Bitcoin mining algorithm: improving efficiency?

[Aada/Ea]

I was watching an online talk (in french) by J.-J. Quisquater, a cryptographer mentioned in the bitcoin whitepaper, he was talking about its consensus mechanism.

From what I've understood, he thinks that every miners shouldn't have to mine 24/24, he thinks that was an "overlook".
Instead, it would be more efficient that miners instead reach a consensus in a first round in order to "delegate" in a way to a small set of miners the task/right to actually compete for the block in a second round, the actual competition.
Miners that failed to be part of that second round would "pause" until the next round.

If there is a way to make sure this first round is conducted very fast and securely, then bitcoin could be made more efficient without compromising security.

I was wondering if there's something to dig here? Theoretically is there a way to make bitcoin more energy efficient? Is he right or is there something that Quisquater failed to take into account? If so, what is it?

He's a very serious cryptographer and I don't think claims like this are made lightly. It wasn't a random claim he made, but something he seemed genuinely convinced about. He gave no technical details, it wasn't a technical talk.

[DannyHamilton]

When you say "efficiency" I assume. you're talking about the amount of electricity needed per block?

If so, then that's an economic detail, not a cryptographic one.

The amount of electricity being used isn't because of the particular cryptographic process chosen for proof-of-work.  It's because it is profitable for that much equipment to be running. That's what the difficulty adjustment does.  It creates an incentive for the proof-of-work process to use as much electricity as can still be profitable.  This is why difficulty (and total hash power running globally) drops when the price drops significantly.

Miners can easily switch pools. They can even do so programmatically within a fraction of a second without any human needing to get involved beyond the initial setup.

Imagine that there are 10 major mining pools each with approximately 10% of the global hashpower (about 10% of the global mining electricity being contributed towards each's efforts).

Right now, people choose their favorite pool and just stick with it.  There isn't a huge incentive to switch pools. There's enough competition between pools that the payout a miner is going to get over time is pretty similar regardless of pool chosen, with the biggest difference being in the volatility the miner is willing to accept in payouts in the shorter term.

With the "delegation" system such as you've described.  As soon as a pool was no longer in the running for the current block, there would be no reason for any of that pool's miners to continue to run their equipment WITH THAT POOL.  However, there would be a HUGE INCENTIVE for those miners to just immediately switch their mining equipment over to the pool that was still in the running for the block.  Once the block was completed, they could instantly switch back to their favorite pool and wait for the next delegation (or just stay with the pool they switched to, thereby consolidating all the world's mining power into a single pool).

You wouldn't have a reduction in power used at all. You'd just have a very fast consolidation of power into the largest pool or pools.

I didn't see the talk, and J.-J. Quisquater may or may not be "a very serious cryptographer" as you've stated. However, it seems to me that one of the following is likely true:

• You've misunderstood some of whatever J.-J. Quisquater was trying to say
• J.-J. Quisquater is not very good at economic theory
• I've misunderstood your representation of whatever J.-J. Quisquater was trying to say

[BlackHatCoiner]

OP, is the talk available with English subtitles somewhere so we can watch? I stand agreed with Danny; I think you might have misunderstood his point (or he's just wrong).

Theoretically is there a way to make bitcoin more energy efficient?

No, because it can't go more efficient than that. For efficiency improvement, there has to be waste. There is no waste in Bitcoin mining. Miners acknowledge that they spend energy with certain infrastructure to mine blocks. The fact that the required energy might increase isn't a technical problem, but an economic one.

[DannyHamilton]

There is no waste in Bitcoin mining. Miners acknowledge that they spend energy with certain infrastructure to mine blocks.

In light of your comment on this other thread (emphasis added by me):

meaning that both miner B and miners from group B wasted their computational power.

I'm very happy to see that you've now come to the realization that hashes which are generated by miners are intrinsic to the design, security, and functionality of Bitcoin, are in fact not a "waste".

[Aada/Ea]

Yes I guess that would purely be about the use of electricity.

Is there a way to programmatically detect if the hashpower (or something related) of the nodes/pool in an hypothetical "second round" doesn't match the hashpower (or something related) of those same nodes/pool during the "first round", in order to prevent the situation you're mentioning?

That or programmatically determine if a node is trying to mine in a round they're not allowed to.

Sounds more and more complicated to me as we try to dig deeper Maybe not a good sign.

I'll post the link if I can re find the talk and there are english subtitles. I'm certain "delegated" was a word he mentioned.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'm very happy to see that you've now come to the realization that hashes which are generated by miners are intrinsic to the design, security, and functionality of Bitcoin, are in fact not a "waste".

Actually, I'm preparing an answer to the other thread. I've truly contradicted myself here. I don't mean "waste" the same. Spending energy to generate block isn't the same as spending energy to a block that's soon to be orphaned. The latter is what I consider waste, which is no doubt part of the system (but I don't take it into consideration in my post above for the sake of simplicity).

Is there a way to programmatically detect if the hashpower (or something related) of the nodes/pool in an hypothetical "second round" doesn't match the hashpower (or something related) of those same nodes/pool during the "first round", in order to prevent the situation you're mentioning?

I'm not yet familiar with the term "first round" and "second round". Can you be a little more precise? Are you asking if it's theoretically possible for a pool to know another pool's hash power?

[Aada/Ea]

first and second rounds might not be something relevant, that's just how I would put it in english. If there's a delagated proof of work type of consensus, then there is two "steps" with two "methods", that's what I meant.

What I'm wondering is if there's a way to prevent the situation explained earlier in this thread, nodes switching pool in order to bypass the first step or round, which would be some kind of cheating. It doesn't have to be knowing the hashpower, in fact I have no idea what it would be, just interested to know if what I've explained is possible and why.

[NeuroticFish]

a delagated proof of work

Delegating to others means trusting them. Why would one miner or pool trust another miner or pool?! They're fiercely competing each other! Any miner would love to get an edge, even by not playing fair, in order to win the next block. Bitcoin is not meant to need trust in somebody else. That's why it still works.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this looks to me more about not taking into account the human factor (and the high chance some would try to cheat), than about cryptography.

[Aada/Ea]

a delagated proof of work

Delegating to others means trusting them. Why would one miner or pool trust another miner or pool?! They're fiercely competing each other! Any miner would love to get an edge, even by not playing fair, in order to win the next block. Bitcoin is not meant to need trust in somebody else. That's why it still works.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this looks to me more about not taking into account the human factor (and the high chance some would try to cheat), than about cryptography.

In this case there would be no trust involved, the delegation would be a result of a cryptographic process/proof of work challenge. Ignore any reliance on "trust".
I'm wondering if such mechanism is possible and how.

[PowerGlove]

[...]

I didn't see the talk, and J.-J. Quisquater may or may not be "a very serious cryptographer" as you've stated. However, it seems to me that one of the following is likely true:

• You've misunderstood some of whatever J.-J. Quisquater was trying to say
• J.-J. Quisquater is not very good at economic theory
• I've misunderstood your representation of whatever J.-J. Quisquater was trying to say

The following video (not related to the idea OP is talking about) has some nice background on JJQ: ZKLux#1 - Quisquater lecture by Claude Crépeau - History of Blockchain and Zero Knowledge Proofs. (Probably too long and boring for modern attention spans, but I enjoyed the whole thing.)

With the above context in mind (I didn't know who JJQ was/is before watching that video), I find it difficult to believe that he would make a simplistic argument that could be easily dismantled; I'm assuming he has a more sophisticated construction in mind than anything we're guessing at.

I don't speak French, and Google's auto-generated subtitles are worse than useless for evaluating the quality of a (presumably) subtle idea, but I think he starts talking about what OP mentioned near the 1:19:10 mark in this video: L'histoire de la BITCOIN par Jean-Jacques QUISQUATER.

[Sha256explorer]

From what I've understood, he thinks that every miners shouldn't have to mine 24/24, he thinks that was an "overlook".
Instead, it would be more efficient that miners instead reach a consensus in a first round in order to "delegate" in a way to a small set of miners the task/right to actually compete for the block in a second round, the actual competition.
Miners that failed to be part of that second round would "pause" until the next round.

If there is a way to make sure this first round is conducted very fast and securely, then bitcoin could be made more efficient without compromising security.

I was wondering if there's something to dig here? Theoretically is there a way to make bitcoin more energy efficient? Is he right or is there something that Quisquater failed to take into account? If so, what is it?

  this idea seems to me a bit like wanting to make bitcoin a bit  like ethereum.
if you take this idea to extremes, you arrive at the idea of drawing lots for the right to package a block (as in ethereum), instead of having it packaged by whoever solved the puzzle first (as in bitcoin).

[thecodebear]

I don't see how this would reduce electrical consumption at all. Miners would still be mining nonstop, as others above have explained. What this would do is make the protocol for mining much more complex for no reason. I don't think the answer to making mining better is to make it more convulated.

Also pretty sure it would have a centralizing effect if every block was reduced down to just a few miners competing. Individual miners would just pile into the top few mining pools for the second round of mining each block (which in this scheme is the only mining that actually matters) and so the actual mining of the blocks would seem to be much more centralized.


It seems like people are constantly trying to figure out a better way to do cryptocurrency security (whether it is altering the mining protocol like this, or doing something totally different like Proof of Stake) but Satoshi made a pretty much perfect system. Despite lots of attempts no one has ever come close to building an alternative that is anywhere near as simple or as strong as Bitcoin's PoW mining. Not saying there isn't a better solution, but there have been lots of attempts and so far there isn't a better solution. It's kinda like altcoins, how many attempts have there been to make something better than Bitcoin? And every single one of them failed to even come close to giving humanity what Bitcoin does. At some point people should probably just accept we probably aren't gonna come up with something better than Bitcoin (or bitcoin mining).