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[SapphireSpire]

nothing to see 

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[d5000]

Basically you're proposing a new hybrid PoW/PoS protocol? The requirement for miners to back their payment addresses with coins is basically PoS. Wouldn't open this new attack vectors, like nothing-at-stake problems?

To me, that looks even quite similar to the Peercoin protocol (your difficulty depends on the coins you send in the mining transaction) mixed with elements of Bitcoin-NG and/or the NXT and Cardano protocols.

The problem with solo mining is that there is only one winner per block, and all but one loses, resulting in an extraordinary waste of energy. Mining pools have done a fair job of reducing wasted effort, but they can't eliminate it without consolidating into a single global pool, which introduces centralization issues.

That's an interesting question if there is more "waste" in a "solo mining world" than in a "mining pool world".

From my view, a "solo mining world" will always result in a lower hashrate/difficulty in comparison with a "mining pool world" like the one we have now. Miners wanting to be profitable need to "price in" that they will always never get selected, so miners will mine with lower hashrate than if they were bundled in a pool. The used energy (by all miners) should be roughly the same in both scenarios.

Thus, I doubt there is any significant energy consumption reduction if we compare a "mining pool world" with a "solo mining world" given the same Bitcoin price (which determines the incentives to mine) and the same hardware.

It could however be argued that the "solo mining world" would have a lower hashrate and thus lower security because an attacker needs less hashrate to 51% the chain. I believe from that point of view you could talk about "wasted" energy.

Thinking about it, I think this is wrong and @tromp is correct below, as the cumulative hashrate is the same, the attack cost is also the same.

[tromp]

The problem with solo mining is that there is only one winner per block, and all but one loses, resulting in an extraordinary waste of energy.

That's quite wrong; there's no waste, except a small fraction due to miners not building on the latest block.

It's the aggregate hash rate that determines the (cumulative) difficulty and thus the energy required to reorg the chain. The energy is not wasted but converted into reorg resistance.

[tromp]

Solo miners work on their own unique blocks, so they do nothing to eliminate bad outcomes for each other.

It matters not in the slightest which block you're trying to mine.
Only that it's on top of the latest (more specifically, the highest cumulative difficulty) block.

[pooya87]

Mining pools have done a fair job of reducing wasted effort, but they can't eliminate it without consolidating into a single global pool, which introduces centralization issues.

You are thinking too short term and are focusing on the times miners or the pool doesn't find a block instead of focusing on the times they find it which is why you made 2 wrong assumptions here about "waste" and "needing to centralize to one pool".

Mining works something like this: if a solo miner or a pool has x% of the total hashrate, they'll find x% of the total blocks on average and earn x% of the total reward. For example if they have 5% of hashrate they make something around $2 million daily (out of $38 mil). Here you cannot claim that the 95% of the blocks they didn't find is a "waste" for them because they only had 5% share and they don't deserve more.

It's the same for a solo miner with a tiny hashrate. You just have to expand the timeframe and take the average.

[tromp]

The work done to mine a block is only cumulative if it was done cooperatively, by the aggregate work of a mining pool.

A block produced by a solo miner isn't cumulative because his work was not a group effort.

All the miners in a mining pool, while working on the same block template, still work on different headers, with different nonce and extra nonce ranges. Literally working on the same block (i.e. on the same header) would be an extraordinary waste.

Btw, you should read this older thread, which covers a lot of this material:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5432391.0;all

[stompix]

The problem with solo mining is that there is only one winner per block, and all but one loses, resulting in an extraordinary waste of energy. Mining pools have done a fair job of reducing wasted effort, but they can't eliminate it without consolidating into a single global pool, which introduces centralization issues. To completely eliminate the waste of energy, solo miners must not compete.

You don't understand how mining works, two scenarios
1) there are 1 million solo users with one 1th/s, the hashrate will be 1 exahash, each of those miners will eventually get a block, some will be more lucky than others but at the end of the universe there will be just a tiny difference
1) you have 1 million users in a pool with 1 exahash, everyone gets rewarded the same, but it will take them 1 million blocks to get rewarded a full block reward.

In both cases, both the hashrate, the difficulty and most important the electricity consumption is the same!

Fake problem with fake solution!

[tromp]

1) there are 1 million solo users with one 1th/s, the hashrate will be 1 exahash

No, the hash rate will be 1th/s. Solo miner hash rates do not sum.

Do you really believe that two fixed-hashrate solo miners will grow a fixed difficulty blockchain at the same rate as one solo miner?

[garlonicon]

Solo miner hash rates do not sum.

Why not? Every single miner, who is working on the heaviest chain, is raising the difficulty. No matter, if it is solo miner, or some miner in a pool. And even Merged Mining is counted here. You can mine NameCoin, RSK, or whatever, but if you produce valid Bitcoin blocks as a part of the process, then you still contribute to the total network hashrate.

More than that: if you mine an altcoin, which just blindly follows the heaviest chain of Proof of Work (no matter if it is valid or not), and where you receive amounts, proportional to your hashrate, then you can even reach de-facto 1:1 peg with Bitcoin, if you do that properly. Why? Because then, the cost of mining 1 ALT, will be equal to the cost of mining 1 BTC (no matter if you produce one satoshi every 10 minutes, or if you produce blocks every 30 seconds like P2Pool did). And if your peg will be enforced with signatures, and no coins will be created out of thin air, then it will be de-facto 1:1 peg.

and all but one loses, resulting in an extraordinary waste of energy

You know, what is "share"? It is invalid block, but miners are paid for them anyway in centralized pools. Which also means, that it is possible to collect all of them, and sum them up on a separate chain, and then push that batched transaction into Bitcoin.

The only problem with centralized pools is that they are, well, centralized. But there are ways to do that in a decentralized way. And also, putting all miners in one basket is not strictly necessary. You can as well sell your shares in Lightning Network, and receive cheaper transactions, according to your hashrate. In this way, it could be possible to send free transactions in LN, if you are a small miner, and if you mine single satoshis or millisatoshis. In that case, it makes no sense to make a new on-chain transaction, because even the minimal fee can be bigger than the amount you earn by mining.

And also note that if this model will be more popular, then finally, some of those miners could produce some valid on-chain block, which will include their own free on-chain transactions, needed for payments, channel management, and so on.

No, the mining pool would have the higher hash rate because their hash rates sum and that contributes more difficult blocks.

Wrong. You can compare P2Pool total chainwork with the main network total chainwork. The more shares you collect, the bigger your chainwork will be. And of course, P2Pool is a proof, that it doesn't have to be centralized.

[stompix]

1) there are 1 million solo users with one 1th/s, the hashrate will be 1 exahash

No, the hash rate will be 1th/s. Solo miner hash rates do not sum.

So you're telling me that if:
- we have 1 million miners mining solo each one with an S19 at 100th
- we add another billion solo miners each with an S19 at 100th
The hashrate and the difficulty won't change?  

[Cricktor]

...

You don't understand the process of mining. Every mining device that participates in the search for a valid block header adds to the global hashrate. Why? Because finding a valid block header is a random process. Any hashwork of any miner, regardless if solo or pool, draws lottery tickets to find a valid block header. Double the number of miners or their hashes/s and you double the number of drawn lottery tickets. It doesn't matter where they draw their lottery tickets.

It's crucial to understand this and I have doubts you do.

[unlikelytux]

...

You don't understand the process of mining. Every mining device that participates in the search for a valid block header adds to the global hashrate. Why? Because finding a valid block header is a random process. Any hashwork of any miner, regardless if solo or pool, draws lottery tickets to find a valid block header. Double the number of miners or their hashes/s and you double the number of drawn lottery tickets. It doesn't matter where they draw their lottery tickets.

It's crucial to understand this and I have doubts you do.

Thanks for highlighting the significance of the mining process and its impact on the global hash rate. Your insights shed light on the connection between the number of miners and the chances of finding a valid block header. Appreciate the clarification!

[DannyHamilton]

Most of the comments are confusing because they're old and outdated.

And wrong.

Hopefully, you've learned something in the time since you came in here to confidently post a bunch of nonsense.

[stompix]

So you're telling me that if:
- we have 1 million miners mining solo each one with an S19 at 100th
- we add another billion solo miners each with an S19 at 100th
The hashrate and the difficulty won't change?  

That's right. They're mining competitively, so their blocks will never have more work than what can be done by a single S19 at 100 th/s, and they'll be wasting like 99.9000999999% of the total energy they consume (1 winner / (1,001,000,000-1) miners for each block).

If they were mining cooperatively, in a pool, there would be no waste. They would consume the same energy, but their work would sum and the hash rate and block difficulty would be insanely high. But their shares of the block rewards would be so small, they would have to mine for a long time just to earn enough coin to get a minimum payout from the pool.

You really need to go back and learn how things work in mining. Based on your stupid assumption it would mean that no matter how many pools we have here, if only 100 people connect to each one for them, the hashrate will not be higher than what those 100 people have , despite being millions of such pools.
Same for larger pools, if Foundry has only 100 exahash, the rest of the hashrate is wasted since it doesn't contribute to the block, right?

Anyhow if math  and logic is not enough for you to understand this, then simple, explain this:
https://btc.com/stats/diff
so explain how despite no pool available till nov 2010 the hashrate grew like that!

[n0nce]

This is very simple; pooya summarized it nicely.
Another way to put it, even more general: any increase in efficiency - being it in hardware, software, networking, or any aspect of the protocol - is simply going to increase the difficulty. It will not reduce the energy consumption whatsoever, so it won't achieve your goal.

Furthermore, the idea that we need to reduce energy consumption is flawed from the get go.

You can find some good information on the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining here: https://bitcoincleanup.com/