Topic: An Idea To Increase the Efficiency of Bitcoin Mining by an Order of Magnitude - page 2. (Read 509 times)

The similarity to which I was referring was simply that this proposed mining technique, like plants, would use the power of the sun without relying on electricity; the power of the sun would go directly into the proof-of-work computation without first converting the photons' energy into electrical power. Similarly, plants use sunlight directly in the process of photosynthesis to make energy within their cells, no external electricity required.

Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to create oxygen and energy in the form of sugar.

I dont see a similarity. But if that technology existed then
fine we used to have asics now we have something better
Miners still need to make a profit Bitcoin goes on what else can you use the technology for?




 Think of it like the trucking industry whenever gas prices go higher or new regulations get put in place to make things more expensive for the trucking industry guess who gets the price passed on to them?

Well, technically, the renewable energy source suggested in this idea is like no other. It's more akin to how plants use sunlight to grow; not many people would consider plants as a user of renewable energy (at least, not energy that could sensibly be made available to the grid). But, since you bring up the financial aspect, I think large miners may someday want to collaborate with a government agency to fund a $10 million R&D project if it could potentially save them an order of magnitude, or more, in efficiency, especially if their operational cost is an order of magnitude greater than their contribution to the project's funding. If Bitcoin becomes as accepted and ubiquitous as the internet is today, then what government wouldn't jump at the opportunity to make their mining operation more environmentally friendly than that of every other nation?


Personally, I think it's too early to predict whether or not the fees will cover the costs of the miners; 2140 is quite far into the future.

And just because it uses renewable energy doesn't mean it is something miners would do unless it made financial sense.


More likely is that transaction fees will  make up for the block subsidy.

Yes. Like any worthwhile endeavor, designing such a device would likely be extremely difficult.

What do you think about this as a potential solution to the apparent lack of incentive to continue mining after the block subsidy is no longer issued? This is not a topic that I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about, so please forgive me if I'm uninformed or simply being naive, but if there ever came a time when the Lightning Network was robust and stable, and when new channels were not created often, then the transaction rewards to the miners might not be sufficient to cover the cost of such a large power consumption (even if it is still only < 5% of the global power consumption). On the other hand, if all of Bitcoin's power consumption came directly from the sun's nuclear fusion reaction, without conversion to useable electricity, and if the optical computing devices were stable and durable, then nobody could possibly complain that Bitcoin was taking too much energy from the grid and maintaining the network may be as simple as infrequent maintenance of these durable devices.

I see, I see. So your logic gates will operate on light rays instead of wires with electricity going through them. Sounds plausible. You will still need a small traditional computer that constructs blocks and inputs them into the ASIC (or ASPIC). So an interface between 'traditional electronic computer' and 'ASPIC that needs photonic inputs'. After the inputs were set, the circuit will need to double-hash, check difficulty target, choose a new nonce and repeat.

Yes, the devices would need to be specially designed. But, the theory presented here is that the energy required to perform the computation would come directly from the sun without first converting it into electricity. The idea is that the photons that come directly from the sun would be the exact same photons that are used in the logic gates of this novel device, with no conversion to electricity.


Technically, the idea suggested here is not a computer that is retrieving electric energy from the grid in a different way, but rather a computer that is powered primarily and directly by a naturally occurring fusion reaction in space.

Yes, indeed, solar power is already being used, but not in the way that is being suggested here. Currently, the energy of the photons from the sun is being absorbed by the PV panels and converted into electricity, which is then used to provide power to traditional electronic computers which perform computation by accelerating electrons within the device's transistors. What's suggested here is that all those photons from the sun be used directly within the optical logic gates of a novel device that is specifically designed for this purpose. It is apparent that solar radiation can be used to create coherent light (laser). From wikipedia:


Additionally,


So, if computation can be performed by a source of coherent light, and coherent light can be produced by solar radiation without an artificial energy source... then doesn't that imply that it's theoretically possible to perform computation with zero operational cost? Obviously it hasn't been economical to mine Bitcoin this way because there is no such optical computing device in existence that is specifically designed to perform SHA256 hash function, let alone one that can perform the hash function from a single source of coherent light. But... it seems as if photonic integrated circuits are now starting to become economical for certain niche applications.

I'm not suggesting that this actionable at the moment. But, perhaps in 20 years, maybe something like this could be the pursuit of a joint venture between some government agency, polytechnic universities, and a large Bitcoin mining corporation.

Interesting idea, on high level (not sure if the science behind it is sound), but you forget that it won't be completely 'performed by the sun'. You will still have devices converting all this energy, radiation etc. into valid blocks. These would be the new ASICs that will always get faster (better use of sun energy / efficiency), smaller etc. and then I'm not sure what issue will actually be fixed. Because there will still be electric waste, race to produce more and better miners and so on.

If it's just about reducing power draw from the grid (that's not more efficient - just a different way to retrieve electric energy), that can be done today through solar cells.

Also, fwiw the nonce's randomness isn't really so important that it makes sense to use photons or similar, you could even just count up from 0.

Solar power is already being used for bitcoin mining. So yeah...anything like that sounds like it could be possible. needs to make financial sense for the miner tho.

Meta—It was suggested that this post be forwarded to this bitcointalk forum. It was originally posted on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMining/comments/sab5yk/an_idea_that_could_increase_the_efficiency_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3. Obviously this is not a technique that could be developed by anybody except the most highly specialized scientists and engineers, but if the idea has merit then I think development should begin as soon as possible. So, if you know anybody in the R&D department of a large Bitcoin mining corporation, please forward it to him/her.

Tl;dr—Instead of using a local energy source (local work) to accelerate and manipulate charged particles (electrons, which are not massless) in intelligently designed devices to perform logical operations (compute proof), why not use intrinsically energetic and intrinsically massless particles (photons) that originate from the largest source of energy (work) in the solar system (the sun) as a source of coherence (for logical operations), and incoherence (if its needed for random guessing), to compute the proof of the next block? All that is needed is a novel, intelligent design.

There is already a large amount of research being performed in the development of Application Specific Photonic Integrated Circuits (ASPICs) and Programmable Integrated Photonics (PIPs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_computing. To my knowledge, these devices can be used to perform basic logical operations, and I don’t know of any reason why they couldn’t be designed to perform the SHA256 hash function.

Due to the fact that these devices are intended to be deployed in locations where they are needed, ASPICs are currently being developed to use locally-powered lasers as a source of coherence. However, it is well-known that Bitcoin mining is location agnostic. As it turns out, lasers can be produced from solar radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar-pumped_laser.

Of course, Bitcoin’s Proof of Work algorithm includes randomly guessing a nonce. As it turns out, random number generation can be performed using either a coherent or incoherent source. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.00224.pdf, https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.08743.

Therefore, is it, or is it not, conceivable that the work that is required to prove the sequential ordering of Bitcoin transactions can be performed by the sun? And, is it, or is it not, also conceivable that the proof of that order can be computed by the radiance of the sun?

Therefore, isn't it conceivable that the sole source of all new bitcoins could, someday, be the sun? Doesn't this also solve the oft-cited problem of Bitcoin's security post-2140?

Edit: See this video, for example, of a professor from the Netherlands giving a talk about optical computing. https://youtu.be/UqeH7ozVOpQ. The video is more than an hour long, but the summary is that optical computers have been following Moore’s Law during the past couple of decades the same way electronics followed Moore’s Law in the latter half of the 1900s. They are now making optical computing chips as neural nets in AI, and these chips are much more efficient than their traditional electronic counterparts.

Edit 2: One of the companies that is mentioned in this professor’s talk is LightElligence. https://www.lightelligence.ai/technology. “By processing information with light, our chips offer ultra high speed, low latency, and low power consumption representing orders of magnitude improvement over traditional electronic architectures.” This particular company specializes in optical chips designed for AI applications. If Bitcoin continues to grow, I expect there will become a greater incentive for companies to develop similar ASPICs designed for SHA256 hash.