Topic: [ANN] Bitcoin PoW Upgrade Initiative - page 8. (Read 42931 times)

Feathercoin and some other coins changed proof of work. And guess what? It's still Feathercoin.

Nice with CPU-only model. when do we start

Fair concern ... but if the algos match ETC and zcash and merged mined couldn't this concern be negated as we would be bringing in 2 different communities to help secure Bitcoin? ETC and zcash folks get along with Bitcoin Core folks as well and share many similar values and we could benefit from  their collaboration against those who wish to attack immutability.

True, someone aleready experimented a multi algo coin, i forgot the name of the coin, but it can't bring good results as each algorithm requires custom GPU tweaks, so if you change the algo at each new block, miners will leave. Annother sollution would be to define an ASIC safe algo and use it, i don't know much about Keccac, but if luke-jr believes that he can be amended to fit in bitcoin-core code, then we should go for this sollution.

Simply changing the PoW pre-emtively sets a bad precedent because it harms good miners and long term investors and it will harm cryptocurrency in general by showing how flippant the community can be. Most of the users and core developers I have spoken to do not support pre-emptively changing the PoW algo, thus this HF would have very few following it , and we would not have the moral high ground. Also , merely preparing and testing is a form of pre-emption because it is enough to scare the hell out of miners so they do not attack in the first place . We already see Jihan opening up and looking for a compromise by the mere mention of a PoW change. We should not let this stop the work we are doing here though.

Perhaps there can be another way though to prepare .... where we develop a full node wallet , like Knots, where it simultaneously mines the other PoW algo on a testnet, where during times of contention users can enable this secondary mining and have the users ready to quickly HF over when ready.

I agree that giving the user control is the way to go, any change of PoW only kicks the can down the road.
What do you think about addition of a database where every miner is defined by his bitcoin address and every set of miners is defined by an unique string.
Then any block that includes a transaction containing incorrect string (miner missing in set) is rejected by the network.
This way rogue miners will be penalized with lost fees and signaling of code changes can be based on amount of earned fees instead of hashrate.

I told you already: "preparing" sounds too much like a euphemism for "fucking around"


Quit the bandying of hashing algorithms around already, we need to pre-empt their attack, not sit around waiting for it to happen. If the lead-time to develop a Keccak ASIC is long enough, we need to get the ball rolling, as soon as is diligently possible.

Jihan and bitmain have given plenty of statements they intend to attack -

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/827904756525981697

https://archive.is/zjvh1



https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-market-needs-big-blocks-says-founder-btc-top-mining-pool/


We must prepare!

How about developing a ethash and Equihash PoW change so we can have ETC and Zcash merge mine bitcoin for much more security in case Zhuoer and other miners decide to spin up their GPU farms in an attack as they have claimed?  Having 2 different tested PoW algos would also have the benefit of being more difficult to create an asic for.  What do you guys think?

A long term ASIC-resistant solution would be where the PoW algo itself is dynamic:

The algo, consistent of base code blocks, will be compiled using (previous) block parameters.

So the exact algo will not be known beforehand, thus ASIC-resistant.

Does it make sense?

https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.fv0s8ll36

I suggest to change the name of new PoW BTC chain to Bitcon.
Then evil pissed-off miners and alnasty Ver-guy can't sue us for usage of Bitcoin(TM).
Let them fail in price of BTU on exchanges, when all honest believers in Core The Blessed will dump all free BTU sinful tokens.
So everyone will see then that it's their fault that Bitcoin(aka BTU) suffers so harsh fate.

As to new algo for PoW i think we must invite here Mike Hearn.
He is very cool cryptodude. He can manage to master it with small help of Peter Todd and Gavin Andresen.
Together we shall win.
And sinful BU will fall under our swords miserably !
 

I like the idea of a memory-hard (Equihash?) PoW.

Another option would be a PoW that's randomized every retargeting period to make it ASIC-proof. A block hash would be used as the source of randomness.

A change of PoW as a quickfix (to fool currently manufactured ASICS) without too much risk of bugs can be as follows:

Instead of checking for n zero bits, implement checking for n one bits instead.

If you are bold, you can have the sequence of leading bits to check to be dependant on the trailing bits of the previous block.

I doubt Bitmain will loose time and money to develop a keccac ASIC, they did an enormous investment in the new farm.

The emergency is to make bitcoin compliant with an algorythm change, if the miners still wants to force a protocl change, then he will simply be activated. It can be used a threatening option.

Do not forget that miners have to follow the community, not force it to adopt the changes they want, if the miners want a more suitable version of bitcoin to mine, let them create their own, i will stay with bitcoin-core as long as they respect the original ideology, because i respect people who do so, and i respect their ideology.

I don't care about bitcoin price, nor about his name, these can change as long as the heart remains the same.

And Carlton Banks is right.

I'm into this idea.


But let's not fuck about, forget the "only in an insurmountable emergency" rhetoric, the emergency is already here.

The longer it takes to build support, the quicker proven bad actors like Bitmain will just develop a Keccak ASIC, if they've not started doing that already. Keccak PoW coins have already been tested in the market, doing 101% rigorous QA is a trade-off against the actual attack we're trying to fend off.


And if it's more appropriate to change the name, The Blockchain Formerly Known as Bitcoin, whatever, then so be it. The brand is the flimsiest aspect of the current Bitcoin's value proposition, it's arguably a highly desirable public relations move, as it then forces the attackers into coming up with different reasons why they're now desperate to "save" everyone from the evil developers who switched from Bitcoin to neoBitcoin.

i.e. If BU saved everyone from the evil Bitcoin Core devs, what is the need to follow them around, constantly trying to hard-fork the new project?

Just adding my suggestion to counter the bot net fear mongers (aka altcoin gpu farm owners).

It would be a good idea to use a memory intensive pow, 6gb or more. This will eradicate the supposed threat from bot nets and allow for anyone with a CPU to mine with a simple ram upgrade. One CPU one vote. The bitcoin network can be secured once again by off the shelf parts.


I also think having this ready to go and on testnet as a counter to any malicious actors is great. Hopefully consensus can be reached but China pboc has already announced they want to make their own crypto coin we can not ignore the fact it is in their interest to try and undermine the open bitcoin network.

Edit: lol tonymidlee you beat me to it.

The more I think about it , the more concerned I become. Ver and Wu are a bunch of crazy guys , and we must be prepared for the worst.

So, I for one strongly support the change of PoW algo.

I personally suggest some RAM-intensive problem, say 8GB at lease,  basically you need a lot of memory, which makes the ASIC impossible.

Don't like the options.  Don't think there should be a hard-fork unless bitcoin is attacked by the china-coin chain.  If they want to fork-off, it is their right.  There's no reason to punish the miners that don't.  While I think a PoW needs to be investigated in the medium to long-term, I don't think it's necessary unless bitcoin is attacked.

This is my take on what would happen if BU forked and took 50% of the hashing power.  It would almost immediately see SegWit being enabled.  That's one thing I would love to see, and I suspect the UASF trigger could make this happen, because you could set the UASF trigger to be the middle of a difficulty epoch.

Let's assume we're talking about mid epoch.  The only thing we can really be sure of, yes?  The average?  For brevity, let's say 1000 blocks.

    1000 blocks : one week. 10 minute blocks.

    1000 blocks : 50% hashing rate. Two weeks. 20 minute blocks.

Three weeks til difficulty reset. Then, because the difficulty calc will include both parts of this (50% full-mine, 50% half-mine), the new lowered difficulty will be 2/3 of the difficulty it was before, with 50% of the previous hashing power. So ~15 minutes blocks.

Off the top of my head, I reckon that would be another three weeks instead of two. Then the difficulty resets to the available miners, and you're back to normal.

So :

Fork happens.

    Two weeks : 20 minute blocks

    ~Three weeks : ~15 minute blocks.

Then back to normal. Assuming miners don't see the potential for huge fees to be had by switching over. Cuz, you know, money. I might be out for a few days or so, but I reckon it'll be about this assuming 50%. Seeing as I think bitmain actually has 50% or so of hashing power, I think I'll be close to right.

It's almost like you want bitmain to fork off. Because blocks will be bigger, so more transactions, but the block creation time will be longer, so less blocks. So less miners creating blocks less often, each with more transactions. Net effect to miners? More total fees in larger blocks and more for each miner. Net effect to users? Same fees for larger blocks that are created less often.

For those five weeks, miners will have a field-day. 50% more profit? Good on em I say.

And if they do attack?  PoW change (to something like Keccak that already has an infrastructure?) and bonza, off we go again, no difficulty reset, and everyone wants to pile into keccak mining.  I really hope we have a real solution to miner centralization instead of kicking the can down the keccak road though.

So finally i had the answer to my question in the first page of the thread, i would like to ask for all the Advantages/Inconvenients who could result from an algorythm change,  i am aware of bitmain's attempt, and if ViaBtc is really a child of Bitmain, they will own more then 51% of the network.

If the algorythm change can really bring protection against this situation, then i am totally for algo change. yet i want to know what are the expected effects on the network, users, markets. I don't want bitcoin to turn to BU, both philosophies are different, and opposing at some points.

The recent events should really get every user to think about what would happen if bitmain achieves the 51%+ network hashrate, and to the announcements in the twitter account of Jihan Wu.

I also participated to an interesting survey with live results update : http://www.strawpoll.me/12569383/r

I invite you to do the same as it is related to this project.

This is decidedly not about luke-jr, or 'Core' (as some have suggested) or Jihan Wu.

Others were discussing change of POW at the same time as that github commit:

http://trilema.com/2016/the-necessary-prerequisite-for-any-change-to-the-bitcoin-protocol/

and they still are:

http://trilema.com/2016/the-necessary-prerequisite-for-any-change-to-the-bitcoin-protocol/#comment-121472