporter, if btc PoW mining fails so too will namecoin, which for the most part namecoin has been DOA for years.
You also failed to understand his analogy of how PoS works is totally wrong, you're a PoW supporter why should you know anything.  
Number of coins and time since last stake influence the next stake, your friend missed all of that, and that was really a bad attempt at explaining PoS,
but again what can we expect from PoW supporters, definitely not accuracy.
Did you like his other article where he claimed bitcoin would never be a stable currency?  

All of the above is fact , not conjecture , which is why there are so few PoW coins left and getting less by the day, because even the developers who look at the code more than everyone else and the ones with high IQs are switching.
The Marketplace has already chosen PoS as the superior technology , PoW has been a dead man walking for years.

You're looking at it the wrong way. Few PoW coins left isn't a result of PoS winning against PoW, it's a result of Bitcoin beating any other PoW coin.
Its biggest contender, Ethereum is essentially admitting defeat by going PoS and competing for #1 in the 'PoS coins' since it can't get #1 in 'all cryptocurrencies' against Bitcoin.

So by your thought process, the fact their are so few 8 tracks tapes in use, means that 8 tracks tapes are superior to MP3 players.  
Like I said earlier, it is apparent there is a problem with your ability to reason.

[n0nce]

Yeah , I guess when all of those news articles talk about the blackouts , the temporary & permanent PoW bans by governments,
the threat to the power grids, they are making all of that stuff up just to stop your deity bitcoin from saving the world. 
All Hail Bitcoin PoW mining, PoW does not waste electricity, it runs off an endless supply of methane from unicorn farts.
*More sarcasm* 

So you're worried about power grids then?



Let's assume Bitcoin does 'threaten the grid' (I'm not sure it does, but let's say so). Why should we give up Bitcoin for something else^{read: worse}, just because the current infrastructure can't handle it? Did we not build cars because roads did not exist? Did we not use BBSes, because we needed to use the telephone connection?

Listen: if a city's or country's demand for electricity rises, they shall improve their network. Companies building these networks will have more business and make more money, what's not to like? Keep the money circulating!

By staking every last penny (guaranteed returns - why wouldn't someone stake their crypto), electricians won't get paid, chip fabs that build ASICs don't get paid, gear manufacturers don't get paid, electricity companies don't get paid (or get paid a lot less), and the list goes on. This is one of the biggest issues with PoS (that you don't spend anything in the real world to accumulate in the crypto world).

Which is why governments can't control a PoS network like they can a PoW network.

If a government can control PoW, it can also control PoS. Because this control would be by legally banning the currency, not by banning the usage of a specific electronic device. In theory, I could use an ASIC to crack password hashes for example; nothing to do with Bitcoin, right? So a real crackdown would manifest in a legal ban to hold and transact with cryptocurrency X.
This can be done to PoS coins just as well as to PoW coins.

The public electric utilities can't tell if someone is staking , or playing on their xbox, but they can pinpoint a PoW miner location in 30 seconds by a quick look at where the most electricity is going.

That's not true; you don't understand how a power grid works and neither do you have your numbers right. A classic Antminer S9 in undervolt configuration is most profitable at around 800W. Modern gaming PCs run 850W PSUs, microwaves 1-2kW, vaccum cleaners also in the 1kW range, not to mention an oven - the list goes on. You could argue that these appliances don't run 24/7, but most people don't have 'smart monitoring' of their power usage anyway, so it's not possible to tell if you've got a constant 800W load on or not. Sure, you might have a higher annual power draw than your neighbour, but it could be an electric heater for your pets, simply cooking more or whatever.

To 'pinpoint and punish' home miners, you would have to physically go into households and check every nook & cranny for a running miner.
Let's play devil's advocate and assume (all) governments are going to do this.
What stops them from looking into your computer and phone to see if you're staking some PoS coin? ^{(because as I've said, if they gain any relevance, govt's will go for those, too)}

[LegendaryK]

Yeah , I guess when all of those news articles talk about the blackouts , the temporary & permanent PoW bans by governments,
the threat to the power grids, they are making all of that stuff up just to stop your deity bitcoin from saving the world.  
All Hail Bitcoin PoW mining, PoW does not waste electricity, it runs off an endless supply of methane from unicorn farts.
*More sarcasm*  

So you're worried about power grids then?

The Governments are worried more.
My concern is the people that suffer because of power grid blackouts, and worst case a cascade failure that destroys the power grid transformers.
Which when that happens , they are looking at 3-5 years without power to restart a grid.
Texas energy regulars are at high odds of a cascade failure within 3 years because of bitcoin PoW miners.

Let's assume Bitcoin does 'threaten the grid' (I'm not sure it does, but let's say so). Why should we give up Bitcoin for something else^{read: worse}, just because the current infrastructure can't handle it? Did we not build cars because roads did not exist? Did we not use BBSes, because we needed to use the telephone connection?

Now at least you are trying.
PoW has a technical flaw of requiring geometrically increasing amounts of energy, which is why current energy resources can't continue it.
But you want to build something to handle geometric energy growth,
ok get started building a  Dyson sphere (is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output)ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
It should only take humans another 10000 years to reach the level of development to build a Dyson sphere.
Oh wait, BTC only has ~5 years from the ban, ok that only leaves regulation, meaning that only a select few btc miners are allowed to mine.
But the problem with that is so much for freedom, so much for the last pretense of decentralization, not only will btc PoW miners be government licensed and regulated, but they will also  now censor transactions to keep their license.
Now you see why PoW is a technical dead end, the energy resources needed are inaccessible for thousands of years and government control is the only way for it to survive and stay PoW.

Just so you know, I did research on any possible ways for PoW to survive , and their were none.
Because the end result of a conflict designed system such as PoW, is not PoW verses PoS
it is PoW verses the Human race. Odds are Humans are going to play dirty and win that fight.

PoS is a cooperative design which is why it can coexist with humans without making their lives harder by using up all of the energy resources.

Which is why governments can't control a PoS network like they can a PoW network.

If a government can control PoW, it can also control PoS. Because this control would be by legally banning the currency, not by banning the usage of a specific electronic device. In theory, I could use an ASIC to crack password hashes for example; nothing to do with Bitcoin, right? So a real crackdown would manifest in a legal ban to hold and transact with cryptocurrency X.
This can be done to PoS coins just as well as to PoW coins.

Nope, underground PoS economy could easily survive,
the one time in US history where they banned alcohol was a total failure.
Why because people made alcohol and sold it in secret.
PoS can operate in secret just as the bootleggers did,
PoW power use put a glowing red target on their back, which means they can't hide,
(if bootleggers could be found as easy as bitcoin miners, prohibition would still be active)
and can be shut down from the electric utility with the flip of a switch.  
(They don't even have to waste gas to go to the location, because of smart meters.)
* As far as them not knowing you are running a ASIC.*
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/researchers-find-smart-meters-could-reveal-favorite-tv-shows/

Smart meters that monitor electricity usage in homes in parts of Germany leak data that could reveal what programs are being watched on the digital TV

They can detect an ASIC, where as a PoS staker can do things to mask their staking. Stealth it makes a difference.

[tromp]

PoW has a technical flaw of requiring geometrically increasing amounts of energy

No it doesn't.
The only reason for Bitcoin to increase its energy use is for Bitcoin to increase in price,
on top of roughly doubling every 4 years for the next few decades to compensate halving block subsidies.

This is not a requirement. It's merely what seems to have happened in the past.
But as we know, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

It's more likely that any further price increases fail to compensate for dwindling block rewards, and energy usage will
stop rising as fast as it has in the past, or even decline.

[BlackHatCoiner]

LegendaryK is the same guy who considered that checking 3 block explorers is more secure than running your own full node. I'm just leaving this here, no pun intended. Judge accordingly.

As far as verifying goes, he could use 3 separate block explorers to confirm the transactions, which will be a 3X better verification that a single node.

Just so you know, I did research on any possible ways for PoW to survive , and their were none.

Just for you to know, you can question me whenever you want for the downsides of PoS that I've mentioned.

The only reason for Bitcoin to increase its energy use would be for Bitcoin to increase in price

This isn't true. Technology efficiency, energy costs and state intervention can also affect the final outcome. There's, indeed, a weak correlation between the price and the difficulty over the long term, but the price, alone, does not determine difficulty.

For example, during the bear market of 2018, the price went from $13k to $3k, but the difficulty was tripled.

[pooya87]

It is worth mentioning that PoS existed nearly as long as bitcoin since it was proposed in early years, and the first implementation of it is a coin called Peercoin (created in 2012) which is considered a dead coin today.
It was only recently that people on the internet started praising this weak and flawed algorithm! It was also recently that a rich centralized foundation started advertising a change from PoW to PoS just because they owned 72 million premined coins. Coincidence?

[franky1]

(They don't even have to waste gas to go to the location, because of smart meters.)
* As far as them not knowing you are running a ASIC.*
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/researchers-find-smart-meters-could-reveal-favorite-tv-shows/

Smart meters that monitor electricity usage in homes in parts of Germany leak data that could reveal what programs are being watched on the digital TV

They can detect an ASIC, where as a PoS staker can do things to mask their staking. Stealth it makes a difference.

The article mentioned it's possible since the smart meters have access to your network and analyze unencrypted data. Encryption could solve this privacy concern.

The smart meters record high-resolution energy consumption of appliances every two seconds and transmit it to the server at the utility company over the Internet.

The data is exposed because it is not signed or encrypted, Loehr said in an interview with CNET. "Anyone with access to your home network has access to this data," he said.

its not so much about access to network to analyse data(computer bytes of your PC). it about knowing power consumption patterns EG knowing the average power of a TV and a coffee maker/microwave. and they can compare any variable of power consumption to when TV shows go to commercial break and people have a coffee or warm up a snack to know which program they are watching due to the timing

for decades electric companies could see spikes in energy on certain programs over the region(but back then not specific per household)
EG at US superbowl they see a spike of regions watching TV more and then at the commercial break people warming up snacks and making coffee.

heck they use to allow police to be informed when people were using high energy 24/7 as it was believed that those houses were being used as weed growfarms
even a few years ago a few people got swatted by cops due to high 24/7 consumption thought of as being weed growing, but ended up being found to being an asic farm
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/28/22458632/bitcoin-mine-mistaken-cannabis-growing-operation-police

some power companies are even looking at the different data depending on the seasons of the year to look at which people are using more energy for heating in winter and cooling in summer and they can sell that data to heating/aircon companies of which people waste more energy and need more efficient devices.

with smart meters its the same thing but now more individual they can gather how much consumption is being drawn at different times of the day and associate that consumption with certain devices.
and then use that data.
and like already said, they already do.
they have for years at macro scale used regional data to predict peaks and dips of demand depending on social habits. but now with smart meters they can make it more micro predicting house by house.

[stwenhao]

You don't need a warehouse if you can mine fractional satoshis with your CPU. If someone will succeed at shutting down huge ASIC miners, then the difficulty would drop, so small CPU and GPU miners will start mining. Also, it will make more pressure for decentralizing PoW mining.

For example:

network target: 0000000000000000000a37730000000000000000000000000000000000000000
reward per target: 6.34333655 BTC (basic block reward plus fees)
target for single satoshi: 00000000000182482072fc950000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (network target * number of satoshis)
target for single millisatoshi: 0000000005e4e9bec12aa6080000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (target for satoshi * 1000)

As you can see, single millisatoshis could be mined today on CPU's, if miners could be rewarded proportionally to their mining power. Banning ASIC's is just pushing us faster to that scenario.

People criticize Proof of Stake, but they cannot even make a test network without staking. For example, signet is very centralized. Developers did nothing to decentralize testnet3 in Proof of Work way as you described, they simply made a centralized network and added even easier Proof of Work than Satoshi did! Still harder than 20 leading zero bits in prenet, but definitely easier than difficulty one on mainnet. So, even Bitcoin developers are testing Proof of Stake and making new signets for new features (check https://ctvsignet.com/ if you don't believe me), guess what will be next. Just look at the mailing list in this month, there are more and more proposals involving signatures and staking. That means, Proof of Stake could win even on Bitcoin!

[JayJuanGee]

You don't need a warehouse if you can mine fractional satoshis with your CPU. If someone will succeed at shutting down huge ASIC miners, then the difficulty would drop, so small CPU and GPU miners will start mining. Also, it will make more pressure for decentralizing PoW mining.

For example:

network target: 0000000000000000000a37730000000000000000000000000000000000000000
reward per target: 6.34333655 BTC (basic block reward plus fees)
target for single satoshi: 00000000000182482072fc950000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (network target * number of satoshis)
target for single millisatoshi: 0000000005e4e9bec12aa6080000000000000000000000000000000000000000 (target for satoshi * 1000)

As you can see, single millisatoshis could be mined today on CPU's, if miners could be rewarded proportionally to their mining power. Banning ASIC's is just pushing us faster to that scenario.

People criticize Proof of Stake, but they cannot even make a test network without staking. For example, signet is very centralized. Developers did nothing to decentralize testnet3 in Proof of Work way as you described, they simply made a centralized network and added even easier Proof of Work than Satoshi did! Still harder than 20 leading zero bits in prenet, but definitely easier than difficulty one on mainnet. So, even Bitcoin developers are testing Proof of Stake and making new signets for new features (check https://ctvsignet.com/ if you don't believe me), guess what will be next. Just look at the mailing list in this month, there are more and more proposals involving signatures and staking. That means, Proof of Stake could win even on Bitcoin!

I finally got through this whole thread, and I would not even claim to understand all of the arguments contained herein.. Furthermore, I have hardly any claim to having much if any technical expertise in terms of the comparing and contrasting of POW to POS, yet I have been learning about bitcoin since about late 2013 - when I first got into it. 

At first, I had a tentative sense that bitcoin was an invention that was adding some kind of value that had never really been accomplished previously, and I was not exactly sure about how bitcoin was accomplishing that, but in some sense bitcoin seemed to provide a kind of hedge against the dollar.. a kind of gold 2.0. 

Yeah.,. I did not make that shit up.  There were already plenty of discussion and presentation of bitcoin as a potential hedge against the dollar and a kind of gold 2.0 in late 2013.  Some  people try to act like earlier people into bitcoin did not know what bitcoin was and everyone thought bitcoin was ONLY for transactions blah blah blah.. Sure, bitcoin had always been known to have multiple use cases, but surely continued and ongoing concerns about the extent to which bitcoin might be able to continue to survive and strive somewhat under-the-radar while gaining adoption and network effects that can take a lot of time to build and for people to get used to these matters.

I find so much nonsense in various claims about POS coins/projects adding any kind of value, or that bitcoin is going to evolve into POS with the passage of time because more and more aspects of bitcoin has developed or entangled with various POS systems.   None of us even need to assert that POS systems are bad because all kinds of them exist all over the world, and various kinds of them have existed way before bitcoin and some of the shitcoins and even status quo powers that be representatives who are currently proclaiming that POS brings various kinds of innovation are not completely wrong in regards to various kinds of innovations that can happen on and through POS systems.. while at the same time, those various POS systems are not bringing anything that is substantially and meaningfully new to the table that is likely even close to being better than bitcoin, and even if some of us might want to argue that they may be better than bitcoin, the better fucking be at least 10x better than bitcoin if they want to get the market to adopt them as superior to bitcoin.

Anyone who might be paying any kind of attention in terms of attempting to understand what bitcoin brings to the table does not even need to get enmeshed with the so many compare and contrast arguments regarding whether POW or POS might be better, because in some sense bitcoin has established itself as being at least 10x better than any kind of POW system that had preceded it... and bitcoin was a paradigm-shifting invention that got so many things adequately and sufficiently correct in order to allow itself to progress into a kind of gravitational pull of value in terms of Metcalfe's law.. and sure, it still might be confusing to many folks regarding the extent to which bitcoin has blowed it out of the park with its more than 13-year old invention .. or at least it has been live for more than 13 years.... and some of the details regarding difficulty adjustment could have been tweaked to have been something else, but those kinds of systems are sufficiently good enough for existing players and new entrants to build upon... creating incentives in which if some folks cannot recognize that value is going to continue to flow into bitcoin and they are distracted by various POS systems that are not really adding much if any value, then they will just need to figure that out later - while some of us have already identified bitcoin's paradigm shifting invention that involves the greatest POW system to date - is likely going to continue to attract value into it because it ends up being the soundest money and the most fair system.. in which anyone can jump on board at any time.. it just costs them more (on a personal level) if they wait longer.

No problem that various POS systems might exist side by side bitcoin and potentially supplement aspects of bitcoin in the event that bitcoin does not end up absorbing them, yet the foundation of value is going to remain bitcoin as a foundational POW system, and any kind of system that strives to displace bitcoin better be at least 10x better.. and there is nothing like that 10x better currently in existence - even though something could evolve, and it would be hard pressed to consider that anything that might displace or sufficiently improve upon bitcoin would be anything other than some other kind of POW system.. not some dumb-ass lack of innovation POS system that largely is convoluted at best and merely replicates various status quo systems that have already been shown to have a lot of defects including the fact that there seems to be no way out of a POS system retaining too much centralization (that bitocin seems to be getting away from.. even if the decentralization might not be perfect in bitcoin but bitcoin systems are likely the most decentralized of any systems that we currently have), and surely some of the unfairnesses of getting in and out and even building upon well being in status quo systems seems to have quite a few improvements with bitcoin..

and POW seems to be the underlying incentive system that drives the whole damned thing.. so anyone so confused about arguing against POW.. seems to be failing/refusing to actually understand what the fuck bitcoin brought to the table and continues to bring.. and who gives a shit if it happens to use electricity along the way.. the benefits way outweigh the cost for anyone who is able to appreciate what is being brought to the table and better get some earlier rather than waiting around for some pump and dump POS system that is only complementing bitcoin at best.

[n0nce]

The Governments are worried more.
My concern is the people that suffer because of power grid blackouts, and worst case a cascade failure that destroys the power grid transformers.

As I said before, if it's such a risk, they would build out infrastructure. That is always the logical choice of what's done if e.g. someone builds a normal factory with traditional heavy machinery. You think they just use the domestic power lines and if they are overloaded they shut down their business?
Again, the logical reaction would be to improve infrastructure, which is always good and gives people work to do & money circulates. It is always done, except apparently when it's not 'company X' in question, but 'Bitcoin'. Not a coincidence. It's about control.

PoW has a technical flaw of requiring geometrically increasing amounts of energy, which is why current energy resources can't continue it.

First of all, 'geometrical increase' isn't even a thing. I've never heard of it and there's no clear Wikipedia definition either. I suspect it's a buzzword spread in PoS circles without anyone checking what it even means. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Wikipedia does link me to 'exponential growth', but if you read the definition, it's not the same thing and probably not what you mean, you're meaning to say 'exponential growth'.

But you want to build something to handle geometric energy growth,
...

Energy consumption won't rise exponentially. That's because difficulty and efficiency advancements kind of cancel each other out. There is no reason for power consumption to grow with a steady Bitcoin price. Of course, if Bitcoin goes 10x, it would make sense for more people to mine and consumption to go 10x, but that's to be expected in a normal business. Like, if you produce 10x more phones, you need 10x the energy - I think that's self-explanatory.

Oh wait, BTC only has ~5 years from the ban,

Random number without any link to reality (what even is the ban...).

ok that only leaves regulation, meaning that only a select few btc miners are allowed to mine.

That's not possible due to the nature of PoW, but this is actually what happens in PoS. As you correctly realize, that's not a good thing.

But the problem with that is so much for freedom, so much for the last pretense of decentralization, not only will btc PoW miners be government licensed and regulated, but they will also  now censor transactions to keep their license.
Now you see why PoW is a technical dead end, the energy resources needed are inaccessible for thousands of years and government control is the only way for it to survive and stay PoW.

That's nonsense, I can't believe you honestly believe this. Also you still don't reply to the question why such an ultra-authoritarion government that you envision, wouldn't go after other cryptocurrencies the same way, too.

PoS is a cooperative design which is why it can coexist with humans without making their lives harder by using up all of the energy resources.

PoW will not use up all the energy resources.. Gosh. For so much 'research' (I hate this wording - looking up articles on the web is not research - but that's another topic), you should know that Bitcoin's energy usage is negligibly small compared to total energy consumption and crippled by many other industries. Hold your horses - any comparisons with small-GDP countries are pure emotional manipulation and meaningless. Like comparing apples to oranges.

Nope, underground PoS economy could easily survive,

So, if the government is not authoritarian and extreme enough to completely wipe PoS off the surface of the planet by applying the death sentence for using it for instance, why should it have the ability to kill 'underground PoW'?

PoW power use put a glowing red target on their back, which means they can't hide,

That's not true. Look up this 200W home miner or this 15W USB miner. Even if it was possible to find people who mine with an S9 (constant 800W load in the home), you cannot spot a 200W load, seriously. Difficulty would adjust accordingly, if large ASICs really weren't able to operate anymore and these little guys would actually become quite profitable.

(They don't even have to waste gas to go to the location, because of smart meters.)

That would first require billions of people to get a smart meter (most don't have one).
You'll also end up with a shitton of false positives, as I already mentioned: People with electric stoves, pets in terraria, aquarium owners, those that tan at home, ones with a sauna, or a heated pool, literally anyone with higher than average electricity usage would need to be checked manually. That's millions of households - good luck with that.

It is worth mentioning that PoS existed nearly as long as bitcoin since it was proposed in early years, and the first implementation of it is a coin called Peercoin (created in 2012) which is considered a dead coin today.
It was only recently that people on the internet started praising this weak and flawed algorithm! It was also recently that a rich centralized foundation started advertising a change from PoW to PoS just because they owned 72 million premined coins. Coincidence?

Interestingly, many PoS folks claim Ethereum 'always planned to transition to PoS later'.
However, if we look at the Announcement thread and check out the earliest archived 2014 versions of Whitepaper and YellowPaper, there is no mention of this.
It's almost as if the creators noticed they had a ton of those coins in their pockets after a while and decided it would be smart to gain voting power with this 'stake' by switching the algorithm. The plan got more concrete as they realized there was no way to beat Bitcoin (when I first joined Bitcoin, there was still a lot of hope by them of this being possible) and environmental arguments played into their hands.

The article mentioned it's possible since the smart meters have access to your network and analyze unencrypted data. Encryption could solve this privacy concern.

Yes, refusing to install a literal wiretap into your home should mostly invalidate this vector.
There is something called 'power analysis' or 'power signature analysis' (that's what franky1 mentioned as well), but it's not nearly good enough to spot someone using a specific device. It can work in very specific circumstances, but it's not like LegendaryK claims, where you get an accurate map of all miners at the push of a button.

People criticize Proof of Stake, but they cannot even make a test network without staking.

They can; Testnet is running on PoW. However, if it were the case that PoS was better for a test network in which the coins are worthless, then you kind of shot yourself in the foot if you believe based on these facts it would be a suitable algorithm for an altcoin's main network. 'Sure, lets use an algorithm that is well suited for worthless coins for our cryptocurrency!'..
Also, testnet is just for... testing... why should it be super decentralized and whatnot, it's just made for testing Bitcoin applications without losing money.

[pooya87]

Interestingly, many PoS folks claim Ethereum 'always planned to transition to PoS later'.
However, if we look at the Announcement thread and check out the earliest archived 2014 versions of Whitepaper and YellowPaper, there is no mention of this.
It's almost as if the creators noticed they had a ton of those coins in their pockets after a while and decided it would be smart to gain voting power with this 'stake' by switching the algorithm. The plan got more concrete as they realized there was no way to beat Bitcoin (when I first joined Bitcoin, there was still a lot of hope by them of this being possible) and environmental arguments played into their hands.

Maybe not from the very start but definitely from early days, that is why they premined their shitcoin and held on to most of it after only dumping to get a couple of million dollars.

In any case the plan also became clear after block 200,000 (Sep-07-2015 ETH is ~3 months old at this point) in the source code after Ice Age hard fork. You may have heard the term "difficulty bomb". It was essentially ensured by the code that at some point it becomes exponentially hard for ETH miners to continue on the PoW chain and to force everyone into submission and accepting PoS since they would have no choice by then.

Nobody thought this could be changed until ETH/ETC split and ETC devs "diffused the bomb". Then since the incompetent ETH devs couldn't come up with the 2.0 version that was supposed to be finished before 2017, they too started "diffusing that bomb" but by only pushing it back. So far there has been 5 hard forks AFAIK that pushed it back (forks between 2017 and 2021). I believe the last fork changed it so that there is no more reward for PoW miners after 2.0 is released without the difficulty bomb but I'm not sure since I don't really follow shitcoin development.

[ABCbits]

The article mentioned it's possible since the smart meters have access to your network and analyze unencrypted data. Encryption could solve this privacy concern.

its not so much about access to network to analyse data(computer bytes of your PC). it about knowing power consumption patterns EG knowing the average power of a TV and a coffee maker/microwave. and they can compare any variable of power consumption to when TV shows go to commercial break and people have a coffee or warm up a snack to know which program they are watching due to the timing

I know you mentioned more common method, but that research specifically utilize network access to perform MITM.

heck they use to allow police to be informed when people were using high energy 24/7 as it was believed that those houses were being used as weed growfarms
even a few years ago a few people got swatted by cops due to high 24/7 consumption thought of as being weed growing, but ended up being found to being an asic farm
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/28/22458632/bitcoin-mine-mistaken-cannabis-growing-operation-police

And it's proof such method isn't reliable to determine how people use electricity.

[n0nce]

Nobody thought this could be changed until ETH/ETC split and ETC devs "diffused the bomb". Then since the incompetent ETH devs couldn't come up with the 2.0 version that was supposed to be finished before 2017, they too started "diffusing that bomb" but by only pushing it back. So far there has been 5 hard forks AFAIK that pushed it back (forks between 2017 and 2021). I believe the last fork changed it so that there is no more reward for PoW miners after 2.0 is released without the difficulty bomb but I'm not sure since I don't really follow shitcoin development.

This makes me think: why would miners even vote for any type of difficulty bomb at all? Wouldn't they always vote for the chain where the difficulty bomb or other type of fork which makes the currency PoS, is pushed back or 'defused'?

[garlonicon]

Because this "bomb" is delayed. Miners can collect profits here and now. They can always pretend that there is some rabbit and that we are going to catch it. But chasing that rabbit is way more profitable than finally catching it and ruining the whole project. Of course there is some used equipment that is sold because of that consensus switch, but this computing power will not be destroyed. It could move to ETC or to other chains, second layers, etc. It will not simply die, because there is no reason to do so. Because of Turing completeness, I also expect some people could attach some difficulty to their staked coins, to have some additional protection. And that is unstoppable, in the same way as soft-forks are. That remaining power could be also used to scrap some bytes from signatures and save fees.

So, that voting is not about "what we want to do right here and right now". It is voting about some kind of "publicly announced direction". So, miners answer that "yes, we want to pretend that we will catch that rabbit" (and we can chase it for years, or expand that race duration in a lot of ways).

[pooya87]

This makes me think: why would miners even vote for any type of difficulty bomb at all? Wouldn't they always vote for the chain where the difficulty bomb or other type of fork which makes the currency PoS, is pushed back or 'defused'?

- Not giving a shit about the coin they are mining (they just want the money)
- Not giving a shit about the future of that coin (they simply switch their GPU rigs to another altcoin to mine)
- Lack of knowledge (they had no idea what they were agreeing with, remember ETH team has a good media team that advertised all these forks that introduced other stuffs that they didn't understand or care about).
- The first bomb was forced on the network in early days that the network was tiny, any subsequent work was in favor of miners (pushed their demise back)
- Centralization...

[n0nce]

So, that voting is not about "what we want to do right here and right now". It is voting about some kind of "publicly announced direction". So, miners answer that "yes, we want to pretend that we will catch that rabbit" (and we can chase it for years, or expand that race duration in a lot of ways).

This makes me think: why would miners even vote for any type of difficulty bomb at all? Wouldn't they always vote for the chain where the difficulty bomb or other type of fork which makes the currency PoS, is pushed back or 'defused'?

- Not giving a shit about the coin they are mining (they just want the money)
- Not giving a shit about the future of that coin (they simply switch their GPU rigs to another altcoin to mine)
- Lack of knowledge (they had no idea what they were agreeing with, remember ETH team has a good media team that advertised all these forks that introduced other stuffs that they didn't understand or care about).
- The first bomb was forced on the network in early days that the network was tiny, any subsequent work was in favor of miners (pushed their demise back)
- Centralization...

Sure, what I want to say though is: how to ETH developers envision this bomb not getting delayed over and over forever? Miners do have an incentive to keep mining Ether, because it's more profitable than other GPU-mineable coins, simply.
Lack of knowledge and centralization are possible, though.

It's funny: they want to switch to an algorithm such that the miners lose all voting power and they get it instead, but for this transition to happen they completely rely on the miners themselves.
Almost as if it's not that easy to stop PoW miners...... ^^

[garlonicon]

how to ETH developers envision this bomb not getting delayed over and over forever?

That's the point. It will be delayed and should be delayed (those who believe in the ETH should understand that). Here is the screenshot from Reddit where Proof of Stake is discussed in August 2015. Now we have March 2022. Almost seven years and the transition is still ongoing. It looks like Coyote Willy is trying to catch this Road Runner for almost seven years! Miners will run, developers will pretend they are switching, "business as usual", I would say.

Almost as if it's not that easy to stop PoW miners...... ^^

Even this ridiculous proposal from stwenhao makes more sense, because in this case, miners cannot stop that. The fact that ETH is going to ask miners for their "yes" vote simply means that they are not thinking seriously about switching. And even in case of some switch, I expect things can quickly get out of control, but because of centralization, they could always deploy just one more hard-fork, in the same way as during ETC split. Failed Proof of Stake activation is a good excuse for one more fork, right?

[PrimeNumber7]

But you want to build something to handle geometric energy growth,
...

Energy consumption won't rise exponentially. That's because difficulty and efficiency advancements kind of cancel each other out. There is no reason for power consumption to grow with a steady Bitcoin price. Of course, if Bitcoin goes 10x, it would make sense for more people to mine and consumption to go 10x, but that's to be expected in a normal business. Like, if you produce 10x more phones, you need 10x the energy - I think that's self-explanatory.

The supply of miners is limited by manufacturing capacity, and it is not trivial to increase manufacturing capacity. Currently, power consumption by the miners is primarily a function of the supply of miners, although the price of bitcoin does influence this.

If there was sufficient supply of miners, the power consumption of the miners would be entirely a function of the price of bitcoin. Increasing mining manufacturing capacity requires substantial long-term investment, so I don't know if there will ever be a sufficiently large supply of miners that power consumption is entirely determined by the price.

People criticize Proof of Stake, but they cannot even make a test network without staking.

They can; Testnet is running on PoW. However, if it were the case that PoS was better for a test network in which the coins are worthless, then you kind of shot yourself in the foot if you believe based on these facts it would be a suitable algorithm for an altcoin's main network. 'Sure, lets use an algorithm that is well suited for worthless coins for our cryptocurrency!'..
Also, testnet is just for... testing... why should it be super decentralized and whatnot, it's just made for testing Bitcoin applications without losing money.

You point out another deficiency with PoS. With PoW, it is possible to have a testnet because PoW equipment that has real value can be used to test a PoW coin. However with PoS, nothing of value is needed to "stake" via testnet, therefore someone wanting to mess with the testnet could do so at zero cost. As such, it is not possible to have a PoS testnet.

[LegendaryK]

Interesting, according to the PoW supporters on this forum.
PoS is so flawed , it is a wonder it works.
PoW has no flaws, anything not wonderful about it is pure fud.


Yet, 

The following is directly opposed to their viewpoint.
The Majority of the Crypto Marketplace is PoS or is moving to PoS
Governments are talking about bans of PoW, not PoS.
Strange their is an increase in blackouts in places where BTC PoW miners reside.

So basically it comes down to the reader ,
believing the PoW supporters are telling the truth and everything the entire rest of the world is saying is pure fud,
or
Realizing the PoW supporters are ignoring the reality they live in due to their compromised reasoning skills.
And the so called fud will end in a worldwide ban of PoW.

The Great thing about this, is even if the answer is not apparent to the reader,
within a few years it will be undeniable even to the conspiracy minded nothing but fud thinkers.

Peace Out and Good Luck to all of you in your crypto investments.

[franky1]

This makes me think: why would miners even vote for any type of difficulty bomb at all? Wouldn't they always vote for the chain where the difficulty bomb or other type of fork which makes the currency PoS, is pushed back or 'defused'?

- Not giving a shit about the coin they are mining (they just want the money)

what is going to happen is a fork

ASIC miners that want to continue asic mining will use old software that doesnt include the bomb code and just mine as usual making blocks
then those running the new software with the bomb will find they cant mine as its too costly so will just 'stake' instead. thus making two different classes of blocks. thus a divergence of 2 sets of ethereum.

the only reason to delay AGAIN (they already have) is because merchants, exchanges and miners that peg their sidechains of some what importance(to them), EG NFT ledger into block data just wont bother doing so on the PoS variant unless they see benefit in treating the PoS fork as the definitive chain.
the issue with PoS is that the cost of making a block drops by about 2000x the very minute a PoS block is made and 'validators' see huge profit and then happily sell down the PoS ethereum coin on the markets. so again merchants and exchanges are hesitant to adopt the PoS fork as the defacto 'main net' of ether

what people dont realise is this simple thing..

if it only cost $2 to mine gold in your own back yard using just a spoon and coffee filter and 10minutes of your time. you would not be objecting to sell below $1800, or $900. because you will be happy to sell at any price down to $3, as its still 'profit'

however because gold mining costs over $900 and upto $2k(dependant on region variations of fuel, labour, equipment).. many do refuse to sell below their ultimate cost price. which is a minimum of $900 meaning gold will always resist going below $900.

same is true with PoW because it costs many tens of thousands to mine a bitcoin people will refuse to sell below cost.
the lower the price the less willing people are to sell and the more wiling people are to buy. which creates support levels.

and those that have high cost will buy coins if they are cheaper on the market then their higher cost. meaning with no one willing to sell new coin below the ultimate bottom (atleast $25k using new gen asics) and many countries with higher mining costs just buy instead, thus helping the support lines.

bitcoin has a good underlying value(not price, i actually mean underlying hidden value) of atleast $25k as the ultimate bottom and many support lines above that

.. ok i done some math and if a certain majority of eth users staked.. and due to the length of time each person had to wait before they got their chance to win a block reward. their PoS cost of electric just running 24/7 relaying blocks and staying online would have a net cost of about $2-5 , meaning Eth PoS bottom line value is only a couple dollars. and people would happily sell down to that.

PoS has crappy 'store of value' and have a high 'speculative' price. and many merchants know this and are reluctant to drop the good store of value part of ethereum

[n0nce]

PoS is so flawed , it is a wonder it works.

It's not a wonder - many broken things work. For example, there are countries with tons of corruption and they stay afloat somehow. Something staying afloat is not a proof of something being good.

The Majority of the Crypto Marketplace is PoS or is moving to PoS

How often do we have to repeat to you that it's the logical choice for profit maximization (of coin creators / cryptocurrency backing companies) to use or switch to PoS, because they usually already hold a lot of their own coins?
Be aware that while this is good for them (hence they implement it), it's not good for you, since it's a flawed concept.

Do you really believe all the companies are making products solely for the users' best interest? There's a reason behind most business decision that at first glance appear or are sold as 'for our users'.

Governments are talking about bans of PoW, not PoS.

Because for PoW coins they have a nice excuse (the climate). When (not if) they'll crack down on Ethereum et al., they will come up with some other excuse, you can bet on that.

Realizing the PoW supporters are ignoring the reality they live in due to their compromised reasoning skills.

Only because everyone does something it doesn't make it good. 99% of people click on 'accept all cookies' and enter their telephone number into every form that asks them. You tell me: is this good security / web browsing practice?

Peace Out and Good Luck to all of you in your crypto investments.

Again, the fact you're so obsessed with 'investing' and 'returns', shows me you (and many others - one more reason PoS is getting popular - everyone wants to 'get rich quick' - they feel 'late to Bitcoin') only see this whole thing as a fiat maximization strategy, you're not seeing the bigger picture. Maybe that's why you don't understand PoW. But it's really not very hard to understand why PoS makes no sense.

[philipma1957]

I might not be the best PoS enthusiast but i'm definitely not a fan of Pow, today a new bill was introduced into the EU parliament named (MiCA) legislation, the bill lost votes but it had 28 votes, this bill says that All tokens to stay Legal must move away from the high energy consumption it currently has, I suggest all the PoW people to stop dragging BTC to the mud because of their pride and ruin the whole cryptocurrency movement. this is a dark point in the history for crypto people. Energy isn't free and Bitcoin uses lots of it. and we are playing Russian roulette because bills like MiCA will keep coming and oneday one will pass and it would be too late.

You are a troll or a moron.

Sounds harsh but it is essentially true.


I have developed:

 a  45 kwatt solar array
 a 115 kwatt solar array
 a 280 kwatt solar array

Mining BTC (and shit coins) are a huge incentive to develop solar arrays.

Rather than blaming mining for power usage. Simply encourage miners that use solar arrays.

Problem solved on so many levels it is a joke.

I would say really nasty shit to any one that is against properly developed mining via solar arrays.

This is not a debate it is simply trolls and shills for fiat and anti coins.

My disgust at main stream media is truly bigly larger than both of Trumps hand and feet combined.

I really will leave you with this.





this is a coal strip mine.  Basically a subsidy to coal companies as they are not required to fix it.

Simply make them build a solar array and use it to mine.

All pow problems go by by so long farewell

BTW sorry for insulting you , but I get so fucking pissed off whenever I hear or read what you wrote by you or anyone that is anti pow.

[pooya87]

ASIC miners that want to continue asic mining will use old software that doesnt include the bomb code and just mine as usual making blocks

The code doesn't have the traditional 2015 difficulty bomb but there are other measures taken and will be taken before the actual fork so that it becomes impossible for anyone to stay on the old chain without having to go through the code and change it back. I doubt anyone would do that.

Also remember what ethereum foundation did when ETH/ETC split happened. They used their premined ethereum that were doubled by then to dump ETC and crash its price. In fact poloniex (which was one of the biggest altcoin exchanges at the time) caught them and blocked their account at least twice but they successfully crashed its price.
They will do the same to any other split chain.

Another problem that shitcoins like ethereum face is their uncertain future. They have unlimited supply and no use cases apart from scams and money laundering through tokens. This is obviously a hype that can not last for ever. It has fallen 60% over the past 4 years.
Eventually it comes a time when it is too expensive to mine this shitcoin, miners leave and 51% attacks start. If it is already PoS and the foundation controls the network with their premine majority coin, they can easily keep the shitcoin network alive.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The following is directly opposed to their viewpoint.

You got all wrong, buddy. We acknowledge all of those you've said, we aren't daffy. We're just telling you that we don't give a shit. We know how things work and in order to have a properly working decentralized cryptocurrency, we'll have to use PoW. Period.

And the so called fud will end in a worldwide ban of PoW.

Over our dead bodies. 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

So no matter anyone's opinion here for or against, the marketplace has already chosen.
And their is an undeniable lean toward PoS or anything other than PoW.

I've never given much credence to market cap when it comes to how "good" a coin is, but in this particular case the PoS coins you named are pretty good as far as altcoins go.  I also noted your point about support for PoS being quite low on bitcointalk (not surprising given bitcoiners tend to prefer PoW).

I've always been a fan of staking coins, and while I do understand OP's point about centralization and so forth, I just don't think it's as powerful an argument against the protocol as it might sound.  That's a gut feeling of mine; if you asked me to give you a considered counterargument, I'd probably have to think for a few days.

On the flip side, there are some PoS coins that are extremely awful.  I'm talking RDD, NAV, Neblio, CURE, and though I hate to say it, PIVX (that one has always had a place in my heart).  And man, NEO is just criminally overlooked.

[Wind_FURY]

I might not be the best PoS enthusiast but i'm definitely not a fan of Pow, today a new bill was introduced into the EU parliament named (MiCA) legislation, the bill lost votes but it had 28 votes, this bill says that All tokens to stay Legal must move away from the high energy consumption it currently has, I suggest all the PoW people to stop dragging BTC to the mud because of their pride and ruin the whole cryptocurrency movement. this is a dark point in the history for crypto people. Energy isn't free and Bitcoin uses lots of it. and we are playing Russian roulette because bills like MiCA will keep coming and oneday one will pass and it would be too late.

You are a troll or a moron.

Sounds harsh but it is essentially true.


I have developed:

 a  45 kwatt solar array
 a 115 kwatt solar array
 a 280 kwatt solar array

Mining BTC (and shit coins) are a huge incentive to develop solar arrays.

A cooperative interaction between Bitcoin and energy providers will be inevitable, with the energy providers starting to understand their role as a kind of quasi-central bank in the network.

Rather than blaming mining for power usage. Simply encourage miners that use solar arrays.

It's the easy debate for anti-Bitcoin trolls who believe that if Bitcoin "dies", all the liquidity will flow to their POS shitcoin.

Problem solved on so many levels it is a joke.

I would say really nasty shit to any one that is against properly developed mining via solar arrays.

This is not a debate it is simply trolls and shills for fiat and anti coins.

My disgust at main stream media is truly bigly larger than both of Trumps hand and feet combined.

I really will leave you with this.





this is a coal strip mine.  Basically a subsidy to coal companies as they are not required to fix it.

Simply make them build a solar array and use it to mine.

All pow problems go by by so long farewell

BTW sorry for insulting you , but I get so fucking pissed off whenever I hear or read what you wrote by you or anyone that is anti pow.

You don't have to convince them because they simply refuse to understand how important POW is for the world, and Bitcoin as designed. Bitcoin was built to survive against an adversarial environment. Proof of Stake doesn't provide the same level of assurances.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I've always been a fan of staking coins, and while I do understand OP's point about centralization and so forth, I just don't think it's as powerful an argument against the protocol as it might sound.

If you aren't convinced from the OP, I'd advice you to read the entire thread. There have been some noteworthy arguments that I've forgotten to mention in it.

[mikeywith]

Strange their is an increase in blackouts in places where BTC PoW miners reside.

Can you name a few places? the U.S is now the largest mining hub and I don't recall any blackouts were caused by mining operations, places that might have blackouts due to added mining operations are most certainly corrupt and people steal electricity without having to worry about damaging the electrical infrastructure, otherwise and in any half-decent country, the electric company will only wire energy to licensed businesses and houses, and they can limit the amount of power each of them can use to avoid blackouts, so in other words, the same blackouts would have happened due to people using more ACs or taking more showers or anything for that matter, they just happened "faster" with mining.

One point you are missing is that POW creates incentives for people to find cheaper ways of generating energy. Also consuming more energy be it clean or not is also good for every economy, it creates more jobs, increases sales, and essentially helps in economic growth.

Mining is about extracting value, so even if mining was to make energy cost higher for other businesses it does not matter, the business that extracts the most value will survive, this is how capitalism works, I don't see why would anyone have a problem with that unless they are somehow communists.

With that said, PoW isn't perfect either, the voting power will always shift towards one direction which is "cheaper power", but the process of that happening is a lot easier in PoS, it can take years for anyone to acquire say 50% of the voting power in PoW, they will need time to build the farms, time to receive the gears, and they also need to ensure that nobody else is getting close to what they are getting, with PoS, a rich prince or king can just decide to buy half the supply at any given day, he can't just own 150EH worth of hash power in a day, not even in a year even if he had an unlimited supply of money.

Also, the argument you make about the majority of top coins being PoS makes PoS better isn't exactly a perfect argument, the number of coins is irrelevant, I can create 1000 PoW coins or otherwise PoS in a few hours, that won't change a thing, you need to look at the value of the market, if you combine the market cap of all PoW coins vs PoS you will see that market has chosen PoW contrary to your claim.

I don't hate PoS, I am not PoW maxi, not even BTC maxi, I am a big fan of "if it works for you, stick to it", if ADA is doing great with PoS, let it be, if BTC is doing fine with PoW, why nag about it?

[Wind_FURY]

Strange their is an increase in blackouts in places where BTC PoW miners reside.

Can you name a few places?

That's laughable. Using that kind of debate, they're obviously nitpicking. Plus they're merely using different forms of arguments/straw men, and see what sticks. I believe if we ask any serious developer which technically gives superior security assurances between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the answer would always be Proof of Work.

[mikeywith]

That's laughable. Using that kind of debate, they're obviously nitpicking.

The "energy-wasting" argument just lacks so many things, and it's used as the first offense against PoW, especially on the "go green" side of things, what the majority of people fail to realize is that PoW can actually help reduce carbon emissions to a great degree, for over a century nobody has ever found a better way to deal with uncombusted natural gas (methane) which is 80 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, gas flaring has been the only option ever since and it's also pretty bad for the environment.

The vast majority of oil extraction sites are located in places where no electricity is actually needed so that gas has to be vented into the air or otherwise flared, the only thing that lets you effectively and efficiently utilize that "otherwise wasted gas" is PoW, all you have to do is bring your mining gears near the extraction sites, and you can achieve a few things.

1-Reduce air pollution
2-Offer more jobs
3-Extract more value
4-Make the blockchain more secured
5-Make life more difficult for other miners who rely on resources with a high carbon footprint like coal

And this isn't just a "theory", people are already doing that, what ExxonMobil is doing in North Dakota is a great example of how PoW can be good for the environment.

[n0nce]

~

Really cool to have someone with long-term mining experience join in to this topic!
There were a few new insights for me as well in your replies

Also, the argument you make about the majority of top coins being PoS makes PoS better isn't exactly a perfect argument, the number of coins is irrelevant, I can create 1000 PoW coins or otherwise PoS in a few hours, that won't change a thing, you need to look at the value of the market, if you combine the market cap of all PoW coins vs PoS you will see that market has chosen PoW contrary to your claim.

There do exist some big market cap coins, but that's easily possible e.g. if you sell 1 coin for $1 to your buddy and then generate a million of them, you have a 1 million dollar market cap coin in a matter of seconds.
This video comes to mind; it's off-topic, but I found it hilarious! It's not too far off from what happens with many cryptocurrencies.
I Became The World’s Richest Man For 7 Minutes

[werghb4562]

PoW miners face enormous costs and head aches in moving your PoW operation, not to mention the hardship of getting an industrial energy contract in the new country.
Takes weeks especially, if caught off guard about the ban.

PoS stakers can just move their laptop, or move their coins to a pool outside the country, at almost zero cost and within 2 hours all finished.

However if they wished, a PoS Staker can hide in any country and never be discovered since the energy efficiently hides them from all electric utilities.
PoW miners however, draw more power than residential use, and the electric utilities can pinpoint their location at a minute's notice.

A global pow ban with fantasy land effectiveness would cause the difficulty to drop to a level where laptops can mine if needed.

Another example:
Say you are in the Ukraine, and a missile just destroyed your warehouse full of PoW mining ASICS.  You are officially now done and bankrupt.
However say your PoS Staking Laptop was destroyed.
PoS Stakers can go buy any cheap $500 laptop, restore their coins from their encrypted offsite backup and be back up and running in 12 hours.

In survival situations, those that are versatile and adaptable are better able to survive than those unwilling or unable to adapt to a changing environment.

Why are you insinuating that bitcoin can't adapt to a loss of hashrate? You are aware that bitcoin difficulty can drop right?

China did ban PoW mining.    Fact
PoW Miners did leave China.  Fact

There are still bitcoin miners in china.

PoS is energy efficient, higher onchain transaction capacity, more decentralized, greater adaptability, and able to achieve transaction finality.
All of the above is fact , not conjecture , which is why there are so few PoW coins left and getting less by the day, because even the developers who look at the code more than everyone else and the ones with high IQs are switching.

The Marketplace has already chosen PoS as the superior technology , PoW has been a dead man walking for years.
Which I pointed out here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59381537#msg59381537

The real reason why pos is more popular with the shitcoin scammers is because premined proof of stake is the holy grail of scams.

[pooya87]

I believe if we ask any serious developer which technically gives superior security assurances between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the answer would always be Proof of Work.

It depends on who you ask. For example Vitalik is also a serious developer but he is serious about making more money so he will tell you PoS as he has been brainwashing people to convince them the upcoming fork of his shitcoin is a good one and not at all helping him profit from 72 million premined ether

[Wind_FURY]

That's laughable. Using that kind of debate, they're obviously nitpicking.

The "energy-wasting" argument just lacks so many things, and it's used as the first offense against PoW, especially on the "go green" side of things, what the majority of people fail to realize is that PoW can actually help reduce carbon emissions to a great degree, for over a century nobody has ever found a better way to deal with uncombusted natural gas (methane) which is 80 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, gas flaring has been the only option ever since and it's also pretty bad for the environment.

The vast majority of oil extraction sites are located in places where no electricity is actually needed so that gas has to be vented into the air or otherwise flared, the only thing that lets you effectively and efficiently utilize that "otherwise wasted gas" is PoW, all you have to do is bring your mining gears near the extraction sites, and you can achieve a few things.

1-Reduce air pollution
2-Offer more jobs
3-Extract more value
4-Make the blockchain more secured
5-Make life more difficult for other miners who rely on resources with a high carbon footprint like coal

And this isn't just a "theory", people are already doing that, what ExxonMobil is doing in North Dakota is a great example of how PoW can be good for the environment.

I would ignore their nitpick, and avoid debating about the "climate" altogether. They would only troll you the moment they know that they're opinions are simply wrong.

BUT they should understand that it's not about "the climate". Because if it truly was, why haven't government entites given large subsidies for renewable energy producers? They can let the miners make renewable energy producers more profitable by letting the them buy excess production. Why attack Bitcoin? Because "bad"for them.

I believe if we ask any serious developer which technically gives superior security assurances between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the answer would always be Proof of Work.

It depends on who you ask. For example Vitalik is also a serious developer but he is serious about making more money so he will tell you PoS as he has been brainwashing people to convince them the upcoming fork of his shitcoin is a good one and not at all helping him profit from 72 million premined ether

OG Bitcoin developers don't take him as a "serious developer". They won't say it, but I believe they take him as a scammer.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

[n0nce]

BUT they should understand that it's not about "the climate". Because if it truly was, why haven't government entites given large subsidies for renewable energy producers? They can let the miners make renewable energy producers more profitable by letting the them buy excess production. Why attack Bitcoin? Because "bad"for them.

I mean if you want to know if governments care about the environment, it's quickly verified by comparing their 'climate budget' against 'other budgets'.
It's also pretty trivial to understand that if you're really trying to transition to renewables as quickly as possible, you have to oversize the renewable energy plants to account for variance in sunlight / sun hours and in the weather in general, to make sure you won't have periods with too little energy. When the power plants do all run on 100% though, you'll have tons of excess energy that will go to waste. Using ASICs as a variable load that can convert that extra energy back into money would certainly help building oversized renewable energy plants, by making them much more profitable.

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

The ASICs 'being physical' is one of my favourite points against PoS. It's much easier to buy half of a currency's tokens or steal them through a hack, while driving around the world and breaking into supervised buildings and hauling around tons of stolen electronics without being caught seems pretty unreasonable. Also just buying 50% of ASICs is never going to happen, at least not quickly. Then you'll have to set them all up and sell them back after your attack.

Instead, even if you buy PoS tokens, you can use the stake for an attack, and sell them back right after. It might even work with a loan of 1 day, if someone grants it to you.

It's also worth noting that hacking a token requires hacking a single smart contract; that's a single point of failure. Whereas stealing all Bitcoin miners would require all security systems of all mining facilities in the world to fail, as well as all police and law enforcement agents around those buildings.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Also just buying 50% of ASICs is never going to happen, at least not quickly. Then you'll have to set them all up and sell them back after your attack.

Exactly, this can take a very long time. Not to mention that if a nutty billionaire attempted to attack the network that way, he had to spend a lot of time trying to gain access to all that hardware which would reveal their malicious activity and ill-intentioned behavior.

On the other hand, a person can buy half the coins relatively quickly and leave no one able to figure it out.

[Wind_FURY]

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain. It can be that exchanges can cartelize, and form a cabal, using coins not withrawn by their real owners to be staked by the exchanges themselves.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain.

Which brings us to the other problem: Inability to produce consensus.

[n0nce]

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain.

Which brings us to the other problem: Inability to produce consensus.

Yup, there is no 'longest chain' in PoS. It is equally as viable that those developers who claim an attack is going on, are the ones actually attacking the network, rolling back to their advantage, as an actual attack going on. The whole concept of there being 'the dEvElOpErS' with some sort of authority over the whole thing is one of the biggest red flags.
Sure, Bitcoin also has developers and they're definitely essential, but the way they are treated / talked about in pretty much any altcoin community (as also evidenced by altcoiners talking about Bitcoin) already shows that they do have much higher impact on those currencies and projects.

Like, everyone valuing 'Vitaliks opinion' so much, is not something I see in Bitcoin with the community questioning 'What does MarcoFalke think about this or that?' for instance.

[Kiara Sessyoin]

Community Alert: Ronin Validators Compromised

There has been a security breach on the Ronin Network. On March 23rd, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised resulting in 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC being drained from the Ronin bridge in two transactions (1 and 2). The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals. We discovered the attack this morning after a report from a user being unable to withdraw 5k ETH from the bridge.

Sky Mavis is here for the long term and will continue to build.

Key Points
• The Ronin bridge has been exploited for 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC.
• The Ronin bridge and Katana Dex have been halted until we are sure that the network is safe to resume activity.
• We are working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers, and our investors to make sure all funds are recovered or reimbursed. All of the AXS, RON, and SLP on Ronin are safe right now.

https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/community-alert-ronin-validators?s=w

This is the announcement from Skymavis addressing the recent $500+ million hack in ronin sidechain that made headlines recently.

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

[n0nce]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

[Kiara Sessyoin]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

That is something that we can't control now. if the investors still trust on the company they will not leave.

Back to the topic, the hacker managed to gain access to 5 out 9 validator nodes and used that nodes to validate fake withdrawals to bridge resulted of draining the funds. Now, the reason why i see this is a dangerous flaw to POS blockchains is because POS uses majority vote system to validate a transaction block now if the hacker manages to get access to majority of validator nodes theoretically, this would bring the whole blockchain down theoretically. Of course the developers will ramp up the security of their cryptocurrencies but the recent hack shows this is possible.

[pooya87]

Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

For the same reason a large number of people are investing in other shitcoins like ethereum that did exactly the same (roll back) and have full control of their chain due to serious centralization. They don't care about things like immutability as long as their bets on the price has a chance of giving them a profit.

[n0nce]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

That is something that we can't control now. if the investors still trust on the company they will not leave.

Back to the topic, the hacker managed to gain access to 5 out 9 validator nodes and used that nodes to validate fake withdrawals to bridge resulted of draining the funds. Now, the reason why i see this is a dangerous flaw to POS blockchains is because POS uses majority vote system to validate a transaction block now if the hacker manages to get access to majority of validator nodes theoretically, this would bring the whole blockchain down theoretically. Of course the developers will ramp up the security of their cryptocurrencies but the recent hack shows this is possible.

First of all: 9 validator nodes? Honestly? And thinking people believe this stuff is decentralized.. 'DeFi' and 'blockchain' are meaningless with 9 nodes.

Okay, so if it was not a bug in the contract, it just falls under what BlackHatCoiner mentioned: it's easy to acquire (honestly or not) a majority in PoS systems compared to gaining 51%+ on a PoW system. Then it's indeed a great example of the uncontested superiority of PoW.

Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

For the same reason a large number of people are investing in other shitcoins like ethereum that did exactly the same (roll back) and have full control of their chain due to serious centralization. They don't care about things like immutability as long as their bets on the price has a chance of giving them a profit.

That's a good point. I am not sure they do realize / know about this stuff being so insecure. Like, do they even realize that shitcoin security is way lower than Bitcoins? Would they still invest if they knew this? Probably they just don't care and only want the 'quick easy money', sigh.

[Flexystar]

Wow I did not know so many things go into POW as compared to the POS. I am not sure why but kinda feels like POS is like rich man’s magic wand. They get it done with the money, swing the votes and confirm the identity. On the other hand POW salient features are more or less public. If you want it then prove it, work for it and it’s your. I think I am pretty sure what I want now, it’s POW.

By the way my vote is as a common man, I’m not that much into technical problems of crypto currency. I have always read and understood them as end user with basic information about it. May be such vote is indeed needed as crypto is made for all types of people. 

[JayJuanGee]

Wow I did not know so many things go into POW as compared to the POS. I am not sure why but kinda feels like POS is like rich man’s magic wand. They get it done with the money, swing the votes and confirm the identity. On the other hand POW salient features are more or less public. If you want it then prove it, work for it and it’s your. I think I am pretty sure what I want now, it’s POW.

By the way my vote is as a common man, I’m not that much into technical problems of crypto currency. I have always read and understood them as end user with basic information about it. May be such vote is indeed needed as crypto is made for all types of people. 

You do seem to be saying a lot of gobbledy-gook, Flexystar.  Of course, public opinion and your vote does have some kind of role at least in terms of how you think and into what you choose to invest your time and your money.

In some sense, this whole thread is a BIG ASS waste of time because there should not really be any need for getting into this line of discussion in the event that any of us might come to understand that POW is a central aspect of bitcoin's building upon an idea and causing a paradigm shifting invention of a combination of concepts - one of the central components has POW intertwined - so in that sense, taking away POW would cause bitcoin to become nothing new, nothing innovative and surely NOT the paradigm shifting contribution that it already is and will likely continue to be because various status quo powers that be can fight POW with ideas, misinformation and even engage in various kinds of physical attacks, yet one of the powers of such a considerable break through innovation, bitcoin cannot be uninvented, even if the powers that be (status quo financial and governing elite) were to engage in such a fight to push bitcoin underground.

In other words, Flexystar, it seems to me that the main vote that you have would concern the extent to which you choose to allocate your time and your finances towards bitcoin and making sure that you incorporate it into your life and continue to attempt to learn about it.  For sure, I am not even proclaiming to be any kind of expert or even to understand some of the technical differences between POW and POS or even various other information pieces or developments that occur related to bitcoin.  Even if something new might be proclaimed to be helpful to bitcoin (and built upon bitcoin) it is not always going to be clear  whether that new thing might be an attack vector rather than actually being helpful to bitcoin.

Another thing is that each of us have our own specialties and limitations, so any way that we choose to balance our bitcoin participation in regards to investing into bitcoin with our time and money,  we surely might not understand what kinds of struck balances might be in our own interest and if we might need to spend more (or less) time and money in one direction or another.  So, in some sense threads like this can be helpful regarding attempting to better understand something like POW versus POS and even to identify some of the real misleading bullshit going on with various POS projects - as several members have pointed out some of that nonsense.. which can be helpful to see, but maybe some of us do not want to spend much time investigating into such nonsense, but we can still see some of the investigative efforts that some other members have made in making such comparisons between POW and POS systems.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bump.

#9 on CMK: Tera Luna is a version of PoS

This didn't age well. 

[n0nce]

Bump.

#9 on CMK: Tera Luna is a version of PoS

This didn't age well. 

It was quite predictable! A newbie mistake that people like LegendaryK make is to assume the 'Coinmarketcap rating' has always been the way it is now. You have to stick around for a few years to understand that projects like Terra Luna pop up, bring in a good amount of money, then due to insanely huge market caps make it into the top 10 and a short while later, crash to zero. Their place is immediately scooped up by the next scam and so it goes on.
That's why long-time Bitcoiners stop caring about these rankings; because while it seems like there are many coins 'on Bitcoin's heels', they're actually rather insignificant little pump-and-dump scams that come and go, without even getting close to something like rivaling Bitcoin.

This sub-10-minute video is mostly a joke, but it actually illustrates what I'm trying to say pretty well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfJRON3b-w

The young man creates a company with 10 billion shares and sells a single one for 50£, while holding on to the rest of the shares, which on paper means his company is worth 500 billion British pounds. In most of these scamcoin projects, the founders sell a bunch of coins, but create insanely huge amounts of them - the number 21 million pales in comparison - which leads to humongous market capitalizations. Most of the coins remain in the hands of the founders, who drop them on the market as soon as the project gains some traction.

[LegendaryK]

Bump
Since BHC,  bothered calling up an old post.

Updated to today.
In the real world. The top 12 coins on coinmarketcap.
#1 on CMK: Bitcoin is the only PoW coin
#2 on CMK: Ethereum is switching to PoS.
#3, #4, #5: Are Tokens
#6 on CMK :Cardano is already PoS.  
#7 on CMK: Ripple is neither.
#8 on CMK: BUSD is a token
#9 on CMK: Solana is a version of PoS
#10 on CMK: Dogecoin is switching to PoS
#11 on CMK: Polkadot is a version of PoS
#12 on CMK: WBTC is a token.

Only Bitcoin is still PoW, and only Bitcoin will be affected by any bans because of energy waste.
https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/crypto-blackouts-bitcoin-mining-bans-kosovo-iran-kazakhstan-iceland/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/crypto-mania-in-texas-risks-new-costs-and-strains-on-shaky-grid

Notice that there are no new PoW coins in the top 12, once bitcoin ends or evolves that is the final nail in the coffin of the PoW dead end tech.

The Tera Luna collapse is a good example , any crypto can crash to zero, look at all of the non-existent PoW coins that are no longer mentioned.
Thinking Bitcoin can't follow suit is a religious faith not a logical analysis.
But think what you like, just as some others think what they like, and time will prove whom is right.  
https://coinpedia.org/opinion/geopolitical-strategist-and-author-peter-zeihanpeter-zeihan-thinks-bitcoin-is-dumpster-fire/

Bitcoin is a Dumpster fire
Bitcoin is emerging in this environment where money is free;
it will not be here in a couple of years;
it is not a store of value;
it is not a method of exchange;
it is not readily shiftable into the real economy.
We’ve discovered with the Russian sanctions that it is completely reliant on the normal financial system for access.
This means it is vulnerable to anything the government might do; it has already been banned in ten of the world’s top twenty economies; and in terms of currency.
If you ever get a carbon tax it will be having a negative value so yes there’s nothing about bitcoin that’s been here for a long now.

[n0nce]

Updated to today.
In the real world. The top 12 coins on coinmarketcap.
#1 on CMK: Bitcoin is the only PoW coin
#2 on CMK: Ethereum is switching to PoS.
#3, #4, #5: Are Tokens
#6 on CMK :Cardano is already PoS. 
#7 on CMK: Ripple is neither.
#8 on CMK: BUSD is a token
#9 on CMK: Solana is a version of PoS
#10 on CMK: Dogecoin is switching to PoS
#11 on CMK: Polkadot is a version of PoS
#12 on CMK: WBTC is a token.

Besides the fact that the list changed a good bit from a few months ago, I notice another pattern that is common to newcomers: you just take people's word at face value. If you've sticked around long enough (or cared to look up its history), you'd know that Ethereum is switching to PoS should be considered a meme by now; it was proposed probably 10 years ago if I remember correctly, and always pushed back. There's no reason it should get done in 2022; people even locked up Ether coins in December 2020 - a desperate move by the developers to get everyone onboard with the switch, but no, one and a half years have already passed and GPUs are still churning along.

Actually your point about the strength of PoS is pretty weak since out of 12 coins, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin are still PoW, so 25% (you can't treat them as if they were PoS just because they say so - you're very naive believing these people blindly), 5 coins are actually tokens, then there's Ripple, which leaves you with only 3 PoS coins in the top 12. Cardano, Solana and Polkadot. Wasn't there something about the majority of coins switching to PoS or something like this? 3 out of 12 is not a majority, right.

By the way; it should be easy to understand that new projects are super incentivized to make PoS coins:
1) Keeps control in the hands of the creators as long as they don't sell the majority of coins
2) Keeps making them richer forever, without the need to buy, run, maintain and replace ASIC facilities from time to time
3) It's much, much easier to do. Who do you think would start mining a new random unknown altcoin and expend energy and resources on it if they could mine Bitcoin, Ethereum or Monero instead?
Neither of these points makes PoS inherently better in terms of censorship resistance, decentralization or security from attacks.

Notice that there are no new PoW coins in the top 12, once bitcoin ends or evolves that is the final nail in the coffin of the PoW dead end tech.

The Tera Luna collapse is a good example , any crypto can crash to zero, look at all of the non-existent PoW coins that are no longer mentioned.

What about the PoS coins that have crashed, though? Isn't Bitcoin the only coin that has stayed on place #1 (since you care about this coinmarketcap metric so much), for 14 years, without budge? This is a point for Bitcoin, not against PoW.

Thinking Bitcoin can't follow suit is a religious faith not a logical analysis.

It's pretty logical to analyze that Bitcoin is the best cryptocurrency, since it has the best and longest track record, the best decentralization, the best censorship resistance and the best security due to enormous amounts of energy spread around the world, used to secure it. It's not hard to understand. It also has the highest value since it's most widely accepted as a payment method compared to any other crypto - the whole value proposition of this space.

But think what you like, just as some others think what they like, and time will prove whom is right. 

That's why I emphasize sticking around so much: after a few years, you'll have seen so many 'promising projects' come and go, get hyped and crash to zero, which means time does prove us right, and has consistently shown that Bitcoin is pretty much the only project still kicking.

Only Bitcoin is still PoW, and only Bitcoin will be affected by any bans because of energy waste.

Are you honestly this naive to think governments would ban Bitcoin because they care about the environment so much? If that's the case, you're way too blue-eyed, I'm sorry. It's all about control, power and money (because money leads to the former).

[BlackHatCoiner]

[...]

Besides n0nce's response, which will be ignored as you only talk about things that are in your interest, why the hell should I care what the others do? I don't use a PoW coin because it's in the #1 position, I couldn't care less about market caps; they're meaningless and misleading.

I've studied bitcoin, I've talked about it a lot, I've understood what's properly working and what's not, what are the advantages of PoW and what are the fundamental problems of every other mechanism that's been proposed (useful link!). But, what I'm sure I've comprehended years now, is that whataboutism can't form a strong argument. And that's what you do. You care what the market cap says. You've yet failed to show us how's PoS superior. You're constantly trying to prove us wrong, but you haven't yet found some time to question the first page.

To sum up, you believe in "argumentum ab auctoritate"[1], you think that using block explorers is better than running a node[2] (which kinda justifies why you don't care about censorship-resistance either), you're sure the governments will take care of PoW[3], you disapprove of having a free choice in energy usage[4] and you're obnoxiously trying to seem smart-ass with whataboutism? Dude, be serious.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5386948.msg59363275#msg59363275
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5388745.msg59465990#msg59465990
[3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59567418#msg59567418
[4] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5386948.msg59354295#msg59354295

[LegendaryK]

I've studied bitcoin, I've talked about it a lot,

And yet , you have not studied the PoS version 3 blockchains like cardano and algorand.

It like saying you learned English and know it is superior to French.  
But have not studied French.

My point above is, if PoW is so great where are all of the new coins using it.
Answer , their are no new coins using it, because it is a dying tech, kind of like a dying religion that was false to begin with.

PoS Tech is growing and evolving every day , what happens to a dying PoW tech is a non-issue for the rest of us.  
Which is why you have to bump your thread, as everyone already knows the conclusion of the discussion is the death of PoW.
Whether Bitcoin evolves to avoid the PoW death, that is up to the btc devs. But to be honest most of us no longer care what happens to btc.

@n0nce, the developers of ethereum and doge have realized PoW is a dead end,
shame you have not caught up to their thought processes yet.
Next is where you claim you are smarter than the devs that are switching.  

You two have a great weekend, regaling how great BTC PoW is and why it will rule the universe.  

[n0nce]

My point above is, if PoW is so great where are all of the new coins using it.

As BlackHatCoiner pointed out, this is basically an 'argumentum ad auctoritate'.
I'd like to add (actually mentioned that earlier) that it's certainly not easy spinning up a new PoW project. You need to convince people to point their miners to your coin instead of mining a well-known, comparatively stable and easy to use (sell) cryptocurrency.

Answer , their are no new coins using it, because it is a dying tech, kind of like a dying religion that was false to begin with.

That's a totally wrong conclusion. When something is 'old', it can either be 'outdated and dying', or 'tried and tested'; it doesn't need to be the former.

PoS Tech is growing and evolving every day , what happens to a dying PoW tech is a non-issue for the rest of us. 

Actually PoS was proposed 10 years ago, it was discussed on this forum and other places and dismissed as fundamentally flawed. You can work on and 'evolve' a flawed concept for as much as you want, but it won't change the fact that it's fundamentally flawed. No matter how many 'generation' numbers you slap on it.

Which is why you have to bump your thread, as everyone already knows the conclusion of the discussion is the death of PoW.

Nope, we're just still waiting for good arguments why PoS may not be fundamentally flawed. If you're so knowledgeable about Xth generation PoS, why don't you explain how that solves the issues BlackHatCoiner brought up for discussion on page 1?

@n0nce, the developers of ethereum and doge have realized PoW is a dead end, shame you have not caught up to their thought processes yet.
Next is where you claim you are smarter than the devs that are switching. 

How are you so sure that this was their reason? What makes you so sure that they don't just switch to get full control over the project, to get richer without doing anything (except holding coins they already have)? Besides the fact that as I said, ETH are trying to do this for years without success. Are you aware of that?

[garlonicon]

You need to convince people to point their miners to your coin instead of mining a well-known, comparatively stable and easy to use (sell) cryptocurrency

Also, creating new Proof of Work coins is not needed. We don't need new coins. We need new features on existing coins. So, I think using Merged Mining to bootstrap some new coin, and get it attached to Bitcoin, is way better than bootstraping that coin as some entirely separated chain.

because it is a dying tech, kind of like a dying religion that was false to begin with

If it is "dying", then why it is still there? I have bad news for you: if you have some Proof of Stake coin, then it is still possible to transform it into Proof of Work coin again, because it is always possible to mine something. For example, you can mine transactions, like this: 000000000fdf0c619cd8e0d512c7e2c0da5a5808e60f12f1e0d01522d2986a51. Or you can mine new block headers, and attach them as a commitment to your Proof of Stake coin. Then, it is possible to create "a coin in a coin", especially if something is Turing-complete (but also Turing-completeness makes it opened to some attacks, allows writing quines, and many other things beyond that; but fortunately, soft-forks can be used to disable some features, and make it safe to use again).

If you want for Proof of Work to die, presenting an alternative is not sufficient. You need something that will stop people from recreating Proof of Work again and again, in other case it will never die. Maybe a lot of people will mine on CPUs and GPUs, maybe the difficulty would drop, when Proof of Work will be censored, but it will still be present. Also, Proof of Work can be hidden by revealing that later, when it is too late to stop that. To stop Proof of Work, you would need to ban commitments, and to do that, you would need to ban message encryption. And reaching that level of censorship is hard.

So, if you want to prevent constant uprising of Proof of Work, then your alternative has to be strong enough, to convince people that they should not bootstrap Proof of Work again. And I never saw such alternative, because Proof of Stake is not resistant to introducing Proof of Work on top of it, by using unstoppable no-forks in some local group, or some kind of soft-forks globally.

[n0nce]

You need to convince people to point their miners to your coin instead of mining a well-known, comparatively stable and easy to use (sell) cryptocurrency

Also, creating new Proof of Work coins is not needed. We don't need new coins. We need new features on existing coins. So, I think using Merged Mining to bootstrap some new coin, and get it attached to Bitcoin, is way better than bootstraping that coin as some entirely separated chain.

Exactly; it would be pointless and thus difficult to get miners to remove some hashpower from one blockchain and add it to a new, untested one. Whereas in PoS it's trivial to quickly spin up a new blockchain, since you need no miners. This is another point that makes PoW so strong and Bitcoin so valuable; that it's very very difficult to create a serious contender to an existing PoW coin and that a serious alternative can't just be created out of thin air.

This is the real reason there are so many PoS coins and so few PoW: not because it's actually better, but because it's trivial to create masses of PoS coins. You don't need backing by real hardware, real energy and real miners; just some code (that you can fork) and a single server running the software. It's trivial.

But if something's so easy and cheap (free) to make, it also drastically reduces its value.

So, if you want to prevent constant uprising of Proof of Work, then your alternative has to be strong enough, to convince people that they should not bootstrap Proof of Work again. And I never saw such alternative, because Proof of Stake is not resistant to introducing Proof of Work on top of it, by using unstoppable no-forks in some local group, or some kind of soft-forks globally.

That's a very good point; it reminds me that there actually already exist (and will continue to exist) PoW tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
I just discovered there are for instance a 'POW NFT' [1] and a '0xBitcoin' [2] that do PoW on Ethereum; this PoW mining will continue even if (big if) Ethereum Foundation manages to move their project to PoS somehow.

[1] https://www.pownft.com/
[2] https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/0xbitcoin-the-neutral-pow-token-on-the-ethereum-network

[pooya87]

~

At this point you are just putting your head in the sand and disagree with anything that anybody else is saying.

Only Bitcoin is still PoW, and only Bitcoin will be affected by any bans because of energy waste.

Funny thing is that nobody can restrict bitcoin but they can easily restrict PoS coins. All it takes is to call up the developer who also holds majority coin and demand censorship or they can seize their coins and kill the chain by owning majority state in Proof of Stake.

[LegendaryK]

~

At this point you are just putting your head in the sand and disagree with anything that anybody else is saying.

Only Bitcoin is still PoW, and only Bitcoin will be affected by any bans because of energy waste.

Funny thing is that nobody can restrict bitcoin but they can easily restrict PoS coins. All it takes is to call up the developer who also holds majority coin and demand censorship or they can seize their coins and kill the chain by owning majority state in Proof of Stake.

Just because everyone in a PoW lemming cult agrees running off a cliff, yelling we are secure and decentralized, is a good idea,  
forgive me if I ignore those that are incapable of rational thought.

None of the bitcoin nutjobs will believe that PoW is dead , even after the governments ban it and shut the miners down,
you guys are a cult, reality is not your strong suit.  
You ignore stuff like :
https://fortune.com/2021/11/17/china-bitcoin-mining-ban-crypto-holdouts-ether-solana-price/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-57260829
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/15/kazakhstan-crackdown-forces-106-more-crypto-mines-to-close/
https://cryptoslate.com/a-global-energy-crisis-could-directly-affect-bitcoin-miners/
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/business-news-why-is-electricity-shortage-a-major-concern-for-crypto-mining/409575
https://coinpedia.org/opinion/geopolitical-strategist-and-author-peter-zeihanpeter-zeihan-thinks-bitcoin-is-dumpster-fire/

Bitcoin is a Dumpster fire
Bitcoin is emerging in this environment where money is free;
it will not be here in a couple of years;
it is not a store of value;
it is not a method of exchange;
it is not readily shiftable into the real economy.
We’ve discovered with the Russian sanctions that it is completely reliant on the normal financial system for access.
This means it is vulnerable to anything the government might do; it has already been banned in ten of the world’s top twenty economies; and in terms of currency.
If you ever get a carbon tax it will be having a negative value so yes there’s nothing about bitcoin that’s been here for a long now.

Bitcoin is the easiest coin to restrict , one call to the power utilities and a automated disconnect by smart meter and bitcoin is dead.
PoS networks can be run from a laptop with solar panels and a backup battery, with no help from power utilities.

[BlackHatCoiner]

PoS networks can be run from a laptop with solar panels and a backup battery, with no help from power utilities.

Yes, but they don't work properly in both theory and practice. However, the other does work properly and has never had any problems.

[tadamichi]

I've studied bitcoin, I've talked about it a lot,

And yet , you have not studied the PoS version 3 blockchains like cardano and algorand.

It like saying you learned English and know it is superior to French.  
But have not studied French.

My point above is, if PoW is so great where are all of the new coins using it.
Answer , their are no new coins using it, because it is a dying tech, kind of like a dying religion that was false to begin with.

PoS Tech is growing and evolving every day , what happens to a dying PoW tech is a non-issue for the rest of us.  
Which is why you have to bump your thread, as everyone already knows the conclusion of the discussion is the death of PoW.
Whether Bitcoin evolves to avoid the PoW death, that is up to the btc devs. But to be honest most of us no longer care what happens to btc.

@n0nce, the developers of ethereum and doge have realized PoW is a dead end,
shame you have not caught up to their thought processes yet.
Next is where you claim you are smarter than the devs that are switching.  

You two have a great weekend, regaling how great BTC PoW is and why it will rule the universe.  

K so lets go over your thought process and start with the biggest aspiring shitcoin first.
In ethereum with PoS your staked coins literally get locked up, like 10 percent of all eth is locked up at the moment and the update isnt even here yet. Since EIP-1559 it burns coins for being used to get "deflationary", but yet the eth supply is higher now, than when the update was introduced. So you basically created a network that punishes you for using it, but incentivizes old holders to not move their coins. Every newcomer is already at a huge disadvantage with this. Then to stake you will need atleast 32 eth and most wont ever have this much, so they will need centralized staking pools like coinbase and so on. So youre basically throwing the concept of self custody out the window, what happened to decentralization? Every sheep nowadays just runs after some fake yields without using their head. Most ethereum nodes are already running on aws, so lets increase the troughput of the network even more in eth 2.0 to make it even more centralized.

Giving up self custody and decentralized nodes and punishing people for doing transactions sounds like a super sound concept, but they have jpgs, that arent even stored on the chain but on centralized websites that just have a smart contract on the chain(without the jpg on it), so it must be superior to bitcoin and worth it.

[ABCbits]

@n0nce, the developers of ethereum and doge have realized PoW is a dead end,

While some DOGE contributor/developer prefer PoS over PoW, they know each of them have it's own pros and cons rather than bashing PoW. Few example,
https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/1952
https://github.com/dogecoin/dogecoin/issues/1924
https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoindev/comments/sk78gp/why_rush_to_pos/
https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoindev/comments/tyzioi/does_anyone_know_more_about_the_community_staking/

Bitcoin is the easiest coin to restrict , one call to the power utilities and a automated disconnect by smart meter and bitcoin is dead.

Not as easy as you think, considering Bitcoin network is still running today.

[BlackHatCoiner]

DOGE contributor/developer

Isn't if funny that they've just copied-pasted bitcoin's source code, changed few lines and call themselves developers?

[tadamichi]

I would also argue that PoW doesn’t require many different coins, since Bitcoin already does what it’s supposed to do. And that the switching to PoS of many shitcoins is more an expression of each founder wanting more control/ profits over their networks. But ofc sheep listen to empty words and marketing lines, instead of looking what the tech actually does.

//Edit: + There needs to be many PoS coins since everyone wants their own hands in the honeypot to lure in newbies, who can’t separate the difference between bitcoin and shitcoins yet. And so PoS coins hold a competition by who can add more useless features, while not even providing the basics of what a decentralized and free monetary system should do. And beginners fall for it, because it sounds good on paper, but they don’t understand the consequences of each design yet.

[n0nce]

~

At this point you are just putting your head in the sand and disagree with anything that anybody else is saying.

Only Bitcoin is still PoW, and only Bitcoin will be affected by any bans because of energy waste.

Funny thing is that nobody can restrict bitcoin but they can easily restrict PoS coins. All it takes is to call up the developer who also holds majority coin and demand censorship or they can seize their coins and kill the chain by owning majority state in Proof of Stake.

Just because everyone in a PoW lemming cult agrees running off a cliff, yelling we are secure and decentralized, is a good idea, 
forgive me if I ignore those that are incapable of rational thought.

If you're so rationally thinking; why don't you ever address any of the issues presented throughout this thread, such as most recently by tadamichi?
Instead you're only throwing around insults and argumenting for PoS through a list of different coins' market capitalizations.

I feel like these two core questions by BlackHatCoiner sill haven't been answered; if your third-generation PoS technologies or whatever you're trying to say are solving these issues, why can't you explain how they do it?

Why Proof of Stake cannot produce consensus
Why Proof of Stake centralizes the system

[...]

I address to PoS-ers to come to this thread and constructively argue with the above assertions or if they don't disagree, to spell out why PoW is worse. This was just my opinion; anyone's free to support the other side. I didn't type this title for no reason.

[tromp]

DOGE contributor/developer

Isn't if funny that they've just copied-pasted bitcoin's source code, changed few lines and call themselves developers?

They copy-pasted Litecoin's source code, which was copy-pasted from Tenebrix' source code, which was copy-pasted from Bitcoin's source code...

The only interesting development in all of this was the MWEB (Mimblewimble Extenseion Block) protocol that recently activated on Litecoin.

[LegendaryK]

why can't you explain how they do it?

It not that the information is not in the google search engine, it is your cult mentality refused to acknowledge reality.
But in your next post, you will just cry fud.

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand-protocol

Decentralization

The Algorand blockchain is entirely decentralized, which means there is no powerful central authority or single point of control.
A unique committee of users is randomly and secretly selected to approve every block.
Nodes are run by entities representing diverse backgrounds across many different countries.
Fair & Transparent

Control is distributed among all individual network participants
Accurate

No risk of data being manipulated, lost or destroyed
Secure

Fault tolerant with no special group of users for an attacker to target
Permissionless
Public & Open to All

Users do not need the approval of a trusted authority to use the Algorand blockchain.
There is a single class of users and no gatekeepers.
Every participant can read every block and have the opportunity to write a transaction in a future block.
Low Cost to Participate

The Algorand platform requires minimal processing power and modest IT resources to join.
All online users who possess algos are automatically eligible to participate in block consensus.
Pure Proof-of-Stake

Algorand uses a pure proof-of-stake (PPoS) consensus protocol built on Byzantine agreement.
This means the system can achieve consensus without a central authority and tolerate malicious users as long as a supermajority of the stake is in non-malicious hands.
The users’ influence on the choice of a new block is proportional to their stake in the system (number of algos).
Users are randomly and secretly selected to both propose blocks and vote on block proposals.
All online users have the chance to be selected to propose and to vote.
The likelihood that a user will be chosen is directly proportional to its stake.
Rewards

In Algorand, the power is in the hands of the users holding stake.
Every user receives an amount of rewards proportional to their stake for every block that is committed to the chain.
We do so to encourage users to join the Algorand platform and accelerate our path to decentralization.
Open Source

The Algorand node repository is open sourced and publicly available for anyone to audit, use, and build upon. The platform is founded in principles of transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration and maintained by a dedicated community with a shared vision of a decentralized, borderless future.
Protocol Evolution

Algorand is rooted in the idea that the system should allow for changes and avoid inflexible policies—enabling both the community and the protocol to evolve.
The Algorand platform takes a consensus approach to protocol changes, which facilitates continuous evolution of the protocol and eliminates potential hard forks that could fracture the community.
This ability is powered by the Algorand consensus protocol that enables the users to reach consensus on anything.
Not just on the next block, but also on a protocol upgrade.

    Proposed changes are posted on the blockchain
    The community uses Algorand’s consensus protocol to vote to accept or reject the change
    When accepted, the community agrees on the block where the change happens
    Everyone switches to the new protocol at the same time

As far as security goes, Bitcoin forks and Algorand never forks,
if this does not immediately point out to you that Algorand is more secure than Bitcoin could ever pretend to be,
well you should just quit reading and go play with your crayons.  

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-bitcoin-fork-4684459

On a basic level, these forks arise out of different perspectives on transaction history,

*Forking is what can allow Double-Spends.*

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/core-blockchain-innovation

Immediate Transaction Finality

The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Unlike with proof-of-work protocols, two different blocks can never be added to the chain in the same position.
Only one block can have the required threshold of signatures in order to be certified in a given round.

All transactions are final in Algorand.
Once a block appears, users can rely on the transactions it contains immediately, as they can be confident that the block will forever be part of the chain.
Even if the Internet is split into multiple pools of users, only one safe and consistent Algorand chain will exist.

Turing Award-winning scientist, Algorand founder on creating the ideal crypto - Silvio Micali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttw4DpDNSo8

Silvio Micali is a computer scientist, recognized for his work on cryptography.
He is the recipient of the Turing Award (in computer science), of the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science) and the RSA prize (in cryptography).
He has been on the faculty of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983.

Bitcoin is the easiest coin to restrict , one call to the power utilities and a automated disconnect by smart meter and bitcoin is dead.

Not as easy as you think, considering Bitcoin network is still running today.

Did I say, they are doing it in the US right now , no I did not.
What I said was they could if they wanted too, and it would be easy.
US Government has to ban btc mining 1st, that is less than 2 or 3 years away.
https://www.ictsd.org/how-do-power-companies-disconnect-service-with-digital-meters/

Can Smart Electric Meters Be Turned Off Remotely?

Yes, of course. Southern California Edison said smart meters can be used to silence a customer’s service remotely.

1st states ban btc mining and eventually the Country
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/06/03/new-york-clamps-down-on-bitcoin-mining-in-newly-passed-bill/?sh=7ae439c76de5
And why will the bans increase
https://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-shortage-warnings-grow-across-u-s-11652002380

Electricity Shortage Warnings Grow Across U.S.
Power-grid operators caution that electricity supplies aren’t keeping up with demand amid transition to cleaner forms of energy

Because energy is not in abundance any more thanks to climate issues , war , and sanctions.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042209223/why-covid-is-affecting-chinas-power-rations
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956911/what-is-power-rationing-uk-electricity
https://www.ft.com/content/13b06f9a-20cc-4499-9137-6299c0b81643

The failure by the btc cult to recognize that the energy abundance of the past few decades is changing ,
so that for most countries holding 1st world status will be unattainable.
In short, governments are most likely not going to be able to keep the lights on 24x7,
much less have the capacity for an overly wasteful PoW mining using up resources that are in short supply.
So unless one of the BTC cultist can build a Dyson sphere, even the current energy % wasted by PoW mining will be unsustainable very soon.  

* The secondary danger of low energy resources, is economic.*
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-in-trouble-electric-rates-in-texas-have-surged-over-70-as-summer-kicks-in/

Electric rates in Texas have surged over 70% as summer kicks in

With the Price of energy increasing and the loss of free investment capital going away because of the baby boomers shifting to safer investments like cash/bonds/tbills for their retirement, a large % of miners might go bankrupt before the bans occur.
Most miners survive off investment of venture capitalists , not the actual mining itself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-01/in-crypto-downturn-startups-are-still-getting-venture-capital-dollars

venture capital investing in crypto overall appears to be slowing

[n0nce]

[...]

It appears to me you just quoted some out-of-the air claims from Algorand again and presented already disproven arguments from earlier in the thread, such as 'argumentum ad autoritatem' (Turing award winner.....).

For instance, not forking is not a measure of security. Besides the fact that you never explained how they want to have a decentralized system but at the same time never have a fork. Not to mention that this was never the question. The question was never 'Is it more secure?' or 'How is Algorand more secure?', but it was: 'How do we solve these 2 essential problems we believe PoS to have?'.

No matter what amount of fancy stuff you build on top of PoS; if PoS is flawed, it's all meaningless. That's why I'd like you to stay focused on BlackHatCoiner's main questions and not overrun us with masses of quotes and arguments that don't answer the questions.

The failure by the btc cult to recognize that the energy abundance of the past few decades is changing ,
so that for most countries holding 1st world status will be unattainable.
In short, governments are most likely not going to be able to keep the lights on 24x7,
much less have the capacity for an overly wasteful PoW mining using up resources that are in short supply.
So unless one of the BTC cultist can build a Dyson sphere, even the current energy % wasted by PoW mining will be unsustainable very soon.

This was again not a reply to the question, but I'd like to point out that history has shown that producing and having more energy is always better than saving energy at every corner. Energy moves humanity forward and Bitcoin mining pushes the energy sector to produce more of it, especially renewable. I see this as a big win. But it still doesn't answer the questions, so I'd really like answers about these (full explanation on page 1 / follow the quote):

Why Proof of Stake cannot produce consensus
Why Proof of Stake centralizes the system

[...]

I address to PoS-ers to come to this thread and constructively argue with the above assertions or if they don't disagree, to spell out why PoW is worse. This was just my opinion; anyone's free to support the other side. I didn't type this title for no reason.

[tadamichi]

why can't you explain how they do it?

It not that the information is not in the google search engine, it is your cult mentality refused to acknowledge reality.
But in your next post, you will just cry fud.

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand-protocol

Decentralization

The Algorand blockchain is entirely decentralized, which means there is no powerful central authority or single point of control.
A unique committee of users is randomly and secretly selected to approve every block.
Nodes are run by entities representing diverse backgrounds across many different countries.
Fair & Transparent

Control is distributed among all individual network participants
Accurate

No risk of data being manipulated, lost or destroyed
Secure

Fault tolerant with no special group of users for an attacker to target
Permissionless
Public & Open to All

Users do not need the approval of a trusted authority to use the Algorand blockchain.
There is a single class of users and no gatekeepers.
Every participant can read every block and have the opportunity to write a transaction in a future block.
Low Cost to Participate

The Algorand platform requires minimal processing power and modest IT resources to join.
All online users who possess algos are automatically eligible to participate in block consensus.
Pure Proof-of-Stake

Algorand uses a pure proof-of-stake (PPoS) consensus protocol built on Byzantine agreement.
This means the system can achieve consensus without a central authority and tolerate malicious users as long as a supermajority of the stake is in non-malicious hands.
The users’ influence on the choice of a new block is proportional to their stake in the system (number of algos).
Users are randomly and secretly selected to both propose blocks and vote on block proposals.
All online users have the chance to be selected to propose and to vote.
The likelihood that a user will be chosen is directly proportional to its stake.
Rewards

In Algorand, the power is in the hands of the users holding stake.
Every user receives an amount of rewards proportional to their stake for every block that is committed to the chain.
We do so to encourage users to join the Algorand platform and accelerate our path to decentralization.
Open Source

The Algorand node repository is open sourced and publicly available for anyone to audit, use, and build upon. The platform is founded in principles of transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration and maintained by a dedicated community with a shared vision of a decentralized, borderless future.
Protocol Evolution

Algorand is rooted in the idea that the system should allow for changes and avoid inflexible policies—enabling both the community and the protocol to evolve.
The Algorand platform takes a consensus approach to protocol changes, which facilitates continuous evolution of the protocol and eliminates potential hard forks that could fracture the community.
This ability is powered by the Algorand consensus protocol that enables the users to reach consensus on anything.
Not just on the next block, but also on a protocol upgrade.

    Proposed changes are posted on the blockchain
    The community uses Algorand’s consensus protocol to vote to accept or reject the change
    When accepted, the community agrees on the block where the change happens
    Everyone switches to the new protocol at the same time

As far as security goes, Bitcoin forks and Algorand never forks,
if this does not immediately point out to you that Algorand is more secure than Bitcoin could ever pretend to be,
well you should just quit reading and go play with your crayons.  

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-bitcoin-fork-4684459

On a basic level, these forks arise out of different perspectives on transaction history,

*Forking is what can allow Double-Spends.*

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/core-blockchain-innovation

Immediate Transaction Finality

The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Unlike with proof-of-work protocols, two different blocks can never be added to the chain in the same position.
Only one block can have the required threshold of signatures in order to be certified in a given round.

All transactions are final in Algorand.
Once a block appears, users can rely on the transactions it contains immediately, as they can be confident that the block will forever be part of the chain.
Even if the Internet is split into multiple pools of users, only one safe and consistent Algorand chain will exist.

Turing Award-winning scientist, Algorand founder on creating the ideal crypto - Silvio Micali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttw4DpDNSo8

Silvio Micali is a computer scientist, recognized for his work on cryptography.
He is the recipient of the Turing Award (in computer science), of the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science) and the RSA prize (in cryptography).
He has been on the faculty of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983.

Bitcoin is the easiest coin to restrict , one call to the power utilities and a automated disconnect by smart meter and bitcoin is dead.

Not as easy as you think, considering Bitcoin network is still running today.

Did I say, they are doing it in the US right now , no I did not.
What I said was they could if they wanted too, and it would be easy.
US Government has to ban btc mining 1st, that is less than 2 or 3 years away.
https://www.ictsd.org/how-do-power-companies-disconnect-service-with-digital-meters/

Can Smart Electric Meters Be Turned Off Remotely?

Yes, of course. Southern California Edison said smart meters can be used to silence a customer’s service remotely.

1st states ban btc mining and eventually the Country
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/06/03/new-york-clamps-down-on-bitcoin-mining-in-newly-passed-bill/?sh=7ae439c76de5
And why will the bans increase
[Suspicious link removed]j.com/articles/electricity-shortage-warnings-grow-across-u-s-11652002380

Electricity Shortage Warnings Grow Across U.S.
Power-grid operators caution that electricity supplies aren’t keeping up with demand amid transition to cleaner forms of energy

Because energy is not in abundance any more thanks to climate issues , war , and sanctions.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042209223/why-covid-is-affecting-chinas-power-rations
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956911/what-is-power-rationing-uk-electricity
https://www.ft.com/content/13b06f9a-20cc-4499-9137-6299c0b81643

The failure by the btc cult to recognize that the energy abundance of the past few decades is changing ,
so that for most countries holding 1st world status will be unattainable.
In short, governments are most likely not going to be able to keep the lights on 24x7,
much less have the capacity for an overly wasteful PoW mining using up resources that are in short supply.
So unless one of the BTC cultist can build a Dyson sphere, even the current energy % wasted by PoW mining will be unsustainable very soon.  

* The secondary danger of low energy resources, is economic.*
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-in-trouble-electric-rates-in-texas-have-surged-over-70-as-summer-kicks-in/

Electric rates in Texas have surged over 70% as summer kicks in

With the Price of energy increasing and the loss of free investment capital going away because of the baby boomers shifting to safer investments like cash/bonds/tbills for their retirement, a large % of miners might go bankrupt before the bans occur.
Most miners survive off investment of venture capitalists , not the actual mining itself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-01/in-crypto-downturn-startups-are-still-getting-venture-capital-dollars

venture capital investing in crypto overall appears to be slowing

1. Youre talking about cults, but all you can come up with is to quote the exact words of algorands foundation, we didnt ask for a modern version of jehovas witnesses, but to answer the questions above - yourself.
2. If were talking about energy and PoS doesnt solve the centralization problem, then we didnt save any energy, but just put it to waste for nothing, since it didnt solve any problem. So it consumes less energy, but wastes it, so whats the point. If i go on coinmarketcap rn i see 19731 cryptocurrencies being listed, with the majority being PoS. Every shitcoin nowadays claims to be superior to bitcoin, yet theres 19 thousand of them and yet not a single one of them, does what bitcoin can do. Are we saving energy if theres 19 thousand shitcoins that consume less energy(individually, but do they on a whole?) than bitcoin, but none of them can do the task? I doubt it. And saving energy on societal level is a fancy word for mass poverty, Bitcoin mining is a way to harness new energy sources that werent profitable before and can be one step into an energy abundant future. And mining is the most profitable with the cheapest energy being used, and the cheapest energy thats available is energy that wouldnt have been used otherwise, like solar energy during non peak hours. Maybe there will be use cases to even support decentralized grids with bitcoin mining. The game theory is just on point again.

[NotATether]

DOGE contributor/developer

Isn't if funny that they've just copied-pasted bitcoin's source code, changed few lines and call themselves developers?

Yikes. I'd say that there should be at least some standardized benchmark people must take online (and pass) before they can call themselves "proper C++ developers".

We used to have pluralsight for that, but then they banned Russian and Belarus users, so the search for a proper what I call "idiot test" continues [and hey, I just read somewhere that apparently, the Linux Kernel itself has a heap of low-quality code from people].

[death_wish]

I am not here to debate.  I am here to inform people that POS is a scam, and to warn Bitcoiners about a rising attack on Bitcoin.  This is the beginning of Fork Wars 2.0.

My perspective:  Although I consider myself a Bitcoiner first and foremost, I also do altcoins.  I’ve had long-term investments in some POS coins for years, and some of that has been highly profitable to me.  (Not identifying my portfolio’s winners.  Not here to pump things.)  I have altcoiner friends in the POS world, with whom I have been privately discussing this issue for months.  And until I saw that Solana’s founder recently attacked Bitcoin with a propagandistic claim that it must go POS, I was planning some projects and community contributions in the Solana ecosystem—which is POS.  Hey, I enjoy coding for Solana!

As I have gained longtime experience in POS, I have increasingly come to see that even my most profitable POS investments are built on a foundation of lies and financial manipulation.  But for a long time, I tried to make excuses, and balance my negativity towards POS against other factors.  Even after I fully admitted to myself that POS is intrinsically based on a dishonesty so subtle that it fools innocent buyers such as myself—even after I was alarmed to find that one of my favorite POW altcoins plans to go POS—I was deterred from action by the scope of the problem.  POS is eating the “crypto” world alive!  What can one individual do to stop it?

The breaking point for me, the impetus to break out of passivity and rise to action:  Just over a week ago, Do Kwon and Terraform Labs executed a contentious hardfork of the Terra (Cosmos SDK) POS chain, against massive community opposition.  They pulled off the fork in ten days from first public announcement to fork height.  They needed only the collusion of a small, wealthy group of DPOS companies.  The result was a brazen, bald-faced rugpull to divert value from both UST holders (many of whom lost their life savings in the depeg), and people who bought LUNA in the crash (disclosure: including me).

I will save the details for future discussions and publications—I’ve had a close view of that controversy.

As to the subject of this thread, the question is beyond debate.  We have empirical evidence to test various competing theories.

In 2017, Bitcoin proved that POW is decentralized.  If you were in Bitcoin in November 2017, then you remember those harrowing moments when the Bitcoin blockchain simultaneously faced two large-scale attacks from rich, powerful groups with gigantic hashrate at their command.  The objective of those attacks:  Hostile takeover of the Bitcoin blockchain.

One attack fell flat:  Bcashers’ attempted “flippening” on (IIRC) November 12, 2017 moderately degraded Bitcoin’s performance for a few hours, without lasting harm.  The other attack, S2X, was cancelled by its perpetrators at the last moment:  They backed down and gave up, because they saw that they would lose.

As I have said in one of my recent Wall Observer posts, I don’t idealize POW.  But the theory is proved:  If POW were not adequately decentralized in practice—if Bitmain had the type of power that large stake operators have in POS—then we would all be using BCH or S2X right now.

In 2022, Terra proved that POS is a centralized scam.  You can’t trust a POS blockchain.  A POS blockchain is mutable—Do Kwon’s original proposal had literally been to rewrite people’s wallets!  He only backed off from that because bigwigs like @cz_binance publicly denounced it.  A POS blockchain can be hardforked out from under you to change the rules, to change the nature of your money—just because some big stake operators colluded to back a corrupt dev team.  That’s what Do Kwon did just over a week ago on Terra, as a fraudulent financial shell game to divert value without literally rewriting people’s wallets.  The incumbent majority of stakes preserved their position by forbidding recently purchased LUNA from being staked; then, as Do Kwon loudly boasted of their support on Twitter, they used their position to hardfork to a new token designed to suck the value out of the coins they had prevented from staking, and to renege the peg obligation to UST holders.

When I bought LUNA in the crash, I relied on the premise that LUNA was a cryptocurrency recorded on a decentralized blockchain.  “Decentralized” means that even if Do Kwon goes nuts or turns out to be totally evil, at least, I am protected so that I get what I paid for—right?

I had no idea that Do Kwon could suddenly change the rules by executive fiat, just because he decided that some people had bought LUNA too cheap in honest transactions at market—and who needs those sad-looking UST holders, anyway?  Thanks, POS!

Although the stablecoin meltdown is what grabs headlines, this is one of the biggest lessons from Terra.  And the lesson is generally applicable.  The major POS ecosystems tend to be dominated by big stake operators—often by the same parties, who operate in multiple ecosystems.  What happened on Terra can happen in any POS ecosystem that hits a perfect storm of corrupt leadership, market turmoil, and rich insiders losing too much money.

Do not trust POS to protect you with decentralization when you most need that protection—in exactly the type of circumstance where real decentralization would protect outsiders and small investors from a relatively small, collusive group of corrupt insiders.


This post is a part of the beginning of a series of public messages to document the frauds, failings, and fallacies of POS, and other related activity.  On this thread, and elsewhere—on-forum, and off-forum—I am determined to push back against POS, to stop it from eating the whole crypto-world, most of all to stop it from harming Bitcoin.

What can one individual do against a massive, well-funded, highly organized push to deprecate POW and replace it with POS?  But I must act—and I doubt it will be in vain, for I learned important lessons both from Bitcoin’s Fork Wars, and from recent my observations of Terra.

When Bitcoin was under serious threat from the forkers 2015 to around 2019, and most of all in 2017, it didn’t only survive because of POW decentralization.  Bitcoin survived because its community had a hard core of idealists, who fought tooth and nail against a hostile takeover.  The superior decentralization of POW gave them solid ground on which to stand; it protected them from simply being steamrolled by Bitmain, et al.  But technology without people is nothing.

Bitcoin is resilient.  But a major part of its resilience is in its people, not in technology.  There are no technological solutions to some problems.  Complacency when the writing is on the wall is one of those problems.  I am doing my part right here, right now, to try to help solve that problem.

Recently, in the Terra community, there were some principled, intelligent voices speaking out against the hardfork—including LUNA holders who protested on behalf of UST holders, seemingly against their own short-term financial interests.  There was widespread mass-sentiment against the fork.  And at least one big DPOS company strongly refused to collude with the forkers—they went so far as to shut down their Terra operations altogether, after the fork.  I applaud them for that.  I have zero financial interest in their operations; and as of this writing, I have never before used their services.  I will henceforth urge POS delegators in other communities to switch to them, and I will use their services myself if the occasion arises:  If you need to trust someone with the fate of your fake-decentralized blockchain, then you should at least trust someone with a record of some basic honesty and decency!

There was pushback.  But there was nothing even remotely comparable to the community activism that I saw in Bitcoin during the Fork Wars.

If the Terra community had had that, it still would have gotten steamrolled—thanks to POS.  To those who were fighting in the trenches there, it was made abundantly clear that no matter what they did, Do Kwon and his big-stake backers could do whatever they wanted with the blockchain.  But—to put it delicately—let’s just say that much though I respect and admire some of the people I saw opposing the Terra fork, I was painfully conscious of the overall difference from the Bitcoin community!

Bitcoin needs people to stand up and push back.  Now.  Propaganda attacks against Bitcoin are rising fast.  The push for POS has been converting some significant POW altcoins (other than ETH, which has planned that switch for years), with the apparent objective of strategically isolating Bitcoin; most Bitcoiners don’t seem to care about that, but did you notice how heavily the annoying POS shill in this thread plays that angle?  Legislative and regulatory attacks against POW are arriving in the U.S., in the E.U., and elsewhere.  The time to get organized and start mounting a serious defense is not later.

Instead of being lazy and waiting for someone else to do what I think should be done—instead of idly complaining that others don’t act as I think they should—I should step up and do my part.  When others do similarly for their own parts—when Bitcoiners are up in arms over this issue—then Bitcoin will have the resilience that it needs now more than ever.

When the Bitcoin community as a whole actively defends against the “switch to POS” attack as vigorously as they defended Bitcoin in the Fork Wars, then I have full confidence that Bitcoin will prevail.

[ANN] POS is Fork Wars 2.0

[...]

This is an “all hands on-deck” moment.

For the record:  I made this forum account, death_wish, as a throwaway so that I could vent my anguish at a very bad moment for me personally.  Hey—notwithstanding all those CAPTCHA challenges to prove my humanity, I guess I must be human!  At a tumultuous time with much going on behind the scenes, I returned here specifically to speak out against the POS attack on Bitcoin, and on some related topics.  Depending on how events play out here, perhaps I may switch names to something with a more appropriate level of professionalism.  Maybe.

Disclosures:  I have no past or present direct economic interest or investment in POW mining.  I never did mining; my involvement in Bitcoin and in some POW altcoins has only been in other ways.  Maybe I will get into mining in the future.  If so, that will be motivated primarily by the principle of supporting POW decentralization—not primarily motivated by money, other than “I must do break-even or better here.”  A high-risk, effort-intensive, hypercompetitive business with high upfront capital investment and razor-thin operating margins is not exactly what I personally enjoy doing.  Some people love it—I’m glad they do!

I currently hold some (drastically reduced by financial wreckage) amounts of various POS coins; and I have a long-term holding in a mid-cap POW altcoin that is now planning to switch to POS.

Obviously, I have a financial interest in Bitcoin.  But I first came to Bitcoin for idealistic reasons, and I care about Bitcoin for idealistic reasons.  The foregoing is motivated accordingly.

[pooya87]

warn Bitcoiners about a rising attack on Bitcoin.  This is the beginning of Fork Wars 2.0.

I doubt it because nobody among the miners would even consider the PoS nonsense because that would brick their ASICs and nobody among developers is even paying attention to the nonsense and very little idiots exist among those running a full node.
Comparing it with "fork wars" there were groups with hashrate like Bitmain and Bitcoin.com trying to convince people to use their shitcoin.

When Bitcoin was under serious threat from the forkers 2015 to around 2019, and most of all in 2017,

Just because some people had a different opinion about how bitcoin should scale doesn't mean they were all malicious and was attacking bitcoin. The main nonsense began in 2017 and ended in 2017.

I’ve had long-term investments in some POS coins for years, and some of that has been highly profitable to me.

I should point out that just because something gives you profit it doesn't make them good. There are lots of pump and dumps out there giving massive profits and none of them are any good. You can open coinmarketcap.com and see these shitcoins every day. For example RVL (something I doubt anybody has even heard of and is pure shitcoin) gave 5000% profit over the past 24 hours. I doubt you ever made this much profit with your PoS shitcoins all the time you bagheld them.

[tadamichi]

What can one individual do to stop it?

You can’t stop altcoins from doing it, because they’re not decentralized, but you already did one important thing by sharing your own experiences to others. So another thing you can do is to keep your friends and family out of them, by putting the facts on the table, so atleast they won’t get scammed. And i dont see the point why people put themselves in vulnerable positions, voluntarily, and still go into these projects, decentralization isn’t just some cool buzzword, but a protection against the wickedness of man, and you should never accept compromises to decentralization, when it comes your money(time). Human stupidity is probably the only infinite thing in this universe, so why elect human leaders to decide about our most valuable asset(time), it just never works out for the majority.

Now to Bitcoin, if an BIP like this will be introduced in the future you can engage in the discussion and give valid points. Then you can always run a node to make sure changes like this won’t run on your Bitcoin. Also i dont see a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model.

[garlonicon]

POS is eating the “crypto” world alive!  What can one individual do to stop it?

Don't worry, we definitely can. The only missing piece is how exactly it will be done, but there are some ideas, I think I will turn some of mine into proposals if it will be necessary, but so far I took the first step: I informed other people about what is technically possible, and gave some basic technical details. But of course it needs to be designed and implemented, to make a working system.

then we would all be using BCH or S2X right now

They did many mistakes. First was doing that as a hard-fork, and not a soft-fork. Second was using separate Proof of Work, instead of using Merged Mining. Now, we are in a very good situation, because it is technically possible to increase the size of the witness. But in practice, I think about completely different thing: compression. And also about another thing: Proof of Work compression (because I think even with 4 MB block size, we could reach some point, where compressing the history would be difficult, and in that case, it could be needed to design the Layer Zero properly; I mean Bitcoin as the Layer One, Lightning Network as the Layer Two, and I think seriously about the Layer Zero, above the mainchain).

What can one individual do against a massive, well-funded, highly organized push to deprecate POW and replace it with POS?

I can tell you that: we need to make Proof of Work stronger than it currently is. For now, centralized mining pools have a big influence over mining, and I believe it is technically possible to make it decentralized. P2Pool is a good starting point, but it needs to be improved. Proposals like BetterHash or Stratum v2 also sounds promising, but I think we need something far better than that. Another proposal is CoinPool, where people could create one shared account in a decentralized way, but I think it is only a part of a bigger project, we need to connect that with other proposals to make it even stronger. I have some ideas for decentralized mining, but they are still "work in progress", some of my friends are also involved, but still, it is better to join existing proposals, than to form a new one from scratch. Again, ideas are shared here and there, but more work is needed to make it real.

[stwenhao]

Also i dont see a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model.

Technically, they can. Also, the Lightning Network is based on Proof of Stake. There is no mining inside LN. That means, it is technically possible to transform Bitcoin into Proof of Stake coin, and give users some choice. So, a "coin in a coin" scenario is possible here and now, it is just a matter of pushing things higher, and turning the on-chain consensus into that.

[JayJuanGee]

[edited out]

I appreciate reading your description of some of the various ways that POS is fucked up and largely emulating a variety of complex systems that already exist in the world outside bitcoin and also have historically existed.

One of the ways that I was struck through my going into some of your description was to get refreshed upon the so many variation of ways that corruption can get embedded into various kinds of POS systems - so none of them seem to be exactly alike because the various ways that they have centralization that can be used to scam people or to provide value can vary to a very great degree in terms of perhaps how honest some of their leaders are when the time comes to actually demonstrate their leadership.

Maybe a distinguishing factor regarding traditional POS systems in society would be that a variety of systems of accountability have been established, and surely some of those systems of accountability do not always work to protect the various stakeholders including the shareholders, customers, workers and public in general.

So an aspect of the POS systems that are built on a variety of shitcoins or other ways of convoluting and camouflaging the scamming would be that these various cyber (crypto/internet only) related systems is that they are faster moving and more difficult to recognize and understanding the players or to verify and identify that they do not have any real intentions to provide value other than hoping for the narrow group in control to be able to take advantage of the broader stakeholders/participants - while at the same time, it may well be known by the vast majority that the whole thing is a scam or a Rube Goldberg machine that cannot work except that some participants know that they are close enough to the Cantillon spigot in order to be guaranteed profits, others have high confidence that they are close enough to the Cantillon spigot, and sure ly there are a number who have no clue that they are the patsy at the card table.

Bitcoin needs people to stand up and push back.  Now.  Propaganda attacks against Bitcoin are rising fast.  The push for POS has been converting some significant POW altcoins (other than ETH, which has planned that switch for years), with the apparent objective of strategically isolating Bitcoin; most Bitcoiners don’t seem to care about that, but did you notice how heavily the annoying POS shill in this thread plays that angle?  Legislative and regulatory attacks against POW are arriving in the U.S., in the E.U., and elsewhere.  The time to get organized and start mounting a serious defense is not later.

I don't necessarily want to minimize the importance of what you are saying, at least in regards to the various ways in which bitcoiner could end up getting lured over into POS baloney - however, in several senses, it seems that a collapsing of all the shitcoins into becoming POS rather than POW shows that bitcoin is winning..

No other coin believes that they even have a chance to compete with bitcoin, so they convert into a scam.

I doubt that bitcoin is any more threatened by the mere fact that bitcoin ends up as the ONLY POW standing, and all the POS systems, banking institutions, governments and status quo rich folks are ganging up against bitcoin.  Bitcoin was designed in a way to be resilient to attack, so not that I would be inviting attacks, but those institutions, individuals and governments who would supposedly be incentivized to attack bitcoin are also incentivized go establish their own financial stake in bitcoin.

In other words, i have my doubts in regards to any supposed attack or threat of attack to be any worse than it has been historically, because even though the attacks get BIGGER and BIGGER with the passage of time, bitcoin is not shrinking either... Bitcoin naysayers are always proclaiming that bitcoin is going to die or it is getting weaker, and really I doubt that getting weaker is actually the case, so part of the reason that the attacks on bitcoin have to get BIGGER and more dramatic is because bitcoin is getting BIGGER and BIGGER.. and it seems that more and more normies recognize and appreciate that they better get some kind of stake in bitcoin whether it is financial or psychological (of course both.. with various ways to get involved with bitcoin, including how to spend time and energies, too).

Instead of being lazy and waiting for someone else to do what I think should be done—instead of idly complaining that others don’t act as I think they should—I should step up and do my part.  When others do similarly for their own parts—when Bitcoiners are up in arms over this issue—then Bitcoin will have the resilience that it needs now more than ever.

I doubt that the resolve of bitcoiners is anywhere as close to as weak or as deteriorating as you suggest it to be.

The fact of the matter remains that Lindy effect continues to live in bitcoin, and each of bitcoin's network effects continues to grow, even if it takes time to really see the growth in clear and unambiguous ways.

When the Bitcoin community as a whole actively defends against the “switch to POS” attack as vigorously as they defended Bitcoin in the Fork Wars, then I have full confidence that Bitcoin will prevail.

[ANN] POS is Fork Wars 2.0
[...]
This is an “all hands on-deck” moment.

Let all the various shitcoins switch to POS.  We already know it is inferior, and I doubt that bitcoiners are going to be inclined in any kind of meaningful way (beyond the minority of possible attackers) to even want to consider switching to POS.

We already know that POW makes bitcoin into what it actually is - a paradigm shifting technology that is likely facilitating the largest wealth transfer in history - so why would we change away from the actual invention of bitcoin in order to uninvent it?  makes no sense.  nobody except the attackers against bitcoin think that there is any kind of plausible or reasonable way that bitcoin would actually switch.. so they would somehow have to gain consensus first, if they even know how to try to change bitcoin's code.. and what happened to Chris Larsen and his lame ass campaign.. not hearing too much about that recently, even though sure, the diptwat attackers have not given up, but whenever their ideas come up, they mostly are laughed out of the room in regards to "not going to happen."  No one in bitcoin who matters actually takes that dumb shit seriously.

Also i dont see a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model.

Technically, they can. Also, the Lightning Network is based on Proof of Stake. There is no mining inside LN. That means, it is technically possible to transform Bitcoin into Proof of Stake coin, and give users some choice. So, a "coin in a coin" scenario is possible here and now, it is just a matter of pushing things higher, and turning the on-chain consensus into that.

Maybe I am missing something, but it seems to me that decentralization remains on a spectrum, and surely bitcoin has some areas in which people have accused it of not being completely decentralized or not decentralized enough; however, at the same time, it seems that bitcoin ongoing growth around POW and systems around POW have allowed it to push the limits of decentralization in regards to likely being amongst the most decentralized of systems ever to exist - at least in the magnitude of its importance including both current day value held and transacted on it but also future potential value held and transacted on it.

Accordingly, I am a little unclear regarding the point(s) that you are making stwenhao.  To me, it seems that there can be various ways in which POS systems are built upon bitcoin, so in that regard, if the base layer of bitcoin remains decentralized (POW) then other layers can be a POS/POW or whatever combination of those, and the POW base layer still ends up as the grounding that is bringing value and security... I have heard this framed as Bitcoin's objectives/innovations/value proposition having had been achieved by retaining the ability (feasibility) to build centralized systems upon a decentralized system, but not the other way around.

[stwenhao]

to build centralized systems upon a decentralized system, but not the other way around

It depends what do you mean by "centralized" and "decentralized". I can imagine a scenario, where all coins would flow inside the Lightning Network, then all on-chain transaction fees could be gone, and then guess, what will happen next: you will have a system that will run out of coins. Miners will mine all 21 million coins in circulation, and what then? No new coins, so the basic block reward would be zero. And then imagine that all coins could be locked in some LN channels, and stay there. If so, then miners will stop mining (because of no incentive), and then the whole chain will stop, because the whole life will be present entirely in some lower layers.

So far, the Bitcoin community has no solution for the scenario, when the basic block reward would be zero. Then, doing chain reorganization would be profitable, just to get some coins from the fees of the previous block. That means, this could be the way to disincentivize miners to extend the Proof of Work chain. And then, if no solution will appear, everything will be handled by the Proof of Stake.

Are there any downsides/benefits in doing that? Im just getting into how exactly lightning works at the moment and didn’t go into merged mining yet. Does someone have any good resources to catch up?

It is just an idea. If Merged Mining is possible, then something that I described, could be named "Merged Signing", so it is exactly "a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model", because then it is possible to vote for anything, just by signing some transaction, and it is possible to prefer that, instead of using Proof of Work to mine blocks. You can always sign a transaction, and then it goes into staking. If you will look inside the Lightning Network, you will see, that there is no mining. So, how to name that consensus, that is inside that network? I would call that staking, because everyone can open a channel, and put all coins at stake, and then take profits from keeping some node online, and signing messages. There is only one difference: it is running on top of the regular Proof of Work chain. But I think it could change, I described the reasons above.

When it comes to the resources about Merged Mining, then see how the NameCoin works. And imagine that instead of reusing some Proof of Work from another chain, you could reuse a signature. Then you will get, how Merged Mining could work in a Proof of Stake consensus.

[tadamichi]

I can imagine a scenario, where all coins would flow inside the Lightning Network, then all on-chain transaction fees could be gone, and then guess, what will happen next: you will have a system that will run out of coins. Miners will mine all 21 million coins in circulation, and what then? No new coins, so the basic block reward would be zero. And then imagine that all coins could be locked in some LN channels, and stay there. If so, then miners will stop mining (because of no incentive), and then the whole chain will stop, because the whole life will be present entirely in some lower layers.

But in practice won’t there always be nodes opening and closing channels? Then there would always remain some activity on the mainchain. And in theory by the time the block rewards run out, technology would be way more advanced than now. Could there be a possibility then that people come to a consensus to increase the troughput of the mainchain to use it more? I mean if the security depends on miners, why would people ignore the problem by the time it comes to this. Also i can imagine scenarios in the future where it could be beneficial(maybe for legal reasons like when someone is buying a house) to have big transactions on a public ledger, instead of lightning, regardless of cost, and then the rational approach would be to choose the most secure chain for this. But I’d like feedback on this.

// Edit: + What if by that time, we have nation state actors and big institutions in it that depend on Bitcoin and the security of the mainchain, they would loose a lot if they didn’t find a way to support mining. But it’s just another idea. Maybe in the end it depends a lot on economics and the degree of adoption on how this problem will be tackled.

It is just an idea. If Merged Mining is possible, then something that I described, could be named "Merged Signing", so it is exactly "a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model", because then it is possible to vote for anything, just by signing some transaction, and it is possible to prefer that, instead of using Proof of Work to mine blocks. You can always sign a transaction, and then it goes into staking. If you will look inside the Lightning Network, you will see, that there is no mining. So, how to name that consensus, that is inside that network? I would call that staking, because everyone can open a channel, and put all coins at stake, and then take profits from keeping some node online, and signing messages. There is only one difference: it is running on top of the regular Proof of Work chain. But I think it could change, I described the reasons above.

When it comes to the resources about Merged Mining, then see how the NameCoin works. And imagine that instead of reusing some Proof of Work from another chain, you could reuse a signature. Then you will get, how Merged Mining could work in a Proof of Stake consensus.

Thanks for the insight and interesting take.

[JayJuanGee]

to build centralized systems upon a decentralized system, but not the other way around

It depends what do you mean by "centralized" and "decentralized". I can imagine a scenario, where all coins would flow inside the Lightning Network, then all on-chain transaction fees could be gone, and then guess, what will happen next: you will have a system that will run out of coins. Miners will mine all 21 million coins in circulation, and what then? No new coins, so the basic block reward would be zero. And then imagine that all coins could be locked in some LN channels, and stay there. If so, then miners will stop mining (because of no incentive), and then the whole chain will stop, because the whole life will be present entirely in some lower layers.

By the way.. I fixed your quotes to reference that you were responding to different members within your above post.

Well it seems to me that I was attempting to get some clarification from you regarding how you consider the various kinds of intermixing of POW and POS systems, so in that regard I presented my own understanding that there may well be all kinds of variations of systems that might have higher up layer levels that end up being built and then functioning on bitcoin's POW base layer.. and yeah, I am presuming lightning network to be one of those.

Perhaps, I am not smart enough, but your response did not really clarify much if anything for me, except to show me that you believe that some kind of pie in the sky gravitation of value from BTC's base layer to another layer (lightning in this example) could cause bitcoin's base layer to no longer have the correct kinds of incentives to preserve itself. 

Your scenario seems to be nothing that is currently in front of us nor some kind of dynamic that we can really see in our current bitcoin dynamics (as far as I understand) and it does not seem to be any kind of phenomena that appears to pending as likely to be happening or to happen, but still you want to present such a scenario as if it were a current serious consideration that we need to ponder about.

It seems to me that a lot of fringe "what about" hypotheticals come to bitcoin discussions, and they have about a snowballs chance in hell of happening, but we are supposed to seriously consider them?

I would imagine that your theory could take 100 or so years to play out, no?  Do you believe that we might see such set of dynamics coming in advance or should we worry that whatever is happening in bitcoin needs to be fixed right now in order to stop such an inevitability?  would there not be any way to stop it once we see it, or is it already too late?  Perhaps, we need to discontinue all work on lightning network in order to discourage second layer gravitation of value towards?  Oh gawd..   

Maybe I am missing something, and this theory is not as fringe as your seemingly melodramatic description is making it out to be?
 

So far, the Bitcoin community has no solution for the scenario, when the basic block reward would be zero.

Yes.. that is about 110 to 120 years into the future.  Sure, we need to plan ahead, but I doubt that your assertion that no solution has been found is even accurate.  It's not like a solution has to be found for every single hair brained theory when we do not even know if the facts are going to evolve into that direction... Makes no sense to have a solution ready for every single possible problem that could happen.  In other words, there seems to be sufficient and adequate evidence that whatever is happening in bitcoinlandia at this time, is a sufficient and adequate balance of what is perfect (or good enough. .or whatever other qualifier that might fit here) for now and sufficiently and adequately balanced for a variety (if not an overwhelming majority of likely and unlikely scenarios) of future scenarios.

Then, doing chain reorganization would be profitable, just to get some coins from the fees of the previous block. That means, this could be the way to disincentivize miners to extend the Proof of Work chain. And then, if no solution will appear, everything will be handled by the Proof of Stake.

Again.. pie in the sky about a situation that does not currently exist or even look like it is starting to move in a direction of existing in the future.

Are there any downsides/benefits in doing that? Im just getting into how exactly lightning works at the moment and didn’t go into merged mining yet. Does someone have any good resources to catch up?

It is just an idea. If Merged Mining is possible, then something that I described, could be named "Merged Signing", so it is exactly "a scenario in which miners would vote out their own business model", because then it is possible to vote for anything, just by signing some transaction, and it is possible to prefer that, instead of using Proof of Work to mine blocks. You can always sign a transaction, and then it goes into staking. If you will look inside the Lightning Network, you will see, that there is no mining. So, how to name that consensus, that is inside that network? I would call that staking, because everyone can open a channel, and put all coins at stake, and then take profits from keeping some node online, and signing messages. There is only one difference: it is running on top of the regular Proof of Work chain. But I think it could change, I described the reasons above.

When it comes to the resources about Merged Mining, then see how the NameCoin works. And imagine that instead of reusing some Proof of Work from another chain, you could reuse a signature. Then you will get, how Merged Mining could work in a Proof of Stake consensus.

Well, I am glad that you have a solution. .. not that I understand it, exactly..   But maybe it addresses the potential problem that you had outlined, so then your assertion that no solution exists has been resolved, with a possible solution?  perhaps?

To your knowledge is there anyone working on a BIP in regards to your proposed solution or does a BIP already exist?

[LegendaryK]

why can't you explain how they do it?

It not that the information is not in the google search engine, it is your cult mentality refused to acknowledge reality.
But in your next post, you will just cry fud.

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand-protocol

Decentralization

The Algorand blockchain is entirely decentralized, which means there is no powerful central authority or single point of control.
A unique committee of users is randomly and secretly selected to approve every block.
Nodes are run by entities representing diverse backgrounds across many different countries.
Fair & Transparent

Control is distributed among all individual network participants
Accurate

No risk of data being manipulated, lost or destroyed
Secure

Fault tolerant with no special group of users for an attacker to target
Permissionless
Public & Open to All

Users do not need the approval of a trusted authority to use the Algorand blockchain.
There is a single class of users and no gatekeepers.
Every participant can read every block and have the opportunity to write a transaction in a future block.
Low Cost to Participate

The Algorand platform requires minimal processing power and modest IT resources to join.
All online users who possess algos are automatically eligible to participate in block consensus.
Pure Proof-of-Stake

Algorand uses a pure proof-of-stake (PPoS) consensus protocol built on Byzantine agreement.
This means the system can achieve consensus without a central authority and tolerate malicious users as long as a supermajority of the stake is in non-malicious hands.
The users’ influence on the choice of a new block is proportional to their stake in the system (number of algos).
Users are randomly and secretly selected to both propose blocks and vote on block proposals.
All online users have the chance to be selected to propose and to vote.
The likelihood that a user will be chosen is directly proportional to its stake.
Rewards

In Algorand, the power is in the hands of the users holding stake.
Every user receives an amount of rewards proportional to their stake for every block that is committed to the chain.
We do so to encourage users to join the Algorand platform and accelerate our path to decentralization.
Open Source

The Algorand node repository is open sourced and publicly available for anyone to audit, use, and build upon. The platform is founded in principles of transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration and maintained by a dedicated community with a shared vision of a decentralized, borderless future.
Protocol Evolution

Algorand is rooted in the idea that the system should allow for changes and avoid inflexible policies—enabling both the community and the protocol to evolve.
The Algorand platform takes a consensus approach to protocol changes, which facilitates continuous evolution of the protocol and eliminates potential hard forks that could fracture the community.
This ability is powered by the Algorand consensus protocol that enables the users to reach consensus on anything.
Not just on the next block, but also on a protocol upgrade.

    Proposed changes are posted on the blockchain
    The community uses Algorand’s consensus protocol to vote to accept or reject the change
    When accepted, the community agrees on the block where the change happens
    Everyone switches to the new protocol at the same time

As far as security goes, Bitcoin forks and Algorand never forks,
if this does not immediately point out to you that Algorand is more secure than Bitcoin could ever pretend to be,
well you should just quit reading and go play with your crayons.  

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-a-bitcoin-fork-4684459

On a basic level, these forks arise out of different perspectives on transaction history,

*Forking is what can allow Double-Spends.*

https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/core-blockchain-innovation

Immediate Transaction Finality

The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Unlike with proof-of-work protocols, two different blocks can never be added to the chain in the same position.
Only one block can have the required threshold of signatures in order to be certified in a given round.

All transactions are final in Algorand.
Once a block appears, users can rely on the transactions it contains immediately, as they can be confident that the block will forever be part of the chain.
Even if the Internet is split into multiple pools of users, only one safe and consistent Algorand chain will exist.

Turing Award-winning scientist, Algorand founder on creating the ideal crypto - Silvio Micali
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttw4DpDNSo8

Silvio Micali is a computer scientist, recognized for his work on cryptography.
He is the recipient of the Turing Award (in computer science), of the Gödel Prize (in theoretical computer science) and the RSA prize (in cryptography).
He has been on the faculty of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983.

Bitcoin is the easiest coin to restrict , one call to the power utilities and a automated disconnect by smart meter and bitcoin is dead.

Not as easy as you think, considering Bitcoin network is still running today.

Did I say, they are doing it in the US right now , no I did not.
What I said was they could if they wanted too, and it would be easy.
US Government has to ban btc mining 1st, that is less than 2 or 3 years away.
https://www.ictsd.org/how-do-power-companies-disconnect-service-with-digital-meters/

Can Smart Electric Meters Be Turned Off Remotely?

Yes, of course. Southern California Edison said smart meters can be used to silence a customer’s service remotely.

1st states ban btc mining and eventually the Country
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/06/03/new-york-clamps-down-on-bitcoin-mining-in-newly-passed-bill/?sh=7ae439c76de5
And why will the bans increase
https://www.wsj.com/articles/electricity-shortage-warnings-grow-across-u-s-11652002380

Electricity Shortage Warnings Grow Across U.S.
Power-grid operators caution that electricity supplies aren’t keeping up with demand amid transition to cleaner forms of energy

Because energy is not in abundance any more thanks to climate issues , war , and sanctions.
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042209223/why-covid-is-affecting-chinas-power-rations
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956911/what-is-power-rationing-uk-electricity
https://www.ft.com/content/13b06f9a-20cc-4499-9137-6299c0b81643

The failure by the btc cult to recognize that the energy abundance of the past few decades is changing ,
so that for most countries holding 1st world status will be unattainable.
In short, governments are most likely not going to be able to keep the lights on 24x7,
much less have the capacity for an overly wasteful PoW mining using up resources that are in short supply.
So unless one of the BTC cultist can build a Dyson sphere, even the current energy % wasted by PoW mining will be unsustainable very soon.  

* The secondary danger of low energy resources, is economic.*
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/2022/06/02/were-in-trouble-electric-rates-in-texas-have-surged-over-70-as-summer-kicks-in/

Electric rates in Texas have surged over 70% as summer kicks in

With the Price of energy increasing and the loss of free investment capital going away because of the baby boomers shifting to safer investments like cash/bonds/tbills for their retirement, a large % of miners might go bankrupt before the bans occur.
Most miners survive off investment of venture capitalists , not the actual mining itself.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-01/in-crypto-downturn-startups-are-still-getting-venture-capital-dollars

venture capital investing in crypto overall appears to be slowing

It appears to me you just quoted some out-of-the air claims from Algorand again and presented already disproven arguments from earlier in the thread, such as 'argumentum ad autoritatem' (Turing award winner.....).

For instance, not forking is not a measure of security. Besides the fact that you never explained how they want to have a decentralized system but at the same time never have a fork. Not to mention that this was never the question. The question was never 'Is it more secure?' or 'How is Algorand more secure?', but it was: 'How do we solve these 2 essential problems we believe PoS to have?'.

Goes to show you can lock a btc cult members in a library, But you can't make them learn,
so at the end of the day all they sprout is the cult speak they started with.
Like I said in the post above, if you can't understand why no forking is more secure, you should go play with your crayons.

This is also why , most PoS supporters no longer comment, as not only does PoW waste energy,
talking to PoW cult members wastes our time.
I gave you the above info, and even a video.
So to keep the btc cult from wasting anymore of my time, I shall leave you to make false assumptions at the glory of your dying PoW tech.
 

[tadamichi]

Yes.. that is about 110 to 120 years into the future.  Sure, we need to plan ahead, but I doubt that your assertion that no solution has been found is even accurate.  It's not like a solution has to be found for every single hair brained theory when we do not even know if the facts are going to evolve into that direction... Makes no sense to have a solution ready for every single possible problem that could happen.  In other words, there seems to be sufficient and adequate evidence that whatever is happening in bitcoinlandia at this time, is a sufficient and adequate balance of what is perfect (or good enough. .or whatever other qualifier that might fit here) for now and sufficiently and adequately balanced for a variety (if not an overwhelming majority of likely and unlikely scenarios) of future scenarios.

I think this is also important, the people that will need to solve this arent alive yet. And we cant know what their world will look like.  Its all just speculation. I think Bitcoin will give them best possible basis to find a sound solution to this, for the reality they will be living in. We cant design a system for a world that doesnt exist yet, so we gotta make sure Bitcoin fits the needs of our reality first, to even survive this long. Its like someone in the 1900s trying to plan how we should live now. But thats what shitcoiners dont get. Systems are also about the people using them, its not about fancy founders with 10.000 prices and fancy features. A system needs to serve its users first, once it stops doing this it will just get abandoned or circumvented. It doesnt matter if a network has 10 trillion tps or 5.000% yield, if i cant even run a full node myself and a small group of people has control.

[stwenhao]

But in practice won’t there always be nodes opening and closing channels?

I don't know. It depends. It is true for now, but I am not sure it will be true in the future. For example, there are proposals like CoinPool. In general, there are proposals to put more people into a channel. Also, there are some ideas flying around, how to solve the problem with on-chain interaction. You know what does it mean? It means Bitcoin could end up in a scenario, where there would be no need to open or close channels, because it will be resolved by more deep layers. So, it could be possible to have some opened LN channel, and then create some coins on L3, without touching L1, everything inside L2. Then, it could be possible to extend "a coin in a coin" or "a layer based on a layer" to that extent, that it could require no interaction with on-chain coins.

And in theory by the time the block rewards run out, technology would be way more advanced than now.

More advanced does not mean "better". Also, the current consensus has its limitations, and the whole chain will stop, unless there will be some hard fork. But as far as I know the Bitcoin community, they will use hard forks only if they will be forced to do so. And by "forced" I really mean "forced". Maybe 2038 year problem will be resolved by increasing timestamps in a soft-fork way? Maybe when the chain will stop, the last block will be endlessly replaced? Maybe people would start making the blockchain smaller, by completing "D" in the "CRUD" model, so that "Delete" operation will be executed by overwriting the chain, and adding the hash of the previous chain in the first block after the Genesis Block? Why not? We could start mining on top of the Genesis Block, and produce 2016 blocks so strong, that they will be stronger than ever (so that will trigger the biggest chain reorganization ever), and then we can pretend that the Genesis Block is not from 2009, but from "2009+offset"? And what then? Because there are a lot of ways, how soft-forks or no-forks can save the day, and be used to avoid hard-forks always and forever.

Could there be a possibility then that people come to a consensus to increase the troughput of the mainchain to use it more?

I can see a different trend. People think that no block size increase is needed, so also no increase in the use of the mainchain is needed. I think it could be reduced, because a lot of soft-forks and no-forks can be used to make things happen, no matter what developers want, and without their permission.

The networks need to have separate fates.  BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.

I think that will be true in the future. Exactly that last sentence about "getting tyrannical". And I mean "really tyrannical", so not increasing the max block size is one thing, but I can also imagine making the whole chain smaller than it currently is, so for example going from the current ~450 GB to ~1 GB in the future. All that is needed is reaching consensus, and creating some Proof of Work that would overwrite the chain. I think it is possible, if miners could be rewarded directly in the Lightning Network. Another thing is that doing it once is more than enough. Some soft-fork or no-fork could make it permanent, and alter all rules.

I mean if the security depends on miners, why would people ignore the problem by the time it comes to this.

There are many reasons, feel free to pick anything, or even extend that list:
1) they don't have good and working solutions for some problems
2) they don't care, they hope that things will be fixed automatically, when we will get there
3) they don't want to implement it now, when something is too crazy to reach consensus right here and right now

Also i can imagine scenarios in the future where it could be beneficial(maybe for legal reasons like when someone is buying a house) to have big transactions on a public ledger, instead of lightning, regardless of cost, and then the rational approach would be to choose the most secure chain for this. But I’d like feedback on this.

I don't care about "legal reasons", because in many countries, the law is outdated, and it cannot catch the crypto world correctly. For example, imagine that Satoshi invented the simplest tax system that is possible: transaction fee. If you govern a country and use crypto, you can keep being just some user, even if you are a government, and it will work fine, it will just be a different scale. If you want to mint new coins, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and create CBDC for your local currency, when you could just use existing crypto, right? Also, you don't have to force your citizens to fill some papers, to go through the whole system of "spaghetti law", you can just collect transaction fees, and not require any additional fees than that. If you want, you can require an explicit payment, you can show each user the explicit amount they have to pay, and you can make things very simple. So why governments don't want to go that way? I have no idea, maybe they are missing the bigger picture of what is possible, and the whole reason that such ideas can also be beneficial for them.

they would loose a lot if they didn’t find a way to support mining

It is already solved by Merged Mining invented by Satoshi. Another way is Merged Signing for Proof of Stake. I think, technically it is not a problem at all, it is just a matter of making things happen. So it requires some coding skills, some time, and patience, to get there. And I hope we will.

I fixed your quotes to reference that you were responding to different members within your above post.

Some users told me that, and I agree, that quoting should not point to users. And I am not the only member of "quotes without nicknames" club. It makes life easier, when it comes to writing posts, but it is only opinion (and there are exceptions, like quoting posts that are far away, for example written by Satoshi). So, I prefer "userless quotes", but feel free to "fix" them if you want.

Do you believe that we might see such set of dynamics coming in advance or should we worry that whatever is happening in bitcoin needs to be fixed right now in order to stop such an inevitability?  would there not be any way to stop it once we see it, or is it already too late?  Perhaps, we need to discontinue all work on lightning network in order to discourage second layer gravitation of value towards?

It depends on what do you want. Because if you want Proof of Work, then you should use that in lower layers. But if you want Proof of Stake, then it can simply take over, if no Proof of Work will be added to some lower layers. Then, if Proof of Stake is superior, coins will gravitate towards staking. But if Proof of Work is so good, then why it is not present in the lower layers? Why Lightning Network transactions are not Merge Mined with Proof of Work, but only signed?

But maybe it addresses the potential problem that you had outlined, so then your assertion that no solution exists has been resolved, with a possible solution?  perhaps?

Maybe. But still, it has to be confirmed or rejected by other people. It is always a matter of consensus, for either Proof of Work or Proof of Stake, or Proof of Whatever. So, ideas are flying, but they are only ideas, unless implemented and enforced. And there is still a lot of work to reach that.

To your knowledge is there anyone working on a BIP in regards to your proposed solution or does a BIP already exist?

As far as I know, no BIP yet, but I think some people are generally interested in the concept of Merged Mining. For example, I guess this guy wants to do that in a Proof of Work way: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-June/020532.html

I think this is also important, the people that will need to solve this arent alive yet.

I think the basic idea of creating a separate chain with zero supply, that could accept deposits and withdrawals from other chain, is mature enough to be implemented. It can be implemented in a very general and open way, then it can be later limited by soft-forks in the future. Another thing is that if this additional chain has no coins, then it can be easily created (by making signatures), and easily destroyed (by moving coins on mainnet), so recreating the whole additional chain will be quite easy, just all users will move from the additional chain v1 into the additional chain v2 by making a single on-chain transaction.

[death_wish]

Stepping in here to add some perspective:

Goes to show you can lock a btc cult members in a library, But you can't make them learn,
so at the end of the day all they sprout is the cult speak they started with.
Like I said in the post above, if you can't understand why no forking is more secure, you should go play with your crayons.

This is also why , most PoS supporters no longer comment, as not only does PoW waste energy,
talking to PoW cult members wastes our time.
I gave you the above info, and even a video.
So to keep the btc cult from wasting anymore of my time, I should leave you make false assumptions at the glory of your dying PoW tech.
 

Garden-variety shill strategy:  Ad hominem attacks based on canned talking points about a “btc cult”.  In an irony that is surely unintentional, this slop is delivered with a preacher’s airs of smug conceit about the quasi-religious righteousness of the POS position.  Yawn.  Could you be a worse cliché?

Although I had planned for months to get active on this issue, a part of the immediate impetus for me to start posting here about it was that the day before, an altcoiner called me a “bitcoin maxi cunt”.  The trigger:  I politely, but firmly and cogently corrected his technical misconceptions about Bitcoin.

I was only talking to him because we are both invested in different aspects of the same POS altcoin ecosystem:  Terra.  We were on very friendly terms.  Out of humane compassion for someone who got wrecked very badly with UST, I spent significant amounts of my time corresponding with him and consoling him about his losses.

Although I am a Bitcoiner first and foremost, I’ve been doing altcoins for years.  Before my recent months-long trainwreck of financial losses, I had a beautiful portfolio of altcoins (both POW and POS) that would give Jay here a heart attack.  In an altcoin venue, I had befriended a downtrodden altcoiner who had apparently just lost his life savings.  But suddenly, I am a “bitcoin maxi cunt”.

Why?  In reply to my observation that what Do Kwon did to the Terra chain could never happen with BTC, he insulted Bitcoin and made some ignorant remark about Bitcoin’s energy use.  I offered him facts—as I am well-qualified to do, given my level of technical expertise.  Therefore, my new pal declared me a “bitcoin maxi cunt”, and sent me a stream of harassing emails with such subject lines as, “suck a bag of dicks fuckface” (quote-unquote).

Well, he may also have been peeved that I refused to indulge his desire to discuss illegal hacking activity that he bragged he would do—evidently to show me that his technical acumen is superior to the fuddy-duddy Bitcoiner’s.  He also threatened to hack me—LOL.  His ineloquence was less less astonishing to me than his audacity.

Although I have no reason to care for the opinions of some random loser on the Internet, the whole scenario neatly illustrated to me that POS buyers who aren’t either dupes or shills are deranged.

I admit that I was duped—not wholly, never enough to believe that POS was better than POW, but enough to compromise and make excuses.  POS is promoted with potent propaganda, and its worst problems are quite subtle.  I love charts and graphs and maths and stuff; the economic and security analyses in various whitepapers seemed reassuring to me, at least on a “not so bad after all” level.  Thus, if a POS coin attracted me for other reasons (programmability, innovative features, etc.), I was willing to tolerate POS—go with the flow—buy, delegate stake, compound my stake income in the POS monetary perpetual motion machine, and then get sad that my money was locked up when I needed the liquidity.  Whoops...

Now, LegendaryK, who is in a “cult” based on empty rhetoric and smear-attacks, not on facts and logical reasoning?

Who refuses to learn?

For my part, I won’t waste my time debating with POS shills.  That is why my first post in this thread announced:  I am not here to debate.


Thanks to others for the replies.  I will catch up later—busy now.  At high risk, I just bought some SOL on margin in the remains of my recently-liquidated BTC account—a very modest amount; not as an investment, but because I’m still trapped!  To make enough dollars to free my remaining BTC, I don’t now have any reasonable short-term prospects that do not involve programming on the Solana blockchain.  That requires rent-exemption SOL for deployment, and I was down to SOL dust after I had dumped my accumulated SOL and MSOL trying to save my BTC.  Too bad I wasn’t paying attention to the recent prices—every dollar counts for me now; I thought I’d better catch some development-fuel SOL while it’s under $40, though I also wouldn’t be surprised if it falls further...  Anyway, LegendaryK, this BTC cult member and proud “bitcoin maxi cunt” will probably not bother with you here.  I have my work cut out for me on multiple fronts; arguing with losers on the Internet is not a productive use of my time and energy.

[tadamichi]

I don't know. It depends. It is true for now, but I am not sure it will be true in the future. For example, there are proposals like CoinPool. In general, there are proposals to put more people into a channel. Also, there are some ideas flying around, how to solve the problem with on-chain interaction. You know what does it mean? It means Bitcoin could end up in a scenario, where there would be no need to open or close channels, because it will be resolved by more deep layers. So, it could be possible to have some opened LN channel, and then create some coins on L3, without touching L1, everything inside L2. Then, it could be possible to extend "a coin in a coin" or "a layer based on a layer" to that extent, that it could require no interaction with on-chain coins.

We gotta see this in practice and the implications of it, it could definitely be a double edged sword.

More advanced does not mean "better". Also, the current consensus has its limitations, and the whole chain will stop, unless there will be some hard fork. But as far as I know the Bitcoin community, they will use hard forks only if they will be forced to do so. And by "forced" I really mean "forced". Maybe 2038 year problem will be resolved by increasing timestamps in a soft-fork way? Maybe when the chain will stop, the last block will be endlessly replaced? Maybe people would start making the blockchain smaller, by completing "D" in the "CRUD" model, so that "Delete" operation will be executed by overwriting the chain, and adding the hash of the previous chain in the first block after the Genesis Block? Why not? We could start mining on top of the Genesis Block, and produce 2016 blocks so strong, that they will be stronger than ever (so that will trigger the biggest chain reorganization ever), and then we can pretend that the Genesis Block is not from 2009, but from "2009+offset"? And what then? Because there are a lot of ways, how soft-forks or no-forks can save the day, and be used to avoid hard-forks always and forever.

But the hardware will evolve, i think its false to assume, there wont be any more significant progress in a timeframe of the next 30-120 years. People in the year 2100 wont be running around with the same rpi4 with 1 tb ssd, its just unrealisitc. So then when people are actually running into limits and they see the hardware is capable to store bigger chains, it wouldnt be rational or economical to keep the chain unusable. Just like it isnt rational rn to increase the blocksize when we didnt run into limits and cheap hardware cant handle a huge chain yet.

Why would the chain stop without a hard fork? And why should the bitcoin community do useless hard forks for no reason? Anyone is free to do their own hard fork at any time, but the majority won’t follow scams.

Blockchains are supposed to be append only, if we’re going back to CRUD we can just go back to traditional databases. I don’t get the point, it’s already possible to run pruned nodes so no need to castrate the whole chain.

I can see a different trend. People think that no block size increase is needed, so also no increase in the use of the mainchain is needed. I think it could be reduced, because a lot of soft-forks and no-forks can be used to make things happen, no matter what developers want, and without their permission.

It can be increased when necessary, it’s really that simple. What’s the rational argument behind increasing the hardware requirements now, when we didn’t ran into a limit yet and adoption isn’t big enough yet. Timing is important in this case, why trade decentralization for scalability now, when we didn’t even run into a scalability limit yet that made Bitcoin unusable. But at a later point in time, the decentralization compromise might be negligible with better hardware and then people can consider it again.

I think that will be true in the future. Exactly that last sentence about "getting tyrannical". And I mean "really tyrannical", so not increasing the max block size is one thing, but I can also imagine making the whole chain smaller than it currently is, so for example going from the current ~450 GB to ~1 GB in the future. All that is needed is reaching consensus, and creating some Proof of Work that would overwrite the chain. I think it is possible, if miners could be rewarded directly in the Lightning Network. Another thing is that doing it once is more than enough. Some soft-fork or no-fork could make it permanent, and alter all rules.

I can see the tyrannical part happening, but then again if most users don’t get served anymore they have the power to fork into a non tyrannical network. But what point would deleting the chain serve and how would it work in practice? No one will agree to this, if you don’t believe me, try it and see how many nodes would follow. The point of Bitcoin is immutability.

There are many reasons, feel free to pick anything, or even extend that list:
1) they don't have good and working solutions for some problems
2) they don't care, they hope that things will be fixed automatically, when we will get there
3) they don't want to implement it now, when something is too crazy to reach consensus right here and right now

Nah i dont think so it just doesn’t make sense psychologically, the playing field in a few decades will be completely different than now.

I don't care about "legal reasons", because in many countries, the law is outdated, and it cannot catch the crypto world correctly. For example, imagine that Satoshi invented the simplest tax system that is possible: transaction fee. If you govern a country and use crypto, you can keep being just some user, even if you are a government, and it will work fine, it will just be a different scale. If you want to mint new coins, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and create CBDC for your local currency, when you could just use existing crypto, right? Also, you don't have to force your citizens to fill some papers, to go through the whole system of "spaghetti law", you can just collect transaction fees, and not require any additional fees than that. If you want, you can require an explicit payment, you can show each user the explicit amount they have to pay, and you can make things very simple. So why governments don't want to go that way? I have no idea, maybe they are missing the bigger picture of what is possible, and the whole reason that such ideas can also be beneficial for them.

The problem is that individuals in the government don’t benefit from efficiency, it would mean less positions, lower budgets, less control and no one to blame. And laws will probably be completely different about crypto by the time Bitcoin reaches mass adoption. There will be use cases and demand for transactions on public ledgers in the business space for sure, it could just be deducted as a business expense.

[JayJuanGee]

So to keep the btc cult from wasting anymore of my time, I shall leave you to make false assumptions at the glory of your dying PoW tech.
 

Thanks.  Your leaving will likely be very helpful, especially since your points (to the extent that you have any) are hardly even logically or factually coherent in their actual attempts to deal with actual contributions that bitcoin makes that largely, but not exclusively, achieved because it has POW.. and would not amount to anything if it were a lame-ass and largely scam motivated and vulnerable POS system that you suggest as being preferable..

Yes.. that is about 110 to 120 years into the future.  Sure, we need to plan ahead, but I doubt that your assertion that no solution has been found is even accurate.  It's not like a solution has to be found for every single hair brained theory when we do not even know if the facts are going to evolve into that direction... Makes no sense to have a solution ready for every single possible problem that could happen.  In other words, there seems to be sufficient and adequate evidence that whatever is happening in bitcoinlandia at this time, is a sufficient and adequate balance of what is perfect (or good enough. .or whatever other qualifier that might fit here) for now and sufficiently and adequately balanced for a variety (if not an overwhelming majority of likely and unlikely scenarios) of future scenarios.

I think this is also important, the people that will need to solve this arent alive yet. And we cant know what their world will look like.  Its all just speculation. I think Bitcoin will give them best possible basis to find a sound solution to this, for the reality they will be living in. We cant design a system for a world that doesnt exist yet, so we gotta make sure Bitcoin fits the needs of our reality first, to even survive this long. Its like someone in the 1900s trying to plan how we should live now. But thats what shitcoiners dont get. Systems are also about the people using them, its not about fancy founders with 10.000 prices and fancy features. A system needs to serve its users first, once it stops doing this it will just get abandoned or circumvented. It doesnt matter if a network has 10 trillion tps or 5.000% yield, if i cant even run a full node myself and a small group of people has control.

I don't disagree with any of the points that you are making, tadamichi.. yet.. of course, we are learning about bitcoin as we go - with 13.5 years of a track record of its actual going live, but then based on various resolutions of issues that had not been put together in the way that bitcoin achieved... but the bitcoin system that is in place seems to have a certain amount of difficult to change (some refer to as ossified) features..

But then when it comes to something like whether bitcoin needs to scale better or whether bitcoin might need to improve on some of the incentives in order to maintain security or maintain other possible practicalities, then the level of then adoption, how bitcoin is then being used and whatever other evolving issues might then be presented would have to be taken into account rather than what had seemed to have been stwenhao dumbass presentation regarding fixing future problems that we are not sure will or will not exist... or whether they will need to be resolved or whether there might be some easy then solution or some more complicated possible need that would exist at that future date.

Of course, stwenhao is smarter than everyone else, and he can see where this bitcoin's incentives to secure the base layer matter is going, so he would like to warn us about fixes that we need to make now.

[stwenhao]

Why would the chain stop without a hard fork?

Because it is vulnerable to the year 2038 problem, and also to the year 2106 problem, if 2038 will not stop it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365359.msg58166985#msg58166985

And why should the bitcoin community do useless hard forks for no reason?

There is a reason: four bytes may be not enough to measure time accurately. But even if it is, then taking modulo 2^32 will be also a hard fork. And if you don't want to solve that problem in the hard fork way, then the soft fork way may be too crazy to reach consensus.

I don’t get the point, it’s already possible to run pruned nodes so no need to castrate the whole chain.

It's about the initial chain download. It should be faster. A lot faster. For now, it can take many days, and that should be improved somehow.

But what point would deleting the chain serve and how would it work in practice?

The point is to make the chain smaller. And the way is to do deep chain reorganization, that will reach consensus, because the new chain could contain the hash of the old chain. When it comes to removing data, chain reorganization is the only operation that can be used to make it.

No one will agree to this, if you don’t believe me, try it and see how many nodes would follow.

In Segwit, people agreed to put signatures in a separate space called "witness". Why do you think they won't agree to put the whole chain in a separate space (called "archive"?).

Of course, stwenhao is smarter than everyone else

We all know that I am not "smarter" in any way. There are only ideas, people can always reject them. I think reaching consensus is always needed, but for some things mentioned here, I think it could be possible to do so. Bitcoin users are different, not all of them are happy about Proof of Work. Another story is that implementing some of my ideas may sound crazy, but it may turn out to be better than creating another altcoin.

[tadamichi]

Because it is vulnerable to the year 2038 problem, and also to the year 2106 problem, if 2038 will not stop it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5365359.msg58166985#msg58166985

Ok now i got it, thanks. I didnt even know the problem existed until now.
I just checked out the GitHub and i think they’re trying out solutions for this already.

I also read that this apperntly will get fixed by itself over time. Like basicly its not a big issue anymore. Just a recompile over time.
If you write C++ code using chrono::system_clock or chrono::steady_clock now and update ESP-IDF once the 2038 problem is solved, the code should keep working after 2038 with just a recompile against the newer libc & libstdc++.

But in the theoretical case a hard fork would be necessary for this, i cant imagine people in the year 2038 would be refusing to fork, if their wealth was on the line. But i also think it’s important to try to solve this earlier.

It's about the initial chain download. It should be faster. A lot faster. For now, it can take many days, and that should be improved somehow.

I thought about this too and that it can be a problem in the future. I just think it’s more sound that Bitcoin grows gradually with the technology around it, to make sure it’s security is top notch. Extreme measures like this could go against the principle of what made Bitcoin what it is in the first place. And then again for many technical problems there could be non technical solutions, in case technology doesn’t catch up, like for example services that sync the chain locally(which already exist now). To me it’s just more likely that technology will actually catch up and the whole world won’t adopt bitcoin tomorrow, so we still have time.

[pooya87]

In Segwit, people agreed to put signatures in a separate space called "witness". Why do you think they won't agree to put the whole chain in a separate space (called "archive"?).

Witness is not separate at all. It is an inseparable part of the transaction like any other parts (version, locktime, input count,etc.). Any full node sees this part and fully verifies it (any node that doesn't see or verify it is no longer a full node).
What you are suggesting is eliminating the history meaning the full nodes can no longer verify "everything".

[death_wish]

In Segwit, people agreed to put signatures in a separate space called "witness". Why do you think they won't agree to put the whole chain in a separate space (called "archive"?).

Witness is not separate at all. It is an inseparable part of the transaction like any other parts (version, locktime, input count,etc.). Any full node sees this part and fully verifies it (any node that doesn't see or verify it is no longer a full node).
What you are suggesting is eliminating the history meaning the full nodes can no longer verify "everything".

Thanks (and I can’t believe can totally believe that we are still correcting these misconceptions almost five years after activation).

However, a node that doesn’t see these data is still a full node.  It won’t be able to validate Segwit rules; and as a practical matter, it has quite limited functionality as most people move to Segwit.  The concept of a softfork is to make consensus validation rules more restrictive; the outdated node will apply laxer rules which are a strict subset of the current rules.

Nonetheless, the old node still has the same security for its own non-Segwit funds as it always did.  Consensus validation of pre-Segwit transactions works just the same as before; and a pre-Segwit full node can still follow the correct chaintip, without the SPV/light-wallet vulnerability of being misled onto a malicious minority fork.

The import of this backwards compatibility is driven home by experience with blockchains where a centralized dev team can effectually force upgrades; there are even some chains where you can lose your money if you fail to upgrade timely.  In Bitcoin, your money is safe even if you don’t upgrade to the latest Core; and the Bitcoin Core developers deliberately make sure that they do not have the power to coerce nodes to upgrade.

There are not a few technical howlers in this thread.  Another one, just for instance:

to build centralized systems upon a decentralized system, but not the other way around

It depends what do you mean by "centralized" and "decentralized". I can imagine a scenario, where all coins would flow inside the Lightning Network, then all on-chain transaction fees could be gone, and then guess, what will happen next: you will have a system that will run out of coins. Miners will mine all 21 million coins in circulation, and what then? No new coins, so the basic block reward would be zero. And then imagine that all coins could be locked in some LN channels, and stay there. If so, then miners will stop mining (because of no incentive), and then the whole chain will stop, because the whole life will be present entirely in some lower layers.

Lightning Network is entirely dependent on the blockchain.  If miners stop mining, then Lightning loses its security.  The whole concept of Lighting is to maintain, in effect, private local ledgers that can be enforced by recourse to the global ledger (blockchain) in case of attempted theft.

By dead simple logic, it is also obvious that if Lighting or a Lightning-style network could function without the blockchain, then we would shut down the blockchain right now.  Why would anyone pay the costs of mining, if a Lightning-style network could function without it?  Although I myself have some criticisms of Lightning, the benefit of running L2 without L1 would so drastically outweigh the downsides that it’s a clear win—unless it wouldn’t work it all, which it wouldn’t.

(Nit, but a telling one:  The blockchain is the lower layer; Lightning is the upper layer.)

On these and other points:  Please stop speculating wildly on Bitcoin’s future without adequate technical knowledge.  Regardless of your intentions, all it achieves is to sow misinformation, rumours, and FUD.


With my apologies, I am still behind on replies to some others who addressed me above.  I’ll be back...

[pooya87]

However, a node that doesn’t see these data is still a full node.

A full node is a software that performs full verification on everything, if it skips any part of the verification then it no longer can be considered a "full node".
Old nodes that do not receive the witness are no longer performing full verification hence they are not full nodes anymore.

and a pre-Segwit full node can still follow the correct chaintip, without the SPV/light-wallet vulnerability of being misled onto a malicious minority fork.

If PoW were the only metric then SPV clients can also not be tricked into following a "minority fork" with less work since they are capable of validating (and some of them like Electrum already validate) proof of work and follow the chain with the most work.

Keep in mind that when it comes to "longest chain" it is only an argument when everything else is correct. Miners alone don't control bitcoin, both miners and nodes do.
For example if all miners decided to produce 10MB blocks that would make that chain the chain with the most work but it still wouldn't be considered "bitcoin chain" because it breaks consensus rules. That's the same with SegWit, if all the miners decided to spend a SegWit P2WPKH output without providing any signature, all full nodes would reject that chain regardless of how long that is but the old nodes would accept it which is another proof that they no longer full nodes.

P.S. that doesn't make old nodes useless though. In other words you are right that they still provide a lot of functionality and security, they are just no longer full verification nodes.

[death_wish]

However, a node that doesn’t see these data is still a full node.

A full node is a software that performs full verification on everything, if it skips any part of the verification then it no longer can be considered a "full node".
Old nodes that do not receive the witness are no longer performing full verification hence they are not full nodes anymore.

That is a matter of semantics, and quite arguable.  I disagree.  A part of the beauty of Segwit is that it allows non-upgraded nodes to degrade gracefully.  They do degrade—but gracefully so.  Anyway, would you say the same of a node that hasn’t yet upgraded to validate Witness v1 (P2TR) rules?  What about the softfork consensus cleanup before that?

This semantic argument is off-topic for the discussion of POW vs. POS—an issue that I consider to be of prime importance.  Thus, I may be reluctant to take this further here.

and a pre-Segwit full node can still follow the correct chaintip, without the SPV/light-wallet vulnerability of being misled onto a malicious minority fork.

If PoW were the only metric then SPV clients can also not be tricked into following a "minority fork" with less work since they are capable of validating (and some of them like Electrum already validate) proof of work and follow the chain with the most work.

I flubbed that explanation while trying to squeeze in a comparison of non-upgraded full nodes to light clients.  Thanks for the correction.

Keep in mind that when it comes to "longest chain" it is only an argument when everything else is correct. Miners alone don't control bitcoin, both miners and nodes do.
For example if all miners decided to produce 10MB blocks that would make that chain the chain with the most work but it still wouldn't be considered "bitcoin chain" because it breaks consensus rules.

Indeed!  I have been trying to hammer that point home to people for years; and it is critical for understanding the POW vs. POS issue.

Compare one of my recent posts in another thread, apropos hereof:

Miners are essentially paid employees of the Bitcoin network.  Their job is security-critical, so they are paid well; but they are neither the bosses nor the owners of the network, and they do not create the network’s value as a first-order cause.

[...]

The security of consensus validation in Bitcoin is independent of miners, for all purposes except for transaction ordering.  Miners have a sharply limited function in Bitcoin:  BFT agreement on transaction ordering, to prevent double-spend attacks.  All other security is provided by the Bitcoin Core node you have running at home on a Raspberry Pi, consuming 10W of electricity at negligible cost.

This is not the case on POS networks.  On POS networks, so-called “validators” with high capital stake have total control of the blockchain.

That's the same with SegWit, if all the miners decided to spend a SegWit P2WPKH output without providing any signature, all full nodes would reject that chain regardless of how long that is but the old nodes would accept it which is another proof that they no longer full nodes.

You are, of course, correct about what would happen in that scenario.  My point here is—look, hey, we won!  Why argue semantics about whether or not a non-upgraded node is a “full node”?  Segwit had such high support from people with nodes that the UASF nuclear option would have worked, had it been necessary.  We long ago had enough nodes upgraded that the scenario you state above is not of concern, outside the lies and fantasies of Bcashers.  Bitcoin won.  Enjoy it.

Having won the last war, I suggest that the adage about “fighting the last war” takes here a meaning different than the usual.

Why are we still arguing over the Segwit upgrade (especially when you and I vehemently agree about it!), instead of proactively organizing to defend Bitcoin in the new war?

“Switch to POS” is an attack on Bitcoin, and it is a threat to Bitcoin.  On a thread titled “POW vs. POS”, let’s discuss how we should respond to it.

[tromp]

A full node is a software that performs full verification on everything, if it skips any part of the verification then it no longer can be considered a "full node".

Note that by this definition, there are relatively few bitcoin full nodes, since most nodes use the default nonzero assumevalid.

[LegendaryK]

instead of proactively organizing to defend Bitcoin in the new war?

“Switch to POS” is an attack on Bitcoin, and it is a threat to Bitcoin.  On a thread titled “POW vs. POS”, let’s discuss how we should respond to it.

The rest are boring, you're worth a few minutes.  

We both know BTC won't switch to PoS,
Blockstream won't allow it, as it lets them hamper the onchain transaction capacity,
and their future money is going to come from Liquid and LN.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/investing/crypto/bitcoin-infrastructure-provider-blockstream-hits-unicorn-status-with-new-financing/

Blockstream announced it has raised $210 million in a Series B funding round, Blockworks reported.
That brought Blockstream’s valuation to $3.2 billion to officially reach unicorn status.

The funding was raised by two investors: investment management company Baillie Gifford and iFinex,
the parent of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

Blockstream has raised $299 million to date.
That includes this week’s $210 million, as well as a 2014 seed round for $21 million, a Series A round in 2016 for $57 million and an $11 million convertible note.

Blockstream will use the latest round of funding to build additional infrastructure, with a focus on the Liquid Network

PoS Coins don't care what BTC does or what happens to it.
The other devs made their choice and switched to a better algorithm in their opinions.

This is your real war on PoW that is coming.
As the world's energy resources become strained.  
https://www.govtech.com/computing/bitcoin-mining-threatens-to-further-strain-texas-electric-grid
How will BTC PoW survive as the governments ban it's mining?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-york-state-senate-passes-bitcoin-mining-moratorium
Also how will the btc network function, when the power is off from 9am-12noon, and 7pm-10pm, everyday?
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956911/what-is-power-rationing-uk-electricity
(side note: That means no onchain transactions are possible during those hours, also sets up any LN funds to be stolen if one knows the attack vector.)
Also how will the miners survive once a carbon tax is enacted and it makes mining a pure financial negative?

As the baby boomers retire, they switch to US $, Bonds, and less risky ventures, which will gut all of those VC firms that have been propping up all of those miners that will go bankrupt without VC investment?
That is the war PoW is facing, PoS networks don't really care how BTC responds to their real war, because PoS network will function as normal.

One last thing for you.
Transaction Finality
Algorand PoS design has it in 1 block,  bitcoin never achieves it no matter how much energy wasted

Looking forward to your reply.  


FYI:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahemerson/bitcoin-crypto-carbon-footprint-hearing

Because PoW involves miners competing to correctly solve a mathematical puzzle in exchange for newly minted coins, it can demand huge amounts of computing power. “This system is inherently inefficient,” said Claudia Herbert, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley

PoW “needs to be intensely regulated,” said Zane Griffin Talley Cooper, a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched the energy costs of crypto in places like Iceland and Greenland.

Alternatively, the committee’s memo cited “proof of stake” (PoS) algorithms as evidence that some mechanisms “can provide secure, trusted transaction infrastructure without the same energy intensity as popular [proof of work] blockchains.” By comparison, PoS demands fewer computing resources by selecting who gets to validate a transaction based on the amount of crypto they’ve put up as collateral. Ethereum has said it will transition to PoS this year, noting its “better energy efficiency.”

countries are actively focusing on reining in mining, in part due to environmental and energy concerns. In 2021, China enacted a ban on all bitcoin transactions after having mined two-thirds of the world’s bitcoins the year prior. Neighboring countries like Kazakhstan saw the cascading effects of China’s crackdown as mining operations flooded their borders and energy grid, taking advantage of empty warehouses and low electricity costs. Swedish regulators are now calling for a ban on PoW mining throughout the European Union.

It looks like the People talking to the senate committee that will decide BTC PoW fate, don't share the view of the BTC cult that PoW is awesome.
Imagine that.  

[death_wish]

A full node is a software that performs full verification on everything, if it skips any part of the verification then it no longer can be considered a "full node".

Note that by this definition, there are relatively few bitcoin full nodes, since most nodes use the default nonzero assumevalid.

Good point.  And how many nodes run at checklevel=4?  And...


tromp, I am particularly glad to see you here.

From your long experience working both with Bitcoin, and with altcoin POW, what do you think of my prediction that the current push to POSify decent altcoins is ultimately designed strategically to isolate Bitcoin?

(I am very upset about what is going on with those altcoins.  But first things first—here, I must focus on Bitcoin.)

Looking forward to your reply. 

For my part, I won’t waste my time debating with POS shills.  That is why my first post in this thread announced:  I am not here to debate.

[LegendaryK]

For my part, I won’t waste my time debating with POS shills.  That is why my first post in this thread announced:  I am not here to debate.

 

Well That was the end of your entertainment value.

Have fun agreeing with the BTC cult members that PoW is just awesome.  

 

[BlackHatCoiner]

Blockstream won't allow it, as it lets them hamper the onchain transaction capacity

Blockstream can propose PoS, implement PoS, run full nodes based on PoS. This doesn't mean the rest will follow, and so is now. Blockstream doesn't control PoW.

PoS Coins don't care what BTC does or what happens to it.

Says Mr. Whataboutism, lol. Neither does bitcoin.

How will BTC PoW survive as the governments ban it's mining?

Probably with difficulty adjustments.

Also how will the btc network function, when the power is off from 9am-12noon, and 7pm-10pm, everyday?

Probably with difficulty adjustments. Also, there's no place in the world that faces such power outages due to mining bitcoin.

One last thing for you... [followed by a ton of horseshit]

If there's decentralized decision-making, there'll be chain reorgs. If there are chain reorgs, there isn't transaction finality. If there aren't chain reorgs, there isn't decentralized decision-making, simple.


Please don't quote the entire post if you don't have something to add other than to reveal your pettishness. 

[LegendaryK]

@BlackHatCoiner

I was only talking to D_W.
You're one of the boring cult members .
That won't believe btc mining is banned, 12 months after it is banned.
 

Good Day.

[tadamichi]

How will BTC PoW survive as the governments ban it's mining?

Look at china. Energy that wouldnt have been used in the grid is hard to trace or „shut off“.

Also how will the btc network function, when the power is off from 9am-12noon, and 7pm-10pm, everyday?

Omg this made me laugh. Bitcoin exists worldwide in different time zones, your 9am in the UK, is a completely different time somewhere else, so they couldnt even launch universal shutdowns worldwide at the same time. Will they also shut down the sun, wind, volcanoes, hydro and other renewables? Use your head before buying into media hysteria.

It just shows how resilient PoW in a worldwide network can be.

Also how will the miners survive once a carbon tax is enacted and it makes mining a pure financial negative?

Mine with renewables, like the majority already does(to my knowledge).


Then you call other people boring.

//Edit: Most energy from renewables actually goes to waste, because it’s hard to store and most demand for energy occurs during certain peak times. This actually makes it perfect for PoW, because you will always have a buyer for your renewable energy 24/7. So PoW actually subsidizes renewables, that would struggle to even find a buyer for their energy during certain times of the day, at the same time. Then during peak demand, the energy can just be sent to the grid for everyone to use. So PoW mining actually tackles a problem in the real world with a sound and practical solution. It’s nice that PoS chains spend more time playing with jpgs and tokens than to solve actual problems, but don’t worry PoW is here to to do actual sound work for everyone to use.

[ABCbits]

We both know BTC won't switch to PoS,
Blockstream won't allow it, as it lets them hamper the onchain transaction capacity,
and their future money is going to come from Liquid and LN.

Blockstream doesn't control Bitcoin network and doesn't have much influence today. Lightning Labs have bigger influence on LN development[1] while very few people use Liquid[2]

How will BTC PoW survive as the governments ban it's mining?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-york-state-senate-passes-bitcoin-mining-moratorium
Also how will the btc network function, when the power is off from 9am-12noon, and 7pm-10pm, everyday?
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/956911/what-is-power-rationing-uk-electricity

Do you know there are 195 country in the world[3]? Have you consider each country have different policy on PoW and electricity usage? For example, New York allow PoW when miner use green/renewable energy[4].

[1] https://lightning.engineering/
[2] https://liquid.network/
[3] https://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-are-there-in-the-world/
[4] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/336665-new-york-passes-moratorium-on-new-crypto-mining-operations

[Dabs]

Is the internet on? (on any location on this planet.)

If the answer to that question is yes, then bitcoin will continue to run and miners will continue to mine.

[garlonicon]

There is more. See changelog for version 23.0, nodes can now connect outside of the typical TCP/IP stack, they can use other protocols, outside of what we know as "the Internet" in a classical sense.

[Wind_FURY]

Shower thought. What if Bitcoin switched from POW to POS, and all of the world Central Banks' in the world printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, then controlled the network.

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

[tadamichi]

Shower thought. What if Bitcoin switched from POW to POS, and all of the world Central Banks' in the world printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, then controlled the network.

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

So first i would start looking at the costs to produce more fiat. -> it’s basically 0 and there’s no limit on how much can be created, but it doesn’t mean an attack like this is easy.

So i think the difference in terms of an attack comes down to:

- In PoS:

1. If they buy half of all coins in a short amount of time, then the chain would likely just be reset to before the attack and it was printed for nothing, also the price of the coins would increase dramatically because of the huge demand(but they have unlimited money to buy more so it wouldn’t stop it), basically the sellers would keep their coins and the fiat.

2. I think a smarter and more likely scenario would be the central banks accumulating coins in secret and over a long period of time. They could spread everything over many staking pools or just keep their coins in secret till then. Like this they could gain control over the network without anyone noticing. It would be hard to reset the chain, because it could affect years worth of transactions. And this attack is basically free or could even make the central banks money, depending on what their goal is.

- In PoW:

The limit here is on how much hardware can be produced and the energy, organization, time and expertise required to run them.

It doesn’t matter how much money they have, because the supply of miners is limited by real world resources and production, money cant overcome this limit directly. Also there’s real world supply chain management going on, so it would be hard to buy them in complete secret over the years and to get more than everyone else at the same time. Also it will take real energy to run the miners, which is a limited resource again, they can’t just take the population’s energy for this, without getting into serious trouble, imagine millions of people energy bill exploding or being shut off. So they would need to build new facilities just for this and again it’s hard to hide this and the network could already notice. It will also take a lot of coordination, hiring and innovation to build all this and keep it functional(which the government is terrible at).

In the theoretical case they can overcome the resources, energy, organizational and time constraints(which comes at a huge cost):

The network could just switch to a different mining algorithm and all this effort was for nothing and would render everything they did useless.

So i think it’s obvious which attack is cheaper and more effective.

[n0nce]

Goes to show you can lock a btc cult members in a library, But you can't make them learn,
so at the end of the day all they sprout is the cult speak they started with.
Like I said in the post above, if you can't understand why no forking is more secure, you should go play with your crayons.

This is also why , most PoS supporters no longer comment, as not only does PoW waste energy,
talking to PoW cult members wastes our time.
I gave you the above info, and even a video.
So to keep the btc cult from wasting anymore of my time, I shall leave you to make false assumptions at the glory of your dying PoW tech.

I believe this is a prime example for a shitpost, as described in:

1. No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads. [1][e]

Besides full-quoting my post, you still didn't answer the questions from OP. I don't even know what you're trying to achieve with these pointless, empty posts, that neither question nor answer anything.

Also, the Lightning Network is based on Proof of Stake. There is no mining inside LN. That means, it is technically possible to transform Bitcoin into Proof of Stake coin, and give users some choice. So, a "coin in a coin" scenario is possible here and now, it is just a matter of pushing things higher, and turning the on-chain consensus into that.

That's actually wrong. Sure, there is no mining, and there are routing fees, but that doesn't mean there is PoS happening. The whole system rests on Bitcoin's PoW, even though it doesn't happen.
If I'm lending you 1BTC by handing you the UTXO in person and you return me 1.1BTC half a year later through a printed UTXO, have we performed proof of stake? I don't believe so.

Some simple differences between a second-layer solution and a PoW base layer: Are coins generated by staking? Is consensus achieved through the amount of someone's stake? In LN, we neither generate new BTC when we collect routing fees, nor does the amount we own allow us to say what's right or wrong. If there's any debate on that, we settle on the blockchain through PoW.
So no, LN is not PoS.

Besides that, anything built on Bitcoin is not necessarily possible to integrate directly into L1. Your claim of [...] => That means, it is technically possible to transform Bitcoin into [...] is fundamentally wrong.

Also how will the btc network function, when the power is off from 9am-12noon, and 7pm-10pm, everyday?

Probably with difficulty adjustments. Also, there's no place in the world that faces such power outages due to mining bitcoin.

Especially there's no chance the whole world loses power concurrently. @LegendaryK, if you're so legendary, you should know different time zones have their power spikes at different times. Therefore even if you couldn't mine in the morning in North America, Europe would be in the middle of the night and mine. Whenever European miners may need to turn off their gear, American and Asian miners would continue running, and so on.
That's one of the core concepts of decentralization.

@BlackHatCoiner

I was only talking to D_W.
You're one of the boring cult members .
That won't believe btc mining is banned, 12 months after it is banned.
 

Good Day.

You seem to be the only delusioned person who thinks 'it is banned for 12 months' is actually a good argument against PoW, seeing as it continues to be done globally (and even in China) today - proving these bans don't work and are indeed no risk to Bitcoin.
Like, if you want to talk semantics: sure, it was banned and other countries may ban it, but it's the very unique power of Bitcoin being so decentralized that it's barely affected by them.

Shower thought. What if Bitcoin switched from POW to POS, and all of the world Central Banks' in the world printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, then controlled the network.

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

It's not just about the price of buying '51% of hash power' - it's also the fact you just cannot do it. The hardware doesn't exist. You can't produce ASICs fast enough.
You'd have to offer an insane premium to existing miners to buy their used gear; since compared to PoS holders, they've expended a lot of real-world resources to build their facilities, hire staff and whatnot.

It's not as easy to buy a ton of miners as it is buying coins. Also keep in mind the miners have a limited lifespan and need to be physically transported unless you also buy their facilities and install local staff you can trust to continue the operation where it resided.

[Dabs]

If the world's central banks printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, that would imply they are buying at least 10 million coins. Are there that much for sale on the open markets? Attempting to buy it in a short period of time would drive demand over existing supply. We'd see $10m BTC sooner.

[n0nce]

If the world's central banks printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, that would imply they are buying at least 10 million coins. Are there that much for sale on the open markets? Attempting to buy it in a short period of time would drive demand over existing supply. We'd see $10m BTC sooner.

Good point; however this only works on coins with limited market cap; many PoS coins are unlimited, so they can buy bulks of it without problem.

[pooya87]

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

You don't need some hypothetical scenario that involves printing money, we have actual cases that happened in shitcoins that have PoS algorithm in the past like the case with Steem network where exchanges took over the chain simply because they held a large number of that shitcoin without spending a dime.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59383033#msg59383033

[Wind_FURY]

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

You don't need some hypothetical scenario that involves printing money, we have actual cases that happened in shitcoins that have PoS algorithm in the past like the case with Steem network where exchanges took over the chain simply because they held a large number of that shitcoin without spending a dime.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59383033#msg59383033

That's merely a "young, nacsent" altcoin. I was thinking about a more developed/mature coin, with high market value. As an example, Ethereum, which is going to make the switch to POS.

If the world's central banks printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, that would imply they are buying at least 10 million coins. Are there that much for sale on the open markets? Attempting to buy it in a short period of time would drive demand over existing supply. We'd see $10m BTC sooner.

What if they will only buy it during bear cycles, and they're willing to take their time?

[n0nce]

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

You don't need some hypothetical scenario that involves printing money, we have actual cases that happened in shitcoins that have PoS algorithm in the past like the case with Steem network where exchanges took over the chain simply because they held a large number of that shitcoin without spending a dime.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59383033#msg59383033

That's merely a "young, nacsent" altcoin. I was thinking about a more developed/mature coin, with high market value. As an example, Ethereum, which is going to make the switch to POS.

It makes no difference; it's a general, inherent problem of PoS. It's just as possible on the 'latest and greatest generation X' PoS blockchain, as it is on a 'young / nascent' or a 'developed / mature' PoS blockchain.
The very principle of PoS that the voting power is determined by the amount of coins you hold is the issue at hand.

If the world's central banks printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, that would imply they are buying at least 10 million coins. Are there that much for sale on the open markets? Attempting to buy it in a short period of time would drive demand over existing supply. We'd see $10m BTC sooner.

What if they will only buy it during bear cycles, and they're willing to take their time?

It's one option; or they might buy it off-chain (buying keys / lending the coins / keys). You can't notice that on-chain and it won't cause price fluctuations.

[pooya87]

That's merely a "young, nacsent" altcoin. I was thinking about a more developed/mature coin, with high market value. As an example, Ethereum, which is going to make the switch to POS.

It wasn't that young, but the principle applies to everything that even includes bitcoin because if you check, a lot of bitcoins are stored on exchanges by traders and newbies. The situation is even worse for altcoins because we don't have as many altcoin exchanges as we have bitcoin. There is essentially only Binance with majority of the volume. It is even worse for shitcoins like Ethereum because they have massive premines (72 million in this case) that is controlled by one entity.

[Wind_FURY]

Then there goes the debate, POW will always be > POS. Has anyone noticed the POS advocates/promoters of the topic were nowhere to be seen when the point was being made after this post? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg60314887#msg60314887

They are usually very aggressive in convincing the newbies that "POW = wasteful" without truly understanding Bitcoin's underlying nature which makes POW superior. But we could let it go as chosen trade-offs.

[n0nce]

Then there goes the debate, POW will always be > POS. Has anyone noticed the POS advocates/promoters of the topic were nowhere to be seen when the point was being made after this post? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg60314887#msg60314887

I hope the reason they left the discussion is because they were educated and understood why PoW > PoS! That's what debates are usually for.

[Hamza2424]

Then there goes the debate, POW will always be > POS. Has anyone noticed the POS advocates/promoters of the topic were nowhere to be seen when the point was being made after this post? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg60314887#msg60314887

I hope the reason they left the discussion is because they were educated and understood why PoW > PoS! That's what debates are usually for.

Considered that point but what about to debate next to it thats the only truth that 80% of community with Long term Speculation stand with POW and I think newones with new investment are more interested in POS thats the reason LUNA, SoL, ADA got so many users and their Destination we saw clear to the Heaven. But POW is still here competitive in market not only competitive with title of King 👑.

[stwenhao]

I hope the reason they left the discussion is because they were educated and understood why PoW > PoS!

Nope, I am still alive and well, still trying to put my idea into practice: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5390027.0

[Ucy]

The truth is that Proof of Work is a True/Proper Consensus Mechanism when it comes to Trustless Cryptocurrency which requires Proof that a Job has been done before dishing out rewards. If you view things this way you would likely understand that it's only a based meaning of the more complicated Bitcoin PoW.
Proof of Stake seems to require Money as Proof that a Job has been done. This is a serious deviation from the real purpose of using proof to show that work has been done to achieve consensus in a Trustless environment.

[Wind_FURY]

The truth is that Proof of Work is a True/Proper Consensus Mechanism when it comes to Trustless Cryptocurrency which requires Proof that a Job has been done before dishing out rewards. If you view things this way you would likely understand that it's only a based meaning of the more complicated Bitcoin PoW.

Proof of Stake seems to require Money as Proof that a Job has been done. This is a serious deviation from the real purpose of using proof to show that work has been done to achieve consensus in a Trustless environment.

Here's another shower thought. What if a developer builds, and bootstraps a new cryptocurrency network based on POS, and if you want to join the network as a validator, you can buy the tokens, BUT, only through Bitcoin. Does that make the new POS cryptocurrency network backed by Bitcoin's POW? Because, Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Here's another shower thought. What if a developer builds, and bootstraps a new cryptocurrency network based on POS, and if you want to join the network as a validator, you can buy the tokens, BUT, only through Bitcoin.

Isn't this Merged mining Proof of Stake?

Does that make the new POS cryptocurrency network backed by Bitcoin's POW?

It is definitely backed by bitcoin, and since bitcoin relies on PoW, it's indirectly backed by PoW. Not something "environmental evangelists" like LegendaryK are going to support of.

Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token. 

So... Why don't you buy bitcoin?

[stwenhao]

Because, Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token.

Note that people can be rewarded in this Proof of Stake network directly, so miners could find it more profitable to mine less on Proof of Work, and validate more on Proof of Stake. It is a matter of incentive, dropping the difficulty from the current level to the bare minimum 2^32 hashes is technically possible.

Not something "environmental evangelists" like LegendaryK are going to support of.

Why not? Using the difficulty equal to one will be "good enough". Going even lower is also possible, because it is possible to increase block time, for example from 10 minutes to 1 hour or longer.

So... Why don't you buy bitcoin?

I do. And I have plans with staking, be ready for them.

[tadamichi]

Because, Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token.

Note that people can be rewarded in this Proof of Stake network directly, so miners could find it more profitable to mine less on Proof of Work, and validate more on Proof of Stake. It is a matter of incentive, dropping the difficulty from the current level to the bare minimum 2^32 hashes is technically possible.

I have a question about this. Let’s say miners really mine less and the difficulty drops, wouldn’t it weaken their competitive edge?

Now new miners can come in easily, forcing them to mine more again. So how does the incentive really play out in a competitive environment? Miners can’t afford to mine less, if they have running costs, new people could come in and just outmine them. „Kicking“ the ones that decided to mine less out. Idk if a PoS can outincentivize PoW like this.

The truth is that Proof of Work is a True/Proper Consensus Mechanism when it comes to Trustless Cryptocurrency which requires Proof that a Job has been done before dishing out rewards. If you view things this way you would likely understand that it's only a based meaning of the more complicated Bitcoin PoW.

Proof of Stake seems to require Money as Proof that a Job has been done. This is a serious deviation from the real purpose of using proof to show that work has been done to achieve consensus in a Trustless environment.

Here's another shower thought. What if a developer builds, and bootstraps a new cryptocurrency network based on POS, and if you want to join the network as a validator, you can buy the tokens, BUT, only through Bitcoin. Does that make the new POS cryptocurrency network backed by Bitcoin's POW? Because, Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token.

Aren’t you basically handing over the biggest Bitcoin whales, the control over your network for free?

And in case just newly mined coins can be staked, then there would be no incentive for non miners to use this network. And in case miners mine less on Bitcoin to use this network more, they would be „kicked“ out by new miners, because they became uncompetitive, so they can’t be staking in this network anymore, if they don’t find new blocks.

I think this concept doesn’t play out, or im missing something.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Note that people can be rewarded in this Proof of Stake network directly, so miners could find it more profitable to mine less on Proof of Work, and validate more on Proof of Stake.

If the Proof-of-Stake concept is to get rewarded with coins for proving you own coins, then you can already achieve this in a modern-banking way; lend your coins with an interest, or invest in Lightning's capacity. Unless your no-fork idea includes sidechains?

Why not? Using the difficulty equal to one will be "good enough".

"Good enough", how? If you have such difficulty it means there's very little work done. And if this internal-Proof-of-Stake system is dependent on Proof-of-Work, there's very little security.

Going even lower is also possible, because it is possible to increase block time, for example from 10 minutes to 1 hour or longer.

How's block time relevant?

I do. And I have plans with staking, be ready for them.

Here's a friendly suggestion: Let's talk about it. Don't implement theory if you haven't discussed it with others. There might be a "hole" you haven't thought of. You've only created a thread; make a paper, let us comprehend it.

[stwenhao]

Let’s say miners really mine less and the difficulty drops, wouldn’t it weaken their competitive edge?

Why? The coin supply is finite, sooner or later we will reach the case, where the basic block reward will be zero. And then, users could fully decide, if they want to move their coins in a Proof of Work network, or if they want to get their transactions confirmed by Proof of Stake validators. Then, it may be pointless to mine zero satoshis on-chain by using Proof of Work. On-chain fees may be lower than off-chain Proof of Stake fees. What then?

or invest in Lightning's capacity

Lightning is similar to staking, but it lacks some features, like direct transfers between all Lightning participants. You still need to touch on-chain, you cannot send coins directly in Lightning, and finalize it later on-chain, you have to finalize that on-chain immediately, no matter what, because each channel should be in the right state to move any coins anywhere.

Unless your no-fork idea includes sidechains?

Well, sidechains at least have some independence, and only finalize things on-chain. But Lightning is fully pegged to the main chain, and that's why all problems from the main chain are always moved downwards to LN (for example, if on-chain fees are high, then there are problems with creating and closing channels).

"Good enough", how? If you have such difficulty it means there's very little work done. And if this internal-Proof-of-Stake system is dependent on Proof-of-Work, there's very little security.

If the basic block reward is zero, and on-chain fees are very low, then this low difficulty is justified. It just reflects on-chain rewards. And they will be lower if the whole system will move into LN, staking, or other layers.

How's block time relevant?

If you increase the block time from 10 minutes to 40 minutes, then without any fork, the difficulty will drop to the minimal value, and will stay there.

Here's a friendly suggestion: Let's talk about it. Don't implement theory if you haven't discussed it with others. There might be a "hole" you haven't thought of.

No agreement is needed, if there is no hard-fork, and no soft-fork needed. It is just about users willing to move coins as they want, and sign transactions as they want. They don't even need to move on-chain coins, they can create coins by signing something, then they will get their coins deposited on a separate chain. Later, they can move coins on-chain, then they will be destroyed on the sidechain. In this way, it is possible to create two-way-peg, where nobody can stop it. Then, it is possible to turn chains on and off, it depends only on users, they will have freedom they never had before. And the whole work is about making the right scripts, so that on-chain coins will move if (and only if) all participants will agree on that, and that will be needed only if someone will want to leave the sidechain.

make a paper, let us comprehend it

The basic idea is already shared, the original author thinks about utilizing it in the Proof of Work context, but I think it could be used as a Proof of Stake too. Many things are ongoing, because, as you can easily guess, Bitcoin community is mainly against staking, so to make it real, there is a need to allow the minority to use their coins as they want, and to gain and lose them, by testing their ideas in practice. If I would share my ideas in the current stage, they would be destroyed by the Proof of Work community. They should be hardened, and more work is needed to make some unstoppable proposal, but the main idea of unstoppable sidechains (without any fork) is very promising.

[BlackHatCoiner]

If the basic block reward is zero, and on-chain fees are very low, then this low difficulty is justified.

If the block subsidy becomes lower than the reward from fees, then the basic reward will come from fees. Currently, the miners earn a ~0.1 BTC from fees on average. If we assume there'll be greater adoption in the future, it's highly likely for this to rise. In any case, a difficulty of 1 is, by no chance, justified.

And they will be lower if the whole system will move into LN, staking, or other layers.

The median fee will definitely decrease if most users transact off-chain, but there will always be on-chain fees.

If you increase the block time from 10 minutes to 40 minutes, then without any fork

How can you increase the block time from 10 minutes to 40 without a hard fork?

No agreement is needed, if there is no hard-fork, and no soft-fork needed.

That was not my point. If no consensus is required, then, naturally, there's no agreement required either. All I meant was to make us comprehend your idea. The way you describe it is vague and foggy. (And that's why you probably haven't got the necessary attention)

The basic idea is already shared

The basic idea is very basic and vague, as I said. All you've said is that it's possible to create a separate chain wherein users can mint altcoin units by providing a valid bitcoin transaction. How is Proof-of-Stake implemented exactly? If the altcoin is inflated, how can you return to the main chain that is not Proof-of-Stake based? If there's a direct correlation between bitcoin and the altcoin, how isn't it completely dependent on Proof-of-Work?

Make a thread, explain your mechanism in a clear and detailing way. I'm sure there will be interest if you've thought of something that's significantly utilized somehow.

[stwenhao]

How can you increase the block time from 10 minutes to 40 without a hard fork?

Just by producing blocks every 40 minutes. If any difficulty reduction will be needed, then soft-fork is more than enough to cover it. But I think moving coins off-chain will be enough to decrease on-chain fees, and to decrease on-chain rewards, which will encourage miners to turn off their machines.

How is Proof-of-Stake implemented exactly?

By making signatures. Instead of signing a regular transaction, you sign something else. For example, in signet, if you want to sign a block header, you make two transactions, there is "to_spend" and "to_sign" transaction, you sign this "to_sign" part, and place your signature in the coinbase transaction.

If the altcoin is inflated, how can you return to the main chain that is not Proof-of-Stake based?

I thought about 1:1 peg (of course 1:1000 or other values are possible, but then it would mean just moving the comma, so for example using millisatoshis, instead of satoshis, as in LN).

If there's a direct correlation between bitcoin and the altcoin, how isn't it completely dependent on Proof-of-Work?

As every sidechain, it has to reach "a peg", not "the peg". As long as all coins are covered by the chain they are pegged into, it works.

Make a thread, explain your mechanism in a clear and detailing way.

It is in progress, I just decided to mention that it is ongoing, but I could patiently and silently work on it without informing anyone, and then suddenly reveal everything at once. So far, I shared parts, where there is very little chance that someone will destroy that easily (also, Core developers already discussed some parts of it, for example "temporary forks", so they are aware of what is possible, they may not be aware only about that "no fork required" part, but I think they should be, because this was also posted (not by me) to the mailing list). But there are other parts, that needs to be hardened, they are too fragile to be shared with Proof of Work enthusiasts, because then they will abuse the system by making chains, and pretending that "this idea was tested, and it failed", which is not the case. In the same way NameCoin was presented as a BitDNS implementation, while it is clearly not the case, as it lacks some features (described by Satoshi).

I'm sure there will be interest if you've thought of something that's significantly utilized somehow.

I can share unstoppable ideas, that are hard to destroy, and I already shared that, the only thing left is answering some questions, and clarifying, what is possible. But still, I don't want to share more fragile parts, because I don't want to repeat NameCoin's mistakes.

[BlackHatCoiner]

But there are other parts, that needs to be hardened, they are too fragile to be shared with Proof of Work enthusiasts

This sounds like you don't have all the answers yet. I'm aware that Proof-of-Stake is possible to implement in a sidechain, but the devil is hidden in the details. Anyway, if you've thought of a Proof-of-Stake-like idea that works better, I hope you make it real. I'm really interested to see how it'll work. Otherwise, you can try to debunk the disadvantages of Proof-of-Stake we've all remarked.

But still, I don't want to share more fragile parts, because I don't want to repeat NameCoin's mistakes.

Which were?

[tadamichi]

Let’s say miners really mine less and the difficulty drops, wouldn’t it weaken their competitive edge?

Why? The coin supply is finite, sooner or later we will reach the case, where the basic block reward will be zero. And then, users could fully decide, if they want to move their coins in a Proof of Work network, or if they want to get their transactions confirmed by Proof of Stake validators. Then, it may be pointless to mine zero satoshis on-chain by using Proof of Work. On-chain fees may be lower than off-chain Proof of Stake fees. What then?

But doesn’t the sidechain need a peg? If it mirrors Bitcoin 1:1 then the transaction reward can’t be higher than on Bitcoin, and you can’t create new coins without breaking the peg, or where will the new Bitcoin be coming from? And if you start to break the peg, you’re creating an inflationary spiral that makes the sidechain more and more worthless, and not even fully redeemable, because this many coins don’t exist on Bitcoin.

Creating new coins forever also diminishes the monetary qualities of a good(worse store value), and it won’t be able to compete with a chain that had 100 years of adoption already and has higher monetary qualities, this is the problem i see.

It’s just too much based on the assumption that Bitcoin needs to give out free money forever to survive, but i think the incentives speak against this.

From what im seeing is that the fee market can actually work out. That there’s actually potential to bring the variable cost of mining(electricity) closer to 0, because the more the block reward diminishes, the more miners are forced to use otherwise unused energy(most of the worlds energy). If the variable cost of miners is close to 0, then there will always be a point where the transaction fees are enough to break even, after a certain time.

This is a real problem in the energy sector, there’s countries like Germany that pay other countries to use their energy overproduction, there’s potential here for example to actually make a profit instead of paying others to use your electricity.

But this is just one example, i think the block subsidy will actually help build the energy sector to get more and more efficient, and then have a buyer for unused energy forever. To me this is the most genius subsidy to build a renewable energy sector ever made, and energy producers won’t be solely reliant on mining to be profitable, because it will always be more profitable to sell the energy to the grid, except when the grid doesn’t need it, and then it’s more profitable to use the energy on mining than to waste it. A perfect complement to the peak energy demand problem.

[stwenhao]

This sounds like you don't have all the answers yet.

Of course I don't have all the answers yet. But I know the basic layer is technically possible to build, and that can be improved later, because a single on-chain transaction could move coins from one sidechain to another, so making improvements will be quite easy.

Otherwise, you can try to debunk the disadvantages of Proof-of-Stake we've all remarked.

I think it should be demonstrated in practice. Imagine talking about Lightning Network without having a working system. It is hard to convince anyone it could work. So, now I am trying to write some code, and build a basic layer of what I already described. Then, I could run that as a some kind of test network, where you can easily get some test coins, just by signing some mainnet coins (that could be also done as a commitment, to make it during sending some regular transaction, so nothing more than tweaking a signature will be needed, and it would cost zero additional on-chain bytes, and one tweaked signature could commit to the hash of the block, to cover the whole test chain at one shot). Another thing is that if it will ever reach some popularity, then it could be possible to add commitments inside the coinbase transaction, just by tweaking some miner's Taproot address, that would also require zero additional bytes, and would allow reaching sidechain finality every 10 minutes, without increasing mainchain size at all. Imagine Bitcoin as a huge clock that would confirm all sidechains every 10 minutes, without any additional bytes, the whole burden of commitments will be taken by each sidechain separately.

Which were?

1) Merged Mining done wrong: they should always follow the highest source of the Proof of Work, and grant coins, accordingly to that. Having 10% of Bitcoin's hashrate should allow reaching 10% of NameCoin's hashrate, there is no need to create a separate difficulty, each chain should follow the heaviest Proof of Work.
2) No coins should be created out of thin air, they should be based on Bitcoin, may be pegged in 1:1, may be signed and cloned in this way, there were many possible solutions to that.
3) "The spent fee goes to the miners in the next block fee" - burning 0.01 NMC to register a domain is pointless, it can be done safely without it, and handled in the form of fees. Also, by throwing coins out of circulation, there is a hard limit of available domains, which is not needed.
4) Names can be attached to Bitcoin signatures or addresses, and revealed later, when needed. There is no need to explicitly include hashes.
5) No "modernised arrangement with the Merkle Tree on top" was created, no commitment-like style of revealing names was added. It should be based on sorted commitments, that should be timelocked, and then revealed in a given timeframe, to get it recorded, and committed into NameCoin, which should commit into any Bitcoin transaction every sometimes (preferably once per 10 minutes, if sidechains would get some traction, and if they would be supported by miners, and not only by users, as it is possible today).
6) "it's cryptographically possible to make a risk free trade", and we have 2022, and it is still on some TODO lists, but not yet implemented. Also, NameCoin developers didn't even try to reach that goal.
7) "A longer interval than 10 minutes would be appropriate for BitDNS" - and they picked of course 10 minutes for no reason. I thought about increasing block time on some networks, into two weeks, maybe even into one halving period. There are some nice properties, when the block time is increased (for example, Proof of Work reduction is then possible, without breaking any consensus rules, that are adjusted to faster block times, so the difficulty is then forced to drop). On some networks, it can be also decreased, like P2Pool did with their 30 second blocks, this method can be also used to do some Proof of Work fragmentation and decentralize mining, or give some people a choice between staking and mining, so they can find a balance between that, for example they could go into 90% mining and 10% staking, it is a good start, and could go further later, when people will be more convinced, that it works.
8­) "In that case, domain objects (domaincoins?) could represent the right to own a domain for a year" - guess what, of course it is not "one year".
9) "You might consider a certain amount of work to generate a domain, instead of a fixed total circulation" - was it considered to utilize something like "vanity address" to have a "vanity name", where people will mine a name that will be unique, will have some matching characters, and will be cryptographically secure at the same time? Do people have a choice between paying for some characters and mining other parts? Of course not. It is not possible to mine "bitcoin" as a vanity string, and pay for "eater, don't send" to own that name. No, you have to claim the whole "bitcoin eater, don't send" part, you cannot mine names, no matter that vanity addresses are better, and they even not require a blockchain! What about mining vanity names and supporting Bitcoin Proof of Work at the same time? They didn't even start thinking about that!
10) This list is longer, but I think it will be too much offtopic. Maybe this reply should be moved to some NameCoin-related topic, feel free to do that if needed, but also note that in all of those points, you can put "Proof of Stake" instead of "Proof of Work", and it will still make sense, so you can also discuss it here.

Edit:

But doesn’t the sidechain need a peg? If it mirrors Bitcoin 1:1 then the transaction reward can’t be higher than on Bitcoin, and you can’t create new coins without breaking the peg, or where will the new Bitcoin be coming from?

"But doesn't the Lightning Network need a peg? If it mirrors Bitcoin 1:1000 then the transaction reward can't be higher than on Bitcoin, and you can't create new coins without breaking the peg, or where will the new Bitcoin be coming from?"

See? If you have some questions about sidechains, you can try putting "Lightning Network" in the same place, just as a thought experiment. Many times, you will see that it is quite similar, and many times you will see it is also similar to Proof of Stake, if you do the same trick, and if you notice, that there is no mining inside LN. I still wonder, why some people accept LN, not accept sidechains, and not accept staking. Those three concepts are quite similar, if you think more about it. And of course the answer is that fees will go to other nodes, as it is in LN, so "the fee", calculated as the sum of all outputs, minus the sum of all inputs, will cover only bare, minimal, on-chain requirements, the rest will flow inside channels, and will be signed in that way or another, by LN-validators, by sidechain-validators, or by some other validators.

Another part of the answer is that there is no "the peg", but "a peg", so if some mainchain is making some changes, then each sidechain can decide, where it should be pegged, because all coins up to the point of the split are identical. Also, even if the mainchain is splitted into BCH, BSV, or anything else, the sidechain can decide to not split, and to merge coins, instead of doing replay protection. Many rules can be altered, everything is always in users' hands.

[tadamichi]

Edit:

But doesn’t the sidechain need a peg? If it mirrors Bitcoin 1:1 then the transaction reward can’t be higher than on Bitcoin, and you can’t create new coins without breaking the peg, or where will the new Bitcoin be coming from?

"But doesn't the Lightning Network need a peg? If it mirrors Bitcoin 1:1000 then the transaction reward can't be higher than on Bitcoin, and you can't create new coins without breaking the peg, or where will the new Bitcoin be coming from?"

That’s making it too easy.

Lightning doesn’t create coins out of thin air, it just takes routing fees, and if there’s a direct channel then not even that. There’s no peg to be broken here. It’s just a trust minimised way to transfer Bitcoin off-chain and hasn’t much to do with a consensus mechanism, it’s not even a chain. A huge difference. It also delivers another indicator that speaks against block demand going too low. Because it will always be smart to open and close channels when demand is low, making transaction revenue more stable and distributed more evenly on the main chain. Kinda like an options contract.

Your argument was that a sidechain could reach higher transaction fees(in monetary value) than the mainchain. And thus incentive miners to do less PoW. Now isnt there a problem?

1. Your sidechain will need a fixed exchange rate, i put 1 Bitcoin in, i can get 1 Bitcoin out.
2. You said you want PoS, now you have the option to create new coins as a staking reward and/or just distribute the transactions fees to stakers.

Now there’s a problem, Bitcoin is fixed supply, so you can’t just create  new coins as a staking reward out of thin air on the side chain, without breaking the exchange rate, because then the side chain has more Bitcoin in circulation, than can be redeemed or actually were put in. If the peg breaks it will make the Bitcoin of the side chain actually worth less, and in monetary value the main chain still pays more in fees for miners.

If you don’t create coins to reward staking, then if the transaction fees are higher on the side chain, why wouldn’t people just use the main chain again? Then miners get less fees on the PoS chain again, because people are disincentivized to even use it. So what problem was fixed in the first place?

In the a peg case, it’s always dependent on the reserves of Bitcoin that can be redeemed. Total value of the sidechain = amount of Bitcoin that can be redeemed. No matter how you change the units. The only thing the PoS does in this case is moving the relative wealth to the top holders, meaning they can redeem more Bitcoin over time, while everyone else can less. How isn’t this vastly different from Lightning. This is Fiat 2.0. Fixed exchange rates always have this problem and idk how you will solve this.

I still wonder, why some people accept LN, not accept sidechains, and not accept staking.

Because it’s different to get paid a small amount for a service in an competitive market, than to use an potentially broken consensus mechanism that favors someone for just holding funds and gets centralized over time. Because lightning doesn’t break sane economic principles and strengthens Bitcoin.

There’s definitely potential for sidechains to take load off the main chain, if fees get too high there, i just don’t think they can disincentivize mining and im still not sure how the basic problems of PoS will be solved on there. And then there’s still the question how will they do it better than lightning? The infrastructure lightning is building at the moment is impressive and it complements Bitcoin really well.

[stwenhao]

Lightning doesn’t create coins out of thin air

Of course, because millisatoshis not divisible by 1000 are enforced on-chain, right?

There’s no peg to be broken here. It’s just a trust minimised way to transfer Bitcoin off-chain and hasn’t much to do with a consensus mechanism, it’s not even a chain. A huge difference.

I can say the same about my idea, just cut this "it’s not even a chain" part, and you can copy-paste it 1:1 into my proposal.

Now there’s a problem, Bitcoin is fixed supply, so you can’t just create  new coins as a staking reward out of thin air on the side chain, without breaking the exchange rate, because then the side chain has more Bitcoin in circulation, than can be redeemed or actually were put in.

I don't need any new coins. Each validator can take fees, in the same way as LN nodes take fees.

If you don’t create coins to reward staking, then if the transaction fees are higher on the side chain, why wouldn’t people just use the main chain again?

They always can. There is no way to stop them, they can put their coins in and out as they will, it is just a matter of signing some transaction.

Then miners get less fees on the PoS chain again, because people are disincentivized to even use it. So what problem was fixed in the first place?

The problem of creating new features without any forks, of course. People have a lot of ideas, and create a lot of altcoins to reach them. There is no reason to create any new coins out of thin air, if they could sign their bitcoins instead.

The only thing the PoS does in this case is moving the relative wealth to the top holders, meaning they can redeem more Bitcoin over time, while everyone else can less.

And people accept that by signing their own coins. They accept to gain and lose coins, by signing messages, and there is no way to stop anyone from signing any message they want. That's the best part of this "unstoppability", that there are some ideas, where even Proof of Work enthusiasts cannot destroy easily. That's why if you try to stop my proposal, you may hurt Lightning Network at the same time. Then, you have to choose wisely, to not kill too many networks with one shot.

How isn’t this vastly different from Lightning.

I still cannot see any difference. Each Lightning participant decide, how to make a closing transaction. The same with sidechains, the act of moving coins on-chain simply means, that everyone agreed to destroy sidechain coins, and take them on the mainchain.

And then there’s still the question how will they do it better than lightning?

Simple, in LN you cannot transact with all participants directly, in sidechains you can. If you are completely new, with fresh keys, you cannot be introduced into LN, without touching on-chain coins. In sidechains, it is possible.

[tadamichi]

Lightning doesn’t create coins out of thin air

Of course, because millisatoshis not divisible by 1000 are enforced on-chain, right?

Maybe we misunderstood each other, i meant inflating the amount of coins, which would be possible in a sidechain itself, but that’s not your goal. I just mentioned it, because i don’t think a side chain can outincentivize Bitcoin.

Now there’s a problem, Bitcoin is fixed supply, so you can’t just create  new coins as a staking reward out of thin air on the side chain, without breaking the exchange rate, because then the side chain has more Bitcoin in circulation, than can be redeemed or actually were put in.

I don't need any new coins. Each validator can take fees, in the same way as LN nodes take fees.

Then it’s a legit side chain for whoever wanna use it and it’s fine.

Then miners get less fees on the PoS chain again, because people are disincentivized to even use it. So what problem was fixed in the first place?

The problem of creating new features without any forks, of course. People have a lot of ideas, and create a lot of altcoins to reach them. There is no reason to create any new coins out of thin air, if they could sign their bitcoins instead.

Sure, but if it’s about features then it’s a different motivation than solving the block reward problem and i was just referring to that. Maybe you won’t gain me as a supporter for this, but im not a dictator and people are free to do what they want. This idea will still need users to use the chain, even if no fork is needed. I have nothing against you trying this.

The only thing the PoS does in this case is moving the relative wealth to the top holders, meaning they can redeem more Bitcoin over time, while everyone else can less.

And people accept that by signing their own coins. They accept to gain and lose coins, by signing messages, and there is no way to stop anyone from signing any message they want. That's the best part of this "unstoppability", that there are some ideas, where even Proof of Work enthusiasts cannot destroy easily. That's why if you try to stop my proposal, you may hurt Lightning Network at the same time. Then, you have to choose wisely, to not kill too many networks with one shot.

They’re free to do what they want, i still think PoW Bitcoin is better and will keep its users regardless, because it’s better, not if it can suppress your idea or not.  There’s 19.000 different cryptos out there and even more other assets, and i still chose Bitcoin, because it is like it is now. If i want other features, there isn’t more to choose from than rn. So let’s see how the actual demand for your proposal is. I believe that some people also want more features on Bitcoin specifically, so maybe there’s some demand. If you can build it in a safe way, that doesn’t have the tradeoffs of other systems, i for sure won’t have anything against it.

And then there’s still the question how will they do it better than lightning?

Simple, in LN you cannot transact with all participants directly, in sidechains you can. If you are completely new, with fresh keys, you cannot be introduced into LN, without touching on-chain coins. In sidechains, it is possible.

Correct, but to me this is one of the reasons why lighting gained more acceptance than sidechains, the tradeoffs lightning has are fine for the utility it offers.

[ABCbits]

Lightning doesn’t create coins out of thin air

Of course, because millisatoshis not divisible by 1000 are enforced on-chain, right?

When you close LN channel, it's rounded down (e.g. 1.9876 satoshi become 1 satoshi).

[Wind_FURY]

Here's another shower thought. What if a developer builds, and bootstraps a new cryptocurrency network based on POS, and if you want to join the network as a validator, you can buy the tokens, BUT, only through Bitcoin.

Isn't this Merged mining Proof of Stake?

No, I didn't think of it that way, just simply if you want to participate in the hypothetical POS Network, you need Bitcoin and can ONLY use Bitcoin to receive the POS token.

Does that make the new POS cryptocurrency network backed by Bitcoin's POW?

It is definitely backed by bitcoin, and since bitcoin relies on PoW, it's indirectly backed by PoW. Not something "environmental evangelists" like LegendaryK are going to support of.

Bitcoin needs to be mined, to buy the POS token.  

So... Why don't you buy bitcoin?

You can buy if you want to, but the context still is, all Bitcoins in existence are created into existence as block rewards received from mining.

[stwenhao]

No, I didn't think of it that way, just simply if you want to participate in the hypothetical POS Network, you need Bitcoin and can ONLY use Bitcoin to receive the POS token.

That's the plan: to have a network, where you can receive coins, only if you sign your bitcoins. Of course someone else could sign its own coins on your behalf, there is no way to stop that.

You can buy if you want to, but the context still is, all Bitcoins in existence are created into existence as block rewards received from mining.

Yes, but the current difficulty means that a lot of energy has to be used. It is possible to convince people to turn off their miners gradually (by convincing them that they can earn more by making signatures and staking their bitcoins), so the difficulty would gradually reach the minimal value. Then, it is possible to protect the whole network mainly by Proof of Stake, and leave a little protection of the Proof of Work, just to make it backward compatible.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I don't need any new coins. Each validator can take fees, in the same way as LN nodes take fees.

If each validator takes fees in the same way as Lightning, then it's the same kind of Proof-of-Stake. Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake are mechanisms used to tackle decentralized minting and transaction processing. If your PoS-sidechain idea excludes the former, then I don't understand how it's different.

Yes, but the current difficulty means that a lot of energy has to be used. It is possible to convince people to turn off their miners gradually (by convincing them that they can earn more by making signatures and staking their bitcoins), so the difficulty would gradually reach the minimal value.

I don't see how's that the case. The moment a block is solved, it stops having a cost. The miner can stake those coins, but there's nothing discouraging him to continue mining. If it's profitable to mine, and earns extra income from staking, I don't understand why not doing both.

Also, if difficulty reaches the minimum value, the main layer has no security, and along with it, all the sidechains as well. Unless your proposal is to move to another layer gradually.

[stwenhao]

If each validator takes fees in the same way as Lightning, then it's the same kind of Proof-of-Stake.

Yes, it's the same kind of Proof of Stake, but it has a chain. And that difference allows direct payments between participants, and that's the key difference between my proposal and Lightning Network: it is like if you could watch all channels and their state. Also, in this case, no watchtower is ever needed, and mining is also possible, because if you can watch all channels and transactions, then you can collect all of them, make a sidechain block out of it, and sign it, then you take all fees from all users as your reward (by default your reward is zero, and can be increased by validating transactions). So, the situation is clear: people can wait a long time for mainchain confirmation and pay on-chain fees, but they can instead use minimal on-chain fees, and pay much less, to have it signed by stakers. In this way, the stakechain can fill the gap between zero and the first confirmation, for a few satoshis you can get it validated, instead of accepting zero-confirmation. No coins will be created out of thin air, users will agree voluntarily to move their coins into stakers' hands, just by signing transactions.

I don't understand why not doing both.

You can, I guess that will be the case during bootstrapping, then people will find a good balance between that, and will see that staking can give them more profits, while having less power requirements, because then no mining equipment is needed. It will be a gradual way from 100% mining and 0% staking into 1% mining (the minimal difficulty is one) and 99% staking.

Unless your proposal is to move to another layer gradually.

It has to be gradual, because instant change will be rejected by Proof of Work enthusiasts. They don't want to switch immediately, they have to be convinced over time, that a different system is better, and can reward them with more coins.

[tadamichi]

I don't need any new coins. Each validator can take fees, in the same way as LN nodes take fees.

If each validator takes fees in the same way as Lightning, then it's the same kind of Proof-of-Stake. Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake are mechanisms used to tackle decentralized minting and transaction processing. If your PoS-sidechain idea excludes the former, then I don't understand how it's different.

Btw this wasn’t my quote.

I think this also opens the question of incentives and security. Sidechains always have a dilemma, they need to move an existing asset into a weaker form of security.

In the case of a PoS sidechain the security will be based on how much capital is inside it, let’s say it starts out with 200.000 € worth of Bitcoin locked inside. It would be easy for any whale, to take control over the network in the beginning. And in general the amount of capital required to make a majority attack on a PoS sidechain, would always be less than the amount of capital that’s inside it, this is different than on a PoS main chain, because the value that’s destroyed on the sidechain makes the attackers holdings worth more on the Bitcoin main chain. He could destroy 200k with just putting 101k in. This would actually make attacks that wanna destroy the side chain profitable.

Then my question is, because im not that familiar with how PoS and bridging in a side chain will work: can an attacker who controls majority of the capital send everyones funds back to the main chain, or make the coins inaccessible forever?

Isnt the whole promise of sidechains, we’re used less, so we can offer services more cheaply? But this incentive to even use them falls apart once they gain traction, because then they face the same problems as the main chain. In terms of scalability, decentralization and security.

It has to be gradual, because instant change will be rejected by Proof of Work enthusiasts. They don't want to switch immediately, they have to be convinced over time, that a different system is better, and can reward them with more coins.

I still don’t understand how this is economically possible. Sure, staking is cheaper and easier for validators, but if the task is providing security and consensus, and this method cant do it, then how was the task solved?

- You can’t have higher fees or the side chain won’t get used.
- If the side chain has more throughput and thus make the average transaction cheaper, it will suffer the centralization problems, the main chain is trying to avoid.

How will they get more coins? There’s a limited amount of coins, more coins means you gotta worsen the distribution of it. How isn’t PoS more and more concentration of wealth at the top, automatically built-in, no work required? This fate is set by the system, there’s no competition that can change it. Lightning is completely different it’s competitive and takes skill and planning to run successfully, it doesn’t work on the premise to give people more fees, sure the highest capital nodes can get more fees, but there can still be competition from smaller nodes, because most people won’t be needing to send high amounts everyday. It actually helps the main chain, instead of being in competition with it, both balance each other out.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Yes, it's the same kind of Proof of Stake, but it has a chain. And that difference allows direct payments between participants, and that's the key difference between my proposal and Lightning Network.

We still don't know most of your network's details, though. For example, Proof-of-Stake-alone systems (can) suffer from subjectivity, as I've said in the OP. The Lightning Network doesn't; you can't double-sign transactions.

It will be a gradual way from 100% mining and 0% staking into 1% mining (the minimal difficulty is one) and 99% staking.

This just doesn't sound right.

then people will find a good balance between that, and will see that staking can give them more profits

Miners' income comes from mining, where there's a cost. Staking coins has no cost. Therefore doing the work and staking will always be more profitable than staking alone. (If miner's income is greater than the cost)

can an attacker who controls majority of the capital send everyones funds back to the main chain, or make the coins inaccessible forever?

There are unlimited possibilities that depend on the details. If we don't have a paper that explains clearly how a Proof-of-Stake sidechain is somewhat superior, we can only do pointless speculation.

[stwenhao]

they need to move an existing asset into a weaker form of security

They usually have "weaker form of security" only because people don't know how to implement Merged Mining correctly (see: NameCoin). There should be one source of the Proof of Work, and each sidechain should commit to that, so users will first get everything sidechain-confirmed, and then Bitcoin-confirmed. After the latter, it is as strong and as resistant to chain reorganizations as Bitcoin itself. And again, Proof of Work can be replaced by Proof of Stake inside the sidechain, without affecting the mainchain consensus at all. Also, sidechains can be created and destroyed at will, it is just a matter of signing the right transaction, to deposit funds into the sidechain, and to take them back, just by moving them on the mainchain. Now I know that any testnet or signet can be easily deployed in that way, and I am trying to think about mainnet, and to deploy some test networks, just to show how it works.

In the case of a PoS sidechain the security will be based on how much capital is inside it, let’s say it starts out with 200.000 € worth of Bitcoin locked inside. It would be easy for any whale, to take control over the network in the beginning.

It is not that easy to take control, because things will be committed on-chain, and after that, it will be very hard for any whale to overwrite that.

can an attacker who controls majority of the capital send everyones funds back to the main chain, or make the coins inaccessible forever?

Users are protected from stealing in the same way as in LN: there are penalty transactions. Also, they are automatically broadcasted, without any watchtower, because revealing any previous transaction will allow unlocking the penalty transaction and broadcast it on-chain. All nodes observe both the mainchain and the sidechain, any malicious action of some wealthy sidechain wallet will be noticed by the sidechain network, and all honest nodes will react immediately, by broadcasting penalty transactions to the mainchain.

Isnt the whole promise of sidechains, we’re used less, so we can offer services more cheaply? But this incentive to even use them falls apart once they gain traction, because then they face the same problems as the main chain. In terms of scalability, decentralization and security.

If sidechains are done in the right way, then they have one nice property, that is not possible on the mainchain: it is possible to prune the history, as it gets confirmed on the mainchain. Coins are created by signing mainnet coins, and then they are destroyed, when mainnet coins are moved. That means, the sidechain history can be regularly pruned, when it gets confirmed on the mainchain. In this way, if the sidechain will be too big, then people can always move them directly, from one sidechain to another, a single mainchain transaction can clear the old sidechain history, and move everything to the new, fresh sidechain. And users can decide, if they want it or not, because they have to do it explicitly, by signing transactions. Imagine a Bitcoin, where you could download only the UTXO set, the Proof of Work headers, some recent blocks, and then the Initial Blockchain Download would take, I don't know, 10 GB? Maybe 20 GB? Only sidechains has such properties, because the mainchain has no upper layer.

Sure, staking is cheaper and easier for validators, but if the task is providing security and consensus, and this method cant do it, then how was the task solved?

It just makes it two-steps and fills the gap between zero and one confirmation.
Without my system: you have zero confirmations with full RBF, so anything can be always replaced, at any time.
With my system: you still have zero confirmations, but you can pay validators to sign your transaction, so the chance for it being unconfirmed forever is much lower.

You can’t have higher fees or the side chain won’t get used.

Fees will be automatically regulated by the network itself, as it is in Bitcoin. There will be just some market fee.

If the side chain has more throughput and thus make the average transaction cheaper, it will suffer the centralization problems, the main chain is trying to avoid.

You can worry about "centralization problems" in LN, they are exactly the same as in my proposal.

How will they get more coins?

Users will pass their coins to the validators explicitly, just like in LN.

How isn’t PoS more and more concentration of wealth at the top, automatically built-in, no work required?

Again, LN has the same problem, my proposal won't make it any worse than that.

Lightning is completely different it’s competitive and takes skill and planning to run successfully, it doesn’t work on the premise to give people more fees, sure the highest capital nodes can get more fees, but there can still be competition from smaller nodes, because most people won’t be needing to send high amounts everyday.

The same will be here. Also, note that mining should be decentralized, that means each validator should validate its own set of transactions, and their efforts should be then combined, to create a superblock for the whole network.

It actually helps the main chain, instead of being in competition with it, both balance each other out.

My proposal also helps the main chain, for example by taking some traffic outside of it, and then posting a batched state of the sidechain every sometimes.

Edit:

The Lightning Network doesn't; you can't double-sign transactions.

The same in my network: it will be rejected in the same way as double spends are rejected. Unless it will have a higher fee, then full RBF kicks in, exactly in the same way as it is on the main network. But after getting at least one sidechain confirmation, it will be very hard to do, in the same way as it is hard to do one-block-reorg on the main chain.

This just doesn't sound right.

Why not? Users should have a choice. If they can sell their bitcoins, and buy some useless altcoins, then why not provide them a different choice: just sign the same coins, but instead of selling them, get some sidechain coins, of the same amount in satoshis, and use new features as you wanted. Why not go that way? That proposal could be used to get rid of altcoins, which create new coins out of thin air. They should all be based on Bitcoin, there should be always no more than 21 million coins, some of them should fly on the mainchain, and the rest should be moved inside LN, sidechains, or different (not known yet) networks.

Therefore doing the work and staking will always be more profitable than staking alone.

Well, so miners will mine and stake. It is still better than mining alone, it is just the first step to convince them into staking. If they will stake, then they can see the benefits of staking, and later, if they decide to turn off their machines for any reason (for example because the endlessly growing difficulty will force them to do so), they can focus on staking, instead of leaving the crypto altogether.

If we don't have a paper that explains clearly how a Proof-of-Stake sidechain is somewhat superior, we can only do pointless speculation.

Keep calm, I'm working on it. Meanwhile, I can answer some questions and make my proposal harder to stop, based on your responses. I don't want to share something that could be easily destroyed by me, or by some regular people from forums. So, this discussion is definitely helpful to speed up the whole process, and I appreciate it. It is like in artificial intelligence: the smarter you are, the faster and the better your model can be trained.

Edit: You wanted more details, so here we go. Let's assume there is Alice, sending coins to Bob. And there is some Zack that wants to validate it. How it should be done? For example in this way:

Code:

+---------------------------------------------------------+
| ZackOne 1.00 BTC                    -> ZackTwo 1.01 BTC |
| SIGHASH_SINGLE|SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY                     |
+---------------------------------------------------------+

That means, Zack is going to sign something, for a 0.01 BTC fee, and wants to put 1.00 BTC at stake. By using such sighashes, Zack can attach this single input and single output into any transaction that will pay him. Then, let's assume that Alice wants to send some coins to Bob:

Code:

+-----------------------------------------------------+
| Alice 0.51 BTC                      -> Bob 0.50 BTC |
| SIGHASH_SINGLE|SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------+

Guess what, both parts can be combined into a single transaction, that will have zero on-chain fee:

Code:

+--------------------------------------+
| ZackOne 1.00 BTC -> ZackTwo 1.01 BTC |
| Alice 0.51 BTC      Bob 0.50 BTC     |
+--------------------------------------+

That means, on-chain miners can of course mine it, but then they will get nothing. And imagine using some smaller fee than on-chain, so many sidechain transactions will be combined, and they will later reach the minimal on-chain fee, so they could be then broadcasted, as a single, huge, batched transaction. Impressive, isn't it? Also, sidechain can optimize things even more, by storing transactions in encrypted form (by using Homomorphic Encryption), then Pedersen Commitments can be used to manipulate encrypted transactions, that could be later decrypted and broadcasted to the mainchain. There are endless possibilities, I don't know what users will invent, I am trying to just provide the base standardized layer for that.

[tadamichi]

There are unlimited possibilities that depend on the details. If we don't have a paper that explains clearly how a Proof-of-Stake sidechain is somewhat superior, we can only do pointless speculation.

True.

[…]

Now the concept sounds much more sound. I’ll wait for the proposal to be here, so you have the time to work the details out. Good luck. This could have potential.

[stwenhao]

More sidechain demonstration: the normal 1 sat/vB fee means 110 bytes per each P2WPKH-P2WPKH pair. Here, each user can pay 105 satoshis per entry, and the validator pays only 85 satoshis for validating all of that, and for enforcing that on-chain. It is trustless, it is based on SIGHASH_SINGLE|SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY, and it allows reaching lower fees. Those low-fee transactions are broadcasted only on a sidechain, where they are collected, grabbed by some validator, and then that validator can be paid by getting a discount on its own transaction, it is a reward for the whole batching effort. In practice, that validator could earn even more by batching A->B and B->C sidechain transactions into A->C mainchain transaction. But this example shows, what is possible here and now, with no protocol changes, more sidechain features are ongoing.

Code:

decoderawtransaction 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
{
  "txid": "07168e032760422e31c98642a2ee8013d7da4902485c002761baa2808a8f7eef",
  "hash": "c2b56a74cde6750711b34c7700e5bd0476eaeb95313387f7bec68369ed776de2",
  "version": 2,
  "size": 907,
  "vsize": 505,
  "weight": 2017,
  "locktime": 0,
  "vin": [
    {
      "txid": "2f22575f71668e16c36486ae531ec4e6b78a050f2afbb59f7cb1f97617d0556d",
      "vout": 6,
      "scriptSig": {
        "asm": "",
        "hex": ""
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Edit: There is a validator that earned 97 satoshis, and provided Taproot validation, where users paid 105 satoshis, instead of 112. See transaction: 99459ff5ce058067ed87b99f326305768444068a5659dce5ea5f126bfd4b0bda.

[NotATether]

Bump...

I'm adding info from this thread to bitcoincleanup, so it's important that I clearly understand what is being talked about here.

In both PoS and PoW, if the miners as a whole act badly, they will lose their investment. However, with PoW, the underlying coin will survive. This is an important distinction. If a large PoS miner were to successfully act badly, they could potentially enter into derraritive contracts to offset the coin they have "locked up" that is mining. This removes the requirement for a PoS miner to actually invest in their "mining" operation. OTOH, a PoW miner cannot easily hedge their investment if they intend to act badly while mining.

Can you elaborate how exactly such an attack could be carried out, from A to Z?

[BrotherCreamy]

The only thing I can contribute to this thread is the following question (for PoSers):

How does PoS support chain splits?

The ability to fork the chain is fundamental for resilience.

Without this, you might as well just have an Excel spreadsheet on somebody's laptop IMO.

To my understanding, in a PoS chain, both forks of a chain retain the staking balances on both sides, and it would only make sense for the stakers to validate the same blocks on both chains.
This would end with two chains with the same parameters, which defeats the point of a split.

In a PoW chain, whenever a chain split occurs, miners have to pick which fork to continue mining on, so you would be left with two competing chains of different parameters, of which one would eventually win out as the coins on one chain slowly devalue relative to the other as people sell their coins on one chain to buy coins on the other (as it should be).

Am I wrong? Is there some mechanism by which PoS supports chain splits in a robust way?

[NotATether]

Am I wrong? Is there some mechanism by which PoS supports chain splits in a robust way?

While I certainly do not count as a PoS'er by any definition of the term, the simple answer to your question is, bare PoS doesn't have such a mechanism.

There is financial incentive to mine on both chains, which leads to double-spend attacks and all that.

Ethereum has a financial deterrent in that you lose you stake if you try to submit a bad block, but there is actually no criteria deployed to the network yet to judge what is a bad block.

[BlackHatCoiner]

To my understanding, in a PoS chain, both forks of a chain retain the staking balances on both sides, and it would only make sense for the stakers to validate the same blocks on both chains.

Sure, but can't the same apply on Proof-of-Work too? Say that the chain splits to old-Bitcoin and new-Bitcoin that supports merged-mining. Miners that mine the old chain can use redundant hashes to mine for the new chain, with the exact same hash rate. All that's needed for new-Bitcoin is to prove you've worked for it. It'll be essentially a sidechain, but with no dependence on the mainchain.

I don't see how Proof-of-Stake defeats the point of split. It's not the miners/stakers who define the value of the coins, but the users. If a split occurs, there might be new money created, but the product remains the same. Market value of 1 BTC is just split to 1-old-BTC and 1-new-BTC.

[n0nce]

To my understanding, in a PoS chain, both forks of a chain retain the staking balances on both sides, and it would only make sense for the stakers to validate the same blocks on both chains.

Sure, but can't the same apply on Proof-of-Work too? Say that the chain splits to old-Bitcoin and new-Bitcoin that supports merged-mining. Miners that mine the old chain can use redundant hashes to mine for the new chain, with the exact same hash rate. All that's needed for new-Bitcoin is to prove you've worked for it. It'll be essentially a sidechain, but with no dependence on the mainchain.

I don't see how Proof-of-Stake defeats the point of split. It's not the miners/stakers who define the value of the coins, but the users. If a split occurs, there might be new money created, but the product remains the same. Market value of 1 BTC is just split to 1-old-BTC and 1-new-BTC.

I don't think there ever was a Fork-BTC that was designed to be able to be mined merged with the original BTC. This seems like a very constructed example.
So, while in PoW model this seems like a constructed, rare exception, in PoS this is the default. You can 'mine' / validate on both chains by default, while in PoW you must decide where you point your miners and what chain you burn your electricity on.

[pooya87]

To my understanding, in a PoS chain, both forks of a chain retain the staking balances on both sides, and it would only make sense for the stakers to validate the same blocks on both chains.

Sure, but can't the same apply on Proof-of-Work too? Say that the chain splits to old-Bitcoin and new-Bitcoin that supports merged-mining. Miners that mine the old chain can use redundant hashes to mine for the new chain, with the exact same hash rate. All that's needed for new-Bitcoin is to prove you've worked for it. It'll be essentially a sidechain, but with no dependence on the mainchain.

The difference is that there is still "work" being done on both chains, even the merged mined coin is being mined and it could actually have increased difficulty for it to no longer work as a merged mined coin.
In the PoS case, there is no actual "work" being done, and it is trivial for the staker to benefit from both chains at virtually no cost.

[oryhp]

I tried to explain some of the differences in PoW/PoS here https://phyro.github.io/nakamoto/. It doesn't go into theory or touches subjects like coin distribution. It focuses more on the difference in how a new block is added. Let me know if I got some things wrong.

[BrotherCreamy]

Sure, but can't the same apply on Proof-of-Work too? Say that the chain splits to old-Bitcoin and new-Bitcoin that supports merged-mining. Miners that mine the old chain can use redundant hashes to mine for the new chain, with the exact same hash rate. All that's needed for new-Bitcoin is to prove you've worked for it. It'll be essentially a sidechain, but with no dependence on the mainchain.

I don't see how Proof-of-Stake defeats the point of split. It's not the miners/stakers who define the value of the coins, but the users. If a split occurs, there might be new money created, but the product remains the same. Market value of 1 BTC is just split to 1-old-BTC and 1-new-BTC.

But the chains become independent once they split. The hashes would be different for different blocks, so you'd either have to choose to point your miners at the new or the old chain.
The miners that believe they can make more out of the new chain would point their miners at the new chain, and miners who think they can make more out of the old chain would stay on the old chain.
The new chain would have different consensus parameters, which could not be subverted without significant cost to the miners who wish to subvert it.

Under PoS, this is not the case.
Since the staked amount persists on both tails, stakers could just stake the same way on both tails, and subvert the new chain, and its consensus parameters would end up being the same as the old chain.

[n0nce]

Sure, but can't the same apply on Proof-of-Work too? Say that the chain splits to old-Bitcoin and new-Bitcoin that supports merged-mining. Miners that mine the old chain can use redundant hashes to mine for the new chain, with the exact same hash rate. All that's needed for new-Bitcoin is to prove you've worked for it. It'll be essentially a sidechain, but with no dependence on the mainchain.

I don't see how Proof-of-Stake defeats the point of split. It's not the miners/stakers who define the value of the coins, but the users. If a split occurs, there might be new money created, but the product remains the same. Market value of 1 BTC is just split to 1-old-BTC and 1-new-BTC.

But the chains become independent once they split. The hashes would be different for different blocks, so you'd either have to choose to point your miners at the new or the old chain.

Except in his (in my opinion) very constructed example where the new chain doesn't require its own mining, but is merged-mineable with the main chain.

The miners that believe they can make more out of the new chain would point their miners at the new chain, and miners who think they can make more out of the old chain would stay on the old chain.
The new chain would have different consensus parameters, which could not be subverted without significant cost to the miners who wish to subvert it.

Under PoS, this is not the case.
Since the staked amount persists on both tails, stakers could just stake the same way on both tails, and subvert the new chain, and its consensus parameters would end up being the same as the old chain.

That's exactly correct. That's one of the aspects that (asterisk asterisk except in niche constructions / exceptions) makes PoW so different and so much stronger than PoS. In PoS, the 'investment' (miner / stake) is within the system and that's a problem on a multitude of levels.

[BlackHatCoiner]

But the chains become independent once they split.

I now see it clearly. You're right. You can't use the same work to extend another chain, unless the new chain is dependent on the old chain, regardless of the configuration of the new chain. The new chain founders can either choose to completely disconnect it with the old chain, or make it based on it.

Forking the chain in the former fashion (e.g., Bitcoin Cash) in Proof-of-Stake does grant the validators the same benefits oppositely to Proof-of-Work, indeed. That being said, you could say that Proof-of-Work makes splitting / forking less desirable.

[n0nce]

But the chains become independent once they split.

I now see it clearly. You're right. You can't use the same work to extend another chain, unless the new chain is dependent on the old chain, regardless of the configuration of the new chain. The new chain founders can either choose to completely disconnect it with the old chain, or make it based on it.

Exactly, and imagine the credibility of a 'fork team' who on one hand is trying to sell their fork as the 'new Bitcoin' that will 'replace it' (flippening), while at the same time being based (thus reliant) on the real BTC blockchain through merged mining. Nobody would take them seriously.
There is a binary decision which chain to mine, that doesn't exist in PoS.

That's also why there is a (trivial) binary decision which chain is longer in an unintentional chain split; meanwhile in Ethereum someone will need to decide which chain is 'longer', as the validators will just validate both sides of the split. Will it be based on a Tweet by Vitalik? I don't know. Doesn't inspire much confidence.

Forking the chain in the former fashion (e.g., Bitcoin Cash) in Proof-of-Stake does grant the validators the same benefits oppositely to Proof-of-Work, indeed. That being said, you could say that Proof-of-Work makes splitting / forking less desirable.

On the other hand, making it harder to fork also gives security / stability to Bitcoin, and if someone were to try coming up with a real contender, the economics (miners switching or not) will show which chain / which coin is more popular and should be pursued. In other words; it would be easier to figure out the 'winner'.

I mean, imagine every miner who claims fork-coins magically being handed an ASIC (for each of the ASICs they own) for the fork chain. The thought is hilarious to me! But that is what happens in a PoS fork.

[tromp]

the validators will just validate both sides of the split.

No they don't, since the two signatures they would make for different branches would get posted to the chain as evidence  [1] and their stake (a minimum of 32 ETH) would get forfeited.

[1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoiners-guide-to-proof-of-stake

[NotATether]

the validators will just validate both sides of the split.

No they don't, since the two signatures they would make for different branches would get posted to the chain as evidence  [1] and their stake (a minimum of 32 ETH) would get forfeited.

[1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoiners-guide-to-proof-of-stake

That's only in theory though, since the whole process depends on slashers running on the network, and currently nobody is daring to report anything with them lest it quickly become a political censorship issue within their community.

It's ironic though, because Vitalik Buterin doesn't want Coinbase to run a slasher because he's scared they will start censoring transactions.

Something that's not practically possible in PoW ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PS. It's possible for PoS 51% hijackers to run a slasher node that reports the real good blocks, so the system has no concept of altruism in the first place (There are strange similarities between this and the algorithmic balancing used in stablecoins such as Luna UST).

[BlackHatCoiner]

On the other hand, making it harder to fork also gives security / stability to Bitcoin

No other hand; it's the same hand. That's what I implied. That forking is not desirable, it reduces security.

and if someone were to try coming up with a real contender, the economics (miners switching or not) will show which chain / which coin is more popular and should be pursued. In other words; it would be easier to figure out the 'winner'.

Exactly. Miners follow demand. History has proven it. For example, if Bitcoin Cash had more demand than Bitcoin, it'd probably have more hash rate than it too. It's approximately 173 times less than it.

No they don't, since the two signatures they would make for different branches would get posted to the chain as evidence  [1] and their stake (a minimum of 32 ETH) would get forfeited.

I don't understand. Say you have 32 ETH, and the chain is split. You now have 32 ETH-old and 32 ETH-new. You can use both these coins with no consequences, unless it isn't an actual split, but a sidechain.

[n0nce]

No they don't, since the two signatures they would make for different branches would get posted to the chain as evidence  [1] and their stake (a minimum of 32 ETH) would get forfeited.

I don't understand. Say you have 32 ETH, and the chain is split. You now have 32 ETH-old and 32 ETH-new. You can use both these coins with no consequences, unless it isn't an actual split, but a sidechain.

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.
You know, compared to ASICs, that allow you to go with whatever is currently more profitable and switch (back) at any time if you want it (freedom), if you don't behave like a good boy, Vitalik will steal your funds in PoS.

Imagine you mined BCH for a while and when Satoshi found out, he came knocking to your door and took away your mining gear. Same shit.

[BlackHatCoiner]

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.

How will he know I validate ETH-new's chain? I can spend on both chains, and I'm sure he would be fine by the assumption that I'm selling the ETH-new he disapproves of, to buy his ETH-old. But, you can't know with certainty that an ETH-old staker uses the same funds to stake ETH-new. Say, for example, that I mixed ETH-new, and then staked those.

[n0nce]

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.

How will he know I validate ETH-new's chain? I can spend on both chains, and I'm sure he would be fine by the assumption that I'm selling the ETH-new he disapproves of, to buy his ETH-old. But, you can't know with certainty that an ETH-old staker uses the same funds to stake ETH-new. Say, for example, that I mixed ETH-new, and then staked those.

True; mixing and putting the coins back in for the same amount of stake should work. I think the slashing mechanic only works if you just don't move the funds and keep them on both chains, verifying on both of them.
There's no identity or KYC (god forbid) attached to your stake, soo you could most definitely sell the new-ETH, buy them again (or mix them) and acquire the same amount of stake on both chains.

[philipma1957]

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.

How will he know I validate ETH-new's chain? I can spend on both chains, and I'm sure he would be fine by the assumption that I'm selling the ETH-new he disapproves of, to buy his ETH-old. But, you can't know with certainty that an ETH-old staker uses the same funds to stake ETH-new. Say, for example, that I mixed ETH-new, and then staked those.

True; mixing and putting the coins back in for the same amount of stake should work. I think the slashing mechanic only works if you just don't move the funds and keep them on both chains, verifying on both of them.
There's no identity or KYC (god forbid) attached to your stake, soo you could most definitely sell the new-ETH, buy them again (or mix them) and acquire the same amount of stake on both chains.

Well VB is on my debtor list as he owes me 2 eth. which I will never see.

So I own 1 old eth on a trezor

and I own .3 staked eth2 on coinbase.

I leave them sit

now the old the on trezor is on a virgin untouched wallet what does it become down the road.

as VB has change the rules enough that I lost track of whether I have a split coin or I am getting one or VB stole some more from me an Now owes me 2 old eth + whatever.

[pooya87]

Exactly. Miners follow demand. History has proven it. For example, if Bitcoin Cash had more demand than Bitcoin, it'd probably have more hash rate than it too. It's approximately 173 times less than it.

It's more accurate to say that miners follow "profit" not demand. For example bcash never had any demand, specially in early days but it could attract a good amount of hashrate simply because they manipulated the difficulty adjustment algorithm so that miners could mine 1000+ blocks per day (for comparison you can mine about 144 BTC blocks/day). So even with the low price and low demand that bcash had, the miners could make more profit in total so they made the switch in that period.

[n0nce]

now the old the on trezor is on a virgin untouched wallet what does it become down the road.

as VB has change the rules enough that I lost track of whether I have a split coin or I am getting one or VB stole some more from me an Now owes me 2 old eth + whatever.

I don't understand what you mean with 'he owes you X coins'.
Anyhow, your stake on Coinbase is not on your possession, so you will probably neither get to claim fork-coins if a fork will happen and neither can you decide what chain to vote on with your stake.

The 1ETH on your hardware wallet, would be present on an ETH fork, and you could claim it without a problem, but that doesn't have anything to do with the recent discussions about staking. Those coins are not staked. They are just sitting in the wallet. They can't be staked since you need 32+ ETH and approval by Vitalik and his friends to be allowed 'in' as a new 'staker'.

TL;DR: Nothing to worry about.

[garlonicon]

Exactly, and imagine the credibility of a 'fork team' who on one hand is trying to sell their fork as the 'new Bitcoin' that will 'replace it' (flippening), while at the same time being based (thus reliant) on the real BTC blockchain through merged mining. Nobody would take them seriously.
There is a binary decision which chain to mine, that doesn't exist in PoS.

It is partially true. There is a binary decision which chain to mine, because you have to choose your previous block hash of your block header that you are trying to mine. But if Merged Mining is active, then you can reuse the same header on both chains. Then yes, it is clearly visible, which chain you picked (because of that previous block hash), but the reusability of that header makes things different, when it comes to the profitability.

Imagine a scenario, where you picked BTC as the chain to mine, but mined a 100 times easier block header. Then, if Merged Mining is implemented in a NameCoin-like way, as a separate difficulty, you will get around 0.0625 BTC plus fees, and for example 50 ALT. But, if the altcoin is constructed to collect all headers, and adjust the coinbase, instead of adjusting the difficulty, then the whole profitability is different, because then you will only get around 0.0625 ALT, and the rest will be pushed to the future.

So, while creating separate difficulties is not serious, collecting all headers, valid or not, and adjusting amounts, is a different matter. Because then, even if there is a stronger chain, and if those miners could potentially switch their machines to attack the chain, the network is aware of the potential attack, and things are stated explicitly, because the total hashrate is always tracked and reflected in coin amounts.

So, to sum up, if someone is seriously thinking about any ALT that could "replace" BTC, then such chain should be at least work-per-amount-compatible, so the total effort to mine 1 BTC should be comparable with the total effort to mine 1 ALT.

[BrotherCreamy]

I mean, imagine every miner who claims fork-coins magically being handed an ASIC (for each of the ASICs they own) for the fork chain. The thought is hilarious to me! But that is what happens in a PoS fork.

That's a great analogy.

PoS really is a PoS haha.
Although see tromp's reply below. I didn't realise, but it seems like Casper might address this?
But then you could still mix your staked coins and start again? (as pointed out by n0nce)

No they don't, since the two signatures they would make for different branches would get posted to the chain as evidence  [1] and their stake (a minimum of 32 ETH) would get forfeited.

[1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoiners-guide-to-proof-of-stake

Right so they in fact do have some mechanism to allow for this.
If it actually works then some of my faith in Ethereum is restored.

But what if you unstake your coins on one fork, mix them, and begin staking again with the mixed coins? (as pointed out by n0nce)

No other hand; it's the same hand. That's what I implied. That forking is not desirable, it reduces security.

Forkability is necessary. How do you know which fork is the better one? Answer: you don't.
The ability to fork, and allow users to choose where to move their funds (through exchange) is what makes the chain resilient.

I don't understand. Say you have 32 ETH, and the chain is split. You now have 32 ETH-old and 32 ETH-new. You can use both these coins with no consequences, unless it isn't an actual split, but a sidechain.

Someone could grab your signature from the other chain (which includes the block height), and post it as evidence that you submitted two votes for the same block height, resulting in your balance being slashed.
You can use - as in, make payment with - both the ETH-old and ETH-new, but you can't stake with ETH-old and ETH-new twice for the same block height without risk of slashing.

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.
You know, compared to ASICs, that allow you to go with whatever is currently more profitable and switch (back) at any time if you want it (freedom), if you don't behave like a good boy, Vitalik will steal your funds in PoS.

Imagine you mined BCH for a while and when Satoshi found out, he came knocking to your door and took away your mining gear. Same shit.

AFAIK, staking on the not "good-boy Vitalik chain" is not a slashable offence by itself, but staking twice for the same block height is.
Or are you saying that Vitalik will just implore everyone to slash your coins by posting on Twitter asking for social consensus? *shudder*

[takuma sato]

What would "cost" more, the cost of printing enough fiat currency to buy > 51% of "POS Bitcoin" coins, or the cost of printing enough currency to have > 51% hashing power in the Bitcoin network?

You don't need some hypothetical scenario that involves printing money, we have actual cases that happened in shitcoins that have PoS algorithm in the past like the case with Steem network where exchanges took over the chain simply because they held a large number of that shitcoin without spending a dime.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59383033#msg59383033

That's merely a "young, nacsent" altcoin. I was thinking about a more developed/mature coin, with high market value. As an example, Ethereum, which is going to make the switch to POS.

It makes no difference; it's a general, inherent problem of PoS. It's just as possible on the 'latest and greatest generation X' PoS blockchain, as it is on a 'young / nascent' or a 'developed / mature' PoS blockchain.
The very principle of PoS that the voting power is determined by the amount of coins you hold is the issue at hand.

If the world's central banks printed enough fiat currency to buy 51% of the coins, that would imply they are buying at least 10 million coins. Are there that much for sale on the open markets? Attempting to buy it in a short period of time would drive demand over existing supply. We'd see $10m BTC sooner.

What if they will only buy it during bear cycles, and they're willing to take their time?

It's one option; or they might buy it off-chain (buying keys / lending the coins / keys). You can't notice that on-chain and it won't cause price fluctuations.

Bitcoin holders also determine the voting power. Whenever there is a hard fork, if a majority of Bitcoin holders (which receive equivalent of coins on the new chain) decide this is a hostile takeover, they would dump the coins into the market, reducing the incentive of miners to mine on the new chain. So holders also have a big say in what goes on in Bitcoin, but the dynamics between holders and miners make it safer than PoS which is just not safe.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Forkability is necessary.

You misinterpreted me. The ability to fork, not only it is necessary, but it is inevitable in a decentralized system. I'm only saying this: Splitting a chain, besides consensus-wise, it splits in security as well. If Bitcoin Cash didn't exist, some miners wouldn't mine it, and so they'd most likely mine its past fork.

Someone could grab your signature from the other chain (which includes the block height), and post it as evidence that you submitted two votes for the same block height, resulting in your balance being slashed.

But, it can't know that I'm voting or just spending my money, unless they forbid me from using other forks, which doesn't make sense because chains are independent and don't interact. Centralized blockchains (which is a contradictory term anyway) could be coded likewise though, no doubt.

[n0nce]

Exactly, and imagine the credibility of a 'fork team' who on one hand is trying to sell their fork as the 'new Bitcoin' that will 'replace it' (flippening), while at the same time being based (thus reliant) on the real BTC blockchain through merged mining. Nobody would take them seriously.
There is a binary decision which chain to mine, that doesn't exist in PoS.

It is partially true. There is a binary decision which chain to mine, because you have to choose your previous block hash of your block header that you are trying to mine. But if Merged Mining is active, then you can reuse the same header on both chains.
[...]

You're not wrong, but I said already that all these ideas are restricted solely to merged mining, which I see as unlikely. At least for any 'We are the new Bitcoin' type of altcoin. Those usually don't want any connection to BTC whatsoever (most definitely no merged mining).

I mean, imagine every miner who claims fork-coins magically being handed an ASIC (for each of the ASICs they own) for the fork chain. The thought is hilarious to me! But that is what happens in a PoS fork.

That's a great analogy.

PoS really is a PoS haha.
Although see tromp's reply below. I didn't realise, but it seems like Casper might address this?
But then you could still mix your staked coins and start again? (as pointed out by n0nce)

Exactly; BlackHatCoiner reminded me of this. Just mix or otherwise 'exchange' the coins, like selling on one exchange and buying the same amount on another one.
Only thing holding you back is that usually in PoS there's a mechanism to 'apply' for validator status. That's right; you can't just spin up a miner, you need to ask for permission. It makes sense for validators to reject it since it reduces their proportional stake, but that's a different point.
They could in theory realize that someone just exited from the validator pool, those coins were sold on an exchange and then someone applied as validator with the exact same amount of coins. Blockchain analysis type of stuff. That's the only issue I see with BlackHatCoiner's idea; but any such countermeasure can easily be circumvented.
You could just split the amount and spin up 2 validators of 'half the size' (e.g. 16ETH, 16ETH while you previously had one 32ETH stake).

In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.
You know, compared to ASICs, that allow you to go with whatever is currently more profitable and switch (back) at any time if you want it (freedom), if you don't behave like a good boy, Vitalik will steal your funds in PoS.

Imagine you mined BCH for a while and when Satoshi found out, he came knocking to your door and took away your mining gear. Same shit.

AFAIK, staking on the not "good-boy Vitalik chain" is not a slashable offence by itself, but staking twice for the same block height is.
Or are you saying that Vitalik will just implore everyone to slash your coins by posting on Twitter asking for social consensus? *shudder*

Oh I don't think they can slash any of your ETH-old if you used your fork-ETH-new to stake, while not staking in ETH-old.
But if you do stake the 'original' and 'forked' coins both, you essentially vote on both chains and that's punished.
Though if I read it right, a few months ago at least, the code for slashing wasn't even implemented yet? ^{[correct me if I'm wrong]}   (Or maybe there was no code for withdrawing your stake, that's also possible. Both bad if you ask me.)

Bitcoin holders also determine the voting power. Whenever there is a hard fork, if a majority of Bitcoin holders (which receive equivalent of coins on the new chain) decide this is a hostile takeover, they would dump the coins into the market, reducing the incentive of miners to mine on the new chain. So holders also have a big say in what goes on in Bitcoin, but the dynamics between holders and miners make it safer than PoS which is just not safe.

It can be an indirect effect in case of an intentional hard fork, but Bitcoin holders technically have no voting power whatsoever. They cannot vote for protocol changes for instance, like nodes, miners or stakers can. So calling market-selling a forkcoin 'voting power' is very misleading to say the least.

Someone could grab your signature from the other chain (which includes the block height), and post it as evidence that you submitted two votes for the same block height, resulting in your balance being slashed.

But, it can't know that I'm voting or just spending my money, unless they forbid me from using other forks, which doesn't make sense because chains are independent and don't interact. Centralized blockchains (which is a contradictory term anyway) could be coded likewise though, no doubt.

I do think it can know that you're voting, by just running two nodes and checking the other blockchain. A vote is definitely different from a simple spend, otherwise how can anyone (on any chain) know you voted in the first place?
I believe ETH does it through smart contracts, and your stake is even locked for some amount of time.

[BlackHatCoiner]

They could in theory realize that someone just exited from the validator pool, those coins were sold on an exchange and then someone applied as validator with the exact same amount of coins.

They can realize that some funds are gone, and about the same time some funds are staked. At that point and further, any conclusion is fundamentally flawed, and any action taken is irrational. Even if mixing is broken.

I do think it can know that you're voting, by just running two nodes and checking the other blockchain.

But, that would make their blockchain reliant on forks, which nullifies the whole fork concept; a fork is a split, not a merge. Being able to fork is being able to oppose. If you charge forking, then your project is not able to fork, because forking happens by nature unquestionably. At least if we're working in a really decentralized manner.

Instead of penalties, the founders of the first chain (if they're so obsessed on disincentivizing the new chain's usage) should work on arguments. Nobody's going to stay in a anti-freedom chain when the neighbor-chain is in favor of them, unless they're morons.

[BrotherCreamy]

But, it can't know that I'm voting or just spending my money, unless they forbid me from using other forks, which doesn't make sense because chains are independent and don't interact. Centralized blockchains (which is a contradictory term anyway) could be coded likewise though, no doubt.

I think they'd have thought of this contingency.
As n0nce said, you need to re-request to be a validator, and there is some kind of timelock on your staked ETH as well.
I assume this is for the express purpose of allowing some time for a new fork to get started, and make it difficult for new validators - e.g. the malicious validators who mixed their previously staked coins to allow them to double-stake - to subvert the new fork.
So, the trick they are using to simulate the functions of PoW is basically a democratic consensus system. It's not a bad idea, but IMO still not as good as PoW, which is much simpler, and with no such attack vector. You cannot kill a fork in PoW, only not contribute to it.

[Jason Brendon]

In the real world. The top 12 coins on coinmarketcap.
#1 on CMK: Bitcoin is the only PoW coin

Although i'm against all shitcoins, but LTC and monero are also PoW.