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

[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.