Long Live Proof-of-Work, Long Live Mining - "there is no meaningful alternative"

[turvarya]

Mining promotes centralization and single point of failure. Right now all the government has to do is to blackmail or hack and take control of two pools and Bitcoin can be destroyed.

Supporters of mining now are mainly those who have already invested in it and have to rely on having this continue to not get broke.

You obviously don't know much about mining. The hashing power is not on the pools. If a pool acts bad, people just go to another one. Losing a pool wouldn't change much.  That's far away from "Bitcoin can be destroyed"
Some people on this forum even state, that this would be good, since people would change to p2p pool and the whole centralization problem, would be solved.

[kodtycoon]

Control?
There are things in this world you cannot buy, you know.

What's the difference with PoW? You spend more on equipment, you control more. You can collude with other large miners.

Those who develop new equipment, might not sell it to those who are currently at the top.
Not everybody sells their share of control for profit.

So can we expect one company to develop super powerful ASICs and totally hijack the PoW network? Wow, that's scary. In PoS anybody can be a miner with their normal computer, I say it's very attractive to users. Users drive the price and adoption, not miners. Crypto should be user-centric, not miner-centric, to be successful. And that's where PoW fails.

This is misleading. In order to mine on a PoS coin, you will first need to "invest" in the coin and to have a larger impact on the network you would need to invest in larger amounts of the coins (and mine from multiple computers - likely from something similar to VMs). This is little different from someone investing in ASIC's and running the ASIC's to secure the network

difference is your pretty much guaranteed 0.5% annual return with pos with even a trivial investment, you can spend the coins after buying them and they don't have a short life span. You can't spend an asic, they need regular replacement and your pretty much guaranteed a loss unless you invest heavily in mining gear.. And reinvest to keep up with the advancement of technology.

[cryptogeeknext]

Control?
There are things in this world you cannot buy, you know.

What's the difference with PoW? You spend more on equipment, you control more. You can collude with other large miners.

Those who develop new equipment, might not sell it to those who are currently at the top.
Not everybody sells their share of control for profit.

So can we expect one company to develop super powerful ASICs and totally hijack the PoW network? Wow, that's scary. In PoS anybody can be a miner with their normal computer, I say it's very attractive to users. Users drive the price and adoption, not miners. Crypto should be user-centric, not miner-centric, to be successful. And that's where PoW fails.

This is misleading. In order to mine on a PoS coin, you will first need to "invest" in the coin and to have a larger impact on the network you would need to invest in larger amounts of the coins (and mine from multiple computers - likely from something similar to VMs). This is little different from someone investing in ASIC's and running the ASIC's to secure the network

difference is your pretty much guaranteed 0.5% annual return with pos with even a trivial investment, you can spend the coins after buying them and they don't have a short life span. You can't spend an asic, they need regular replacement and your pretty much guaranteed a loss unless you invest heavily in mining gear.. And reinvest to keep up with the advancement of technology.

It's not about profit or returns, it's about control.
You will get guaranteed food in a zoo too, but you'll be missing something essential, wouldn't you?
ASICs can be challenged with newer ASICs, stakes (once big enough) can never be challenged.

Would you like control of the money flow to be a competition or would you like it to be in hands of a few forever. If you prefer the latter, just stick to fiat and be done with it.

EDIT:

I wouldn't be a crypto geek if I couldn't read hidden messages in random data.
Take a look at this thread, it's a new song about Bitcoin.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857195.0

Here is a Bitcoin address (I added white spaces for readability)
1C4 iVs2E659ksBK8gVEyQw229 ZoESC oyK1

1C4 - apparently Satoshi needed only one C4 to plant at the perimeter of our fiat zoo some 6 years ago. If you play video games you'd know what it means.

iVs2E659ksBK8gVEyQw229 - time it took before the smoke settled.

ZoESC - we now have a hole in the perimeter and can escape our zoo.

oyK1 - everything is gonna be o k !

Good day!

PS: The word "mining" has definitely something to do with perimeter disruption, besides its usual interpretation. Thus "miners" are those who will disrupt every perimeter they encounter on their infinite way out from a zoo within a zoo within a zoo... Hmmm and what if there is no zoo?

[Flashman]

Some people on this forum even state, that this would be good, since people would change to p2p pool and the whole centralization problem, would be solved.

p2pool has an issue for small hobbyist miners, you need a certain amount of hash to get shares. Last time I looked a few months back, this was tending toward about 500GH. I'd imagine you'd need a terahash plus for a smooth ride. At the moment, for a reliable "non-evil" pool for small miners I'd most recommend bitminter.

[Flashman]

Would you like control of the money flow to be a competition or would you like it to be in hands of a few forever. If you prefer the latter, just stick to fiat and be done with it.

Moores law should guarantee that things get shaken up at least every 18 months.

[devphp]

ASICs can be challenged with newer ASICs, stakes (once big enough) can never be challenged.

Why do you think stakes will only be accumulated and never spent? After all, humans are humans, they will spend and cash out to buy stuff (including assets on the asset exchange) or buy stuff directly with the crypto when more merchants accept it. Why do you think the price of NXT hasn't been going anywhere for a year? It's because those stakeholders are cashing out and a lot of coins have already changed hands. Apparently your theory of eternal growth of stakes doesn't work.

[kodtycoon]

Control?
There are things in this world you cannot buy, you know.

What's the difference with PoW? You spend more on equipment, you control more. You can collude with other large miners.

Those who develop new equipment, might not sell it to those who are currently at the top.
Not everybody sells their share of control for profit.

So can we expect one company to develop super powerful ASICs and totally hijack the PoW network? Wow, that's scary. In PoS anybody can be a miner with their normal computer, I say it's very attractive to users. Users drive the price and adoption, not miners. Crypto should be user-centric, not miner-centric, to be successful. And that's where PoW fails.

This is misleading. In order to mine on a PoS coin, you will first need to "invest" in the coin and to have a larger impact on the network you would need to invest in larger amounts of the coins (and mine from multiple computers - likely from something similar to VMs). This is little different from someone investing in ASIC's and running the ASIC's to secure the network

difference is your pretty much guaranteed 0.5% annual return with pos with even a trivial investment, you can spend the coins after buying them and they don't have a short life span. You can't spend an asic, they need regular replacement and your pretty much guaranteed a loss unless you invest heavily in mining gear.. And reinvest to keep up with the advancement of technology.

It's not about profit or returns, it's about control.
ASICs can be challenged with newer ASICs, stakes (once big enough) can never be challenged.

Would you like control of the money flow to be a competition or would you like it to be in hands of a few forever. If you prefer the latter, just stick to fiat and be done with it.

actually this very argument is the very reason im so involved in nem. nems proof of importance will allow someone 10 years from now to "challenge" the control of someone who was in the genesis block regardless of the fact that the early adopter has way more coins. there are flaws in both pow and pos and from wha i understand proof of importance solves this. in both pos and pow the early adopters will retain the majority of control over the network for the foreseeable future. to challenge control in pow you need to pay large chunks of money but buy up/develop new asics and in pos you must buy up large chunks of coins to challenge the whales. in poi users must only adopt the currency and use it day to day. a merchant could integrate nem, do lots of transactions with lots of other important people and boom he could have higher importance than an early adopter who doesnt do many transactions but has millions of coins. the new poi algorithm levels he playing field for all users and it will stay level far into the future and possibly forever..

in both pow and pos the control of the money flow/network is in the hands of a few. its plain to see for everyone. how many people have thousands, if not millions to buy up coins or asics? not many and the numbers are getting fewer as the price of coins rise and the number of asics needed to mine rises. poi will mean that joe soap on 200 dollars a month can start using nem and earn as high of an importance as anyone else regardless of the fact that he cannot invest huge amounts of money.

i know you are going to say this is game-able but i dont think so as it is not "how many transactions you make" but rather with who you make them, much like a web of trust. im not advocating that poi is 100% secure or that it is battle tested as code has not been released yet so we wont go into the "it will be suitable to this/that attack" as it would be a pointless discussion, but if it continues to work as it has for the last 4-5-6 months and it is proven to be secure, both pow and pos are going to have a serious competitor on their hands.

[kodtycoon]

Would you like control of the money flow to be a competition or would you like it to be in hands of a few forever. If you prefer the latter, just stick to fiat and be done with it.

Moores law should guarantee that things get shaken up at least every 18 months.

and the only ones who are capable of doing any meaningful "shaking up" are those who are already largely in the game or have buckets of money to buy/develop large numbers of the next gen of ASIC's.

[cryptogeeknext]

ASICs can be challenged with newer ASICs, stakes (once big enough) can never be challenged.

Why do you think stakes will only be accumulated and never spent? After all, humans are humans, they will spend and cash out to buy stuff (including assets on the asset exchange) or buy stuff directly with the crypto when more merchants accept it. Why do you think the price of NXT hasn't been going anywhere for a year? It's because those stakeholders are cashing out and a lot of coins have already changed hands. Apparently your theory of eternal growth of stakes doesn't work.

A big enough stake would earn enough fees or interest (depending on PoS variant) that would cover all life expenses including yachts and mansions, so it will never need to be spent.

The only way to shake up stakeholders is to have competing PoS systems some of which need to be fraudulent so that stakeholders would risk losing in their diversification process. Would you like to compete in fair game with known rules and develop innovation that would benefit humanity or would you like to play dice and create fraudulent PoS systems to shake up stakeholders?

[devphp]

A big enough stake would earn enough fees or interest (depending on PoS variant) that would cover all life expenses including yachts and mansions, so it will never need to be spent.

Haha, before that happens (it would have to be a huge market cap) something more advanced would surely be invented which would make their huge stakes much less valuable, and people would switch to that more advanced system, provided that crypto currencies survive at all. Same way as more people switch to PoS now, leaving those large holdings of Bitcoins less valuable.

See, I don't think PoS is the final step. I only consider it more advanced than PoW. Something better than PoS is possible, I don't doubt it. But PoW miners are dead set that PoW is the blessing and use exactly the same arguments against anything else that bankers use against Bitcoin. This is so funny and hypocritical at the same time.

[cryptogeeknext]

A big enough stake would earn enough fees or interest (depending on PoS variant) that would cover all life expenses including yachts and mansions, so it will never need to be spent.

Haha, before that happens (it would have to be a huge market cap) something more advanced would surely be invented which would make their huge stakes much less valuable, and people would switch to that more advanced system, provided that crypto currencies survive at all. Same way as more people switch to PoS now, leaving those large holdings of Bitcoins less valuable.

See, I don't think PoS is the final step. I only consider it more advanced than PoW. Something better than PoS is possible, I don't doubt it. But PoW miners are dead set that PoW is the blessing and use exactly the same arguments against anything else that bankers use against Bitcoin. This is so funny and hypocritical at the same time.

I think my "game of skills" versus "game of luck" analogy for PoW and PoS is fairly accurate.
I'm not saying that one game is better than the other. Everyone is free to pick one that they prefer.
The paradox is that those in the wild are free to build zoo. Can't change that.

[devphp]

This competition between cryptos and different Proof-of-... is exactly the game of skills, only the fittest will survive.

But it makes sense to review all options available on the market if you're an investor and a user.

If you're a miner, you have no choice but promote PoW to make your living.

[cryptogeeknext]

This competition between cryptos and different Proof-of-... is exactly the game of skills, only the fittest will survive.

But it makes sense to review all options available on the market if you're an investor and a user.

If you're a miner, you have no choice but promote PoW to make your living.

I think we can agree on that.
One can be an investor and a miner and play many games on multiple levels, that's exciting!

[cbeast]

One can be an investor and a miner and play many games on multiple levels, that's exciting!

What games can a miner play?

[Flashman]

What games can a miner play?

Well there's the game of "Guess the shipping date" that's always a party favorite.

[kodtycoon]

One can be an investor and a miner and play many games on multiple levels, that's exciting!

What games can a miner play?

who can dig them selves into the deepest (financial or reputational) hole before they realise PoW isnt the be and end all :L

[cbeast]

What games can a miner play?

Well there's the game of "Guess the shipping date" that's always a party favorite.

Classic. Then there's good old "pump and dump the shitcoin" on Bitcointalk.

[cryptogeeknext]

One can be an investor and a miner and play many games on multiple levels, that's exciting!

What games can a miner play?

Well, there are at least two types of miners, those who are in position to develop hardware and those who buy it from them.

The first-tier miners play their intellect games in designing ASICs targeting various process technology from yield/cost/power perspective. They also need to decide wether to sell or to mine themselves, not all of them are honest, so there is an element of luck in the game.

The second-tier miners play their profit games and make decisions at which pool to mine if they agree or disagree with pool's behavior.

And there are always those, who haven't touched mining yet and are looking for a perfect position for entry either with their piles of fiat or some alien advanced tech, that they need to ramp up volume production of.

There is plenty of fun in the mining land.
Those who are willing to compete can always do that, and there is a zoo for everybody else

[Eisenhower34]

This competition between cryptos and different Proof-of-... is exactly the game of skills, only the fittest will survive.

But it makes sense to review all options available on the market if you're an investor and a user.

If you're a miner, you have no choice but promote PoW to make your living.

I disagree. People who purchased miners are essentially investing in bitcoin via their miner. Additionally most miners have a short useful life span so anyone who has invested in a miner could simply decide to cease upgrading their mining farm if they decided to stop believing in PoW in favor of something else.

[cbeast]

One can be an investor and a miner and play many games on multiple levels, that's exciting!

What games can a miner play?

Well, there are at least two types of miners, those who are in position to develop hardware and those who buy it from the first ones.

Choosing to be a developer or user. Sounds like a fun game.

The first-tier miners play their intellect games in designing ASICs targeting various process technology from yield/cost/power perspective. They also need to decide wether to sell or to mine themselves, not all of them are honest, so there is an element of luck in the game.

The second-tier miners play their profit games and make decisions at which pool to mine if they agree or disagree with pool's behavior.

There are so many theme parties where developers come dressed as differing yield/cost/power technologies. The ladies love that.

And there are always those, who haven't touched mining yet and are looking for a perfect position for entry either with their piles of fiat or some alien advanced tech, that they need to ramp up volume production of.

There is plenty of fun in the mining land.

Those who are willing to compete can always do that, and there is a zoo for everybody else

I want to party with you, cowboy.