Which Proof of Stake System is the Most Viable

[Conurtrol]

Good luck trying to spin-off the 100 or so devs working on dozens of Nxt projects as we speak you arrogant prick.

[1714804572]

1714804572

[Peter R]

Good luck trying to spin-off the 100 or so devs working on dozens of Nxt projects as we speak you arrogant prick.

Maintaining a spin-off requires one part-time developer.  His job is to copy the work that your "100 or so devs" do into the clone.

[Coinsy]

NXT system blows because big stake holders can rake 30K NXT with their Mac. Why wouldn't you hoard?

[jonald_fyookball]

What is interesting to me is that in the (IMO very unlikely) event that Nxt has technical promise, then as soon as the code is open-source it will be possible to create Nxt-clone using the spin-off mechanism and immediately bootstrap the clone with a more efficient distribution than Nxt-original.  

Spinoffs are why nxt is trying to keep things as secret as possible for as long as possible.  We can hardly blame them for that.  Obviously the strategy would be to be far enough ahead in the innovation and adoption cycle that the rest would seen as imitators, not innovators.

I don't know if it's fair to say nxt has no technical promise.  They seem to already have created some in innovations.  Yet, the elephant in the room is the nothing at stake issue at this point.  Or seems to be anyway.
Whether they can solve that remains to be seen.

You bring up a good point about distribution though.  If nxt did create a major breakthrough, it would certainly be nice to capitalize on that with a bitcoin based distribution, rather than speculating on a new altcoin.

Would your bootstrapping protocol work with nxt even though the coins are so different?

[toast]

Yet, the elephant in the room is the nothing at stake issue at this point.  Or seems to be anyway.

Nothing at stake is a strawman. Include a recent block hash in every transaction and allow migrating transactions cross-chain ("invalid" block headers in tx don't count for stake-vote). There's your motive for picking a chain.

[jonald_fyookball]

Yet, the elephant in the room is the nothing at stake issue at this point.  Or seems to be anyway.

Nothing at stake is a strawman. Include a recent block hash in every transaction and allow migrating transactions cross-chain ("invalid" block headers in tx don't count for stake-vote). There's your motive for picking a chain.

What are "migrating transactions"?

This doesn't make any sense.  Either a transaction is valid because its on the right chain,
or its invalid because its on the wrong chain.  That's what a distributed conensus
is all about.

Are you sure you understand the nothing at stake problem?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Yet, the elephant in the room is the nothing at stake issue at this point.  Or seems to be anyway.

Nothing at stake is a strawman. Include a recent block hash in every transaction and allow migrating transactions cross-chain ("invalid" block headers in tx don't count for stake-vote). There's your motive for picking a chain.

You haven't eliminated the fact that there is absolutely no reason not to sign all possible chains in event of a fork.  It is just a small step in the right direction, albeit at the expense of larger txs.  Bitcoin in it's short history had had ~40M txs. Adding 32 bytes to each transaction would have bloated the blockchain by another 1.2 GB.  If that solved the problem it probably would be worth it but it doesn't so one has to weigh if that increased security is worth that increased cost (in terms of tx size & complexity).  I think it probably is but it isn't a magic bullet and it isn't free.

Nothing at stake covers a number of different scenarios that all have at their core are related to the fact that there is no (significant) cost for failure*.  One can perform a reorg with no cost by simply acquiring private keys which at one time had (past tense) a majority of the active stake.  Accounts which have no value have worth to an attacker for what they once had.  Nothing at stake also applies to the concept of selfish mining.  There is no reason to not continue your chain when you lose a race against a superior block.  You can work on the majority chain and simultaneously attempt to extend your minority chain.  There is a small chance you will out mine/mint/forge the rest of the network.  In PoW the cost doesn't warrant the small chance and thus it is more profitable to switch when you lose but if there is no cost why wouldn't you keep trying, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  In NXT when you forge a block which is the best at current height but doesn't enable you to forge the next block (due to incompatible block signature) there is no reason to not use computing power to try and find an alternative which enables you to forge the next one as well.  The chance may be low but you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying.  With PoW there is a real cost associated with extending an inferior chain (one that has a less than 50% chance of remaining the longest chain) and that cost drives the network to reach a consensus quicker.  Inferior chains are abandoned and the network aligns around the best chain quickly.  How often have you seen reorgs more than 3 blocks deep in the blockchain?  This alignment doesn't happen out of some need to do the "right thing" but because it is prohibitively expensive to do anything else.   With no cost, forks will last longer, and reorgs will be deeper.  In any blockchain system, attackers with a minority of the stake can (infrequently) generate short lived chains that are better than the majority.  With PoW those attempts have a real cost which counteracts the gain of the double spend and unless the attacker has a high chance and profitable spend it is very likely a net loser to even try.  When the cost of an attempt is nothing there is nothing to lose by trying and thus why not double spend anything and everything.  Most of the time the attacker will fail but those failures cost nothing so any successful double spends is profit even if rare.

So saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx and nothing at stake is a strawman" misses the larger context.  If there is no cost to attack the network there is no reason to NOT attack the network.


* Yes some will like to split words and point out there is always some cost in anything so saying there is "nothing" at risk is wrong.  Well you can split hairs all you want but if a legit node has a cost of X and an attack node has a cost of 10X it is essentially nothing.   X has to be pretty low such that non mining nodes have the resources to run a full node so 10x is still very low.  PoW doesn't require 10x the resources to solve a block than to run a non-mining node, or even 100x, or a billion times but (at current difficulty) 193,690,812,773,950,000,000,000,000,000x.
 

[jonald_fyookball]

correct me if i'm wrong, but saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx"
does nothing more than duplicate the mechanism already in place in
any blockchain, which is to cryptographically link one block to the next.

[DeathAndTaxes]

correct me if i'm wrong, but saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx"
does nothing more than duplicate the mechanism already in place in
any blockchain, which is to cryptographically link one block to the next.

It prevents the tx from being included in a chain which diverges below the blockhash referenced in the tx.   It does have some use but to say alone it "solves" all aspects of "nothing at stake" is sadly not correct.

[toast]

Yet, the elephant in the room is the nothing at stake issue at this point.  Or seems to be anyway.

Nothing at stake is a strawman. Include a recent block hash in every transaction and allow migrating transactions cross-chain ("invalid" block headers in tx don't count for stake-vote). There's your motive for picking a chain.

You haven't eliminated the fact that there is absolutely no reason not to sign all possible chains in event of a fork.  It is just a small step in the right direction, albeit at the expense of larger txs.  Bitcoin in it's short history had had ~40M txs. Adding 32 bytes to each transaction would have bloated the blockchain by another 1.2 GB.

Nothing at stake covers a lot more than that.  One can perform a reorg with no cost by simply acquiring private keys which at one time had (past tense) a majority of the stake.  Accounts which have no value have worth to an attacker for what they once had.  Nothing at stake also applies to the concept of selfish mining.  There is no reason to not continue your chain when you lose a race against a superior block.  There is a chance you will out mine/mint/forge the rest of the network.  In NXT when you forge a block which is the best at current height but doesn't enable you to forge the next block (due to incompatible block signature) there is no reason to not use computing power to try and find an alternative which enables you to forge the next one as well.   The chance may be low but with no cost it would be foolish to not attempt it.   With PoW there is a real cost by trying to extend an inferior chain and that cost drives the network to reach a consensus quicker.  Inferior chains are abandoned and the network aligns around the best chain not out of some need to do the "right thing" but because it is prohibitively expensive to do anything else.   With no cost, forks will last longer, and reorgs will be deeper.  That is just from honest but profit maximizing miners.   Attackers with a minority of the stake can generate short lived chains that are better than the majority.  With PoW those attempts have a real cost and unless the amount which can be double spent is significant the cost outweighs any gain.  When the cost of an attempt is nothing there is nothing to lose by trying.   Most of the time the attacker will fail but those failures cost nothing so any successful double spends even if rare are profitable.

So saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx and nothing at stake is a strawman" misses the larger context.  If there is no cost to attack the network there is no reason to NOT attack the network.

Oh ok I understand this attack better now. Two questions then:

It seems like this affects NXT but not DPOS, because with DPOS once you miss a chance to produce a block it is gone forever - you cannot use old stake-votes to produce a longer chain if at least 51% of delegates have produced a block since then. Is this right?
Also, NXT claims that having clients reject chains built on anything but the most recent block they have seen solves not only this but 51%... this is true in theory but relies on unreasonable network connectivity assumptions. Is this right?

[jonald_fyookball]

im sure DT will give you a more complete answer,
but I think no, it affects any PoS system because
nothing is happening in real time.  Everything can
be done retroactively.  The thing about PoW is
that is simulates a timestamp server because
work actually takes time to do.

It prevents the tx from being included in a chain which diverges below the blockhash referenced in the tx.

wouldnt this be prevented anyway be some other check in the protocol?

[Peter R]

What is interesting to me is that in the (IMO very unlikely) event that Nxt has technical promise, then as soon as the code is open-source it will be possible to create Nxt-clone using the spin-off mechanism and immediately bootstrap the clone with a more efficient distribution than Nxt-original.  

You bring up a good point about distribution though.  If nxt did create a major breakthrough, it would certainly be nice to capitalize on that with a bitcoin based distribution, rather than speculating on a new altcoin.

Would your bootstrapping protocol work with nxt even though the coins are so different?

I see no reason why the spin-off mechanism shouldn't work with every alt-coin.  We are discussing the protocol details in the spin-off thread if you are interested.  Adrian-X has posted a 1 BTC bounty for source code that builds the snapshot.bin files that become Block 0 in the spin-off.  

I think in time we will see the idea of launching "new alt-coin currencies" as economically flawed: money is more about the legitimacy of the ledger than the properties of the payment system.  Important open-source payment system innovations will be integrated into bitcoin anyways, and closed-source innovations will not be trusted.  I believe people genuinely interested in innovation will be better served building new protocol layers that work on top of bitcoin, launching experimental spin-offs, or working towards side-chains or tree-chains.  But, alas, the promise of dumping a huge premine on a frenzied market seems too big a carrot.  

[jonald_fyookball]

What is interesting to me is that in the (IMO very unlikely) event that Nxt has technical promise, then as soon as the code is open-source it will be possible to create Nxt-clone using the spin-off mechanism and immediately bootstrap the clone with a more efficient distribution than Nxt-original.  

You bring up a good point about distribution though.  If nxt did create a major breakthrough, it would certainly be nice to capitalize on that with a bitcoin based distribution, rather than speculating on a new altcoin.

Would your bootstrapping protocol work with nxt even though the coins are so different?

I see no reason why the spin-off mechanism shouldn't work with every alt-coin.  We are discussing the protocol details in the spin-off thread if you are interested.  Adrian-X has posted a 1 BTC bounty for source code that builds the snapshot.bin files that become Block 0 in the spin-off.  

I think in time we will see the idea of launching "new alt-coin currencies" as economically flawed: money is more about the legitimacy of the ledger than the properties of the payment system.  Important open-source payment system innovations will be integrated into bitcoin anyways, and closed-source innovations will not be trusted.  I believe people genuinely interested in innovation will be better served building new protocol layers that work on top of bitcoin, launching experimental spin-offs, or working towards side-chains or tree-chains.  But, alas, the promise of dumping a huge premine on a frenzied market seems too big a carrot.  

Interesting.  As you say, "we will see" since people can vote with their wallets.
The good thing about your idea is that is still allows for several competing
currencies even though distribution is based on bitcoin.

I wouldnt want there to be just one blockchain to rule them all.
But the distribution benefits bitcoin holders at the same time.

 

[HCLivess]

Transparent forging? What do you mean? PoW/PoS is not transparent?

[valarmg]

Transparent forging? What do you mean? PoW/PoS is not transparent?

Transparent means that the system will know ahead of time (subject to some uncertainty) which agent will be verifying the next block.

[farl4web]

Transparant forging is really impressive, never seen something like that in cryptocurrencies. 

[Eadeqa]

I find CfB self -imposed "ban" from BT forum weird, and of course DaT won't join nxtforum

https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/some-thoughts-on-arguments-of-pow-guys/

  -- quote --

From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584703.msg6982574#msg6982574

You haven't eliminated the fact that there is absolutely no reason not to sign all possible chains in event of a fork.

Can a penalty fix this problem? It seems to me it can.

Bitcoin in it's short history had had ~40M txs. Adding 32 bytes to each transaction would have bloated the blockchain by another 1.2 GB.

So PoW guys were saying that current blockchain size was not an issue but now they want to save 1.2 GiB? It's even funnier that SPV is not mentioned.

One can perform a reorg with no cost by simply acquiring private keys which at one time had (past tense) a majority of the stake.

I wouldn't use the word "simply", unless someone could show 2 cases when ppl sell their old private keys.

There is a chance you will out mine/mint/forge the rest of the network.

Sure, odds r the same as to win 1 million dollars in a lottery.

In NXT when you forge a block which is the best at current height but doesn't enable you to forge the next block (due to incompatible block signature) there is no reason to not use computing power to try and find an alternative which enables you to forge the next one as well.

Could someone show an example? Right now the quoted phrase looks as the beginning of a Sci-Fi novel.

The chance may be low but with no cost it would be foolish to not attempt it.

No cost? Right, 1 (one) SHA256 operation costs nothing, 10¹⁵ * [nothing] is still nothing. Bitcoin network spends no resources, neat.

With no cost, forks will last longer, and reorgs will be deeper.

Penalty makes it very costly to extend multiple forks.

So saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx and nothing at stake is a strawman" misses the larger context.  If there is no cost to attack the network there is no reason to NOT attack the network.

How many times should I repeat that there will be a penalty?

PS: A bonus thought. Nxt consensus rule solves the problem of Bitcoin Fork 2013. Nxt to Bitcoin as Einstein's theory to Newton's theory.

[newuser01]

PoW+PoS+PoT

Fluttercoin

That's the most viable PoS system.

[ThePurplePlanet]

I find CfB self -imposed "ban" from BT forum weird, and of course DaT won't join nxtforum

https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/some-thoughts-on-arguments-of-pow-guys/

  -- quote --

From https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=584703.msg6982574#msg6982574

You haven't eliminated the fact that there is absolutely no reason not to sign all possible chains in event of a fork.

Can a penalty fix this problem? It seems to me it can.

Bitcoin in it's short history had had ~40M txs. Adding 32 bytes to each transaction would have bloated the blockchain by another 1.2 GB.

So PoW guys were saying that current blockchain size was not an issue but now they want to save 1.2 GiB? It's even funnier that SPV is not mentioned.

One can perform a reorg with no cost by simply acquiring private keys which at one time had (past tense) a majority of the stake.

I wouldn't use the word "simply", unless someone could show 2 cases when ppl sell their old private keys.

There is a chance you will out mine/mint/forge the rest of the network.

Sure, odds r the same as to win 1 million dollars in a lottery.

In NXT when you forge a block which is the best at current height but doesn't enable you to forge the next block (due to incompatible block signature) there is no reason to not use computing power to try and find an alternative which enables you to forge the next one as well.

Could someone show an example? Right now the quoted phrase looks as the beginning of a Sci-Fi novel.

The chance may be low but with no cost it would be foolish to not attempt it.

No cost? Right, 1 (one) SHA256 operation costs nothing, 10¹⁵ * [nothing] is still nothing. Bitcoin network spends no resources, neat.

With no cost, forks will last longer, and reorgs will be deeper.

Penalty makes it very costly to extend multiple forks.

So saying "put a hash of a recent block in the tx and nothing at stake is a strawman" misses the larger context.  If there is no cost to attack the network there is no reason to NOT attack the network.

How many times should I repeat that there will be a penalty?

PS: A bonus thought. Nxt consensus rule solves the problem of Bitcoin Fork 2013. Nxt to Bitcoin as Einstein's theory to Newton's theory.

Such arrogance many arguments..

Penalize what? One could move the coins to a new address I suppose... how do you know?

[jonald_fyookball]

The penalty suggestion would need to be much further defined if you want a serious discussion about it.