rpietila Altcoin Observer

[SlipperySlope]

SlipperySlope I believe is outside his field of expertise in crypto-currency. I don't think he is a cryptographer nor a programmer nor an economist nor a political scientist. He has an applied math background if I remember correctly, which is pretty general if considered in this context. If were in an applied math forum, I better shut up and listen more to him.

Correct in that I am not a crypto-currency expert yet, but my whitepaper has been received well enough to credential me for a modest speaking role at the Hashers United Conference to be held in  Las Vegas this October. There is little new in the way of crypto that I bring to this community.

I am however a programmer with decades of Cobol and database experience in networked enterprise financial systems up to 1998. Subsequently I worked as a Lisp and Java programmer and project manager for Cycorp, a DARPA contractor performing artificial intelligence research. Now 8 years early retired from a salary job, I have drawn on both experiences, bringing a fresh approach to solving the problems Tim Swanson best describes in his recent book about Bitcoin.

Regarding the political and economic aspects of bitcoin, I am naively optimistic and defer to you on those issues.

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[AnonyMint]

I am however a programmer with decades of Cobol and database experience in networked enterprise financial systems up to 1998. Subsequently I worked as a Lisp and Java programmer and project manager for Cycorp, a DARPA contractor performing artificial intelligence research. Now 8 years early retired from a salary job, I have drawn on both experiences, bringing a fresh approach to solving the problems Tim Swanson best describes in his recent book about Bitcoin.

My apology. I had forgotten you were a programmer. I think you did mention the A.I. background to me but not the programming aspect. I messed around a bit with Lisp and A.I. in the 1980s.

[Este Nuno]

No. You need the majority of stake in any point of time past, to forge all the history of the future from that point of time on. So any group who ever had 51% of the currency/votes/etc. can rewrite the history at will. Or any group that can coerce any group at any point of time. There is also no mechanism to keep track which of the forks is the correct one.

Yes, there is a mechanism to keep track which fork is correct. It's called Economic Clustering. But it will likely never be utilized, as getting private keys of 51% coins seems a much more insurmountable task than coercing 2-3 biggest PoW pool operators to follow a certain agenda. But EC will be there just in case, so yes, nodes can know which fork is correct and be in consensus. There is also a penalty in EC for forgers who forge on an incorrect fork.

As I stated a month or so ago in this thread, I think people mis-estimate the ease of borrowing large amounts of money if you already have large amounts of money.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624223.msg7689885#msg7689885

If you're a billionaire, you could borrow a billion dollars of a coin (or buy it outright, use it as rpietila said, and then re-sell), and if you worked through proxies, you could probably do it without people even realizing you'd done it.

Well hedged bets like this make people a lot of money.

Heck - you could even do the attack, make money off of it, and then short the currency hard as it looks like it's going to drop and then reveal that it was owned, causing it to collapse faster...

Adversarial finance is tricky.

And let me make this very concrete:  I've actually had a conversation along these lines with someone who works at a private investment firm.  It was speculative, and probably won't go anywhere, but don't think that people aren't already starting to plan for things like this in the event that bitcoin or foo-coin becomes successful.

You're not wrong, but I fail to see how this doesn't apply to PoW as well. Someone could short/borrow a large amount of BTC and perform any sort of attack. It wouldn't even have to be a 51% attack to cause a massive crash. Someone providing as little as 25% of Bitcoin's hashrate going rogue and attempting double spends or doing any of the attacks outlined on hackingdistributed would cause a panic.

It would seem that PoS is inherently more resistant to the 'rich guy' attack. And as far as borrowing goes apparently NXT is implenting a change that would require someone to have 90% of the stake in order to fork(is that correct?). Keeping 10% of the total stake unborrowed seems like a reasonable challenge that can be met. That almost sounds too good to be true, so I'm pretty skeptical about a cryptocurrency that requires 90% consensus actually coming true.

If it's a question of what's more secure, I'm betting that within two years we'll have at least one working PoS system that's demonstrably more resistant to attacks than PoW. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but it seems to be heading that way.

edit: Ah, you said at the end there that people are already starting to plan such things for Bitcoin. Which makes perfect sense and will likely be a major problem in the future. How would any cryptocurrency, no matter the type, survive when the financial benefit of attacking it is positive?

[AnonyMint]

If it's a question of what's more secure, I'm betting that within two years we'll have at least one working PoS system that's demonstrabily more resistant to attacks than PoW.

I betting within two years no one will be having this debate and PoW will have crushed everything else into oblivion.  

And I am also betting it won't be Bitcoin.

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

[Este Nuno]

If it's a question of what's more secure, I'm betting that within two years we'll have at least one working PoS system that's demonstrabily more resistant to attacks than PoW.

I betting within two years no one will be having this debate and PoW will have crushed everything else into oblivion.  

And I am also betting it won't be Bitcoin.

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

If PoW is what we have, I'm fine with that too. I stongly dislike the way Bitcoin mining is headed though. I think everyone who isn't one of the few running one of these 9 figure operations must as well.

A billion people mining on their low powered mobile phones would be nice. As was discussed previously in this thread.

[coinsolidation]

If it's a question of what's more secure, I'm betting that within two years we'll have at least one working PoS system that's demonstrabily more resistant to attacks than PoW.

I betting within two years no one will be having this debate and PoW will have crushed everything else into oblivion.  

And I am also betting it won't be Bitcoin.

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

If PoW is what we have, I'm fine with that too. I stongly dislike the way Bitcoin mining is headed though. I think everyone who isn't one of the few running one of these 9 figure operations must as well.

A billion people mining on their low powered mobile phones would be nice. As was discussed previously in this thread.

Interesting discussion.

The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it.

It's really explicit

'proof of' ... just the proof that work was done

'work' ... the expensive bit that protects the network. It has to be hard and expensive and require a lot effort and investment, that's our protection.

If the majority of work is controlled by honest nodes then the chain is safe. Not done by honest nodes, controlled by honest nodes.

So as long as the work is expensive (monetarily) and controlled by honest nodes, the network is safe.

[Lohoris]

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

This is not optimistic, this is very pessimistic.

PoW requires unbounded use of resources, which can and will scale up very much, even over the point of "no profit".
I'm not only talking about the energy used, but also about the old miners produced and thrown away.

We might end up realising PoW is the one and only "way to do that" (though I hope not), but that would be a very grim discovery.

PoS is environmentally safe.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe it will improve.
Maybe something else entirely will come (Proof of Burn anyone?).

In the end, if any safer method wins, it's better for everyone.

[Lohoris]

If the majority of work is controlled by honest nodes then the chain is safe. Not done by honest nodes, controlled by honest nodes.

With PoW an attacker might produce new miners and gain control of the network.
With PoS unless enough people sell to him their money, a "new" attacker just can't do anything.

(not implying there might not be other attack vectors)

[ArticMine]

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

This is not optimistic, this is very pessimistic.

PoW requires unbounded use of resources, which can and will scale up very much, even over the point of "no profit".
I'm not only talking about the energy used, but also about the old miners produced and thrown away.

We might end up realising PoW is the one and only "way to do that" (though I hope not), but that would be a very grim discovery.

PoS is environmentally safe.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe it will improve.
Maybe something else entirely will come (Proof of Burn anyone?).

In the end, if any safer method wins, it's better for everyone.

Proof of cold can be used to at least mitigate if not eliminate the environmental cost and in fact to increase decentralization in a POW system. In a POW system if a use is found for the "waste" heat, and that use is only of value if decentralized, then the security of the network is still maintained. Proof of cold means putting the waste heat from proof of work to good use by displacing the energy otherwise used for space heating in cold climates. So for example a transaction in Melbourne, Australia where it is say 30C in January gets secured in Winnipeg, Canada where it is -30C in January.

[othe]

If the majority of work is controlled by honest nodes then the chain is safe. Not done by honest nodes, controlled by honest nodes.

With PoW an attacker might produce new miners and gain control of the network.
With PoS unless enough people sell to him their money, a "new" attacker just can't do anything.

(not implying there might not be other attack vectors)

1) Exchanges can and will be hacked if its worth it, see Vericoin and NXT just for an example of the last weeks.
2) Exchanges don´t even need to be hacked, a drunken worker there might just do it for fun and profit.
3) If exchanges get a nice letter from certain 3 letter agencies or just a visit and servers confiscated they have your coins too.

Both of those are nearly zero cost attacks and some people might just do it for the sake of it, because they can do it.

In case of PoW coins there would be value lost, in case of a PoS coin the whole network is endangered.

[Majormax]

If the majority of work is controlled by honest nodes then the chain is safe. Not done by honest nodes, controlled by honest nodes.

With PoW an attacker might produce new miners and gain control of the network.
With PoS unless enough people sell to him their money, a "new" attacker just can't do anything.

(not implying there might not be other attack vectors)

Yes.... Also, other attack vectors and unexpected vulnerabilities are constantly turning up as algorithms and systems evolve. That is one reason for the 'newer' coins being more in demand (in general), because there is a constant search for 'fixes'.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

PoW is an expression of value transfer (the expense of one resource to create another). I realize this is a major simplification, but if PoS can't represent some measure of GDP than it's security is irrelevant. It fails the most basic test.

[brekyrself]

500k+ of volume and no comments on BitSharesX?  Seems people are getting in before the market peg features are rolled.

[SlipperySlope]

Proof of cold can be used to at least mitigate if not eliminate the environmental cost and in fact to increase decentralization in a POW system. In a POW system if a use is found for the "waste" heat, and that use is only of value if decentralized, then the security of the network is still maintained. Proof of cold means putting the waste heat from proof of work to good use by displacing the energy otherwise used for space heating in cold climates. So for example a transaction in Melbourne, Australia where it is say 30C in January gets secured in Winnipeg, Canada where it is -30C in January.

Industrial mining appears to be concentrating in locations with the least expensive power and passive cooling. Increasingly, ASIC manufacturers are vertically integrating with industrial miners. The fact that mining equipment rapidly becomes obsolete means that an ASIC space heater will offset electrical heating costs for one  season at most. Then the rig is simply not worth running at all, e.g. too noisy. I have three GPU mining rigs ready to heat my Colorado mountain home should GPU-algorithm coins ever again be profitable to mine, but I doubt that I will ever take them out of storage.

PoW secures a blockchain that only needs securing because anonymous, possibly malicious, peers compete. Conventional financial networks are secured at much less expense, and the block rewards of PoW coins should be better spent elsewhere.

[SlipperySlope]

PoW is an expression of value transfer (the expense of one resource to create another). I realize this is a major simplification, but if PoS can't represent some measure of GDP than it's security is irrelevant. It fails the most basic test.

My CPoS scheme will directly test this hypothesis and will certainly fail if you are right. In contrast, perhaps cryptocurrencies are valuable solely because some people think they are valuable.

[aminorex]

I have three GPU mining rigs ready to heat my Colorado mountain home should GPU-algorithm coins ever again be profitable to mine, but I doubt that I will ever take them out of storage.

It is profitable to mine XMR.

[AnonyMint]

It will turn out that PoW is absolutely essential. Everyone will go "a ha" and that will be the end of the debate.

(I might be a bit too optimistic...we'll see...)

This is not optimistic, this is very pessimistic.

PoW requires unbounded use of resources, which can and will scale up very much...

We might end up realising PoW is the one and only "way to do that" (though I hope not), but that would be a very grim discovery.

PoS is environmentally safe...

I hope all of you who believe this Malthusian delusion are willing to read irrefutable logic (and there are a lot of you who have been mind programmed by Rockefeller's funding of the environmentalism propaganda such as his creation of the 1978 UN Conference on Human Environment in Brazil).

Without 'wasting' (ahem consuming) energy to produce outputs of higher value, we would all still be living without fire shivering in caves.

For example, you could analogously claim that consuming too much airconditioning (turning the thermostat down too low) is wasteful, yet fact is that the colder it is (down to a reasonable threshold), the more mentally focused productive humans can typically be.

And before 2015, you will have the opportunity to learn that there is something of incredibly high value that we can do with PoW that we can't do with PoS. But I expect most of you won't even realize the observed outcome is because of PoW, even if I told you (well I already told you upthread but I assume most can't decipher what I wrote upthread) you wouldn't grasp it and you'd just attribute it to 'jibberish'.

I'm not only talking about the energy used, but also about the old miners produced and thrown away.

That can be fixed.

[rpietila]

Money cannot have an issuer that must be trusted.

[ArticMine]

Proof of cold can be used to at least mitigate if not eliminate the environmental cost and in fact to increase decentralization in a POW system. In a POW system if a use is found for the "waste" heat, and that use is only of value if decentralized, then the security of the network is still maintained. Proof of cold means putting the waste heat from proof of work to good use by displacing the energy otherwise used for space heating in cold climates. So for example a transaction in Melbourne, Australia where it is say 30C in January gets secured in Winnipeg, Canada where it is -30C in January.

Industrial mining appears to be concentrating in locations with the least expensive power and passive cooling. Increasingly, ASIC manufacturers are vertically integrating with industrial miners. The fact that mining equipment rapidly becomes obsolete means that an ASIC space heater will offset electrical heating costs for one  season at most. Then the rig is simply not worth running at all, e.g. too noisy. I have three GPU mining rigs ready to heat my Colorado mountain home should GPU-algorithm coins ever again be profitable to mine, but I doubt that I will ever take them out of storage.

PoW secures a blockchain that only needs securing because anonymous, possibly malicious, peers compete. Conventional financial networks are secured at much less expense, and the block rewards of PoW coins should be better spent elsewhere.

It does not need to offset 100% of the heating cost even if it only offsets say 10% of the heating cost the the effective energy cost of securing the network is still actually zero. Furthermore the industrial miners have the same problem of obsolescence, and more importantly are still treating the heat produced as waste. This is frame of mind question. Rather than think of an ASIC that produces waste heat we think of a space heater that uses crypto-currency mining to offset part of its operational cost. As for the noise that is a design question. There are also many conventional space heaters that are noisy.

[kelsey]

Money cannot have an issuer that must be trusted.

However could a genuine trustless system even be possible?