Topic: Changes to the Alogrithm Prohibited or disputed? - page 3. (Read 5293 times)

Whichever is better, PoW or PoS is fine with me, there is no bad news for me here, you're wrong.
You're right that as long as it's robust, efficient and secure, that's all that matters.
Please proceed to discuss with other members as we have found consensus )

Anything is possible in theory, but in reality Bitcoin will stay as is, mark my words. Thus this discussion is pointless. You can see that it's pointless from very few people participating, all the early adopters are happy with the status quo and the rest have blind faith in them, end of story.

And you're wrong, there is no bad news for me here.

Bitcoin consensus is controlled by miners, not full nodes.

So, the real threat to Bitcoin is not on the technical site, but on the PR-site. If that would be true, shouldn't we fear more about people bad-mouthing bitcoin? Oh wait, they already do and Bitcoin is still alive, although people believe that the CEO of bitcoin if a magical tux or that bitcoin was already hacked, etc.

So, the real threat to Bitcoin is not on the technical site, but on the PR-site. If that would be true, shouldn't we fear more about people bad-mouthing bitcoin? Oh wait, they already do and Bitcoin is still alive, although people believe that the CEO of bitcoin if a magical tux or that bitcoin was already hacked, etc.

No, full nodes have no say in what gets into blockchain and what doesn't, miners do.
My arguments are cast from the position of the end game scenario for each system.

I have to read Vitalik's papers to have an opinion, so this will have to wait a bit, but I would advocate against changing current PoW systems into something else simply because getting rid of PoW would not let it compete with other models on the common ground.

Within Bitcoin, full nodes, not miners have ultimate control. Miners have no ability to take or destroy Satoshi's 1 million Bitcoins. An attack can freeze Satoshi from spending his coins temporarily at the cost of destroying the trust of Bitcoin altogether and forcing a fork.

Additionally, you keep on focusing on comparing Bitcoins PoW with simple PoS implementations like Nxt which is outside this conversation. I am not advocating PoS, as a viable alternative.

Perhaps you should read Vitalik's paper to get a better understanding of what this conversation is about.

Any successful attack would erode confidence in the network and would cause people to not want to hold/use any coins that are backed by the network. As a result the value of such coin would decline (like to nearly zero).

A likely attack would involve spending the same coins multiple times, resulting in all of the people who thought they received money to actually not receive money.

Oh no, you don't understand control then.
If current controllers decide to freeze Satoshi's addresses then there is nothing he do about it, other than attempt to challenge the controllers, maybe even at a loss. So you need to keep an eye on mining if you are rich, but you don't get control automatically. PoW ensures competition for control.

Non Sequitor. PoS can easily be designed where the largest stakeholders don't maintain a permanent share of control through Demurrage or a PoSV scheme. Otherwise, PoW within Bitcoin has the exact same problem. Satoshi doesn't need to buy an ASIC to maintain control of his 1 million coins.

My criticism was directed towards current PoS implementations, where it's not the reward scheme that bothered me, but the fact that stake maintains permanent share of control no matter what, that's the recipe for stagnation and eventual collapse of the system. If you like the words "economic stimulus" you might hear a lot of that in the end game scenario of current PoS implementations.

People use the term "attack the network" a lot. Could you give examples, of what can really happen? What do these attacks look like? What damage can these "attacks" really do?

"Consensus" for Bitcoin means the people behind enough mining pools to control > 50% of the hash rate. What end users want is irrelevant.

If that is what he is suggesting than it is odd statement to make as it is trivial to design an algorithm which forces or encourages decentralization, even with PoS. What is tricky is combining the right security and incentives as well into the consensus mechanism.

I.E.. having Bitcoin incorporate a hybrid PoW /TaPoS algo where either some of the transaction fees or mining rewards aren paid to full nodes/or p2p miners would both encourage decentralization and make Bitcoin more robust.

I already have some concerns with Vitalik's proposal and am adding more concerns as I review it further but would like to hear more specific concerns rather than knee jerk reactions and generalizations(not coming from you BTW)

It is indeed possible that PoW is superior to everything else and Satoshi got it right the first time. What I find interesting and concerning is that many people aren't even willing to test or study new consensus designs. I have a long history of attacking PoS and many alts in general and am making a very reasonable suggestion of entertaining an idea and studying Vitalik's proposals followed by a very conservative approach of incorporating this algo into an alt or sidechain so it can be tested over the course of years before even thinking about discussing a hardfork and this is the reaction I get.

There appears to be a sense of protectionism, reverence and faith towards Satoshi's original code, which is silly because most of his code has already been thrown out or changed.

Yes, but Bitcoin will be permanently damaged by by removing the trust we have in the system from such an attack.


Again you seem to be ignoring that a disgruntled employee or outside hacker attacking a large mining pool without a large amount of resources can attack the network.

You seem to be focusing on PoS as well which isn't exactly what the paper is talking about.

I get the impression that you don't understand what the word "consensus" means or how difficult it is to change it once it is established.