Topic: Crazy pow power reduction idea - page 2. (Read 492 times)

Think manhattan project energy..
No, not to make 50btc or even 5,000,000 BTC.. Their goal would be to DESTROY BTC..


Yes, miners would eventually get back to the limits of their efficiency in their competition..
If BTC was running at 800exa rather than 160exa, it would be incredibly more secure against government attack, would it not?

Yes mining decentralization of the hash is key to its security, but the amount of hash in the hands of the “good guys” matters too..
The more hash running on Bitcoin in decentralized hands of good guys, the more secure it is against government attacks..


I don’t know..
Do you have any ideas?

No, it will not.
Power consumption is capped by the reward, miners will never be able to spend more on energy than what they make from the reward.
Even if your plan would work things will simply change, instead of constantly deploying 160Exahash of hashing power miners will afford to deploy 800Exa for 2 minutes, in the end consuming the same amount of power and getting the same reward.

This is just like fishing quotas, when you restricted the number of days boats could fish there was simply a rush in those days and it ended with more boats getting launched ending with a bigger catch per day overall so the effect was zero, thus it changed to quotas. But unfortunately, there will be no way of doing this with bitcoin as there is no central authority issuing permits to mine.

But that energy is not available.  It would cost a blackout in significant share the country. And the united states is not a dictatorship, but a democracy.

First of all, nobody would allow such a blackout for a day in a democracy which would have very severe consequences(people dying in hospitals for example and billions of usd lost in the economy, )

Even if that could happen, There are responsibilities,  accountability  and other tools which certainly would be used against someone who was responsible for a blackout like that. Certainly many powerful people would he removed from the administration . For what, 50btc?

How's that true? What is the power consumption required to mine that it is reduced? You, yourself, stated it that miners will be able to spend that energy, they'd spend within these 8 minutes, on more ASICS.

But if they spent more money on ASICS, then the attacker(s) could do it too. It wouldn't change anything with the network's security.

I'm trying to understand if you do understand how mining works. I like that you proposed this idea and I hope we continue this discussion further, in order to convince some people, but the answer to this question is:  It depends. If the mining income is greater than the electricity expenses, then mining is more profitable. As long as mining is profitable, more miners will join to earn money out of this procedure. As long as more miners work on extending the chain, the difficulty increases, which makes mining less profitable. So it wouldn't increase the profitability of mining, neither paying less for electricity.

If the old inefficient miners "skyrocketed", then what about the new efficient ones? Note that this could be true only for the short term. On the long term, they'd stop being profitable, as they're now.

You shouldn't be confusing hashrate with security. The more the hashrate doesn't mean the more the security. The security of the network is assured by the hashrate's distribution. If the hashrate is 100x than now, but 70% of it is owned by 4-5 pools, then it isn't as secure as it was back when you could mine a block with your CPU. And that's because the hashrate was distributed. The more the hashrate means that it's more difficult for an outward to perform 51% attack, without going through a pool.

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Do you know what's the problem with mining? Man's greed. You shouldn't be looking how to reduce the power consumption, with a different PoW mechanism. This is a problem that existed long ago, before bitcoin. To me, when greed is uncontrolled and it's damaging, then that's a big issue. Fortunately, greed with bitcoin mining isn't uncontrolled. Some governments can illegalize the use of ASICS, which would help with the power reduction and wouldn't change the security of the network, neither the number of bitcoins mined every day, in contrast with gold mining.

Sometimes a block isn't even found in 10 minutes, it's found in 4, or 25, or 60. You get the idea.

For a long time nobody will be able to find a block because the time limit is shorter than the time it takes to continuously hash SHA256 to find a solution. Then in the next epoch whoever gets their miners started the quickest can mine whatever they want in that timeframe (including invalid transactions and wipeout of others).

I do think that the idea *could* be possible but the problem is with reaching the consensus for the variables that you've added. The network's time can deviate between node to node by quite a bit and it is difficult to synchronize all of them without a reference to a central server. Transactions aren't relayed instantaneously and there can be a delay between the nodes seeing it.

As for the benefits, I fail to see how this would increase the security at all. Given that you don't have to mine for 8 minutes, this makes it such that all of the work is done within the 2 minutes which would be much lower than the 10 minutes of continuous hashing that we have right now. It wouldn't bring older ASICs back into the game as the profitability would remain roughly constant; think of it as Bitcoin having to decrease the difficulty retarget to make 2 minute blocks. Standby power could still be fairly massive and would be much more inefficient than continuous hashing.

That's right, it was poor choice of words. What happens is an increased number of stale blocks whenever difficulty is reduced and if there are malicious/competitive miners active on the chain. The effects are similar to a 51% attack since the last block that was mined is going to be replaced over and over.

Because block time is the result of the difficulty value not a standalone variable.
To reduce the block time we have to reduce the difficulty, and when we reduce difficulty a miner (or a mining pool) can find next block easier. And when the reduction is 80% the mining pool that has a moderately high hashrate may even find the next block at reduced difficulty instantly. That means 2 competing mining pools with high hashrates could end up competing with each other and reverse the other pools block multiple times. This happens because the cost of performing the attack was also reduced by 80%.

The problem is coming up with that random number. Your "using transaction" idea won't work. But maybe we could add more complexity to this hypothetical scenario where miners have to "mine" something else. That is do another sort of work to find something that takes 8 min to finish and can't be done on their SHA256 ASICs.
It could be another PoW hash using a different algorithm or some mathematical problem like finding next prime gap of maximum known merit (GAP coin!).

I would contend that the security comes from sheer computing power/hashrate rather than how much energy is used to run the computing power..

It’s “the next 500 supercomputers in the world can’t compete”, not “the next 500 power plants in the world can’t compete”..
(Probably much more than 500 since this saying was a thing, and it’s never been about how much electricity it would take)

If the NSA wanted to 51 Bitcoin, do you really think they would care how much electricity it took?
Neh, they can make plenty of energy.. They have the energy, what they don’t have is the hashrate/processing power..

It would only take about 1 day to 51 Bitcoin, and they could use an entire nuclear power plant, or 10..
The cost of burning that energy for one day is nothing compared to the cost of burning that energy 24/7 to KEEP it secure..

Energy doesn’t matter, it’s the hashrate that keeps Bitcoin secure, because they don’t have the hashrate to compete no matter how much energy they have/use..

Bitcoin could keep the same hashrate and use less energy, by only hashing in bursts, thus allowing miners to buy even MORE hashrate with their savings, and even put all of the old currently inefficient miners hashrate back online to increase hashrate, because it would be profitable again..
Might even make CPU mining profitable again until hashrate grew to make it a competition of efficiency again..

Would incentivize a massive amount more hashrate and INCREASE DECENTRALIZATION to higher energy cost areas..
Mining on almost anything would become profitable until hashrate atleast tripled..
Hashrate would go through the roof.. And thus also security..


If you want blocks/solutions found in 2 minutes you adjust difficulty so on average a block/solution would be found in 2 minutes with full current hashrate right?
It’s hashrate vs hashrate..

I don’t see how reducing the block time to find a hash faster would somehow give a minority hashrate(pool/attacker) any advantage.. They would still need 51%..


Ok, average of node clocks having passed 8 minutes of idle time before the 2 minute hashing session begins (with difficulty set to take an average of 2 minutes for X hashrate to solve a block solution)

I think you would still need a random number published after the 8 minute idle time hashed into the next block to PROVE that the miners only starter hashing after the 8 minute idle time is up, or they would just mine the entire time and hold the solved block until after the 8 minute idle time, in which a cheater could 51..

The point of the random is to MAKE them wait the 8 minutes before they started hashing, or they would be hashing for nothing, because without including the random number (starting pistol shot), their block would be invalid.

I’m still talking 10 minute block times, but instead of hashing for all 10 minutes of every block, a random number could be released after 8 minutes, like a starting pistol shot, for a 2 minute hashing sprint at the end of every 10 minutes..
Their solution would have to include the random to prove they started after the 8 minute idle..

8 minute idle-release random after the 8-2 minute hashing sprint (difficulty adjusted to find solution in 2 minutes)-block still found/added in 10 minute increments

Would probably also reduce the variation in actual seen blocktime too..
Variation in shorter block times is less (I imagine it’s likely a percentage), and would still only have blocks every 10 minutes on average to keep the blockchain a manageable size (decentralization)..



I do find this to be a valid point..

I’m not a code genius..
How could a starting pistol shot random number be programmed to be broadcast after an about 8 minute idle period to start the 2 minute hashing sprint?
Thus proving they didn’t start hashing until the idle period was over..

The way I’m imagining it, until this random number was broadcast after the idle period, they wouldn’t even have anything to work/hash on, because they don’t yet have all of the information they need to create a valid block at all..

Nodes would reach a consensus as to what this random number is after the idle break, and not accept a block that did not include it the random number.. Block would be invalid without it..
Somehow..

This wont create an opportunity for a 51% attack. The ability to pull off a 51% attack is based on the attackers hashrate as a percentage of the total network hashrate, it is not a function of the difficulty.

You don't need to generate random numbers or anything crazy like that, it can be done by changing how next target is computed by using different number of previous blocks to get the time. For example "If last block was mined in 2 minutes, reduce difficulty by 80%; Else set difficulty as it should be based on past 2016 blocks". Roughly similar to what we are doing in testnet but only when the time between blocks are 20 minutes.

Here are two major problems with the idea:
1. As it was mentioned above, there is no universal clock in the decentralized network that determines "what time it is". Your node may say it is 14:05, my node says it is 14:30 and another can say it is 15:00. That's why we take the average of all times we get from the peers.
2. When you reduce the difficulty, the hashrate doesn't go away. It is still there and when the difficulty is reduced by 80% that massive hashrate can find the next block in an instance. Now we are facing an easy to perform 51% attack.

PoW power consumption is what makes bitcoin secure. IMO there is no problem to solve here. There is big propaganda made by altcoins criticizing bitcoin TPS and energy consumption...

You are basically staking energy, which is something from outside the blockchain, something valuable in our world and society as we know it. This is one thing that gives value to bitcoin. (the opposite of staking coins, which you are staking something from within the blockchain itself)

Bitcoin is not wasting energy to generate blocks, it is using energy to create value and utility.

Miners also mine in places where energy is cheap, and those places are usually where the generation of eletric energy is bigger than the consumption.

I saw just now this video from Antonopoulos where he explains that it is easy to bash bitcoin energy consumption, because it is transparent. But you cannot see how much energy banks consome (with buildings, bureaucracy, security, guards, etc)

This won't work.

Who determines what the random number is? Transactions are not timestamped when they are broadcast, and there is nothing to stop a miner from broadcasting their own transaction 8 minutes after the prior block was found.

Also, block timestamps are not the exact time a block was found, it can have up to a two hour variance, so it is possible for block n to have a later timestamp than block n + 1.
It takes time to shut down a miner, and to start a miner. The power savings would not quite be 80% under perfect circumstances.

I think this would encourage miners to backdate (or back time) found blocks, and withhold the blocks until the next block is broadcast, creating many orphans.

Reduce difficulty to target block time of 2 minutes..
After block solved nodes start timer to 8 minutes..
At 8 minutes somehow generate random number  (possibly use last/nearest tx broadcast closest to 8 minute mark as the random number?)..
Next block must be solved including hash of last block and random number generated to prove work started after the 8 minute mark since last block solved..
Still requires the same amount of computing power giving same security, but miners only run for 2 minutes out of every 10 minutes instead of constantly..
Reduces power consumption by 80%..


Have any ideas like this came up to run POW security in bursts rather than constantly?

Could it possibly make BTC even MORE secure because miners would be able to spend that 80% power savings on more ASICS rather than spending it in electricity?
This would greatly increase the profitability of mining, not paying so much electricity, and create even more of a race for more hashpower, no?
Would probably even make mining profitable even at high electricity costs until 500% more hashrate came online to compete..
The value of miners, even old inefficient miners, would skyrocket? (Basically all miners would see an efficiency increase of 500%?)
Could insanely increase hashrate and hence security?