Topic: Issues with Proof-of-Work - page 3. (Read 874 times)

Let me just interject, for OP and the newbies in the forum who might misunderstand the post, that the mechanism is NOT "purely useless", it was designed as a way to be a Sybil Attack protection mechanism for the network. It's also where Satoshi's brilliance is shown because it also was implemented to be the mechanism for issuing the currency, and therefore also incentivizing the miners to keep continuing.

how many times do I have to tell you I know how the POW mechanism works. If a node does not solve the POW mechanism the block proposal can not be added to the chain or evaluated. It doesnt matter if its code that looks at the data within the block, if you only have one proposal for that code to check what are you optimizing. There is nothing to compare with the proposal/block!

Just like people have unique perspectives so do nodes within a network. Stop getting caught up on the specifics of the POW function, like you said the POW function doesnt have anything to do with the data in the block which is what im trying to optimize. The POW mechanism just narrows down which proposals are eligible for evaluation/verification. Since you narrow down to one proposal using the POW mechanism you cannot compare it with anything because its all you have access to. POW and POS are both selection mechanisms for which node(s) will be involved in that blocks proposal. This is not an issue with how the POW mechanism works from a technical standpoint but how many proposals it allows to be compared and optimized.

gap of time is an issue but more its an issue of optimization. As computers and networking gets faster the network should evolve alongside technology through natural optimization. The issue is that since Bitcoins POW mechanism narrows down the proposals before the network sees them all it is very difficult for the network to optimize itself as it doesnt even have access to all the network info.

Imagine the metaverse is actually a thing and we all live in it for a majority of our lives are we still going to be relying on 10 min time capped blocks for our transactions. It works fine for what its used for now but for real daily use in a digital world it needs to innovate alongside technology. Fundamentally POW is designed to narrow down to as few proposals/nodes as possible before network consensus begins. This is the issue. The reason POW works is the same reason it wont work nearly as well in the future.

Additionally with POW:
better computers = same network output with more wasted computation

im just wondering.
putting aside your subtle sidestepping, misunderstandings.
you seem to be wanting a system of more random people inclusion in the PoW task or hinting about faster block times

so imagine we thrashed around for many days trying to get you to understand what Pow is..
the question is:
 is your main gripe if speaking just about PoW that you personally cant with just your CPU be part of the PoW block solving task being able to make 50btc for pennies(low effort)? is that your end goal of coming to a conclusion about your "issues with PoW" your lack of involvement due to expense?

or is it about the gap of time between blocks

---

if it is about neither of those
and about "proposals" and rulesets... thats got nothing to do with PoW and everything to do with the code inside a node, which is a separate thing entirely, called consensus (the agreement of a set of rules by consent of the masses of nodes)

Every 2 weeks does mean continuously though? Its a repeating process that is required for the network to operate properly?

When it comes to speed it cant be individually quantified but it can relatively quantified. The half-baked idea you are referring too I have already built and it works in local simulations so im not sure how half-baked it really is. Regarding who, bitcoin uses ECDSA signatures to sign transactions which means knowing who/public key is fairly essential in bitcoin. Where refers to where/how that transaction interfaced with the network.

If you dont understand how it can be done thats one thing but saying that these things are not possible is another. Rather than just saying im wrong it would be more productive for all parties to ask questions in order to understand what im trying to say. All im asking is that everyone try to come at this with an open mind because it is fundamentally a completely different approach to decentralized consensus. Let me clarify I'm not saying bitcoin is bad but rather asking the question is there potentially a better solution. Decentralized systems exists throughout nature and last I checked none of them use POW and have all lasted way longer than anything we have created.

again PoW has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with consensus or proposals

PoW is PURELY the mechanism to create an expensive ID of a lump of data no matter what that data inside contains(people can use PoW to identify a lump of data of library books, transactions, birth registries, medical records, anything)

PoW asics do not touch or receive the block data inside the block. not care about transaction details, number of transactions or format of transaction. it simply sha256's a sha256 with a nonce
its not complicated to create PoW

its as simple as SHA256(SHA256(data)+nonce)

and thats it
yep in its most simplest form of explaining what PoW is, is:
if prefix(4) of SHA256(SHA256(block content)+nonce) = '0000' then
ID is strong to prefix strength of levels

and thats it
bitcoin however uses 'difficulty' to calculate and adjust the prefix strength requirement

the stuff about transactions and proposals and features and functions is about CODE not PoW
Code that nodes have to verify the content. its code that looks at the data, not the PoW

No, it's not. Read & learn, don't just assume.
Read about the difficulty adjustment period. The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks, i.e. about every 2 weeks. That hardly can be seen as "continuously".


What does transaction speed means in your idea? Because the "speed" is related to the fee and the miners. So that's not a valid measure. Fee, maybe, but not speed.
Who spent the transaction? You should not know nor care who spent the transaction. Period.
Where are they? Are you kidding me? On a proper decentralized network this should never matter.
Number of transactions and so on are highly dependent on mempool, and, each node has a different mempool, so we cannot compare apples with oranges.

So.. all this "best" logic has shown (I will agree with franky1 here) that you don't know nor care about what bitcoin is and how it works, you just came with some half-baked ideas that cannot work.

Im afraid you may be too focused on specifics of how bitcoins POW function operates to understand the relationship i'm explaining. You also seem to be misinterpreting the things I have said but if thats how you read it that may be on me speaking too abstractly. Believe it or not I have written my own POW functions so I understand how they work and calling me dumb because you don't understand my analogy is far from constructive. I understand you feel you fully understand how bitcoin works but how POW consensus operates on a macro level is where the analogy works. Once again, it is not about data processing/selection specifics as much as it is about representing the system from a singular network perspective.

To summarize in simple terms and try to move away from this analogy. A decentralized network must be represented my some, all, or none of its members in consensus.

Bitcoin POW falls in the category of being represent by 'some' of the network with those that solve the POW function being the only ones capable of making a public proposal. Government is also decentralized representation through 'some' of the population. Sure the selection methods might be different (solving POW functions and elections) but what i'm trying to explain is it is much more difficult for a network to adapt to network conditions if proposals are only made from a single network perspective. The way gossip protocols work not everyone in the network will have the same transactions at the same time. This means that not everyone will be building the same blocks. If the only proposal thats evaluated is the one that first solved the POW function that means only one network perspective is checked for each block(assuming two nodes don't solve the function at the same time, in which case longest chain is selected). While this method meets the minimum requirements for block security it makes it extremely difficult for the network to optimize itself as it doesn't have anything to compare with only one potential proposal.

The main issue is proportional representation(some of system/network) rather than complete representation (entire network/system).

ok so the OP is not actually trying to describe or learn PoW
nor wanting to learn how bitcoin uses PoW

but wants to instead make a whole different system where PoW means something completely different.. as thats how i am reading his posts now
where he wants to create a new system without first understanding how the current system works

..
so here goes another attempt at explaining the current system
PoW is not about "selecting proposals"  or selecting a president who controls the network..
PoW is just doing a complicated method of using electric and computational time to create a strong ID that fixes the contents of a block. whereby it would take someone else more electric to go back and change that block and afix a new block ID to the changed data.. and then try to do the same for the next newest block to overtake the leading blockheight to become the valid blocks usernodes read and follow.
which to even be capable of doing this and consistantly win every block requires alot more electric spent than the entire networks worth of mining hardware

PoW has nothing to do with changing rules. its about securing the DATA inside a block with a strong and expensive ID for the blocks contents of transactions
and that is it in a nutshell
if a malicious pool owner with such massive amount of hardware to achieve repeated winning blocks. all he can ultimately do is just select (be picky) about what transactions to include or not

separately from PoW
changing the rules(proposals) requires having a majority of user nodes, or more importantly the nodes used by businesses and serives using your changed rules code.. to THEN accept blocks that may contain a new format.
meaning you need to convince user nodes to adopt your code first.. BEFORE a new block format would be accepted

thus 2 separate activities

as for who wins the block creation. its not about nodes randomly accepting something(being picky).
its about nodes receiving something random
 
its the mining pool that manages to solve the puzzle with enough difficulty faster than its opponent, and if the block meets the rules. then that is accepted as the winner

because there is a bit of 'randomness' in the blockID creation. its not always the pool with the most hashpower that wins every time.

dumbing it down by (whatever the term is for several factors above Vigintillion)
one pools attempt at making a block might be searching for the number 987654(xVigintillion)
while another pool is searching for the number 1234(xVigintillion) where the end result needs to when converted to hex have a prefix of a certain amount of zeros

their next attempts would be a different number where a different pool has to find a lower number meaning it gets to win even though other pools might have more hashpower their number this time they need to find is higher thus needing more time to find it

Why do you keep sticking with this analogy when it's clear it's flawed to the core?
You would need to have
- citizens, people that make transactions
- city halls, where the transactions are being sent and the archive is copied
- construction workers, the miners that build the next block in which all the receipts from the transactions are kept, and they can build each block empty because they feel like doing so, or one where there are no pets allowed
- then the city halls decide on their own which block to accept to expand their archive, without any citizen vote


The population can't do anything about it, not in PoS not in PoW, again stop with this analogy as it creates more confusion than it solves.
You have nodes, you have miners, and you have simple users which send transactions, stick with them and remember a miner is a node, a node doesn't have to be a miner!

"Best" can be quantified by basic quantifiable metrics like transaction speed, value spent, number of transactions, who spent transactions, where in the network they are spent from etc. just depends what the network is designed/optimized for

Regarding First solution and block difficulty they are separate things. Block difficulty is constantly changing so the system approaches on 10 min block times. This means blocks will get easier or harder to solve based on how long the last block took to mine. When the network is operating smoothly nodes who propagate a solution to the POW function first are usually accepted as that makes that solution the longest chain. This usually means the first solution is accepted unless malicious/illegitimate activity is detected.

In my opinion proof of work i a very safe and secure method because of it give power users to contribute to solve blocks all over the world so it make a strong decentralized transaction ,
Of course it may costs us as it use high amount of electricity but now companies are coming to green energy,
 But now its a fact that it's causing a lot of environmental problems because of using fuels to produce electricity. So in future we may convert to other mechanism but best option is using green energy , i.e solar wind water .

It's not any first, it has to meet the difficulty too. And this is important because it also regulates the speed of blocks being mined. "First" is relatively easy to quantify.

"Best" on the other hand... who and how to decide what's best, in an unbiased way, plus to make sure it's not cheated and also making sure the blocks are mined at the correct speed? (The who part is meant to be a trap, since the only correct "who" is the nodes.)

Although the idea above is interesting, I see 0 chance of it being implemented as long as PoW works fine. You'd have to somehow blow up pow and prove it to be counterproductive for bitcoin to fork into what you're proposing.


Which is complete and utter garbage argument used by haters, just like another one that goes something like "blockchain not bitcoin"...
Please tell me what is this so called "environmental hazard" of using bitcoin. Are you saying that ice caps will melt if we keep mining?

I feel I understand how bitcoin works as I have rebuilt it multiple times testing various small changes, although I can understand why it was unclear what I meant. When I say bitcoin is like the government, I meant it in a very general sense with nodes acting as the citizens within the population. I am not referring to transactions acting as votes but rather nodes accepting/confirming the longest chain as their vote.

 Citizens(nodes) do their jobs everyday to contribute to the economy which is the ongoing macro system(make and distribute transactions). Presidents(nodes) are randomly selected to group transactions for the next block through attempts at solving the POW function for that block.  Just like a president a citizen(node) is selected for a brief time period to make potential decisions for the networks next economic state. The difference being instead of 4 years of decisions it is building 1 block/proposal worth of decisions.

When it comes to the analogy, I am referring less to the specifics of the voting/election aspect and more to how it is unlikely for a system to be represented accurately from a single point or origin. A president is selected and then treated as a temporary origin point for decisions. The population can always rebel(accept another chain), however, the problem more so lies in the fact that the “president “ only has access to a single market perspective for forming proposals.

This means each time a proposal is made it is only coming from the perspective of that position in the network thus limiting the systems ability to build the most efficient block for adapting to market conditions. Focusing on network communication you would be able to instead decide on the best potential block for the network rather than the block of the first person that solves the POW.

In this analogy you could take it even farther and say that mining pools are similar to political parties how the network uses mining pools to group candidates and simplify the selection process but I will admit it's a bit of a stretch.

To summarize:
POW:
Selects proposal based on what node is making it.(selects potential proposal based on node who first solved POW)

Ideal:
Selects proposal based on best proposal for the current conditions
(Selects node based on best potential proposal)

Transactions = participation in the economy
Proposals =transitions system to next economic/market state
Nodes = citizens
President = node/citizen who solves POW first that term(block)
Votes = which proposal/chain a node is willing to confirm/using

Wrong analogy and I strongly suggest you start studying bitcoin to first understand how it works.

Miners don't really make any major decisions, they are merely workers on the network that are "working to get paid". So it is like holding a raffle to hire a different construction worker to place each block for each wall that goes up and pay them for their work.

Then instead of one "boss" overlooking their work, we have tens of thousands of them (ie. Full Nodes) watching over their work to enforce the "law" aka the consensus rules.

nope

block creation is not that at all
(sticking with YOUR election analogy(poor analogy but lets go with it))

imagine everyone puts a tick on a ballot(a transaction)
and posts it to whatever polling count centre is available . near them
where multiple counting stations get it. but only one instance can be deemed valid

the polling centre collates said cards/tx. and counts them up. and puts them into a batch

*they then run it through a machine that costs alot of electric to give that batch an ID*
*this* stage of costly batch ID creation is the POW

then when there is a secure enough batch ID to preserve the cards/tx data from being tampered with

the polling data of that specific counting station is released to the public. where the public validate its secure.
the next polling counting station. then batches up some cards/tx not already validated and uses that already public batch ID of the latest publicly aware batch ID within its batch collation. and then *the PoW* process is done on that batch
thus having a chain of batches of polling cards preceding each other

and again released to the public
the public can then see which votes(data) voted for x or y candidate (or pay whomever tx destination is) and you can see the results are confirmed 2016times a fortnight(~10 minutes each) as polling centres release their batches throughout the day

anyone can then tally up results at any time to see who has most votes at any given ~10min period

the thing is.. there is no stopping the polling. meaning yes satoshi may have held onto 1million votes out of 19m votes for 14 years and micheal saylor may have only 135,000 votes in last 2 years and greyscale might have been growing its vote count to 635,000 votes over 10 years and binance might have 575000 votes

but as the polls are continual. they can change futuristically in 10 minutes. rather than 4 years. and cant change retrospectively(its possible but cost prohibative to do such, thus you dont really see it get done)

..
Pow is not about changing votes retrospectively(by itself. POW does not read or write polling cards). nor about keeping votes a secret for 4 year term. nor about the PoW being related to editing votes when received(again PoW is not about reading polling cards).
(a malicious polling count station, could if it had enough power to outpace the other poll card collating centres, could produce an empty batch(management decision not related to PoW). thus holding up/delaying any change of majority by having nothing to count for a period.
but thats not PoW caused.. thats bad management of selecting to not fill their batch BEFORE using PoW to secure an empty batch

PoW is about securing a batch ID of collated votes(or empty boxes). which then is a proof of confirmation they are then counted and locked(or nothing new occured) and treated as valid locked positions at that given time

if a polling count centre had more cost/power then its competing count stations. it could go back and make its own pile of empty batches or batches of collated votes it favours(again not POW related but management decision) and then make the batch ID's faster then competing stations. to overtake them and re-org the results
(costly endeaver that can easily be rejected by other mechanism, thus not worth attempting)

...
why i say its a poor analogy to compare to elections
is if treating btc as votes. satoshi has remained president with most majority votes for 14 years, even when elections that could change who has what btc every 10 minutes
meaning elections can swing to a new vote majority leader any time
(EG a merger of greyscale and binance) where they show they have more btc/votes than satoshi by co-mingling their coin

which has nothing to do with PoW and PoW has nothing to do with election counting.. just batch securing an ID of a the count of recent vote changes

if you use the government's attempt at decentralized consensus as an analogy for bitcoin. Proof of Work is like randomly selecting presidents and not revealing who they are until they are done with their term (pretend the president is actually the one who makes decisions). Sure you may prevent murder but if you select randomly it is rare you will select the best candidate for the current market condition, as you are limiting access to all the potential information. This makes it difficult for the network to optimize itself into the future as it is constrained to a single network perspective for each decision(proposal). Seeing as blockchain is software I feel like it should be built to scale alongside computational innovation rather than being restrained by it.(block size wars, time server constraints, pow function)
 
If you based a network in communication could it possibly be the best way for all relevant data to be compared and the system optimized for the next state. In an ideal world wouldn't everyone be able to properly communicate their perspectives and reach common ground? The only way to have all the relevant information is communication, and we can program computers to communicate clearly and uniformly through protocols. Why is network communication being minimized rather than optimized amongst consensus methods?

The Bitcoin mining environmental hazard is being debunked by research, data and statistics.  I believe anti-Bitcoiner are exaggerating this issue and making it an issue to give hindrance to Bitcoin propagation.  I find this thread: Bitcoin Mining is Good for Environment enlightening as it gives information on Bitcoin mining and its economic impact.



Yeah, POS has an issue since it invites potential concentration of wealth that can result in centralization.

Why do I think this is an interview between OP and franky? Lol. I haven't seen any proposal worth discovering, have you? Bitcoin becoming centralized is equal to no bitcoin at all, no one will use it.

POW has indeed the theoretical capacity of getting centralized by miners migrating where they can get more profit (cheaper electricity, lower taxes, maybe solar/wind power).
But this is the theory. In reality the miners are pretty well spread, much better than 5 years ago. In reality the miners can pick the pools they want and I don't see why miners would be dumb and endanger Bitcoin (and their revenues) by using all of them the same pool (and even trying 51% attack, which would clearly bring the price down).
Actually I've seen - not in case of Bitcoin - one pool getting over 51% hash rate and still not attempting anything fishy. Again, staying honest usually pays off better in this business.

Or.. do you see other issues which you expect us to guess?!