please delete

[LegendaryK]

Feel free to deny it, but reality will be unaffected by your false belief.

I'll deny it, thanks.

Checkpoints protect against a low difficulty flood attack. They can't protect the system against a 51% attack, which is the kind of attack that overwrites transactions, unless they happen on every block. If they do, as in the case with Algorand, there's no decentralized decision-making.

If you start "locking" blocks by inserting unnecessary checkpoints everywhere, denying the existence of a chain with more work that isn't complied with your chain, then you fail to produce consensus. This isn't a technical problem, but a logical. If your coin is so insecure that you have to update the checkpoints in each block, then it fails at being decentralized.

Here's a discussion, 6 years ago, regarding this matter: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/7591

Checkpoints protect all transactions before it, not even a 51% attack could change it.
There are program coded checkpoints or rolling checkpoints that block reorgs at a specific number of blocks.
Satoshi was the 1st to put checkpoints into btc code after software updates.

But you are confused on the issue,
as only 1st or 2nd generation blockchains such as the ancient btc, would be helped by checkpoints to achieve transaction finality.

3rd generation Blockchains such as algorand and cardano have evolved past the needs for such an old design of checkpoints.
One example Algorand design prevents any forking, something old outdated btc using PoW could never hope to accomplish.

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[BlackHatCoiner]

Checkpoints protect all transactions before it, not even a 51% attack could change it.

Exactly. A 51% attack can't happen if the nodes don't accept to change their past blocks, but this, ultimately, ruins the thing the entire game theory is dependent on; decentralized decision-making. Consensus is produced only if everyone's following the chain with the most work. If one denies to change their past block, because they believe they've been attacked, then you can't tolerate the Byzantine's fault, which is the problem you're trying to solve.

The only way, for the Byzantine generals, to agree on a concerted strategy is by following the most work, objectively. If there's subjectivity, then there's no true blockchain. One node says that their chain's true, another might disagree. This is essentially Proof-of-Stake; and that's why I believe it's less secure.


If Algorand has a new checkpoint on every block, then how does it bear with stale blocks?

[LegendaryK]

Checkpoints protect all transactions before it, not even a 51% attack could change it.

Exactly. A 51% attack can't happen if the nodes don't accept to change their past blocks, but this, ultimately, ruins the thing the entire game theory is dependent on; decentralized decision-making. Consensus is produced only if everyone's following the chain with the most work. If one denies to change their past block, because they believe they've been attacked, then you can't tolerate the Byzantine's fault, which is the problem you're trying to solve.

The only way, for the Byzantine generals, to agree on a concerted strategy is by following the most work, objectively. If there's subjectivity, then there's no true blockchain. One node says that their chain's true, another might disagree. This is essentially Proof-of-Stake; and that's why I believe it's less secure.


If Algorand has a new checkpoint on every block, then how does it bear with stale blocks?

Like I said, you are confused,
Algorand does not use checkpoints and it never forks.

We have derailed this topic enough,
I suggest you research the 3rd generation blockchain designs of algorand and cardano thru google.

And on that note, To all of you a good day.  

[ranochigo]

What I like so much about PoW / wasting electrical energy is that you can produce this energy cleanly, so without harming the environment.

I'm not aware of anything else that can be produced and wasted in a climate-neutral fashion; for instance, proof of space requires certain materials to produce HDDs and SSDs and they end up on landfills at the end of the day. ASIC miners eventually also have a limited lifetime, but are often resold and reused for many years down the road. I can also imagine future ASIC designs to e.g. allow to upgrade hashboards without trashing the whole device. This would already reduce e-waste a good bit.

I think that is a common misconception. PoW can result in an increased usage of clean energy, ONLY under the assumption that they're cheaper than fossil fuels. Well, they can be very well true but you have to realize that by dedicating clean energy to mining, you are also depriving some other areas that is currently burning fossil fuel. There is no good way to argue that any energy intensive task is inherently green, because they aren't.

There is also a common misconception about the lifespan of ASIC miners. Unlike most other electronics, ASIC miners don't actually get re-used solely because of the economics. Once they are disposed, they do not get reused because it would've already been unprofitable. There is no reason for it to be resold for anything other than scraps, because they have next to no value. Something that also perpetuates this is also unfortunately the technological improvements on the efficiency. This is unfortunately a vicious cycle that we cannot solve.

Also, the way that the mining industry functions is that we don't expect technological innovations other than if it helps with the efficiency. So no point trying to explore re-purposed hashing boards or to have it function differently and on that topic FPGAs are re-programmable. ASICs are not, they are optimized for one task and also cheaper.

The response to all of these is to just live with it.

[n0nce]

The PoS coin Algorand is more secure than PoW BTC.

Again, it is a free world and nobody is forcing others to buy the secure, decentralized and fairly distributed bitcoin. If people think that dog poop in a pretty bag is a valuable purchase who are we to judge them

And if people can't recognize that PoW is the dog poop, well enjoy your btc until they do. 

The issue I have with this statement is that it has been said by every single one of the thousands of altshitcoins for over a dozen years now. It gets old. After a while, when you see these claims have always been unfounded and the coins have always failed after a few years of hype, you lose interest in looking into these new revolutionary protocols and ideas.

Here's a discussion, 6 years ago, regarding this matter: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/7591
And: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5276774.msg55225123#msg55225123

Yeah; this stuff gets old.. Newcomers who haven't heard of these ideas in the past think they're new and modern, just like they think PoS is the new hot thing. While Bitcoiners have discussed it thoroughly long before and decided unanimously that it's not a good idea. Now that enough time has passed, non-cypherpunks saw the opportunity to make a lot of money by selling this old, dismissed idea to clueless people as the new, hot shit and took it.

What I like so much about PoW / wasting electrical energy is that you can produce this energy cleanly, so without harming the environment.

I'm not aware of anything else that can be produced and wasted in a climate-neutral fashion; for instance, proof of space requires certain materials to produce HDDs and SSDs and they end up on landfills at the end of the day. ASIC miners eventually also have a limited lifetime, but are often resold and reused for many years down the road. I can also imagine future ASIC designs to e.g. allow to upgrade hashboards without trashing the whole device. This would already reduce e-waste a good bit.

I think that is a common misconception. PoW can result in an increased usage of clean energy, ONLY under the assumption that they're cheaper than fossil fuels. Well, they can be very well true but you have to realize that by dedicating clean energy to mining, you are also depriving some other areas that is currently burning fossil fuel. There is no good way to argue that any energy intensive task is inherently green, because they aren't.

I didn't intend to argue that an energy intensive task is inherently green, so this would be a strawman argument against me. However I stated the fact that using electrical energy has the chance / possibility to be done in a climate-neutral fashion, while other forms of securing money can't do this. Such as proof-of-storage or fiat currency.

Also, the way that the mining industry functions is that we don't expect technological innovations other than if it helps with the efficiency.

Isn't this one of the greatest things about Bitcoin mining? People have a financial incentive to research and develop more efficient silicon, smaller chip manufacturing nodes and better optimized package designs, amongst many other aspects that go into making these highly-optimized, highly-efficient chips. This not only adds more hashrate to the network without significantly increasing the energy footprint, but I'm sure the technological advancements trickle down to other chips as well.
For instance, a 5nm ASIC fab should be able to produce 5nm consumer chips, as well (correct me if I'm wrong).

[pooya87]

just like they think PoS is the new hot thing

Yeah, PoS was created in early days and died then and there. Most of the coins that started it don't even exist today. But unfortunately there are "expert looking people" that are pumping this type of misinformation to the newbies minds. People such as the creators of centralized shitcoins that all have a massive premined like ethereum and its 70+ million premine. They are trying to convince people that PoS is better so that they can make more money by receiving "interest" on the massive amount of premined coins they printed for free.

[ranochigo]

I didn't intend to argue that an energy intensive task is inherently green, so this would be a strawman argument against me. However I stated the fact that using electrical energy has the chance / possibility to be done in a climate-neutral fashion, while other forms of securing money can't do this. Such as proof-of-storage or fiat currency.

Not really. Your ASICs are usually not recyclable, perhaps only the aluminium but for the chips, boards and stuff they can't really be recycled and they would probably just be thrown in a landfill. The production of these devices already incurs a huge penalty on the environment before the process even starts. That aside, pretty much the same argument can be made from the rest, because your initial production already uses so many raw materials (aluminium, copper, silicon, etc) and they are all being (physically) mined at the same time. So I would argue that the actual (non-intrinstic) environmental impact could potentially be larger, even if for some reason renewable energy becomes cheaper than coal everywhere.

Isn't this one of the greatest things about Bitcoin mining? People have a financial incentive to research and develop more efficient silicon, smaller chip manufacturing nodes and better optimized package designs, amongst many other aspects that go into making these highly-optimized, highly-efficient chips. This not only adds more hashrate to the network without significantly increasing the energy footprint, but I'm sure the technological advancements trickle down to other chips as well.
For instance, a 5nm ASIC fab should be able to produce 5nm consumer chips, as well (correct me if I'm wrong).

It depends. When the cost of production goes down, you get more devices on the network and even more e-waste problem. The problem with the increase in efficiency, specifically in Bitcoin mining is that you get a lot of machines going obsolete far before the actual lifespan of the device and you can't do anything but to just throw it away. A good percentage of the device cannot be recycled. Energy footprint will always increase so long as ASICs are being produced.

The technological improvements won't actually trickle down to consumer chips or anything. Firstly, the entire mining's market share is far smaller than your regular electronics and the fabs are done by the fabrication plants but the chip designs are done by the ASIC manufacturer. Any improvements that you make is basically limited to Bitcoin specific application because the architecture is very different (ie. having only to hash SHA256 vs graphics processing, data processing, etc etc).

[n0nce]

I didn't intend to argue that an energy intensive task is inherently green, so this would be a strawman argument against me. However I stated the fact that using electrical energy has the chance / possibility to be done in a climate-neutral fashion, while other forms of securing money can't do this. Such as proof-of-storage or fiat currency.

Not really. Your ASICs are usually not recyclable, perhaps only the aluminium but for the chips, boards and stuff they can't really be recycled and they would probably just be thrown in a landfill. The production of these devices already incurs a huge penalty on the environment before the process even starts. That aside, pretty much the same argument can be made from the rest, because your initial production already uses so many raw materials (aluminium, copper, silicon, etc) and they are all being (physically) mined at the same time. So I would argue that the actual (non-intrinstic) environmental impact could potentially be larger, even if for some reason renewable energy becomes cheaper than coal everywhere.

It's not completely correct. Sure, 'mining for profit' usually requires the latest-gen machines due to Bitcoin difficulty adjustment. As soon as the new generation of miners is released, the old ones aren't usable anymore even though the hardware is still fine.
But what I see at the moment and hope to see more in the future, are projects like Apollo BTC [1] and GekkoScience Compac F [2] (though I am waiting for their Apollo-style pod miner), which utilize a bit older chips as a way to 'dollar-cost average through the power bill' and get KYC-free Bitcoins in a regular interval. These home-mining devices, as well as various Bitcoin water heaters and similar ideas, could make use of outdated and even used chips and hashboards.

Generally, people keep buying old ASICs; even though I'm not always sure why (for example really old MHz-range USB asics). Maybe mikeywith knows more; but I suspect some of them have fixed-rate, so basically free extra electricity contracts.

When I said 'other forms of securing money', I was mostly targeting fiat. It requires much more energy and earth resources than the electronics used to build ASICs.

As for the price of coal energy, as far as I know the reason it's so cheap in some location is that it's heavily subsidized; but I may be wrong.

The technological improvements won't actually trickle down to consumer chips or anything. Firstly, the entire mining's market share is far smaller than your regular electronics and the fabs are done by the fabrication plants but the chip designs are done by the ASIC manufacturer. Any improvements that you make is basically limited to Bitcoin specific application because the architecture is very different (ie. having only to hash SHA256 vs graphics processing, data processing, etc etc).

Interesting, thanks! I was hoping that the gained knowledge, techniques and machinery could be used for other chips, by just using a different photolitography mask (that 'encodes' an x86 CPU instead of a SHA256 ASIC for example).

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314398.0
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355470.0

[ranochigo]

But what I see at the moment and hope to see more in the future, are projects like Apollo BTC [1] and GekkoScience Compac F [2] (though I am waiting for their Apollo-style pod miner), which utilize a bit older chips as a way to 'dollar-cost average through the power bill' and get KYC-free Bitcoins in a regular interval. These home-mining devices, as well as various Bitcoin water heaters and similar ideas, could make use of outdated and even used chips and hashboards.

When I said 'other forms of securing money', I was mostly targeting fiat. It requires much more energy and earth resources than the electronics used to build ASICs.

As for the price of coal energy, as far as I know the reason it's so cheap in some location is that it's heavily subsidized; but I may be wrong.

I see some point as using it as a heater, though those older ASICs typically incur more power costs than profits, and they are generally barely profitable (might have $1 or so profits after eliminating the power costs) so the ROI is typically never. They are generally built for hobby and lottery mining and not much purpose otherwise.

I was actually researching into getting older ASICs when I was having free electricity and the ROI was basically not happening, and it was just more worth it for me to either get an S19 (with a reasonable ROI) or S17 (with an unreasonably long ROI). Not to mention that the state of these are not really ideal for home mining. Just my two cents here, perhaps you might have a different experience.

As for your last two points, I'd say it depends. There is a shift towards cashless transactions and the reliance on physical currency is rapidly decreasing with the growth in fintech so I don't foresee it to be a long term issue.

I think part of the reason for the cheaper prices might be subsidies. But I think it also differs between locations; they have established infrastructure to utilize the coal as well as being a coal/fossil fuel producers. Some countries simply cannot fully support themselves with just renewable energy.

[n0nce]

I see some point as using it as a heater, though those older ASICs typically incur more power costs than profits, and they are generally barely profitable (might have $1 or so profits after eliminating the power costs) so the ROI is typically never. They are generally built for hobby and lottery mining and not much purpose otherwise.

The idea is that for instance if you're heating with electricity anyway, usually you just burn it and get the heat out; instead if you generate heat by mining, you also get some coins. But of course an ASIC will be more expensive than a simple heater which just creates a short circuit in a piece of metal that heats up.

As for your last two points, I'd say it depends. There is a shift towards cashless transactions and the reliance on physical currency is rapidly decreasing with the growth in fintech so I don't foresee it to be a long term issue.

I didn't mean that huge amounts of resources and energy are needed to create the physical form of fiat; but this energy is needed to 'secure the network', similar to Bitcoin. Just that you can't make it 100% renewable due to e.g. the need of a military to secure the fiat currency.
My guess is that the energy used by the lights in bank branches all over the world exceeds Bitcoin's energy consumption; but there are less 'tangible' forms of energy consumption in the traditional banking sector, as well. For example (good article as a whole):

Several fun implications follow. First, that central banks are vastly more polluting than Bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine. Second, this estimate implies that if Bitcoin makes it harder for central banks to cause recessions, it could pay back every watt many times over. For example, if Bitcoin reduces the odds or magnitude of central bank recessions by just two percent, Bitcoin would actually save us far more energy than it uses.

[ranochigo]

The idea is that for instance if you're heating with electricity anyway, usually you just burn it and get the heat out; instead if you generate heat by mining, you also get some coins. But of course an ASIC will be more expensive than a simple heater which just creates a short circuit in a piece of metal that heats up.

Then there isn't a good point isn't it? ASICs are not good space heaters because:
1) They're far more likely to spoil with little resale value.
2) They don't generate enough to warrant the hassle to set it up.
3) You make far more Bitcoins by buying a simple space heater and buying Bitcoins directly with the rest
4) They're really, really loud and just like a vacuum cleaner running 24/7. Trust me, you won't want any of them near your house.

It isn't quite a fair argument, if you're buying used ASICs specifically to heat your space. A used S9 is around $400 (might be more expensive depends on your location), and incurs a $0.60 loss a day assuming electricity rates of $0.05/kwh, which isn't very common. Also, not to say that just because some might want to lottery mine, it doesn't mean that the other millions of ASICs are also resellable.

I didn't mean that huge amounts of resources and energy are needed to create the physical form of fiat; but this energy is needed to 'secure the network', similar to Bitcoin. Just that you can't make it 100% renewable due to e.g. the need of a military to secure the fiat currency.
My guess is that the energy used by the lights in bank branches all over the world exceeds Bitcoin's energy consumption; but there are less 'tangible' forms of energy consumption in the traditional banking sector, as well. For example (good article as a whole):

Several fun implications follow. First, that central banks are vastly more polluting than Bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine. Second, this estimate implies that if Bitcoin makes it harder for central banks to cause recessions, it could pay back every watt many times over. For example, if Bitcoin reduces the odds or magnitude of central bank recessions by just two percent, Bitcoin would actually save us far more energy than it uses.

Banks have a CSR to follow actually, if you look at their yearly report, they have made conscious efforts to shift to either renewable energy or to digitialize their banks. All in all, for their transaction volume, it is fair to say that the cost is very much worth it. Can't say the same for Bitcoin or any crypto in general.

I'm not so sure about the point on military, the carbon footprint incurred by the military, either due to securing fiat(?) [which I believe would be rather negligible] or just in general is very much necessary and is a good tradeoff.

The thing is that, most don't appreciate the role of central banking systems. Central banking system actually plays an important role in ensuring economic stability. A totally unregulated and decentralized system like Bitcoin is actually quite a novel concept and it is insufficient to determine the avalanche effect that could happen if Bitcoin were to go through certain adjustments and if the world currency is totally dependent on it.