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

[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.

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[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).

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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.