Topic: Core needs to prepare a GPU only PoW - Spondoolies CEO Guy Corem (Read 3446 times)

Ah thanks! It was something like that. I'll keep an eye open, and see if it turns up again, It was reported that some miners were scanning activity to detect a vulnerability, and had succeeded a couple of times. Presumably miners will be aware of it, and take suitable precautions. Sorry to be a bit vague, but once again I'm out of my depth (but learning to swim).

If you mean by partially completed block a one that has not been broadcast,
then that is impossible.. and no miner would broadcast a block that fails to meet
the PoW target.

There is a scenario where a miner can take a valid, broadcast block, stuff in it
some new transactions and start to mine on it, and if he succeeds, he effectively
"hijacks" the reward plus some extra fees. I don't know if that actually occurs, but it could
be seen as a variant of selfish mining (where a miner finds a valid block but does not
broadcast it, instead starts to mine on top of it)

I'm trying to find the discussion about this. It seems that a couple of miners are monitoring activity to see if a block has been partially completed, and then jumping in with a partially populated block to grab the reward before the finder can complete. Now I'm posting this from memory, and I don't understand the stages that miners go through to prove their blocks. Also, I gather that it's only careless miners that leave themselves open to this. If anybody recvognises this description, I'd be grateful for some keywords, so that I can find the article again.

I'm struggling to find this. I wonder if it was something in the discussions about "selfish mining"?

What block hijacking? If a miner changes something in a block,
he will have to compute a new proof-of-work.

A problem?... It's a downright infestation of bankster trolls up over here. Some have even been lying in hibernation for near half a decade, just shows you how super cereal our opponents are... A quick way to identify them is if they talk about "native scaling", or "outright suicide" if you have your head screwed on straight.

A PoW change may be necessary to shed the fleas for good, via decentralization and censorship resistance.

well, I'm not suggesting I actually want you to change it to something else, but just to give it some more thought. I like what you said about multiplicity of voices, and it's more than welcome to get new people coming to bitcointalk, so don't be offended if I come across a bit didactic. But as I said, and as it seems you already know, we have a problem with very insidious bankster trolls over here.

Well my intention wsas to nail my flag to SigWit. I really believe that it is essential to move Bitcoin into a mature phase (and some other changes of course). I know I'm not a significant voice, but multiply my voice a few hundred times, and it might have an effect. What would you suggest as a better sig?

I know.


No, I would disagree with your contention that it's "not quite the same"; the operative principles are the same. That's why you drew the analogy to begin with, and that's why I suggested an extension of your metaphor to encompass the full range of factors that affect propensity to sell in either market.


That's cool, but can you see how your sig actually undermines confidence unnecessarily? If people took you seriously they might assume:

• There is a serious risk that the blockchain will fork (there is only a small risk of that)
• 2MB hardfork is in serious contention amongst the devs (it isn't)

There is an unfortunate mob of forum hounds who spend all day, every day, spreading misinformation like the 2 bullet points above. The intention is to do a "Billie Jean": the lie becomes the truth, because everyone is so used to hearing the lie. Watch out for those people, and their rhetoric.

It was news a few days ago that a N. Dakota well had to pay for its oil to be removed. It's low grade, and the transport + refining costs made it uneconomic to process. I agree that it's not quite the same. A Bitcoin is a Bitcoin (ignoring ageing and unspent premiums), so there is no significant variation in price between coins.

re. my sig. I'll stay with Bitcoin whatever happens, but I support SegWit, and my sig is a puny attempt to support the true Bitcoin camp, rather thsn the usurpers.

Except that economics would have to be the only consideration in order for that to happen: it isn't (in either North Dakota fracking wells or Bitcoin mines). That is, to some extent, why what you're talking about isn't happening either.


What fork? There is no fork, and the way things are going, there isn't likely to be a fork any more significant than the orphaned blocks we see every day.


But you seem to be basing alot of your present-day planning around an assumption that the blockchain will fork; to wit, your signature. You have a few misconceptions yourself about the overall picture, I would argue.

I read most of this thread, and it seems to me that there are a few misconceptions. It is not the miners who determine the price, but the consumers. These are investors, speculators, traders and people who want a convenient money transfer system. If the price drops below the cost of mining, then miners start to sell up. One example of this is the oil industry at the moment. A fracking well in N. Dakota is having to pay to dispose of its oil - they won't be in business for long.

What will happen to Bitcoin? Well imho, it depends on the direction that the full nodes take. There is no point in mining blocks that will get chucked out by the consumers. Also, I haven't seen any comments on the block hijacking that seems to go on between miners. If a block is rejected by the nodes, will another miner be able to grab it, re-populate it, and submite to the core chain? I don't know enough about mining to know if that is feasible or likely, but it does seem as if opportunistic miners could benefit by staying with the core fork.

You are forgetting that nobody will be interested in doing "51% takeover" on worthless coin, just like today big farms or pools are not pointing their hashing power to mine sha alt coins, taking over their networks and double spend worthless coins.

They have invested a lot of capital into mining BTC,  time is money for them.  If they all agree on mining "classic coin" they will not waste time with "core coin".

If you have more miners mining 'classic' flavour, the longest chain wins.  Period.

The worst part of this whole saga is that "end users" will decide how to solve technical issues.  This does not bode well for long-term viability of bitcoin.

Miners, retailers, end users will all lose if that hard fork happens.  This hard fork is really dangerous now, especially when bitcoin community is already split BEFORE the hard fork.  So yes, I agree, we'll have two coins for a while.

Such process concerns belong at BitcoinObituaries.com.

Nothing harms Bitcoin, which always has and always will run on drama.

It's antifragile, so adversity like "divisiveness" only makes it stronger.

Divisiveness won't do anything but harm Bitcoin.

xpost:

A new challenger emerges.

TLDR: it's Wild Keccak modified to be even more ASIC resistant.  I'm calling it "Feral Keccak."   

There's no trick question here or lurking 'gotcha' waiting to pounce on you bro.  I only asked you to spell it out because your highly-informed expert opinion is one of the most valuable to me.

I'm not sure you are getting what I'm saying, because you reference "hundreds of millions of dollars worth of mining hardware" that, in a contentious fork war, would have stopped being an asset to Bitcoin and started being a liability (or at least may have entered a grey zone where sha256's value is unclear and possibly zero or negative).

Catastrophic consensus failure would entail that Bitcoin must "start again from scratch."  And facing headwinds of terrible publicity to boot.

In a DEFCON ZERO situation, by switching PoW we would have little to lose (despite the intrinsic chaos involved in moving from one stable state to another), much to gain by defending the blockchain from adversity, and maybe even mitigate the ASIC centralization problem in the process.

Perhaps where we disagree is on the impact of increasing block size on Bitcoin's antifragile aspect.  IMO antifragility is an emergent property of the diverse/diffuse/defensible/resilient network, and anything over 1MB tx + SEGWIT blocks are too risky.

I know that's a controversial opinion, but being out on the fringe isn't so bad when I am in good company with the 'let's consider DECREASING max_block' crowd, to whom I am sympathetic in that I'd rather set max_block at too low a value than too high.

Thanks for stepping into the endless debate to LMK your POV.  I think I got it now, so you can go back to making Bitcoin more awesome!   

Well, this is the third time in this thread that you've made a very arrogant assertion of fact, in the actual expectation that the audience simply accept what you say due to your erudition. Not the case. It's possible you have a really good reason to make your statements, but no-one except you knows what it is. You have "spelled out" precisely zero.

Are you trying to tell me that a fork to Keccak (tomorrow) would be as disruptive as a fork to 1TB blocks, tomorrow? C'mon Con. Your superiority can't confer you the luxury of making generalised statements like that, and expecting to project a more specific meaning onto them, can it?

Changing the proof of work that secures the system from hundreds of millions of dollars worth of mining hardware (whatever you make of the degree of centralisation) for a multi-billion dollar economy into one that will start again from scratch in the hands of a few thousands of dollars worth of GPUs at peoples' homes is as disruptive as increasing the block size?

It's a shame that you make me spell it out like this, clearly baiting me. I get sick of these discussions very quickly for that exact reason. I'll go hide in my mining corner while everyone continues their endless debate on that note.

Well of course changing PoW in anything but the most dire circumstances would be "absurd."  But that is the SHTF scenario a ToominCoin 51% attack forces us to confront.  So let's hope for the best while we plan for the worst.

Are you saying sha256 is a 'less arbitrary/more intrinsic' feature of Bitcoin than 1MB blocks?

I have no problem sacrificing sha256 in order to preserve 1MB blocks, unless you can demonstrate PoW change is more of a threat to our diverse/diffuse/defensible/resilient network than >1MB (2MB or whatever) blocks.

It seems you have reached the opposite conclusion, and say that 1MB blocks may be sacrificed in order to preserve sha256.

Is that correct, or was something lost in my translation from the Australian?   

Characterizing Guy Corem & Co's POV as "absurd" only tells the rest of us you disagree with it, while leaving your audience wondering what your exact points of contention are.

That's cute, equating limiting to 1MB blocks to being married to sha256. Don't try and take my one line comment as the opener for something completely unrelated on a completely different scale. This thread is about changing PoW, and I said clearly contentious is not the same as absurd.