Annual 10% bitcoin dividends if mining were Proof-of-Stake

[Peter R]

The main difference is that PoS doesn't waste a bunch of electricity in doing so.

No, the main difference is that consensus is formed by those holding stake and not those willing to work.  To me it is the difference between rent seekers (PoS) and innovators (PoW).  

Yes, the main difference is that PoS doesn't waste a bunch of electricity in doing so. That is why government bureaucrats will force a change in a few years when more than $100 billion gets wasted.

No, with a PoS network we will exploit our natural resources faster than with a PoW network.  That is my opinion and you may disagree; in the final analysis it really doesn't matter what either of us thinks.    

What matters is how does one actually force a change?

What you do is create a PoS "spin-off" from the bitcoin blockchain and try to legitimize it using your influence and economic power.  

The market will decide whether is succeeds or fails.  

[jonald_fyookball]

Pretty sure there's an altcoin that already does that.  

I think he is just trying to argue a point why pos might be better than pow

I'm interested in at least discussing pos for security reasons.  I don't think thing energy use is an issue for the foreseeable future, although that seems to be slope's concern.

[Peter R]

I'm interested in at least discussing pos for security reasons.  I don't think thing energy use is an issue for the foreseeable future, although that seems to be slope's concern.

For readers, PoS = proof of stake and PoW = proof of work.  They are two different mechanisms that can be used for achieving consensus in peer-to-peer networks.  With PoS, consensus is formed by those holding stake; with PoW, consensus is formed by those doing work.  

I think it would be proper to call a PoS version of bitcoin, bitshares instead.  Dividends are awarded to share holders for holding stake, rather than to miners for doing work.  Arguments are settled based on how many shares one holds, rather than by how much work one performs.  

But I think the future is already foretold.  A strong PoS alt-coin will emerge to satisfy those that prefer this method of consensus.  Perhaps it will become strong by merging the blockchain ledgers of smaller like-minded communities, and perhaps it will eventually grow to challenge litecoin.  

[SlipperySlope]

What you do is create a PoS "spin-off" from the bitcoin blockchain and try to legitimize it using your influence and economic power.  

The market will decide whether is succeeds or fails.  

I independently had a similar idea before I learned you were yet again ahead of me.

Here is the sort of similar idea. Clone all the Bitcoin source code to create XCoin. Cleanly add PoS as an option to PoW but turn off PoS. After sufficient testing, e.g. on a testnet, release XCoin clients in lock step with Bitcoind and Bitcoin Core clients. Operate on the existing blockchain where XCoin peers are otherwise indistinguishable from Bitcoin peers. I propose that XCoin clients inform users as to how much dividend they could receive if there were enough of them.

Spin-off the new PoS network by forking the blockchain given an overwhelming number of XCoin clients as compared to validating Bitcoin clients.

[SlipperySlope]

... with a PoS network we will exploit our natural resources faster than with a PoW network.

Why? I foresee that Proof-of-Work power requirements will continue at the 10x trend we both model. How could Proof-of-Stake exceed that?

[Peter R]

What you do is create a PoS "spin-off" from the bitcoin blockchain and try to legitimize it using your influence and economic power.  

The market will decide whether is succeeds or fails.  

I independently had a similar idea before I learned you were yet again ahead of me.

Here is the sort of similar idea. Clone all the Bitcoin source code to create XCoin. Cleanly add PoS as an option to PoW but turn off PoS. After sufficient testing, e.g. on a testnet, release XCoin clients in lock step with Bitcoind and Bitcoin Core clients. Operate on the existing blockchain where XCoin peers are otherwise indistinguishable from Bitcoin peers. I propose that XCoin clients inform users as to how much dividend they could receive if there were enough of them.

Spin-off the new PoS network by forking the blockchain given an overwhelming number of XCoin clients as compared to validating Bitcoin clients.

I was recently invited to give a talk on this very idea at Trader Steve's online bitcoin conference in June (http://gobc.co) and I intend to do so.  It is an exciting idea.    

I'd like to see us build infrastructure to take "snap-shots" of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain, and to create awareness around how one can use their existing bitcoin private keys to claim their share of any pre-mine in a "spin-off" coin.  This would make it much easier to create spin-offs (such as your 10% dividend PoS idea) to experiment with new methods of achieving consensus, and it would provide a Plan B in the extremely unlikely event that the network comes under unrelenting 51% attacks.  

[SlipperySlope]

Existing Miners Should Love Proof-of-Stake

Proof-of-Stake pays miners a 10% average annual dividend on their bitcoin exposed to the network in a Bitcoin Core wallet. Anyone can be a miner because Proof-of-Stake processes transactions, secures the network, and maintains the blockchain using the modest resources of an ordinary computer.

But why would existing Bitcoin miners love this new thing? Because it is common wisdom among miners that they would have been financially better off by simply buying and holding bitcoin, with the funds they spent buying designed-for-obsolescence ASIC mining devices and the power required to operate and cool them. Plus the time and effort of configuring, maintaining, monitoring, and ultimately disposing of them.

When 10% annual Proof-of-Stake dividends are added to the profit equation, the balance should clearly tip in favor of abandoning the current wasteful Proof-of-Work system.

[Siegfried]

What you do is create a PoS "spin-off" from the bitcoin blockchain and try to legitimize it using your influence and economic power.  

The market will decide whether is succeeds or fails.  

I independently had a similar idea before I learned you were yet again ahead of me.

Here is the sort of similar idea. Clone all the Bitcoin source code to create XCoin. Cleanly add PoS as an option to PoW but turn off PoS. After sufficient testing, e.g. on a testnet, release XCoin clients in lock step with Bitcoind and Bitcoin Core clients. Operate on the existing blockchain where XCoin peers are otherwise indistinguishable from Bitcoin peers. I propose that XCoin clients inform users as to how much dividend they could receive if there were enough of them.

Spin-off the new PoS network by forking the blockchain given an overwhelming number of XCoin clients as compared to validating Bitcoin clients.

I was recently invited to give a talk on this very idea at Trader Steve's online bitcoin conference in June (http://gobc.co) and I intend to do so.  It is an exciting idea.    

I'd like to see us build infrastructure to take "snap-shots" of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain, and to create awareness around how one can use their existing bitcoin private keys to claim their share of any pre-mine in a "spin-off" coin.  This would make it much easier to create spin-offs (such as your 10% dividend PoS idea) to experiment with new methods of achieving consensus, and it would provide a Plan B in the extremely unlikely event that the network comes under unrelenting 51% attacks.  

This is one of the best ideas I have heard.

[Siegfried]

... with a PoS network we will exploit our natural resources faster than with a PoW network.

Why? I foresee that Proof-of-Work power requirements will continue at the 10x trend we both model. How could Proof-of-Stake exceed that?

I would like to know the answer to that too.

[Peter R]

... with a PoS network we will exploit our natural resources faster than with a PoW network.

Why? I foresee that Proof-of-Work power requirements will continue at the 10x trend we both model. How could Proof-of-Stake exceed that?

It is difficult to explain, and that's why I agree with you that it appears that PoW is more wasteful (and that this could be used as a political weapon).  This is a half-baked explanation, but perhaps the essence of what I'm trying to communicate will still come across:


For me it comes down to the simple fact that PoS rewards those who already hold the most wealth--they no longer even need to work for it.  I think this creates more opportunities for rent-seeking and less impetus for innovation.  I believe an economy that favours rent-seeking over work + innovation leads to the misallocation of our natural resources.

With PoS, consensus is formed by those holding stake.  In other words, those who already have the most also get to make the rules.  Look at who accrues the new coins in your 10% dividend model: they accrue to the largest stake holders!  It's no longer a coin-distributoin mechanism--it is a way for those with first access to new money to benefit un-proportionately.  Sounds a bit like the Fed.

PoS supporters appeal to idea of the "greater good" (less electricity consumed).  This makes me highly suspicious:

1. For the greater good, we must stop this wasteful bitcoin mining and we will all be richer!

2. For the greater good, we must create more coins so that we can direct them towards important projects that the free-market neglects!

3. For the greater good, we must incentive spending to keep the people employed!

4. For the greater good, we must create more coins so that we can lend them to people to stimulate the economy!


I just can't see how the end-game of PoS is anything different than the current system.  How much pure waste do we currently have?  I bet a shift to bitcoin cuts the rate at which we exploit our natural resources at least by half, maybe more.  Bitcoin favours efficiency.  Our current system favours debt and consumption.  

[SlipperySlope]

... with a PoS network we will exploit our natural resources faster than with a PoW network.

Why? I foresee that Proof-of-Work power requirements will continue at the 10x trend we both model. How could Proof-of-Stake exceed that?

It is difficult to explain, and that's why I agree with you that it appears that PoW is more wasteful (and that this could be used as a political weapon).  This is a half-baked explanation, but perhaps the essence of what I'm trying to communicate will still come across:

For me it comes down to the simple fact that PoS rewards those who already hold the most wealth--they no longer even need to work for it.  I think this creates more opportunities for rent-seeking and less impetus for innovation.  I believe an economy that favours rent-seeking over work + innovation leads to the misallocation of our natural resources.

In fact, I am a landlord and collect rents. But of course you mean economic rent-seeking of the sort that patent trolls employ to bedevil innovation. I believe that capital seeks its wisest custodian - optimal for the overall economy if opportunities for rent-seeking are minimized or mitigated.

How can rent-seeking behavior be prevented by Proof-Of-Stake? The critical aspect is the Bitcoin mining reward and its schedule for halving. When the mining reward is tiny compared to the transaction fees awarded for solving a block then I propose that rent-seeking behavior will be diminished as annual dividends drop to the point where the risk of exposing the stake to the network is not worth the gain.

Because Proof-of-Stake is many orders of magnitude more efficient than Proof-of-Work, I expect that Proof-of-Stake holders would accept much lower transaction fees to process a block than would Proof-of-Work miners who must pay for equipment, power and their own time.

In the meantime, I claim without proof, that Proof-of-Stake rent-seeking behavior is less harmful than the manifestly wasteful Proof-of-Work alternative.

[Siegfried]

I have very little knowledge about how mining actually works but I am trying to conceive an abstract solution based on what little I do know. Even if this idea is theoretically sound, I have no idea whether or not it is possible to implement it in computer code.

Suppose that in order to solve blocks a miner would be required to have 1 BTC in a certain address per quantity of hashing power contributed. Suppose arbitrarily the requirement were 1 BTC per gigahash. For someone who has and intends to hold 10 BTC, it would make perfect sense to devote 10 gigahash to mining, but hashing power beyond that would not increase the chances of solving a block. There are about 12 million BTC that have been mined, so the maximum profitable hashing power of the network would be 12 million gigahash, which I believe is less than it is today, and is certainly less than it is projected to be in the next few years. Excessive energy waste becomes a negligible issue.

Another benefit is that Bitcoin mining would be more decentralized. It is estimated that there at least 10,000 people who have more than 100 BTC, but only a handful with more than 100,000. It makes economic sense for a holder of 100 BTC to devote 100 gigahash to mining and a holder of 100,000 BTC to devote 100,000 gigahash to mining. So the miner number 10,000 would earn approximately 1/1,000 as much BTC as the top few miners. What is the difference in earnings between the top few miners and the number 10,000 miner in Bitcoin today? I strongly suspect that the difference is much greater. So in the mining system I propose there would be more incentive for more people to mine.

Would a 51 percent attack be feasible in this system? Suppose a government or mega-bank wanted to destroy Bitcoin. Suppose there are 4 million BTC devoted to honest mining (not every holder/user will bother to mine) and total of 4 million gigahash mining power. The malicious entity could certainly acquire more than 4 million gigahash of processing power for a few hundred million dollars, but could it acquire more than 4 million BTC? The current market cap is ~7 billion dollars and there are fewer than 1 million BTC on all of the exchanges. If the malicious entity tried to buy all of the BTC available on exchanges, the market cap would probably rise two orders of magnitude, costing hundreds of billions of dollars to acquire less than a quarter of the coins necessary to execute a 51 percent attack. I believe it would be impossible for any entity to acquire the requisite number of BTC to execute a 51 percent attack.

[SlipperySlope]

Suppose that in order to solve blocks a miner would be required to have 1 BTC in a certain address per quantity of hashing power contributed. Suppose arbitrarily the requirement were 1 BTC per gigahash. For someone who has and intends to hold 10 BTC, it would make perfect sense to devote 10 gigahash to mining, but hashing power beyond that would not increase the chances of solving a block. There are about 12 million BTC that have been mined, so the maximum profitable hashing power of the network would be 12 million gigahash, which I believe is less than it is today, and is certainly less than it is projected to be in the next few years. Excessive energy waste becomes a negligible issue.

I have thought about ways to limit hashing power but they do not seem to work. Others certainly have argued this before so my comment may turn out to be naive. I tried to apply rules from the economics of cap-and-trade for pollution permits.

How does the network measure hashing power contributed? I could supply twice the allowed hashing power and claim that I am simply lucky when my share of the block rewards is twice what averages predict.

Among miners, there is a protocol named VAR DIFF for variable difficulty in which the pool server measures your hashrate by giving you work-shares to hash with progressively increasing difficulty until a shares are solved by the client at say 4 - 10 per minute. This allows the mining pool to estimate and report your hashing rate. But this can be faked by the client to fool the server if the client wanted to cheat beyond the allowed maximum hashrate.

[mgburks77]

I would say that people who have a lot invested in mining activities may have a perspective that is subject to confirmation bias leading them to rationalize an inferior method because of their vested interest.

Why would you prefer having to have specialized equipment to produce new money? Squandering more and more electricity necessarily to secure a network is rent seeking exemplified, not productive behavior. Which is why that will only lead to centralization and cartelization as in the fiat world. This can be observed as mining is already controlled by two major cartels and most of the larger positions are held by financial institutions of one sort or another.

PoS is better all around.  It individualizes production of new coins which only helps fight the manipulation by mining and trading cartels that is the current situation. Not to mention the savings in overhead from power costs.  

Both are methods of achieving consensus so why use the expensive, difficult way unless it is because you already spent a lot on mining equipment and have a vested interest in that? I'd rather my position stake on an android tablet or something.

People all over the world have android phones and tablets, not everyone has a 10K mining rig or the means to ever get one.

Now which method of achieving consensus is more likely to be widely adopted? It's easy to see which way the wind is blowing.

[SlipperySlope]

PoS is better all around.  It individualizes production of new coins which only helps fight the manipulation by mining and trading cartels that is the current situation.

I do not observe manipulation by the large mining pools. However, many people reading this thread in hopes of receiving 10% bitcoin dividends on the holdings are not aware that of the tens of thousands of Bitcoin mining rigs operating, almost none of them are actual miners. They are rather hashers who do not maintain the blockchain, nor validate blocks, nor propagate transactions. Rather they are delegated Proof-of-Work tasks by the pool operator, who is the actual miner.

Look at the following pie chart from Blockchain.info . In the Unknown pie slice are private datacenters and ASIC manufacturers that are large enough to keep the 1% typical pool fee for themselves. Suppose there are four very large datacenters in there. Count the named pie slices and add say 4 for the private datacenters in Unknown and get 12.

Those 12 miners control Proof-of-Work Bitcoin mining.

I am not really alarmed at this situation. It is not one that Satoshi envisioned when considering how miners would operate, but pools flow naturally from the motivation of miners for steady income as opposed to luck. Hashers, those who actually operate ASIC rigs, are free to move from pool to pool as they see fit to balance this pie chart.

My point is that concentration of mining power by large holders in a Proof-of-Stake scheme could not conceivably be worse than this . . .

[FeedbackLoop]

But the hashers are mobile if a pool turns out to be a bad player. If a bad player acquires a significant portion of the PoS coin that mobility does not exist.

[kwukduck]

Let's not forget that all PoS implementations so far also suffer from quite a bunch of potential attacks that PoW does not. Do your research.
Maybe in the future somebody will come up with PoS that would really work.

[itod]

Look at the following pie chart from Blockchain.info . In the Unknown pie slice are private datacenters and ASIC manufacturers that are large enough to keep the 1% typical pool fee for themselves. Suppose there are four very large datacenters in there. Count the named pie slices and add say 4 for the private datacenters in Unknown and get 12.

Those 12 miners control Proof-of-Work Bitcoin mining.

Wrong, these "named slices" are not miners, they are public pools with thousands miners contributing to each one. The second those miners sense their pools get bribed to destroy bitcoin, their source of income, they would switch to non-corrupted one. Instantly, within a day. With each month passing and more and more money being poured in mining hardware the chances that hardware being obsoleted by some external bribing attempt are diminishing rapidly.

[SlipperySlope]

Look at the following pie chart from Blockchain.info . In the Unknown pie slice are private datacenters and ASIC manufacturers that are large enough to keep the 1% typical pool fee for themselves. Suppose there are four very large datacenters in there. Count the named pie slices and add say 4 for the private datacenters in Unknown and get 12.

Those 12 miners control Proof-of-Work Bitcoin mining.

Wrong, these "named slices" are not miners, they are public pools with thousands miners contributing to each one. The second those miners sense their pools get bribed to destroy bitcoin, their source of income, they would switch to non-corrupted one. Instantly, within a day. With each month passing and more and more money being poured in mining hardware the chances that hardware being obsoleted by some external bribing attempt are diminishing rapidly.

No, you are wrong and here is why. These "named slices" plus a few private datacenters are the miners, only they execute a few instances of bitcoind.

The numerous ASIC owners execute cgminer or another program that adheres to the stratum protocol which is not a part of the Bitcoin Network and was never envisioned by Satoshi.

An ideal you might be thinking about is P2Pool for Bitcoin. Only in this sort of pool does each participant actually execute an instance of bitcoind, and the pool exists to share the solved block rewards fairly among them. Note that P2Pool does not appear in the named entities on the market share pie chart. Why? Because the ASIC operators find it more convenient not to be miners and delegate that most important aspect to the few big pool operators.

As core developer Greg Maxwell said in a thread suggesting a revival of Bitcoin P2Pool . . .

. . .

We now have miners with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment which run it off a raspberry pi. Who send their coins directly to coinbase to be sold. Who have never used a Bitcoin client of any kind (except for the coinbase webwallet), certainly not a full node, and they have no concept of why they'd want to.  The name they trust most in mining is operator of their chosen pool— who could be robbing them blind, but maybe isn't— who has a financial interest to the tune of— say— >$700,000/month in keeping miners on their pool, and who tells them they don't need to worry about things, and who is believed because far too many people— including you— overly fixate on "51%" and ignore the fact that someone who controls 25% hashpower can reorg 6 confirms with 5% success or 2 with 31% success.

. . .

Perhaps many miners could be moved to running something p2pool like if doing so was easy, but just running a Bitcoin node is no longer so easy that it can be treated as costless, with now gigabytes of space wasted by pointless dust-scale messaging transactions. Transactions that the Bitcoin users didn't care about because they weren't running nodes and because many people had a monetary interest in being able to wastefully use the systems resources in that manner.

In any case, I don't think the problems you're facing are technical. The problem is that participants in the system don't know or care. I think the problem is also that to some extent people who should know better are not paying attention to the mining ecosystem and don't realize what a mess things are, and some who do are tempering their statements because saying "Hey everyone, the Bitcoin security assumptions are basically invalid in the current environment" too loudly may be adverse to the value of their holdings.

If you can figure how to educate people on the subject in a world where people have multimillion dollar a year income streams that depend on hashers not being educated and while other people own hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin whos value might be eroded if the concerns become too wide spread— then I think progress could be made.

. . .

Here are Bitcoin network statistics showing the number of bitcoind instances - and few of these actually have generation turned on because it wastes resources if they have only minuscule chance of finding a block.

Note how few nodes there are compared with the number of bitcoin wallets.

With Proof-of-Stake, each wallet owner would be highly motivated to join the Bitcoin network to receive their 10% annual dividend on the amount exposed to the network.



credit: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/

[Peter R]

I believe that capital seeks its wisest custodian - optimal for the overall economy if opportunities for rent-seeking are minimized or mitigated.

I agree.  This was in fact the logic for the "spin-off" proposal: you launch an experimental new coin with a pre-mine distributed proportional to the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain at a pre-defined point in time.  The wealth distribution starts as the one already known to be efficient for bitcoin.

How can rent-seeking behavior be prevented by Proof-Of-Stake?

I don't believe it can.  

PoW : consensus is achieved by people who have capital at risk; rewards flow to those who perform the most work.

PoS : consensus is achieved by people who have capital; rewards flow to those who have the most capital.

Although "capital seeks its wisest custodian," these custodians should be rewarded for risking that capital and proving that they are wise.  Not by everyone assuming they are wise because they already have the capital.  To me this is the fundamental difference between PoW and PoS.  

As core developer Greg Maxwell said in a thread suggesting a revival of Bitcoin P2Pool . . .

Now this is something I can support, SlipperySlope.  Shifting hashpower away from the big pools and towards P2P-pool improves our consensus mechanism.  

This is where we should direct our efforts IMO.  I think with time, education, and the commoditization of SHA256 ASIC chips, that this will happen naturally.