Energy efficiency.

[bigeliphant]

Hello,

i've been thinking about how much energy proof of work stage uses why dont they just let it be proof of stake to use alot less energy, wasnt that the point? I've heard it may go up.

[andytoshi]

Hello,

i've been thinking about how much energy proof of work stage uses why dont they just let it be proof of stake to use alot less energy, wasnt that the point? I've heard it may go up.

Because Bitcoin needs a distributed consensus to function, and the only known way to achieve this is through proof of work. I've heard claims from parts of the Internet (as may have you) that you can use a proof-of-stake system to get a distributed consensus. As section six of my document on altcoins shows, this is fundamentally incorrect.

[ranochigo]

Hello,

i've been thinking about how much energy proof of work stage uses why dont they just let it be proof of stake to use alot less energy, wasnt that the point? I've heard it may go up.

Monopoly have more chance of happening in proof of stake. Exchanges with huge wallets can generate more blocks using the user's funds. It is possible for someone to 51% the network by having half of the coins. Anyone can easily 51% the network by borrowing coins or buying the coins. Proof of work requires computing power which consumes energy and requires a lot of hardware which exchanges most probably don't have and is more expensive to carry out.

[arnuschky]

Hello,

i've been thinking about how much energy proof of work stage uses why dont they just let it be proof of stake to use alot less energy, wasnt that the point? I've heard it may go up.

Because ever altcoin ever that uses proof of stake failed or is in the process of failing.
Proof of stake is fundamentally flawed.

[Cranky4u]

PoS just requires coins in a wallet thereby allowing the owner to acquire 'interest' but without giving back to the network through either blocksolving or acting as a node.

PoW requires the user to at least act as a node whilst being rewarded for servicing the blockchain.

[Gavin Andresen]

Thaddeus Dryja's "proof of idle" idea hasn't been getting enough attention. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2TPeQ9mnA

The idea is to get paid NOT to mine, because it is economically rational for everybody to keep the difficulty lower rather than higher (everybody saves money on electricity if everybody can somehow agree to keep their equipment idle). Thaddeus figured out a way of solving the coordination problem so nobody can lie about how much mining power they have or profit from cheating and running miners that they promised to keep idle.

Having lots of idle mining capacity is appealing for at least two reasons -- it is more energy efficient, and if an attack of some kind is detected it could be brought online instead of kept idle to help fight the attack.


However... I suspect that taking that idle mining power, pointing it to a big mining pool, and then performing a winning-share-withholding-attack (if you find a share that satisfies full network difficulty, don't submit it to the pool -- just throw it away and pretend it never happened) could be a way of doubling your profits, because you drive down difficulty, get paid for "idle" capacity, AND get a share of the profits from the mining pool you're attacking.

[instagibbs]

However... I suspect that taking that idle mining power, pointing it to a big mining pool, and then performing a winning-share-withholding-attack (if you find a share that satisfies full network difficulty, don't submit it to the pool -- just throw it away and pretend it never happened) could be a way of doubling your profits, because you drive down difficulty, get paid for "idle" capacity, AND get a share of the profits from the mining pool you're attacking.

That would be an example of a cartel falling apart(if caught). That setup only works

Have you thought much about what happens as hashing hardware becomes a more liquid resource? A lot of this game-theoretical stuff assumes a fixed amount of hashing power, which is really only true today. Once the price is essentially the cost of burning electricity, I'm not sure how all this shakes out.

[bigeliphant]

this just looks like sucking the last left out of the world but there is till no stellar to leave.

[pch957]

good point

[audereyy]

I think so as well

[arnuschky]

Thaddeus Dryja's "proof of idle" idea hasn't been getting enough attention. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN2TPeQ9mnA

The idea is to get paid NOT to mine, because it is economically rational for everybody to keep the difficulty lower rather than higher (everybody saves money on electricity if everybody can somehow agree to keep their equipment idle). Thaddeus figured out a way of solving the coordination problem so nobody can lie about how much mining power they have or profit from cheating and running miners that they promised to keep idle.

Having lots of idle mining capacity is appealing for at least two reasons -- it is more energy efficient, and if an attack of some kind is detected it could be brought online instead of kept idle to help fight the attack.


However... I suspect that taking that idle mining power, pointing it to a big mining pool, and then performing a winning-share-withholding-attack (if you find a share that satisfies full network difficulty, don't submit it to the pool -- just throw it away and pretend it never happened) could be a way of doubling your profits, because you drive down difficulty, get paid for "idle" capacity, AND get a share of the profits from the mining pool you're attacking.

Thanks for posting this Gavin; definitely an overlooked idea right now.
I'd wish he would post his graphs and models as well, but I guess we have to wait for the paper.

Regarding the actual proposal, it's quite interesting. However, he's making some very strong
assumptions in the beginning which won't be true in bitcoin for quite some time I think.

However, I think Gavin is right: you can participate in any pool, withholding blocks from it and
thereby not violating the Proof-of-idle agreement. Not sure if existing methods of detecting miners
that withhold blocks from a pool work if said miners do not publish the block on their own.

[minerpumpkin]

Hello,

i've been thinking about how much energy proof of work stage uses why dont they just let it be proof of stake to use alot less energy, wasnt that the point? I've heard it may go up.

Monopoly have more chance of happening in proof of stake. Exchanges with huge wallets can generate more blocks using the user's funds. It is possible for someone to 51% the network by having half of the coins. Anyone can easily 51% the network by borrowing coins or buying the coins. Proof of work requires computing power which consumes energy and requires a lot of hardware which exchanges most probably don't have and is more expensive to carry out.

Yeah, it's a fact that people don't realize. I think it also depends on how the next block-generator is being determined. And what if he/she isn't able to actually generate a block. This type of determinism may be exploited in some way, I believe.