Topic: It's about time to turn off PoW mining - page 32. (Read 39732 times)

Except discus fish and ghash.io controls at least 40% of the Bitcoin network, and some times over 51%, and they mostly own the machines they are mining with. How is that decentralized?

Why do you need to know about who owns what stake in PoS? do you know every miner in a PoW system? does a PoW miner advertise they are going to attack the network?

Sorry to speak the truth. It is easy to collude with a 10k Peercoin holder than colluding discus fish or ghash.io to gain 51%. Investment made by discus fish or ghash.io is far more than the investment made by 10k Peercoin holder.

Glad to see that your eyes are open.

So far only Peter R's idea for initial distribution based upon a *snapshot* of the Bitcoin blockchain makes sense to me (no IPO coin will ever be more than a scam in my eyes).

That's why I call NxT distribution a scam and is not participating in it, it should fail. See my post here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8559235

An unfair distribution is simply a failed execution, it does not invalidate the advantage of PoS.

You seem to have missed the IPO idea of creating a PoS with say 21 BTC and a bunch of anonymous bitcointalk accounts (do I need to name the coin?).

It is perfectly easy to collude to gain 100% of the initial distribution if the cost is so low (but maybe very expensive for anyone else to *take that away from you* once the coin *gains value* via an exchange especially if the "initial stakeholders refuse to sell").

Bitcoin is completely decentralized mining. The pools are made up of independent miners that choose which pools they use at any particular moment. If there are any large mining businesses, they fluctuate at any given time.

How can you possibly know anything about who owns what stake in a PoS? Do you think they will advertise the fact that they are going to attack the network? I am all for a PoS system if it is backed by a strong central government and I would trust it as much as I did that government.

I'm not sure where this PoS "collude" concern come from. Who would collude to destroy their own wealth? I hold some peercoin, if you tell me to collude with you to attack Peercoin, I would tell you to gfys. Do you think it's easy to collude with 10,000 peercoin holders? or is it easier for discus fish and ghash.io to collude and gain 51%? I think the answer is obvious.

The fact is forks has NOT appeared more often in PoS, in fact PoW system has had much more forks, including Bitcoin.

That in itself is "worrisome" as presumably it means that forks could appear more often.

The other problem with PoS is that those not mining could be in fact colluding to present a new better chain (the cost of doing so being very little as the "Nothing At Stake" point made).

Again it comes down to "distribution" with PoS that basically *cannot be anonymous* in order to be trusted.

Fast forward to 2014

Its nice how anyone with just a Mining Farm can compete fairly equally right now.

Thanks for posting a blatantly false claim. Currently, half of the top 10 altcoin by marketcap are not PoW.

I stopped mining a long time ago

Wow, lots of claims made here. Are you sure 51% attack is illegal in all countries? (or in any country at all? lol) otherwise the attacker could just concentrate the effort in one country, not sure how they will "lose their mining investment" if their only intention was to attack. Many PoW altcoin has been 51% attacked to death, I haven't heard anyone got prosecuted for it, or "lost their mining investment"?

Not sure what "altcoins don't really have much work behind them yet" means. In altcoins, it has been clearly shown that it's much easier to attack a PoW system, as no PoS system has been successfully 51% attacked, even though many of them exists, and some of them very tiny too.

"PoS is aristocratic in nature. PoW is proletariat"... wtf does this even mean, if we look at Bitcoin PoW mining power is extremely concentrated. discus fish and ghash.io controls at least 40% of the network, and several other large mining companies control the rest. While PoS distribution is usually much better, and this is demanded by the community. For example Peercoin, the largest PoS stakeholder address that is mining with his stake, has about 1% of the coin. Also one of the funny thing I observed in a PoS system, is that many of the stake holders decides to not to mine. Usually only about 10-20% of the coin actively engage in mining PoS.

And make money from that?

Anyway - a "share in an ASIC" farm is *not real ownership* as far as "control of what it does".

All other system that aren't PoW are failed thus far  

Yes , we can   but not with 2-3 TH/s of power . This is the real problem : the power of hash .

To be fair, I don't know much about PoS.


Much like newly elected government officials are mocked when they come into power, yet still serve their entire term in office.

That is an interesting idea though, "term in office". Have the delegates serve terms of no longer than X period, with candidates requiring a certain amount of time being a shareholder (other than the stake requirement). Just an idea, and solves some of the concern of initial distribution as it will eventually change, no matter what.  Use it, don't, just an idea.

Yes. Anyone can own part of a miner.

This seems poorly thought out - proles can't afford "high end ASIC" can they?

Well altcoins don't really have much work behind them yet, do they? That's a poor argument.

You can try to double spend at any percent. If you try you will fail and probably be prosecuted for fraud. Even if you have a successful 51% attack, it is likely to be detected and you will lose your mining investment.

Altcoins can be interesting experiments. Many of them make unfounded claims and deserve their fate. Namecoin was spared this fate by merge mining because it serve a purpose other than competing with Bitcoin.

Wealth has a funny way of aggregating into a few families. With PoS, it can be quietly and secretly secured over time until only one person controls the majority stake. With PoW, people have to actually work to maintain wealth. It's not so easy to own human spirits.

There is a fundamental difference between PoS and PoW. PoS is aristocratic in nature. PoW is proletariat. It comes down to which side of humanity you choose to identify.

The point is they are not so much attacking the currency as buying it. It's like instead of flying two 'planes into the World Trade Centre, the terrorists bought the towers and then shut them down so no-one could use them.

Bitcoin is more vulnerable to irrational attacks than PoS. They'd just have to kidnap the families of the controllers of the few largest mining pools. Or an ASIC manufacturer.

How will destroying trust in the currency increase their wealth, when that wealth is denominated in that currency?

Have you looked it the Bitcoin distribution? 0.71% of the accounts hold 55% of the coins. The real situation is probably worse, because each owner spreads their bitcoins over multiple addresses. For example, Satoshi rarely has more than 50 coins at a single address. We only know he owns millions of coins because he was the only miner for a while.

As for distribution of hashing power, that is also terrible, with pools sometimes going over 50% almost by accident.