Bitcoin and proof of stake

[Ivartheragnarson]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

[1714261595]

1714261595

[1714261595]

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[BlackHatCoiner]

Because it's an inferior mechanism that cannot even produce consensus. Beyond that, it makes things more centralized as vote distribution is not permissionless; for newcomers to vote, present owners have to give them part of their stash, oppositely to Proof-of-Work wherein everyone has the ability to vote just by spending their energy on mining.

Cryptocurrencies that have adopted it might currently operate normally (in a manner of speaking), but their future's success in decentralization is highly questionable (if their present isn't bad already).

[Maus0728]

I'll try my best

Simply because with POS, you are trusting whales or people who holds large amount of coins to create a new blocks effortlessly thus making the network much less secure as compared to POW. I can't get to the technical know-how, unfortunately, but the premise is that bitcoin switching to POS isn't worth the risk given how many attack vectors are involved -- this means many different type of hacks or anomalies could happen.

- https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf
- https://medium.com/@factchecker9000/nothing-is-worse-than-proof-of-stake-e70b12b988ca

To make it more simple, think of it like the economic side of things where the top 1% have more control over the rules that we live in making it centralised and prone to corruption.

[Phu Juck]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

Almost no coding expert is recommending PoS for Bitcoin.
So many Altcoins are using PoS already but it is clearly because devs have more power in PoS by hoarding a large chunk of premined coins, so Altcoin dev's choice is PoS.
Bitcoin is better in PoW, no need to change to PoS.
Now, we can wait and watch, what will be better but I expect many PoS coins will fail.

In addition, PoS is an unfair consensus because rich stakers are getting richer every time.
PoS is just not fair.
In Bitcoin you can always keep a certain % of Bitcoin's supply and it doesn't get diluted.

[coupable]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

Almost no coding expert is recommending PoS for Bitcoin.
So many Altcoins are using PoS already but it is clearly because devs have more power in PoS by hoarding a large chunk of premined coins, so Altcoin dev's choice is PoS.
Bitcoin is better in PoW, no need to change to PoS.
Now, we can wait and watch, what will be better but I expect many PoS coins will fail.

In addition, PoS is an unfair consensus because rich stakers are getting richer every time.
PoS is just not fair.
In Bitcoin you can always keep a certain % of Bitcoin's supply and it doesn't get diluted.

Proof of work mining requires high energy consumption and has other problems. This is not only in Bitcoin mining, but in all currencies that use the same Proof.
The EU Parliament had proposed moving the protocol from a proof of work to a proof of quota. The reasons explained are the large amount consumed by mining farms with the inability of green energies to meet all the mining needs of energy. There are countries that ban mining for the same reasons.
I am not advocating Proof of Stake because I know this will make Bitcoin more centralized but I would like to know how the problem of excessive energy consumption can be overcome in the long run.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The EU Parliament had proposed moving the protocol from a proof of work to a proof of quota. The reasons explained are the large amount consumed by mining farms with the inability of green energies to meet all the mining needs of energy.

Which we all know are pure alibis. The real reason is control, something they don't have with Proof-of-Work. If they cared about the environment, and their intentions had a purely humanistic character, they'd have grabbed the entire financial sector, which consumes much more than Proof-of-Work does (and is capable of consuming):

The modern recession and the boom-bust cycle that drives it is entirely a creation of fiat money. Governments intervene in the allocation of capital, randomly starting and stopping a fire hose of credit that whipsaws the real economy and destroys real lives. Just as the cost of a five-second delay in a footrace can be measured in distance lost, the cost of a recession can be measured by the resources it will take to rebuild lost wealth. Bitcoin, by taking purchasing power out of central banks’ manipulation space, can reduce or even eliminate their ability to cause boom-bust cycles.

Even Bitcoin’s worst critics allege the distributed network consumes no more than 86 TWh per year, of which perhaps 16 TWh might be Americans, with much of that green energy. It would take between 500 and 1,000 years for Bitcoin’s energy use to even approach the 2008 crisis alone. With another recession permanently on the way, over and over again. That 500 to 1,000 years’ worth of energy goes on top of the 8.4% of GDP, the 80,000 bank branches and 470,000 ATMs and those skyscrapers.

These ratios suggest that central banks are vastly more polluting than Bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine. Bitcoin, by implication, is among the most green technologies humanity has ever invented. Indeed, if Bitcoin even slightly reduces central banks’ ability 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 2%, Bitcoin would actually save us far more energy than it uses – it would be net carbon negative.

But, no politician talks about that. It somehow raises no interests. 

I am not advocating Proof of Stake because I know this will make Bitcoin more centralized but I would like to know how the problem of excessive energy consumption can be overcome in the long run.

It can't. The network needs energy. That energy comes from difference resources, most of which are sustainable according to the Mining Council. But, just like nearly anything humans utilize, it requires energy to operate properly.

[franky1]

to turn it to PoS requires forking bitcoin..

guess what. bitcoin has already been forked to PoS
there are dozens of altcoins that are PoS.. look at them all.. all unsuccessful

thus proves how crap it is

do you know why people do not buy air. .. because it costs nothing to make air.. just like the residual cost to make PoS.
PoS coins are never worth much. they have no real cost backing the acquisition of coins created. and so their market prices are near 100% pure speculation hype. rather than backed by a decent non-zero cost value

Ethereum is going to go through a process of rampant speculation. followed by a massive value crash.
yep once people realise they are getting coins for penny costs or zero cost by just staking with a custodian.. they would all be happy to sell at any price knowing that they are making a profit.
and no one would happily buy ethereum for over $1k if they can get ethereum for pennies

when you hear 99.5% less energy COST.. you should also be hearing 99.5% cost reduction. thus 99.5% less market price.

yep if people can get ethereum for penny/zero cost. then people will not want to pay over $1k for ethereum if they can get it for $0.10. so watch the buy demand die

bitcoin is not worth over $12k due to speculation.. its worth over $12k because no miner on the planet can mine bitcoin for less. no one can acquire bitcoin for less.
the reason why bitcoin topped out at $70k is because everyone on the planet could mine for under $70k at the time. and so no one was left to want to buy for more then $70k

..
in shorts its basic economics..

[NeuroticFish]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

Because it was programmed to work with PoW. (Why can't I charge my old benzin car from the so cool electric charging stations?)

However, as said, one can change Bitcoin code to work with PoS and whoever agrees with the change can use that code, which will work on its own fork of the blockchain.
Of course, most probably the majority will not care about that change (that new coin), which is pretty much proven by the fact the attempts done until now produced worthless coins.

[BlackHatCoiner]

thus proves how crap it is

This proves altcoins are crap. Not only Proof-of-Stake.

do you know why people do not buy air. .. because it costs nothing to make air..

No, no, no. You're making the same confusion with cost of production and market value. The reason people don't buy air is because it (the supply) is abundant.

PoS coins are never worth much. they have no real cost backing the acquisition of coins created. and so their market prices are near 100% pure speculation hype. rather than backed by a decent non-zero cost value

The cost of backing the acquisition of the coins, is the staked coins themselves. I'll give another example: Printing paper money costs nearly nothing. A $5 bill costs the same as a $500 dollar bill; yet, they are valuated differently, because the monetary policy isn't down to you to decide. The cost of minting the money is irrelevant, what matters is that you can't alter the supply by your own will.

[OgNasty]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

The short answer is that it could.  The longer answer has to do with game theory.  What I am surprised by is that there hasn't been a big push to fork Bitcoin to PoS.  Even if it failed miserably, it would still likely be one hell of a dividend for current Bitcoin owners that would likely lead to them selling and investing more money into Bitcoin, thus driving the price up for everyone similar to a stock buyback.  That alongside an ETF approval would make for one hell of a bubble.

[franky1]

thus proves how crap it is

This proves altcoins are crap. Not only Proof-of-Stake.

do you know why people do not buy air. .. because it costs nothing to make air..

No, no, no. You're making the same confusion with cost of production and market value. The reason people don't buy air is because it (the supply) is abundant.

no. i have made no mention of the market at all
that is where you are confusing things i categorically mentioned the $12k minimum cost on the planet for mining. which is not the market price.
its the under lying store of value that no one will sell below because no one can acquire coin via any method right now below this COST

as for supply.. meaningless too.. thats the realm of speculation of a market above the underlying value store

when people think something is rare they are willing to pay a premium ontop of the underlying value. but if the underlying value is low then the premium above that is low

take a coin called "bitcoin plus" which is only $3...
yep they have less then 200k coin supply but the price is only $3. thats because its PoS with a low underlying cost at the bottom thus all the speculation above it is causing small changes.

..
oh and even if there are 19m coins in the true bitcoin circulation.
in 2012 there were only 11million coins .. yet the price was lower.

thats because the market price has nothing to do with coins in circulation. the market price is dependant on the coins and only the coins deposited into an exchange and not only that. only the allotment of coins actually on the market orderbooks.

simple economics.

that said.. some speculate that because PoS involved locking coins up to stake. it would mean less coins available on market orderbooks thus a supply lack meaning a hype of speculation due to orderbook supply lack vs demand.

but in the end because PoS coins have no real large value cost to back up the underlying cost. then all the speculation ontop would only be a Yx of underlying cost. as there is a limit to how many multiples of underlying cost someone is willing to pay before they decide they will jump into the stake side for cheap coin to sell for profit.

[pooya87]

The EU Parliament had proposed moving the protocol from a proof of work to a proof of quota. The reasons explained are the large amount consumed by mining farms with the inability of green energies to meet all the mining needs of energy.

EU parliament or any other government entity doesn't have a say about Bitcoin protocol, if they are making statements they are just making noise for themselves.
Their reasons also had nothing to do with "green" crap at all, otherwise they wouldn't be moving towards using coal again very quickly! They've just been facing an energy crisis which they are trying to avoid while at the same time they have no idea what they are doing.

There are countries that ban mining for the same reasons.

Any examples?
I know China banned bitcoin mining because they wanted control over their citizens and their finances while introducing their own centralized govcoin.

[witcher_sense]

Proof of work mining requires high energy consumption and has other problems. This is not only in Bitcoin mining, but in all currencies that use the same Proof.

I like this explanation by Saifedean Ammous, the author of The Bitcoin Standard book. A single football match requires an enormous amount of energy to take place, which includes not only football stadium maintenance, but also broadcasts on TV, advertising, movements of fans, and all the people who would like to watch a match either in a stadium, TV or some pub. The problem is if you DON'T like football or sports games in general, then according to you, all the energy that is being spent on all these activities goes to waste and only damages the environment, nothing else. Yet, other people don't consider energy wasted because football games are fun to watch. The same reasoning can easily be applied to bitcoin or other important innovations or technologies that the ESG mafia considers useless, purposeless, and wasteful. Other people, however, who recognize the value and importance of decentralized unstoppable payments and undilutable savings, don't consider the energy spent on bitcoin mining wasted.

Bitcoin never will switch to Proof-of-Stake because it is designed to be an alternative to the traditional financial system, not its likeness, which Proof-of-Stake evidently strives to become (Ethereum merge is a perfect example of this flawed model).

[BlackHatCoiner]

Even if it failed miserably, it would still likely be one hell of a dividend for current Bitcoin owners that would likely lead to them selling and investing more money into Bitcoin, thus driving the price up for everyone similar to a stock buyback.

This is not how it works. If you fork bitcoin, and create say Bitcoin Cash, and somehow it rises in value, it's because instead of demanding BTC, some people demand BCH. Demand is transited to another asset, and selling later that and buying back BTC won't make a difference.

that is where you are confusing things i categorically mentioned the $12k minimum cost on the planet for mining. which is not the market price.

Didn't say it's the market value, but the cost of production. Price = Cost + Profit, agreed, but it just not works the same in currencies, that's true for products whose supply can change by anyone. Proof-of-Work goes to the same basket. On the other hand, Proof-of-Stake doesn't. You can't print ETH without paying a present owner, therefore you can't alter the supply which is what drives the price.

oh and even if there are 19m coins in the true bitcoin circulation.
in 2012 there were only 11million coins .. yet the price was lower.

So, by that you conclude that supply is a pointless measure? Not that there was minimal demand back then? Come on franky, it doesn't go more simple economics than that.

[Upgrade00]

The EU Parliament had proposed moving the protocol from a proof of work to a proof of quota. The reasons explained are the large amount consumed by mining farms with the inability of green energies to meet all the mining needs of energy. There are countries that ban mining for the same reasons.

The fact that this is still a running argument shows that no matter how unsure one is of what they are saying, if they confidently repeat it and use the media to spread the propaganda, it would become an issue. This is a part of journalism which has always puzzled me.
The only reason the EU parliament or any other government parastatal is interested in the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining, is that if they keep pushing the narrative that it is unsafe for the environment, more people may move away from it, and they can force a protocol change, which can be more easily controlled.

Most governments do not give 2 cents about climate impact.

I am not advocating Proof of Stake because I know this will make Bitcoin more centralized but I would like to know how the problem of excessive energy consumption can be overcome in the long run.

It is not a problem which needs to be solved, and mining is already majorly run on sustainable energy as it is now.

[Dunamisx]

In my own understanding, PoS is just simply a display of runnings under centralized system whereby you depend on others to secure your coins, they are the whales and the developers, while in PoW, you get the reward for your mining as what you earned directly from solving complex mathematical equations, although this may be high energy demanding than PoS, but there's justification in receiving mining rewards and you don't have to depend on centralized whales as in PoS, I don't see any reason for changing bitcoin mining from PoW to PoS because that's one of the edges bitcoin has over altcoins.

[kamikazeqvist]

This is about how we trust the "book-keepers" and admins of transactions, how you have trust in a decentralised system. PoW forces the book-keepers to expend energy in a digital lottery where they try to guess the right number, competing against all the other book-keepers who are guessing as well; if a book-keeper tries to censor transactions, but fails to guess the right number for the block, their energy is wasted, and the transaction can get through any of the other book-keepers who aren't censoring anyone and happen to guess the right number.
That random nature of the contest, and being forced to expend actual "work" that costs something to do, is how you get trust decentralised.

[Abiky]

why bitcoin protocol cannot use pos instead of pow ?

Bitcoin won't use PoS simply because the consensus algorithm only benefits the whales. Those with large amounts of money will be able to control the BTC blockchain with their stake. In other words, changing from PoW to PoS would mean sacrificing decentralization in the long run. Even Ethereum's developers acknowledged that the ETH blockchain will be less-decentralized with PoS. Yet, they've decided to go forward with the change in order to make the ETH chain cheaper and faster to use for dApps. It's a smart contract platform after all (not a single purpose chain like Bitcoin).

If you want people to use your platform massively for decentralized applications, then you'd need to adopt a consensus mechanism that prioritizes scalability above all else. I believe the pioneer cryptocurrency is fine as it is, even though many haters criticize its "high energy" consumption. Many altcoins are already switching to PoS due to "environmental concerns", so I wouldn't be surprised if BTC remains as the "only PoW coin in town". Just my opinion

[dansus021]

Because it's an inferior mechanism that cannot even produce consensus. Beyond that, it makes things more centralized as vote distribution is not permissionless; for newcomers to vote, present owners have to give them part of their stash, oppositely to Proof-of-Work wherein everyone has the ability to vote just by spending their energy on mining.

yep i do agree with what u saying, the idea makes bitcoin to PoS happens all the time.
i mean PoS is very efficient compared to PoW but every consensus has their challenge. like right now that happen to ETH to completely migrate to PoS and it was not easy task it take a multiple year from idea into reality and of course not everyone gonna like it too

[witcher_sense]

i mean PoS is very efficient compared to PoW but every consensus has their challenge.

The only consensus algorithm that has proven its reliability is based on attaching evidence that energy has been spent and the effort has been put to make a block valid for everyone else. In PoS and other flawed "consensus" algorithms, there is no way to determine which block is valid and which isn't because there is no connection to the real world whatsoever. Maybe it is more efficient in the sense that almost no energy is being spent to produce a block, but that also means that a block itself has little to no value. The main goal of having a consensus system is to make everyone in a system agree on some "true" statement, which is only relevant for a system in nothing else. In the PoW algorithm, the truth is spoken by those who have proven they have a right to make a statement, and this right is always temporary, whereas in PoS if you have invested enough money, you get permanent voting power. The former system is competitive and objective, the latter is oligarchic and highly subjective. Hence, in the latter case, it is slowly but surely moving towards centralization of power and inevitable takeover by those who happen to have more power and money.