Topic: It's about time to turn off PoW mining - page 11. (Read 39732 times)

You think the cipherpunks were romantic? You think they couldn't predict the technology vectors? ASICs are just a technology that will be replaced by something faster and more efficient. PoS is not a great idea. It replaces the competitive drive to innovate technology with authority. PoS is Luddism incarnate.

cbeast after reading Satoshi's paper you'll see that "CPU power" is the term used (for mining). The idea is great (Nobel-Prize worthy actually).

But the romantic times are gone: mining pools and ASIC factories brought everyone back to earth.
Now massive centralization is the reality.

TL;DR same problems as PoS but at the same time wasting tons of energy.

You proved nexerns point. I'm sure you know all mining farm owners around the world.
Have you ever had a look at the 21% "Unknown" origin of mined blocks?

It's not a perfect world. Work is how we get by my friend.

thx for your confirmation that the above assumed scenario is valid atm.

Yes, you need to secretly order and hide a lot of ASICs with PoW. Go ahead, put in a mega million dollar order from an ASIC manufacturer. I'm sure that can be kept secret. I hope you buy it from BFL.

haven't read the full thread and don't know if this was already mentioned but if not here is another important factor about attack visibilty.

pow - an attack can be hidden prepared, just by accumulating hardware in the dark (unlimited available if really needed), no way to detect this before the attack is already running.

pos - an attack can't be hidden prepared. funds are needed to accumulate/reorged/controlled and a look to peerforging compared to known accounts triggers instant attention.
accumulating mining capacity (buying nxt) would also be seen immediatly on the exchanges.

without any deeper pow knowledge, is this simplified view correct atm?

Yes. You are trusting work vs stake. It's that simple.

With pure PoS you trust the majority of stake.
With pure PoW you trust the majority of hashpower. (with bitcoin you trust the biggest mining pools as an example)

Sticks and stones will not save your argument. Absolutely do your research. Read the white papers. Decide for yourself. That's one thing we agree on.

you are unbelievable you know that! dont listen to this guy if you need to learn about crypto. he is  a prime example of what you wuld call a "bitcointard" who thinks bitcoin is the perfect flawless crypto while all others are "scams".

this is a prime example of what happens when such a person is met with resistance by people who know what they are talking about: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9027745

the thread is full of that stuff. calling someone paranoid is not by any means a valid return in a debate when a very logical argument has been put forth.

PoS is just as secure if not more secure than PoW as is explained (why bitcoin is centralised and therefore less secure) here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9027321

however PoS does also have its own flaws, distribution being a difficult hurdle to overcome among other minor issues but nothing that makes it a "scam" or "insecure". the best thing to do is do your own research into the matter. the guys at www.nxtforum.org know their stuff and you can find the white paper for nxt there too which doesnt use the same PoS algo that most of the "PoS FUD" comes from. if you dislike PoS or the FUD has put you off. their is an alternative, Nem, that uses a new consensus algorithm called proof of importance. its a major major advancement on PoS. and soon going to be a real pain in cbeasts back side..

so ya do your own research and please do not heed guys like cbeast because he is a very very well known bitcointard that quite obviously has some serious vested interests in bitcoin being top dog.

PoS is fine by itself as a local currency issued by your government. It shares some of the traits of Bitcoin like being non-counterfeitable (except by the majority stakeholder which is the government) and fungibility. You can trust PoS as much as you can trust the people that control the majority stake. As far as security, they also use the same basic cryptography.

Is combination of PoS and PoW more secure than Pos or PoW alone?

Indeed distribution is the key. Bitcoin has a 5 year history of fairly distributing consensus. It started out with Satoshi having 100% of the mining hashrate, but now it is distributed on the world's largest hashing network. You can keep making claims about PoS or DPoS somehow being fair, but you cannot prove that claim. You cannot prove that any of them are not controlled by a single individual owning many accounts. It comes down to what someone is willing to sacrifice. You PoS folks think there is some ENTITY out there that has infinite resources that will dominate and control Bitoin forever because they have some diabolical intent. Yet your solution is to offer a shitcoin that you distribute to yourself and sell a minority stake just to scam us. That's fine if you are a government, but go sell your snake oil elsewhere.

Because you don't understand how Bitcoin solves it. POS solves it to the same degree as POW does (the process is different).
You make a ton of posts without understanding the nature of the solution Bitcoin brought and what the shortcomings are that only became visible over time. Almost all the statements you make in here are plain false.
Here is my take on it: Both (POW and POS) do not eliminate trust, they distribute the trust (yes you have to trust mining pools and big ASIC mining companies) and both make it economically unprofitable to work against the consensus. POS replaces high energy costs with elections and reputation and can therefore reduce costs significantly while keeping up the high security. 

Bitcoin solves the Byzantine Generals Problem according to the Satoshi White Paper. I haven't found any PoS White Paper that solves it without PoW.

You are confusing Pos with DPoS

You present this as if it was a fact. Can you prove it with an empirical example?

This is a very good point. The additional cost two have two stakes that each have 1/2 of your holdings of a PoS coin above only having one stake are very small. Since almost all altcoins are very deeply divisible it would be easy to effectively control a PoS network with only a very small holding of a PoS coin.

I haven't seen a PoS that solves the Byzantine General's problem. I see PoS as efficient as fiat and just as trustless as fiat.