Poll - Should Proof of Stake be implemented in Litecoin?

[ripper234]

Proof of Stake is a proposed modification/addition to Proof of Work. Its main motivation is prevention of monopolistic 51% attacks that might naturally arise when transaction fees are lowered, due to miners' incentive structure.

Litecoin thus far has not been extremely innovative (no offense), but is still IMHO filling the intended role of "Silver to Bitcoin's Gold". If PoS were implemented in the main Litecoin chain, this might elevate the status of Litecoin as a beta group for new candidate ideas, before they are introduced or even seriously considered in the main Bitcion chain.

In your opinion, should Proof of Stake be implemented in the official Litecoin blockchain?

See also https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96255.0;all

Edit - if you support the idea, you might want to contribute to a bounty.

[NASDAQEnema]

http://litecoinforums.org/index.php?/topic/18-proof-of-stake-is-a-scam/#

this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests
this is relevant to my interests

[tgsrge]

No, never. such a system will grow to serve its own interests (NOT the interests of the network)

people need to keep in mind "proof of stake" might sound like a very fancy name, but please research what you are voting for first.

and you have refused to address the issue of ddos and the fact you are introducing central points of failure into the network (places for governments to put pressure, botherders to ddos, and just generally bad things arising from centralization)

[markm]

How about proof of noble birth? Nobles will have a stake in preserving the nobility of the behavior of those designated noble, right?

I wonder if economists ever talk to historians at all?

-MarkM-

[ripper234]

How about proof of noble birth? Nobles will have a stake in preserving the nobility of the behavior of those designated noble, right?

I wonder if economists ever talk to historians at all?

-MarkM-

Jokes aside, I think Proof of Stake is an interesting concept, and has merit (combined with PoW).
If you wish to debate these points, you can do it on the main PoS thread.

[ripper234]

If PoS is such a good thing, why you still not get convinced Bitcoin community
 to implement it in Bitcoin ?!

Why stalk it to Litecoiners ? 

The market cap and adoption of Bitcoin is much larger than Litecoin. As such, it will be slower to take riskier moves like changing its economical fundamentals.

Litecoin is still young enough that it can change with relative ease.
This experiment (implementing PoS) can give it real life. It might be bad, and might be good, but at least it will be interesting to test.

Of course, this can be done as a fork ... but in that case I think it should be a fork of Bitcoin, not Litecoin, and in any case it would be hard to attract a large following at this stage.

If coblee and other supports of Litecoin could be convinced to think about this idea and change the official Litecoin chain to include PoS,
it might have a real chance to gain adoption in this community. Of course the original PoS-less Litecoin would continue alongside, but I think a lot of people will flock to where the leaders of a chain point, and will consider upgrading to a PoS-based system.

Maybe the time is not right yet, and another PoS alt-chain should be built as a PoC before this is even considered.

[ripper234]

If coblee and other supports of Litecoin could be convinced to think about this idea and change the official Litecoin chain to include PoS,
it might have a real chance to gain adoption in this community. Of course the original PoS-less Litecoin would continue alongside, but I think a lot of people will flock to where the leaders of a chain point, and will consider upgrading to a PoS-based system.

Thanks for your explanations.
So if PoS will be implemented,
Litecoin likely will have hard-fork chain split.
Not good.

I personally once thought Litecoin is interesting, but have lost interest in it a long time ago.
Right now, as it stands, it is simply not relevant.

This is one proposal to make it relevant.

[Etlase2]

Instead of a potentially complex and fork-inducing proof of stake change, why not make a fork-free smart-chain?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64637.0

All clients agree that competing blocks will have priority weight based on number of transactions, average age of coins in transactions, and other factors.

Really comes down to using a "bitcoin days destroyed" metric.

Say two blocks were created at the exact same time, but one had 500LTC days destroyed, one had 200LTC days destroyed, so the 500LDD wins and becomes the next block. Not only does it reduce the likelihood of the miner that ignores transactions scenario, but it also effectively prevents a sustained 51% attack. Anyone attacking the network will need lots of old coins and must destroy those days each block they create. It will also probably be more difficult to pull off a finney double spend attack because a pre-mined block will likely have less days destroyed than a legitimate one.

As long as no one actually attacks the network, this change could be made over time and be completely compatible with old clients. If someone does attack the network, old clients would be fooled and a fork may be created. Additionally, if there is some large change that happens due to an attack or a network split or some other big event, instead of (stupidly) picking longest chain wins, the user will be notified that there are multiple chains, beware, find out what's going on, etc.

All you have to do is create some slightly complex algorithms to determine block acceptance rules and a smarter interface.

[ripper234]

Instead of a potentially complex and fork-inducing proof of stake change, why not make a fork-free smart-chain?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64637.0

All clients agree that competing blocks will have priority weight based on number of transactions, average age of coins in transactions, and other factors.

Really comes down to using a "bitcoin days destroyed" metric.

Say two blocks were created at the exact same time, but one had 500LTC days destroyed, one had 200LTC days destroyed, so the 500LDD wins and becomes the next block. Not only does it reduce the likelihood of the miner that ignores transactions scenario, but it also effectively prevents a sustained 51% attack. Anyone attacking the network will need lots of old coins and must destroy those days each block they create. It will also probably be more difficult to pull off a finney double spend attack because a pre-mined block will likely have less days destroyed than a legitimate one.

As long as no one actually attacks the network, this change could be made over time and be completely compatible with old clients. If someone does attack the network, old clients would be fooled and a fork may be created. Additionally, if there is some large change that happens due to an attack or a network split or some other big event, instead of (stupidly) picking longest chain wins, the user will be notified that there are multiple chains, beware, find out what's going on, etc.

All you have to do is create some slightly complex algorithms to determine block acceptance rules and a smarter interface.

I don't understand how the TL;DR of the linked thread relates to the pargraph you wrote here:

Resolved: Design a cryptocurrency based off of Bitcoin where the purchasing power in any given account remains relatively unchanged over time

[Etlase2]

Then why not just read the quote and the paragraph in context? I had to come up with a way to make sure that a bitcoin-based block chain where difficulty would be intentionally lowered but still be safe against attacks. For that proposal. The idea still applies and would be useful for bitcoin or litecoin. It is a much less dramatic step than proof of stake, yet I believe it can still be extremely effective when fine-tuned.

[ripper234]

Say two blocks were created at the exact same time, but one had 500LTC days destroyed, one had 200LTC days destroyed, so the 500LDD wins and becomes the next block. Not only does it reduce the likelihood of the miner that ignores transactions scenario, but it also effectively prevents a sustained 51% attack. Anyone attacking the network will need lots of old coins and must destroy those days each block they create. It will also probably be more difficult to pull off a finney double spend attack because a pre-mined block will likely have less days destroyed than a legitimate one.

What is "at the exact same time"? Bitcoin is, in fact, a timestamping service, so it's important to be specific about this.

If a 500 LTC block is released at time X, and 10-60 seconds afterwards a competing block with 700 LTC is released, that claims it was actually released at the same time. Does the 700 LTC block win? But miners have already started to work on the continuation to the 500 LTC block...

Also, there is no "becomes the next block" in Bitcoin - every miner decides on the history he prefers. Clients and standard, rational miners will go along with the longest history, so an incentivized Bitcoin miner should always pick the longest chain.

Perhaps more details, and some more examples, can help clarify this point.
Given its distributed nature, I don't think shorts forks can be avoided in a good Bitcoin-based protocol (hunch).

[coblee]

Instead of a potentially complex and fork-inducing proof of stake change, why not make a fork-free smart-chain?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64637.0

All clients agree that competing blocks will have priority weight based on number of transactions, average age of coins in transactions, and other factors.

Really comes down to using a "bitcoin days destroyed" metric.

Say two blocks were created at the exact same time, but one had 500LTC days destroyed, one had 200LTC days destroyed, so the 500LDD wins and becomes the next block. Not only does it reduce the likelihood of the miner that ignores transactions scenario, but it also effectively prevents a sustained 51% attack. Anyone attacking the network will need lots of old coins and must destroy those days each block they create. It will also probably be more difficult to pull off a finney double spend attack because a pre-mined block will likely have less days destroyed than a legitimate one.

As long as no one actually attacks the network, this change could be made over time and be completely compatible with old clients. If someone does attack the network, old clients would be fooled and a fork may be created. Additionally, if there is some large change that happens due to an attack or a network split or some other big event, instead of (stupidly) picking longest chain wins, the user will be notified that there are multiple chains, beware, find out what's going on, etc.

All you have to do is create some slightly complex algorithms to determine block acceptance rules and a smarter interface.

Sounds interesting. I can see how this makes it hard to do a sustained 51% attack. But it's still not hard to do a one time 51% attack. Let's say the attacker just needs to do 51% for about 10 blocks in order to do a double spend at the exchange. He just needs destroy enough coins to match the network for those 10 blocks.

[coblee]

Instead of a potentially complex and fork-inducing proof of stake change, why not make a fork-free smart-chain?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=64637.0

All clients agree that competing blocks will have priority weight based on number of transactions, average age of coins in transactions, and other factors.

Really comes down to using a "bitcoin days destroyed" metric.

Say two blocks were created at the exact same time, but one had 500LTC days destroyed, one had 200LTC days destroyed, so the 500LDD wins and becomes the next block. Not only does it reduce the likelihood of the miner that ignores transactions scenario, but it also effectively prevents a sustained 51% attack. Anyone attacking the network will need lots of old coins and must destroy those days each block they create. It will also probably be more difficult to pull off a finney double spend attack because a pre-mined block will likely have less days destroyed than a legitimate one.

As long as no one actually attacks the network, this change could be made over time and be completely compatible with old clients. If someone does attack the network, old clients would be fooled and a fork may be created. Additionally, if there is some large change that happens due to an attack or a network split or some other big event, instead of (stupidly) picking longest chain wins, the user will be notified that there are multiple chains, beware, find out what's going on, etc.

All you have to do is create some slightly complex algorithms to determine block acceptance rules and a smarter interface.

Sounds interesting. I can see how this makes it hard to do a sustained 51% attack. But it's still not hard to do a one time 51% attack. Let's say the attacker just needs to do 51% for about 10 blocks in order to do a double spend at the exchange. He just needs destroy enough coins to match the network for those 10 blocks.

Also, the attacker will likely just want to revert his one transaction to the exchange. He (or she ) can include all the other transactions that don't conflict. So in his own chain, he just sends the coins to himself instead of the exchange. And the days destroyed metric would be the same as the main chain.

[iddo]

http://litecoinforums.org/index.php?/topic/18-proof-of-stake-is-a-scam/#

3. By putting the voting power in the hands of high coin account holders you create greater possibility of attack.
4. It creates the opportunity for those with more coins to hire those with somewhat less to attack those who have much less.

How did you come up with these claims? Are they based on any technical analysis?
Did you read what I described at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96255.msg1062538#msg1062538 ?
The idea is simply to cement the blockchain with special checkpoint blocks, and in order to avoid conflict between competing attempts to cement the blockchain we use signatures by those who hold the large amounts of coins when cementing, because these signatures cannot be faked. Anyone who wishes to protect himself from double-spending attack can simply wait past a special checkpoint block. The high coin holders who already signed that special block cannot reverse their decision, because the distributed network respects their initial signature but wouldn't respect their subsequent conflicting signature. Therefore, I don't see how high coin holders can use this distributed proof-of-stake protocol to attack anything. Do you see any concrete attack?

[ripper234]

coblee, while you're here, it's a shame I haven't seen you respond to the OP (perhaps you voted, but I think a proper response is better).

[coblee]

coblee, while you're here, it's a shame I haven't seen you respond to the OP (perhaps you voted, but I think a proper response is better).

Sorry, I've talked to iddo about this previously on IRC. Hard to keep track of what I've said where and when.
Anyways, I'm looking into Proof of Stake. And I'm willing to experiment with Litecoin if I think proof of stake is a good solution to our 51% problem.

[ripper234]

coblee, while you're here, it's a shame I haven't seen you respond to the OP (perhaps you voted, but I think a proper response is better).

Sorry, I've talked to iddo about this previously on IRC. Hard to keep track of what I've said where and when.
Anyways, I'm looking into Proof of Stake. And I'm willing to experiment with Litecoin if I think proof of stake is a good solution to our 51% problem.

Good to know, thanks for sharing.

[tgsrge]

Sorry, I've talked to iddo about this previously on IRC. Hard to keep track of what I've said where and when.
Anyways, I'm looking into Proof of Stake. And I'm willing to experiment with Litecoin if I think proof of stake is a good solution to our 51% problem.

please dont do it. the majority of people clearly are against this, and i am sure they do not want to lose their investment either, but this is clearly not the solution the community is looking for.

[coblee]

Sorry, I've talked to iddo about this previously on IRC. Hard to keep track of what I've said where and when.
Anyways, I'm looking into Proof of Stake. And I'm willing to experiment with Litecoin if I think proof of stake is a good solution to our 51% problem.

please dont do it. the majority of people clearly are against this, and i am sure they do not want to lose their investment either, but this is clearly not the solution the community is looking for.

Are you basing this statement on this poll alone or have you talked to a lot of Litecoin users about this? I think a lot of people are against this because they actually don't understand the proof of stake proposal.  People think that with proof of stake, it means we give the control back to the wealthy and it's no different than what we currently have with fiat currencies. This is not true. (At least with Meni's implentation) Please read the wiki page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake

With the proof of stake proposal, blocks are found the same way as they are currently with hashrate. And every 100 block, there will be a signature block. People who have a lot at stake (a lot of coins) sign signature blocks. They want to do that so that they protect their investment. If there are more than one block for that signature block, then block with the most signatures weighted by coins wins. Think of it in terms of checkpointing. Right now, one person (me) decides which blocks are checkpointed. With proof of stake, people how have a lot at stake gets to checkpoint signature blocks. So they can't control which transactions are included when. Miners still control that. All that the stake holders can do is that if there are more than one fork (if there's an attacker trying to 51% the chain), they can sign the signature blocks to help make sure that the fork with no malicious attack is the "true" chain.

[coblee]

Sorry, I've talked to iddo about this previously on IRC. Hard to keep track of what I've said where and when.
Anyways, I'm looking into Proof of Stake. And I'm willing to experiment with Litecoin if I think proof of stake is a good solution to our 51% problem.

please dont do it. the majority of people clearly are against this, and i am sure they do not want to lose their investment either, but this is clearly not the solution the community is looking for.

Are you basing this statement on this poll alone or have you talked to a lot of Litecoin users about this? I think a lot of people are against this because they actually don't understand the proof of stake proposal.  People think that with proof of stake, it means we give the control back to the wealthy and it's no different than what we currently have with fiat currencies. This is not true. (At least with Meni's implentation) Please read the wiki page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake

With the proof of stake proposal, blocks are found the same way as they are currently with hashrate. And every 100 block, there will be a signature block. People who have a lot at stake (a lot of coins) sign signature blocks. They want to do that so that they protect their investment. If there are more than one block for that signature block, then block with the most signatures weighted by coins wins. Think of it in terms of checkpointing. Right now, one person (me) decides which blocks are checkpointed. With proof of stake, people how have a lot at stake gets to checkpoint signature blocks. So they can't control which transactions are included when. Miners still control that. All that the stake holders can do is that if there are more than one fork (if there's an attacker trying to 51% the chain), they can sign the signature blocks to help make sure that the fork with no malicious attack is the "true" chain.

In order for an attacker to succeed, they need 51% of the network AND they need to sign their signature blocks with more coins than those that sign the regular signature blocks. This way, it's much harder to attack the network, and the attacker has a lot more to lose if they attack the network.