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

I think the boom of ICO hurt Bitcoin and we are still recovering from the sudden influx of people because those people have now panic sold their bitcoin and caused the crash. I think we are starting to show signs of recovery but atm I think we need to focus on growing steadily and not push for a bull run. A bull run is likely if the confidence goes up enough and I am worried about it shooting back up and then having a correction again which will hurt Bitcoin again for the next 6 months.

Shouldn't be too much of a shock considering they already know bitcoin can not scale for mainstream adoption due to a decentralized nature. Scaling also comes with more dangers and downsides. It's logical to grow slow but steady.

I would just like to say that it's quite shocking that a paperless currency like this hasn't been affected by the dangers of censorship. It is a major security flaw in the system and if they ever want to go main-stream they need to find a way to solve this issue because right now it is not built for the real world, it's built for a utopian society that can still reap the benefits of anonymity.

Well that's most people. We however are privy to what developers do and so we care more about those kinds of things than the average user.

I got to say, adding features is not always the best solution. First you have to asses whether there is demand for those features you want to implement to avoid wasting your own time, and creating protocol bloat that cannot be removed without expensive (in terms of time) hardforks.

Intuitively, I would agree. But how far have these penalizing algorithms (Casper, Slasher etc.) evolved that are supposed to prevent people from publishing the rewritten chains? Can they achieve any stable consensus on which one of the competing chains is actually the one to follow?

I believe PoS is bad because you can rewrite the chain without having to invest the work again.
Meaming that if 51% doesn't like something they can go back and rewrite XX hours in a few seconds. Hence sending any amount of ETH to B instead of A (as A's original transaction won't be included and won't work as re-transmit as the original balance is gone).

With PoW same group would have to re-mine the blocks which means this is practically impossible as the original chain is progressing too.

You can try to avoid rolling back too many blocks, but that is an artificial and only locally enforcable rule. As far as I know there is no such rule today on ETH.

Time alone won't suffice as long as the self-claimed alternatives don't have to store value on a comparable scale. You can always claim whatever protocol you invented can replace PoW as long as there is not much at stake.

Honestly speaking, I just think that each algorithm has something special to it and some problems as well. You just have to find which one works best for you and how you can make the most out of each one.

I don't think it's about whether or not the community is "open" to a new consensus method. I think it's more about what has withstood the test of time. PoW has, that's why it is still used today. If there are new consensus methods that do truly outweigh it, only time will show them as better alternatives...It will take a lot of time before something can truly be concluded as better than PoW.

the comparisons of eth development and btc development is they are both centralised
vitalik is just like adam back with a few other notable sponsored devs below the leader that have main merge privileged

that said. ethereums wide community. is not wide at all they do not even have their own unique utility that offer users a separate sentiment of usefulness and desires to have a different price discovery sentiment

check out their price wiggles

about 98% following bitcoins market price discover, just at a dropped rate of 1:14

however because unlike lightning whose peg has no network wide audit or chain or mechanislm for accounting. and where lightning has MANY flaws and methods to fractional reserve, double spend msats and steal directly and indirectly from channel partners break commitments/promises/ious... people just dont trust lightning for useful amounts.. lightning is more so stuck in concept stage for 7 years of sandbox testing and playing around. rather than having a functional monetary security policy to make it a final ready to operate network.. which other subnetworks do have

so yea people are preference to lock btc up and then using that lock reference on other subnetwork bridges with better monetary security policy on other subnetwork bridges
.. as for the comparisons to ethereum and cores centralism
core play the music of shouting "open source" but with their hierarchy structure and moderation, their concept of "open source" means something else to them.. under their premiss. lets use an analogy of a newspaper that is open on a page, transparent to read the contents(source). but that does not mean anyone can become a newspaper editor with publisher rights
open source to core does not mean open gate/open door policy.

If we are honest then most people do not pay attention to what the developers are doing and instead of watching the price of btc and eth. The problem for many people with btc is they cannot get past not owing 1 btc and ethereum in their opinion is easier to get into because they can afford to purchase 1 but not with btc. I do not think that the developers have any impact on most people investing because they would have to go out of their way to find the devs discussion which they do not they are investors not people who care about the development of btc. Any one that cares about the development will pick btc every time because its a more careful process and considers the whole picture before making decisions.

What other option is there currently, really?

In order to see whether another consensus algorithm will work out, it's gotta be shoved into a top 5 (not even 10) cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap and then we see how the coin performs. Not in terms of price, but in activity. The problem with that is that most altcoins have too small of a userbase for any novel consensus to be truly seen under the microscope.

If we can convert all miners to green energy then POW cannot be attacked from that angle. If we could do that I think we would see a huge price jump because companies who are now looking to adopt green energy might be able to adopt btc but atm they cannot because btc is known for its resource heavy mining which causes pollution but we cannot convert every miner ourselves it would probably have to be made a law in the governments for that to happen because a miner is just going to do the most cost effective thing for them which does not involve building some green energy solution which would cost them a lot to build.

 

Gaslighting again, franky-101? Don't make it look that I have just made all of "my research" recently. I, and some of the other more out-spoken people in the forum, have been informing, and telling what's technically true about Bitcoin when you were spreading disinformation about it.

Plus, I must thank you that you and Joland_Fyookball helped me learn THE HARD WAY about Bitcoin, after all of the technical disinformation that you did. That shouldn't happen to newbies, and plebs like me again. You mislead many people.

correct he was part of bitcoin but found out early on that butting heads against the core roadmap and treated like an attacker rather than a proposal suggester. is where the centralisation was first spotted and the clan cultish mindsets began

funny part is.. ethereum has its subnetwork bridges and more people are preferring to lock bitcoin. and use as reference point to then play on ethereum subnetwork bridges. more so then using the failing subnetwork bridge that was promised as the solution to bitcoin scaling

the bitcoin scaling solution of a sub network bridge promise made 7 years ago. has less users less liquidity, but more flaws than a ethereum subnetwork bridge which is only 15 months old
(funny sidenote. the snake oil sales men of bitcoins scaling solution was offramping to subnetwork bridge,, are now this year saying how its not the solution its just a side effect niche for small utility(took them long enough))

im not suggesting ethereum is better(for many other reasons). but more users are preferring to avoid the offering by the core devs.. because core devs seem half assed in being devs and more inspired to be sponsored governors/moderators ensuring they stay in power
and yes you can do your own research and find the stats. its eye opening and may surprise you

bitcoin devs(not just core) need to catch up and do something to really help utility and usability rather than just promote "wait patiently"(conservatively)

core devs promote to their noisy hounds to suggest that devs are migrating away from bitcoin because devs are being critiqued by node users and trying to say node users should not have a say in dev review critique.. yet the actual dev migration away from bitcoin is due to sponsored devs in core being in moderation control to want to only enforce a core roadmap rather than a decentralised "bitcoin roadmap" of multiple brands united in byzantine generals effect, uniting via true consensus without hierarchy

Part of the reason (maybe the main reason) is that Ethereum copied a lot of its ideas and implementations from bitcoin, which means the mining algorithm (PoW) was also part of it. In fact Vitalik was once hanging out in bitcoin circles trying to convince us to destroy bitcoin's smart contract protocol and make it vulnerable like how ethereum's is today. He failed so he created the shitcoin we know today as ethereum.

I would love to take you up on that offer. we will speak soon

im a bitcoin maximalist so no interest in using altcoins. but if you want me to review and critique and find the flaws (bug review) to help you mitigate problems and reduce attack vectors, sure

smart devs actually want to have people that search for holes. have an outside point of view of finding worse case scenarios. rather than some ass kissing group that only deal with best case scenarios and ignore the obvious flaws

I am currently in the midst of testing the reference client

The system is designed to provide no advantage to utilizing multiple nodes(slight disadvantage as more gas will be required to consolidate rewards). Additionally, peer information is contained network-wide within the network state to prevent a cluster/echo chamber of peers.

Local sims are looking good just need to start testing the waters for market demand to plan initial distribution.

I can message you when I start the topic if you are interested

media can attack all they like.. an asic does not read the newspaper
an asic also does not self power by eating a lump of coal.. its the power plant that are the issues

as long as an asic owner is living in a region within X miles of renewable. he has a case where he can defend that he is not polluting and just keep mining.

media can say whatever they like.
but it becomes harder for a government to tell a renewable power plant to cut one of their customers off using a "green law" when that power plant is green so has no reason to cut off that customer with fake reasoning that said customer is polluting

.. yes if a miner is paying bills to a fossil plant then yes that miner can risk having their power supply cut

but for near on a decade(2014+) most mining farms set up near cheap renewable regions and bulk purchase via xxMW contracts units for 5-24months of electric from renewable power plants direct (rather than retail power "services/billing companies")

its only the home-hobby miners stuck with whatever residential power 'billing company' there is that might be told they cant mine if there was a "green law"

but that blame is more on the power plant that then lose possible income due to the power plant(real culprit) being non -green

there is always debate between proof of work and proof of stake and indeed you are all already know the side effect by choosing one of those,

but we can't blame the all Proof of Work take example bitcoin litecoin and dashcoin has their own ASIC meaning is very efficient compared to GPU and CPU mining and the end of the day transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy is everywhere.

and the Proof of Stake is evolving too there is plain PoS, there is Delegated PoS there is Masternode and etc right

The only issues with proof of work is it will be attacked for polluting the environment and when more people are mining that will only increase the concern and attacks by the media. The other thing is it requires a big investment to compete against the difficult of the network which means it will only be rich companies and people who will be able to mine in the future if that is not the case already. It makes the mining side centralized because normal people will not be able to afford the equipment which could mean that rich people could scheme to reject certain transactions or blocks unless a high fee is paid.

PoW may have stagnated when it comes to inventing more useful types of work to prove. But this doesn't mean that we should head for something even more experimental.

your trying to re-invent the wheel. so any platform will do. but the most participation of discussion of your type would be found in the altcoin culture/category of this forum

this bitcoin category is meant to only want to discuss bitcoin stuff, although some certain people do try to make it all about their other subnetwork promotions

but they too should be in the altcoin network section too because their payment system does not emulate how bitcoin functions even if they brand tag it as 'bitcoin'

..
as for your assumptions that "the network" you envision will self mitigate its own method. no code is needed meaning you ned to write it. you ned to come up with the methodology where it avoids certain peers from grouping up into clusters good luck funding a method to identify that certain nodes are not just 1 guy with 1000 nodes or where your node only has 100 connections and most of them are from a common peer cluster that gossiped(seeded) a list of known 100 nodes thus form their own cluster/echo chamber of only hearing each other first
(its more about the peer IP connection/identity decider. rather then the latter block reward split mechanism thats the problem when it comes to trying to mitigate pooling/clustering)

@franky1

since presence is based in proportional participation and network communication the block rewards process is separate from the block verification/proposal process. The network first agrees on the most ideal/efficient block and based on the network presence within that block the rewards are distributed accordingly. This means even if node A is somehow pooled and responsible for every block proposal, block rewards will be distributed amongst participating nodes based on each nodes agreed presence within the proposed block.

What platform would you recommend for starting a community to further discuss it?

issues with everyone throwing out a candidate block with no cost. is that everyone can send out a candidate block in seconds

you then find that clusters of nodes peer connect into subgroups of each other


where you have clusters all connecting to node A hearing mostly group A block which build ontop of that, which varies widely from the data of another cluster hearing another group of relayed transactions and building on that group
where it takes a few layers of 'pending' blocks accumulating confirms from different clusters until you finally get just one stream/chain of blocks with longest height.
you end up holding alot of candidate blocks side by side fighting for height.

thus you end up still having a so called 'pool' of nodes' competing to be the main height winner but with alot od data wastefully being relayed just to fight for height and then orphaning off or re-orging the pending chains(wasting time/data)

you would probably have to find a way (as you say proof of presence) that cant be sybilled, cloned, spoofed or swapped to pretend not to be another 'presence' so that you can trust that one contributer/miner is not just sending out a stream of 10 blocks instantly to win height.

goodluck with that

i say goodluck because only options ultimately is that inside the block data you need to have a true unforgeable identity of a node. which can prove its a unique user(no guy with 1000 nodes) where that block identifies said unique user and bans them from making streams of blocks in a row

which is why in the end everything just resorts back to PoW (cost of work) or PoS (staking a lump of coin)
but if you can truly find a "free" method that does not involve both of these. well you have created a proof that hundreds of thousands of people have failed to do (many have tried)

@franky1
Yes I agree the main issue with having everyone involved is bandwidth. Syndication/pooling risks are a result of bitcoin/POW being permissionless and based in computational power. Using a different mechanism this risk may be minimized or eliminated.

I’m currently working on developing a new mechanism called Proof of Presence built around optimizing network participation and communications. The vast majority of the initial network will be distributed for free as proof of concept. This is also to ensure initial distribution is broad and unbiased and will instantly transition the network to complete decentralization. I was planning on using discord for more detailed communications and community building but I’m open to alternatives as well.

greying it out as its an obvious side show poke the bear to get me to join someones social drama by trying to get me to talk and give links to other topics
@blackhat
oh here it goes again. when doomad gets debunked and shys away in one topic,. clan sister comes along to start social drama in another topic within minutes. pretending there is no game at play, whilst playing the known tactics of the game they play too much

and clan sister then wonders why i gave them a title of madhatter, knowing its a known social drama boring technique done multiple times to become soo notable it deserves a title

i had some hope after you(blackhat) were ready to try to move away from toeing the clan party book and starting to ask questions outside of doomads desires/scripts, where the hope was you were trying to begin to exist outside the clan mindset
but you come back within literal minutes of doomad being debunked(same pattern) trying to start more social drama in a different topic(same pattern).

just stop for once

also if you cant remember the stuff you learned in the last 10days-3 months. from questions you asked in last 10days-3 months.
cant be bothered to even search your own post history of this month as a reminder.. then please take the time.

it becomes a struggle to even hope your ready to learn/ escape the madhatter echo chamber even if some of your underlings are trying harder then you to remember stuff they learned without the madhatter spoonfeeds

but to give you the points about the MAHF and the other poiints where i thought there WAS a slight hope for you by asking questions outside the social drama scripts
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5433973.20
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/116327/do-non-segwit-nodes-reject-segwit-transactions-with-invalid-signature

pitty that small step outside the echo chamber didnt last 10 days before you went back to norm madhatter tactics forgetting things you said

no response needed. i already know the usual stuff your about to say

now.. take a couple days. off. dont turn this into a "about franky" topic like doomad tried in another topic.. just to show you can defend him.. (its boring and meaningless)

people want to discuss the stuff of this topic
spend sometime relearning what you forgot about BITCOIN and things that affected BITCOIN and its functions and features which the topics are about

if you are truly ready to escape the madhatter title. stop sounding too much like doomad.. as said briefly to not derail the topic, i noticed windfury is gaining confidence to not sound like him as much.. end of drama enjoy a few days off

Proof-of-Work has NOTHING to do with scaling. Please don't spread FUD.

It's, unfortunately for you, still the only option solution to the problem.

What MAHF topic, and how am I even related in this?

@leg-end
yep windfury is correct and its why vitalik decided to call the smallest eth unit a wei many years ago, as he was always favouring/inspired to go the PoS route and follow the path of wei-dai for years, he just had to use PoW for eth first to create a community of interest due to PoW's good value policy(which PoS doesnt have). so he had to snare greed/value interest of people first to build the community before converting the community to vitalik long plan wishes(wait for the market speculation correction DOWN when he finally allows the code to un-stake)


@windfury
you are now showing you are doing some research along with the examples in the  MAHF topic. seems you are gaining confidence to do your own research and break away/not rely on the social spoonfeeds of the madhatter group(doomad/blackhat)

so . for now. ill refrain from calling you a default idiot. as long as you keep up the confidence to do your own research

do it for no one else, not even me. do it for your own mental wellness and your own fact finding efforts

do not fear the time it takes to do the research because even though it takes time. its less time then the years wasted finding social drama reasons to refuse to do the research for yourself

I was just merely making the reason clearer for the newbies, and the plebs like me, franky. I never said you were doing something in this topic.

 


Satoshi chose POW because it was the only FEASIBLE option available, and it STILL currently remains the only feasible option right now.

Plus in case many of you forgot, Wei Dai's B-Money experimented with a form of Proof Of Stake, I believe it was the first  to resemble a POS coin, but later said it was impractical because it couldn't solve the double-spend problem.

Not sure how POW is connected with scaling issues? What exactly do you mean? Please elaborate.

With POS it's sort of clear - selling/giving control of the blockchain to billionaires/corporations. Never gonna happen to Bitcoin (hopefully). With the transition to POS, ETH was a shitcoin since day 1 but after POS it turned into a complete shitshow. 

@leg-end
you think that PoW was the only mechanism ever imagined in the cypherpunks idea house pre 2009

there were many. just because they were not called "PoS":
concepts of selected/random individuals to sign a block of data at no cost.
concepts of unit/value penalty for rule breaking
did exist

there is a reason satoshi ignored those ideas and went for PoW instead

Incorrect,

Satoshi choose PoW because it was the only option available in 2008 for what he wanted.

Satoshi left bitcoin behind in 2011.
https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/finance/bitcoin-founder-satoshi-nakamoto-1234613022/

https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-history-and-evolution-of-proof-of-stake


Satoshi left in 2011 , Proof of Stake concept was founded in 2012.
He never choose PoW over PoS, because he had no knowledge of the newer more efficient superior PoS technology.

Had he not dropped the bitcoin community like they were foul-smelling excrement in 2011,
he might have stay long enough to replace that worthless proof of waste algorithm, that the btc cultists hold on to for pure stupidity stake.
* Satoshi believe in using program coded checkpoints to secure the blockchain, the btc cultists that took over after him quit using that security feature.*

Not only is PoW a waste of energy and a growing environmental disaster, an centralized *only 2 mining pools control over 51% of the hash rate *
it's Noise Pollution alone is getting communities to ask their governments to start banning it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/19/us/north-carolina-crypto-mine-noise-weir-wxc/index.html
 
 

Proof of Stake Energy Efficient and Space Efficient and Excess Onchain Transaction Capacity and most important if you live near one, Quiet.  

that is not a PoW issue

its a usernode issue
where by the usernode would have extra consensus rules in your scheme that:
things go back to "solo mining"
mine in a method that does not allow outside contribution (mining pool/syndication/external efficiency improved device)

this has nothing to do with limitation of PoW
PoW can still be used, but at a weaker difficulty to be managable to make a ID with just CPU power in X timeline(much like 2009 solo mining)

but as just said to prevent history repeating itself you will need another consensus/rule mechanism to prevent syndicating/pooling effort or using devices not CPU rated/internal to nodes device

that is the hard part. again its not related to PoW

trying to prove the ID was created by only the node and nothing helping/supporting it externally is where you need to find a solution for
most things can be emulated. EG faking IP addresses. using GPU instead of CPU multiple devices spoofed as one. one device spoofed as many

PoS does not solve this. because people can easily just run 1000 pc's all signing with the same key to have 1000 attempts of same
or have 1000 pc's with different keys to appear as different users when its actually hidden away that its just 1 person
this is called a sybil attack

satoshi chose PoW as one mechanism feature of making blocks due to the cost/effort.. thus preventing someone from cheaply broadcasting out masses of block prospects/candidates
..
the issue with having 1000 block prospect/candidates is that when a network only deems 4mb is broadcast safe per 10minutes. having a user spam out 1000 block prospect every second. then harms the bandwidth of other user nodes receiving(multiple users) millions of block prospects every second and trying to choose one out of the flood spam of blocks

having a system where only 1 prospect/candidate block is seen every 1-20minutes is safer.. thus having some form of difficulty/cost/inclusion threshold involved in the block creation is a must

Ah beautiful I think i'm with you now. I'm saying the issue with POW is its designed to minimize the number of solved block IDs(ideally one per block so chain doesn't split). Im also saying ideally a decentralized consensus method would involve the whole network as to get all relevant network perspectives. If the whole network was involved, however, there wouldn't be a need for a POW mechanism anymore. Im referring to a system where every node in the network creates a proposal from their own local transaction pools and the most 'efficient' proposal is automatically spread and verified/confirmed.

and yes mb proposals = possible blocks
I'm not great at turning my thoughts into words so thank you for being patient.

my last post was to windfury.. as stated

moving on to OP's stuff
i tried once to get passed all your mis-use of mechanism wording and function to ask you to get to the crux/summarise what you are saying
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61668951

so
OP you are the one that is talking about 'proposals'.. POW has nothing to do with that.
however your latest post and hints else where is about proportional representation

i gather you are talking about wanting whole network involvement

but here is the thing again
are you wanting whole network involvement of the POW (this topic is wrote about POW issues after all)
meaning when you say "proposals" you actually mean possible blocks candidates outside of a pooled system?

or is it about whole network usernode involvement in code ruleset decisions(proposals)
..
if you are talking about a system where many nodes can collate transaction lists (each/independently) and secure them with a weaker(independent manageable) ID and broadcast their independent block to the network

you have to factor in how over X years people will find their own way to move away from that (as thats how bitcoin was in 2009) where by they then create mining rigs and asics and start pooling them ..
meaning your attempts is just temporary and end up returning to the same situation again

Are you reading what I'm saying? I didnt say you said it was useless? I also didnt say to change anything within POS or POW im saying both are not ideal. I also didnt say POW made decisions. You are mostly arguing semantics.

POW Mechanism = POW function that is solved to create Block ID
POW consensus = entire system involving the POW mechanism

It doesnt feel like your even trying to understand what I'm saying your just trying to prove that I'm wrong?
Please reread what I said above regarding proportional representation as that is the root of the issue I'm speaking on.

@windfury
POW is a mechanism to make an expensive id
NO where did i say useless (dont even start more social drama by injecting your own words)

satoshi chose PoW instead of PoS because Pow is useful for the fact that it has a cost component of making an ID.. its why it has the word "work" in it, because it requires effort, which means more work for a malicious user to do to undo such effort, and then re-do and then catch up. to make a malicious persons more expensive effort get any recognition

the decision was put as a consensus(separate feature) rule.

if the OP is having issues about decisions of timing or if PoS should be used, or if difficulty should be adjusted to CPU rated solving. that is a CONSENSUS issue/debate.. not a PoW debate

PoW does not make decisions. it just makes a strong ID
satoshi beautifully patched together many many different mechanisms that all had their functions to create bitcoin

the choices/decisions are part of consensus debates of what decisions should remain as set hard rule that should not be touched, or things that could be(if done safely without risk, bug, breaks of the network) changed

EG the adjustments of difficulty via counts of 'if +/- 2016 blocks per fortnight, adjust difficulty +/- accordingly' are not made by PoW its made by consensus rules in user nodes.. not inside PoW asics

PoW is not about currency issuance.. again currency issuance is not done in an ASIC. its done by user node consensus rules
it doesnt matter of a block has 1 tx or 2000 tx. it doesnt matter if the coin reward is 5000000000sats or 625000000sats. the PoW mechanism still (in simple terms) sha's a sha of the same length

The consensus mechanisms used by Bitcoin and Ethereum, Proof of Work (POW) and Proof of Stake (POS) respectively, do have their own limitations. POW has been criticized for its high energy consumption and scalability issues, while POS has been criticized for its potential centralization of power among wealthy stakeholders.

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?!

The truth is that Proof of Work is the true consensus mechanism/method for a trustless decentralized Blockchain Network. The moment you start deviating from this fact the more complicated and confusing things become.
It's simply a consensus method for proving to a trustless Network that a work has been properly done before it's approved, possibly with reward. Any Consensus method you develop should be based on this(PoW), maybe slightly or completely different from Bitcoin PoW type.
Proof of Stake should never even exist in the first place as the name and idea is fundamentally flawed. Consensus or agreememt only happens once a work is done with proof that it has been done, which is why a true consensus must always have the word Work rather than Stake attached to Proof..
So your own consensus method must be Work Based Proof and nothing else.


You could say "Issues with Bitcoin Proof-of-Work"  rather than "Issues with Proof-of-Work". Proof of Work has no issue as it's perfect consensus method for a trustless network or world.
By the way, Bitcoin PoW remains the best consensus mechanism for a decentralized & trustless network as far as I can tell. It doesn't violate the other Bitcoin principles. But I know of alternative PoW that will prove very useful for any truely decentralized and trustless network. And it maybe compatible with the current Bitcoin.  I just prefer it tested on another network. Notwithstanding, the current Bitcoin consensus is still very much useful and it's the right method for any true cryptocurrency.

I agree POW > POS by far I just think that POW may also be limiting the potential of decentralized currency in its own way.

It seemed promising a first but with all the required amendments is it really still the best solution out there or is it time to rethink the base principles of consensus.

what you think of when u mention Pow pool are not what you think
within those pools are sub groups of stratums where there are subgroups of miners per stratum. located all over the world with different managers. and people can pool hop to different pools/stratums in milliseconds

when times are good and there are no malicious proposals where devs made bad code and blackmailing the network.. hashrate per pool is meaningless(in regards to rules)
if devs were to make malicious proposals(taking weeks-months to enforce/activate). asics can pool hop in MILLISECONDS

no one in ethereum PoS can de-stake from their CEX pool right now

Only two bitcoin pools were responsible for mining more than half of Bitcoin's blocks in the second half of December. Doesn't that prove POW is vulnerable as well in the sense that a few mining pools make up a super large portion of the network?

crypto is not self coding AI.. all rules of al cryptos are dev created!!
its how code is created.
ignoring the politics is allowing their centralisation to influence their ability to activate without restraight

they call themselves "core" "reference" "proposer" client for a reason
its bitcoins only drawback. head even lead maintainer of core admits how core is a central point of failure which they are trying to get away from

it pays to keep attention to details and critique proposers/devs influences. to not let them have free reign

Apart from the drama that Franky loves to raise about devs, he is right. The scaling has very little to do with mining algorithm, it is about the block space being limited which exist in both PoW and PoS.
However the flaws in PoS are by design and there is nothing that can really fix them whereas PoW doesn't have those flaws. For example in a PoS coin (specially altcoins) where people store their coins on exchanges and the altcoin exists only on the exchange for trading (aka gambling) the exchange suddenly gains a supermajority power to control the PoS network (which has happened in the past!). Something that is not possible in PoW because by design we have a genius way of preventing such attacks by making them needing to do actual work.

Most people are very open to new innovations in cryptocurrency world the problem is that we are always disappointed because almost everything new we see is a money grab project which is why the algorithms they introduce is also designed to ease their scam not to innovate and solve problems. Example: everything about Ethereum from its conception to help create tokens to scam people to their recent switch to PoS that helps them make money using their 72 million premined coins.

PoS issues are a multitude of things
but lets use ethereum as an example

just look at the 6month market charts
ethereum blind follows bitcoin market.

this is because ethereum does not have an independent community.
by this i mean if it did they would have their own sentiments of price and desire and their markets would not resemble the wiggles(ups and downs) of bitcoins.
lack of independence/desire means the markets just follow the prime markets due to arbitrage opportunities made by prime mainnets of real good utility/community/value

other factors are although ethereum switched to stake. they didnt add the redemption method at the merge. meaning peoples value has been locked and unmovable between 'staker pools' thus frozen and unspendable

yes they can find off-market trades to swap ownership. but thats just taking one person out away from his stake to put another sucker into that persons stake

these stakes in coinbase for instance are locked to coinbase. meaning if coinbase were to want to change some code. users owning that stake will not want to oppose coinbase because opposing a change = stake being destroyed and the owner losing it all. so they blindly go along with their stakers plans
AKA centralisation

other aspect of centralisation is that the threshold to be a staker is 32 coin meaning more then $30k invested. so people end up having to pool/syndicate smaller amounts with other people. thus less independency and along with the other flaws above less freedom to get out and just say no

with bitcoin Pow
asics can just pool jump in milliseconds away from malicious pools at no cost/harm

What do you think it would take for people to be open to a Consensus method that works off a new base mechanism(not based in POW or POS)?

You could do well by pointing out the issues you mentioned with Proof of work (pos) and proof of stakes (POS), scalability is already a popular challenge to both Network algorithms and a lot of developers have been made toward solving that scalability issue.

Bitcoin proof of work is greatly criticized because of its power consumption and environmental hazards and in solving these issues, proof of work which requires a lot of energy due to its use of computing devices that are constantly working to confirm transactions, and to reduce the dependence on the grid for electricity supply, the miner is now migrating to renewable energy as alternatives power sources.

Using convertible energy such as solar panels and other environmentally friendly energy generation mechanisms!

Proof of stake on the other hand pause a great risk due to the centralization of the network in the hand of the higher pool providers and this is where the risk is.

in regards to Pow mining it does not matter how many transactions are in a block
the PoW part of mining. just solves a puzzle based on a 256bit hash.
no matter the blockdata load they all resort to a 256bit ID no matter the scale. so it has nothing to do with PoW being the problem of scaling

PoW is not limiting scaling.
scaling is delayed due to developer/corporate sponsor politics of not wanting to scale bitcoin because they want to offramp users to subnetworks rather than scale bitcoin even by % periodically..
 the stall/delay is further becoming impatient due to the prime candidate subnetworks they promised to be the "solution" subnetworks.. have flaws of their own and are not fit to handle the scales they were promoted to handle (they are worse than what bitcoin can handle onchain now (unless you only want chewing gum/coffee amounts))

bitcoin however has a great value lock. and yes many subnetworks that "bridge" between many mainnets are already fostering bitcoin value as liquidity for their own network units. and yes some of them are even out liquidity providing compared to the promoted ones promised 7-8 years ago

and all this political commercial, corporate promises has nothing to do with PoW

after doing dev work with ethereum and bitcoin it seems that both consensus options are blatantly fairly flawed. POW has obvious scaling issues and POS seems like a bandaid solution with wealthy people automatically being allocated more currency through an infinitely compounding cycle. Is the crypto/blockchain community not open to new type of consensus? It seems like POW and POS just keep getting updated rather than addressing the real issue and switching base mechanisms. Do others just not see issues with POW or POS?