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Topic: [ANN][YAC] YACoin ongoing development - page 101. (Read 379983 times)

sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
One does not simply mine Bitcoins
January 02, 2014, 01:16:24 PM
Can't we just slow down PoW block target rate, so only a couple are mined between PoS blocks.
That wouldn't stop anyone from orphaning all the PoW blocks at the tip of the chain.

Yeah, but orphaning a single PoS block with 2 PoW blocks actually costs you something (you have to be lucky or have majority of the network's hashrate).

It seems that there's currently a pool in a position to make it happen on a frequent ongoing basis.  Orphaning a PoS block with 2 PoW blocks doesn't really cost you anything extra if you're already PoW mining anyway and happen to hit 2 consecutive PoW blocks.

Nope, the rogue PoW miner has to decide in advance to invest his work in what will most probably be an invalid chain. So when he fails to execute his attack, he effectively lost his potential profit from playing nice.
OTOH, with PoS you can safely and with absolutely no additional cost mine on all the forks.

OTOH you can generate PoS blocks essentially for free.

Well, you do have to hold YAC, and hold it long enough, so I'm not sure it's correct to say minting PoS blocks is free.
And what's gonna stop me from purchasing the minimum amount of YAC needed for some type of attack, assign them into multiple "packets" of coins that have different PoS maturity time so I get 1 PoS block every X hours/days/whatever? Wink
(and trust me, the amount of YAC is small enough for anyone to buy)

Also, the gain from orphaning PoS is ZERO.

The gain in the miner's held YAC from orphaning PoS blocks is zero, but there may be other motivations other than an immediate gain in YAC to orphan PoS blocks.
I fail to see any possible motivation to do so whatsoever.
sr. member
Activity: 347
Merit: 250
January 02, 2014, 01:11:09 PM
Yeah, but orphaning a single PoS block with 2 PoW blocks actually costs you something (you have to be lucky or have majority of the network's hashrate).

It seems that there's currently a pool in a position to make it happen on a frequent ongoing basis.  Orphaning a PoS block with 2 PoW blocks doesn't really cost you anything extra if you're already PoW mining anyway and happen to hit 2 consecutive PoW blocks.


OTOH you can generate PoS blocks essentially for free.

Well, you do have to hold YAC, and hold it long enough, so I'm not sure it's correct to say minting PoS blocks is free.


Also, the gain from orphaning PoS is ZERO.

The gain in the miner's held YAC from orphaning PoS blocks is zero, but there may be other motivations other than an immediate gain in YAC to orphan PoS blocks.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
The cryptocoin watcher
January 02, 2014, 01:09:36 PM
Can't we just slow down PoW block target rate, so only a couple are mined between PoS blocks.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
One does not simply mine Bitcoins
January 02, 2014, 12:15:49 PM
I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.
Matching PoS and POW trust has enourmous consequences so we have to be very carefull here.

The biggest problem is that it'd be possible for PoW-miners to turn YAC into PoW-only!
Once we are there we couldn't get back without a hardfork and it's unlikely we could possibly agree on such by then. PoW is far more important than just distributing initial coins.(I've written someting about that on yacointalk, that's also why YAC is special)

I belive the current problem of one PoS-block overwriting more than 6blocks is far less than the problems we would get when we have no more or just a bit PoS. PoS as whole has to be much stronger than PoW so that all miners couldn't agree on "just ophraning all PoS" to make more profit. A PoW-block will always have more new coins than the average PoS block so most PoS would disapear and the rest 'd be centralized.

PoS mining is truly decentralized so we should try to keep it as important as possible.
I can't think of a technical way to prevent doublespends AND miners from fighting PoS.
What we could do is increase PoW-rewards for miners that mine on top of a PoS block.

It must be either chaintrust PoS>>>PoW or new coins generated in ...-PoW-PoW-PoS-PoW >...-PoW-PoW-PoW-PoW. We all know that PoS>PoW is problematic so we should go with the 2nd.

I'm glad you've got something in mind, I've spent a couple hours trying to find out what the fix novacoin implemented was, even digging through the code, but I can't isolate a single POS fix - there have been quite a few tweaks to POS in Novacoin.  I can see that  they currently have adjacent POS blocks, so what did they do to address this issue?
AFAIK Novacoin "fixed" this by having a centralized checkpointing system in-place. Essentially one person controlling the whole network (deciding on the valid chain), which defeats the decentralized nature of cryptocoins.
A centralized checkpoint for the next few months would be far better than loosing or having less PoS in the future than we have now.

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?
I think that's reasonable.

Yeah, but orphaning a single PoS block with 2 PoW blocks actually costs you something (you have to be lucky or have majority of the network's hashrate). OTOH you can generate PoS blocks essentially for free.

Also, the gain from orphaning PoS is ZERO.
sr. member
Activity: 280
Merit: 250
January 02, 2014, 12:11:59 PM
I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.
Matching PoS and POW trust has enourmous consequences so we have to be very carefull here.

The biggest problem is that it'd be possible for PoW-miners to turn YAC into PoW-only!
Once we are there we couldn't get back without a hardfork and it's unlikely we could possibly agree on such by then. PoW is far more important than just distributing initial coins.
and unable to secure the network later on since f.e. it can be centralized.
(I've written someting about that on yacointalk, that's also why YAC is special)

I belive the current problem of one PoS-block overwriting more than 6blocks is far less than the problems we would get when we have no more or just a bit PoS. PoS as whole has to be much stronger than PoW so that all miners couldn't agree on "just ophraning all PoS" to make more profit. A PoW-block will always have more new coins than the average PoS block so most PoS would disapear and the rest 'd be centralized.

PoS mining is truly decentralized so we should try to keep it as important as possible.
I can't think of a technical way to prevent doublespends AND miners from fighting PoS.
What we could do is increase PoW-rewards for miners that mine on top of a PoS block.

It must be either chaintrust PoS>>>PoW or new coins generated in ...-PoW-PoW-PoS-PoW >...-PoW-PoW-PoW-PoW. We all know that PoS>PoW is problematic so we should go with the 2nd.

I'm glad you've got something in mind, I've spent a couple hours trying to find out what the fix novacoin implemented was, even digging through the code, but I can't isolate a single POS fix - there have been quite a few tweaks to POS in Novacoin.  I can see that  they currently have adjacent POS blocks, so what did they do to address this issue?
AFAIK Novacoin "fixed" this by having a centralized checkpointing system in-place. Essentially one person controlling the whole network (deciding on the valid chain), which defeats the decentralized nature of cryptocoins.
A centralized checkpoint for the next few months would be far better than loosing or having less PoS in the future than we have now.

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?
I think that's reasonable.

EDIT: Sorry smtg wrong
EDIT2: Added stuff in RED.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
One does not simply mine Bitcoins
January 02, 2014, 12:09:40 PM
I'm glad you've got something in mind, I've spent a couple hours trying to find out what the fix novacoin implemented was, even digging through the code, but I can't isolate a single POS fix - there have been quite a few tweaks to POS in Novacoin.  I can see that  they currently have adjacent POS blocks, so what did they do to address this issue?
AFAIK Novacoin "fixed" this by having a centralized checkpointing system in-place. Essentially one person controlling the whole network (deciding on the valid chain), which defeats the decentralized nature of cryptocoins.
member
Activity: 118
Merit: 10
January 02, 2014, 11:54:11 AM
I can not imagine YAC having any distinct advantage over other prominent coins without POW far in the future (at least a couple of years).
And if Yac is to succeed N factor will be the key driving force for superior POW block distribution.
Remove that and you are left with just a bunch of coins in a few hands and have initiated euthanization of a plain clone.

I am ok with Feb 1st or even sooner since I believe Yac has a lot of attention right now due to exchange problems.
hero member
Activity: 693
Merit: 500
January 02, 2014, 11:30:06 AM
I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.

PoW miner forking/orphaning still requires a substantial percentage of network hashing power.

However, this way we're essentially removing the intended purpose of PoS (checkpointing). I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

I think I'll have the implementation ready soon (in 1 day methinks).

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?

Seeing the reversals we've had lately, I don't want to wait too long, but I also don't want to see a knee-jerk reaction.  February 1 would be my vote.  I think once it's done, we'll simply need to make sure we contact the pool operators and verify they've updated the pool wallets well in advance.  This means reaching out to feeleep, obermench, and digger (the biggest pools I know of), and the exchanges (cryptsy and bter.com - are there any others?).

I'm glad you've got something in mind, I've spent a couple hours trying to find out what the fix novacoin implemented was, even digging through the code, but I can't isolate a single POS fix - there have been quite a few tweaks to POS in Novacoin.  I can see that  they currently have adjacent POS blocks, so what did they do to address this issue?
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
One does not simply mine Bitcoins
January 02, 2014, 10:57:08 AM
I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

This should be weighed carefully. PoW is a bit hard to rely on long term due to not knowing how technology is going to affect it, not knowing if someone will plug in massive hashpower out of the blue someday, not knowing how future energy costs will factor in, etc.

It's not relying on PoW per se. In the future PoW can be disabled completely and the "no 2 consecutive PoS blocks" rule removed (block trust value would not matter then anyway, and the same goes for PoS checkpointing).
However, this is a no-go short term, as we're still pretty much in the initial coin distribution stage and there's too few PoS blocks to be able to rely on it (and remember we need a huge amount of different people participating in PoS, not just 2-3 big hoarders).

Also, remember the increasing computing and memory requirements of scrypt-chacha. If/when we see a massive break-through in hashing hardware, Bitcoin will be the first to go, not Yacoin. Wink
If we happen to see scrypt-chacha ASICs, the difficulty will adjust MUCH faster than in Bitcoin ('cause we do a retarget after each single block, compared to Bitcoin's 2016). In case of huge energy costs and the network hashrate experiencing a massive drop - YAC can also adjust fairly quickly (just look at the Nfactor change events).

As far as quantum computing goes - we'll have much greater problems than cryptocurrencies going bust then.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
The cryptocoin watcher
January 02, 2014, 10:40:09 AM
I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

This should be weighed carefully. PoW is a bit hard to rely on long term due to not knowing how technology is going to affect it, not knowing if someone will plug in massive hashpower out of the blue someday, not knowing how future energy costs will factor in, etc.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
One does not simply mine Bitcoins
January 02, 2014, 09:59:56 AM
I've got a "workaround" for this issue. Still, it requires a hard-fork.
It's quite simple, just disallow two consecutive PoS blocks and lower PoS trust to match PoW (1).
There's no way PoS-only miner can orphan a single block.

PoW miner forking/orphaning still requires a substantial percentage of network hashing power.

However, this way we're essentially removing the intended purpose of PoS (checkpointing). I was unable to come up with any suitable solution that also preserved PoS checkpointing functionality - IMO it just can't be done (the right way) with current hybrid PoW/PoS design. In PoS-only system - no problem. But with hybrid chain it's just one hell of a mess.

I think I'll have the implementation ready soon (in 1 day methinks).

The only issue is deciding on the blockchain fork date. It should be fairly soon, but not too soon as we should give a majority of the network time to upgrade. How about 1 month?
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
The cryptocoin watcher
January 02, 2014, 09:40:23 AM
PoW was always meant to "break". I'd say we speed it up and just disable it/zero the coin output from PoW. With the current altcoin bloat it's worthless anyway for coin distribution since only the few ones with so much processing they have to diversify will get most of PoW coins anyway. Regular trade is way more efficient at this point at distribution, while PoW is just increasing the inequality.
hero member
Activity: 637
Merit: 500
January 02, 2014, 06:52:23 AM
The wallet has serious problems with ORPHANED blocks.
I tried to synch a wallet from the start, it took more than 10 hours to synch until December (I quitted then), and the debug log showed all the problems with the orphaned blocks (and forks). I would say right now it is unusable.
member
Activity: 106
Merit: 10
January 02, 2014, 02:30:43 AM
yacexplorer.tk has been hacked...
You get redirrected to some ad sites.

And regarding this:
How it can be that blocks from 357620 to 357627 are POS blocks only?
Why there's no one POW-block during 3 hours?

... here could be an explanation:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,473.0.html
Not hacked, just the .tk registrar shenanigans again...
You can use this in the meantime: http://ec2-54-247-145-77.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (direct hostname).
I should prolly get a proper domain for it.

Hi, i redirected http://explorer.yacointalk.com to your explorer until you get a domain ^^,
hero member
Activity: 802
Merit: 1003
GCVMMWH
January 01, 2014, 04:36:06 PM
Unless someone comes up with a better idea soon, I think we should implement the Novacoin solution to fix this problem.

There are .5 BTC and 10,000 YAC's in the dev fund for whoever can implement this fix asap. 
member
Activity: 118
Merit: 10
January 01, 2014, 04:16:49 PM
You will find more answers on yacointalk:
http://yacointalk.com/forum/index.php?action=recent
member
Activity: 115
Merit: 10
January 01, 2014, 02:12:39 PM
Their wallet must be down, it seems it's automatic.

They, Cryptsy, were down the other day too, they were down for like two days. I was worried that there was a fork on the block but that might not have been the case. They are down again, but why do you think it is automatic? Just the way that the server's in Cryptsy are set up, or not setup properly?
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
The cryptocoin watcher
January 01, 2014, 08:04:41 AM
Their wallet must be down, it seems it's automatic.
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