Topic: POW vs. POS - page 3. (Read 3657 times)

I definitely think that proof-of-work is going to be phased out soon, though proof-of-stake isn't much better, they all require specialist hardware in order to run their networks, which is not something we should implement for later generation blockchains, a waste of energy can't be the best way to secure a blockchain. I notice that the major blockchains are starting to shift towards POS as it's definitely more environmentally friendly than POW, but it also increases centralization and the risk of a vector based attack so we should look for even better alternatives in future.

That is true for PoW as well. Some people just buy a lot of GPUs/ASICs to get maximum reward. In PoS, instead of buying mining equiment, they buy the coins/tokens.

After doing some research I found out that:

Proof of work (PoW) requires proof that work of some kind occurred. In the case of Bitcoin miners are required to do this work before any of their blocks is accepted by others. Using miners to solve the blocks and get rewards from this work.

Proof of stake (PoS) requires users that have a high stake at the currency (i.e. hold a lot of coins) to determine the next block. This has a high risk of some party achieving monopoly of the currency but there are several methods to prevent that (by allocating random stakeholders to agree on a new block, and others). Get reward from holding as much coin.

There are some pro and cons from not only PoW but PoS. PoW may consume a lot of electric energy but fair for everyone because they work hard to get reward based on it "Nothing ventures, nothing gains".

In conclusion, I support PoW. 

@aliashraf

It seems we are at a impasse.

Therefore Time and the Reader can be the final arbitrator.

Good Luck with your PoCW.  

Bitcoin never ever use PoS...

So you believe bitcoin is not secure, but it IS.

I think you are right about centralization of mining but, the fact that despite this bitcoin has remained secure shows the strengths of PoW.
Value is one thing and price is another thing. Value is determined by necessary labor for the society to produce a commodity but price is determined by supply and demand. Value is fundamental for price not the price itself. You need to check economics theory of value.

Fiat currencies are the only exceptional commodities that have no value but a price! This is why this movement, cryptocurrency is morally justifiable and fair. Fiat is fake commodity just like slavery: An slave is not a product of labor in a society but in some points of the history (even modern history) they got price and were/are exchanged ruthlessly.

PoS is just a computerised version of such a fake commodity. It is produced out of thin air.

Code and time are irrelevant and the electricity for PoS.

A printed money takes time and labor to be produced and still we don't hesitate to say: It is produced out of thin air.

OK,

1. Your conclusion is misplaced, because energy consumption does not keep bitcoin safe.
IE: ~2 years ago Chinese Miners gain ~71% control of bitcoin mining, the energy required to run bitcoin has increased dramatically in that 2 year period,
      it is no safer now than then , and the argument could be made it is less safer as the Chinese miners are running a 2nd coin to switch too.
Shorty put : Bitcoin Security is dependent on the Continued Chinese Miners Collusion , energy spent is irrelevant.

2.  PoS or PoW coins value is perceived by the price the public is willing to pay.
With PoW coins, you have a higher baseline price because of a psychological floor due to the input cost needed to produce a bitcoin today.
However the majority of Bitcoins were mined at much cheaper prices than today's rate, so that promoted myth fails to hold water and is a falsehood.
The amount of resources going into a product do not guarantee a higher price.
IE:
Make a Car out of pure gold , it cost to purchase would be immense, however due to the weight , it would be crappy on gas mileage and a prime target for thieves, as such the majority would shun it as wasteful and pick a car with better gas mileage that was more affordable.

Shortly put : PoS & PoW coins are both created by using electricity, program code, & time to create said coins.
It is just that one requires less resources to be created and used.

         


FYI:
Another good example of the amount of resources going into a product don't guarantee a higher price, is the US Penny.
It costs the Government more than a penny to make a penny, but yet when you spent it , it is only worth 1 penny.


 

@Zin-Zang

AFAICS, this conversation is becoming too chaotic, I suggest you choose just one topic, like energy waste of bitcoin (your terms) and simply prove my arguments about the irrelevance of your claim, wrong. Although I've clearly stated everything necessary in this regard for your convenience I try to make another brief argument here:

1- Bitcoin and PoW generally, consume energy to keep the network safe against unfaithful behavior of malicious participants. It is irrelevant to call it a 'waste' because it is one of the most useful use cases for energy ever: decentralizing money.

2- The coins generated in PoW, have objective value because they have been produced by consuming resources like any other asset (other than fiat currencies). PoS generated coins are just like fiat, they come from nowhere and have no value.

Now, in just 2 short paragraphs refute my arguments above.

We can agree that the more confirmations the more secure a transaction,
however this is a condition of both PoS and PoW.

The only real implementation of banks in the cryto world is lightning network.
Banks used to take gold deposits and use their own notes to transfer representations of value.
Lightning Network takes Bitcoin deposits and uses their own custom ledger to transfer their representation of value.
Only LN meets the specifications to be called a Bank.

PoS & PoW onchain transaction transfer the actual value, not a representation of the value like a Bank or LN.
PoS & PoW onchain transactions do not allow for the possibility of a fractional reserve system onchain.
PoS & PoW onchain transactions do not use a debt based system (like Banks) that guarantees their is always more debt than quantity of coins.
Therefore neither PoS or PoW onchain implementations fit the specifications of a Bank.  

Your conclusion on bitcoin being secure because of the risk to the miner wealth if they damage it, is false.
You have a incorrect assumption that the miner is totally dependent on only bitcoin.
Bitcoin Cash has changed that conclusion for the following reason, Bitmain has stockpiled more bitcoin cash than bitcoin.
They have mined a large % of bitcoin cash, kept all of their bitcoin cash from the original fork, used a % of their bitcoin profit to buy more bitcoin cash,
taken bitcoin cash exclusively for their new miners, because of the following they have a direct financial incentive to replace bitcoin with bitcoin cash, their profit windfall would be staggering if bitcoin suffered a failure or price drop that made bitcoin cash more popular.
All they have to do to achieve this , is keep stock piling cash , and start cashing out all of their bitcoins on their mining operations, at some point they make bitcoin cash price match bitcoin and the rest of the miner join in leaving bitcoin to fend for itself with no miner support.
Bitmain would gain untold riches from carrying out such a plan, so old bitcoin is no longer secured by the miners , as the larger profit can be made elsewhere.

* If you want to fix PoW, you need to remove the energy waste & block the pooling of resources so that individuals will always be part of the system.*
* Due to coin age included in PoS, and the fact that PoS coins are disabled for period of time before allowing another stake, it gives an individual with lesser amounts the ability to stay relevant in a PoS network*  

When you examine the underlying structure of PoW verses PoS,
the following comes to light:
PoW is a combative system Winner take all design, as miners compete for every single block, meaning the richest will always be the strongest.
PoS is a cooperative system design, as when one block stakes , those coins are offline for a specified time and no longer competing for a block, which means that coins from other members are required to stake to reach the # of confirmations that will again allow that block to stake.
In PoS , You literally need others to be staking and securing the network until your coins are again eligible to stake.
 



Read the following to understand , it is not absurd my friend but a reality.  
Miners will need permission to buy electricity.  
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/canadian-utility-halts-processing-service-requests-from-cryptominers/525438/
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/bitcoin-backlash-as-miners-suck-up-electricity-stress-power-grids-in-central-washington/
https://www.theolympian.com/latest-news/article208635474.html
https://www.chelanpud.org/docs/default-source/commission/bitcoint-mining-prompts-utility-rate-hike---data-center-frontier-feb-2-2016.pdf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2018/03/25/bitcoin-mining-triggers-backlash-from-electric-utilities/





PoW consume Massive amounts of Electricity.
PoS consumes a tiny fraction of that amount of electricity.

Both provide the ability to make transactions, PoS is just more energy efficient than PoW.
IE:
PoW is a Car that has a gas mileage of  1 mile per gallon.
PoS is a Car that has a gas mileage of 1000 miles per gallon.
Therefore to go 1000 miles in the PoW car require 1000 gallons of gas.
While in the PoS Car going 1000 miles only require 1 gallon of gas.

Both PoW & PoS get you to the same place , however PoW wasted 999 gallons of gas to do so.

* In truth , the ratio of energy waste in electricity is much worse in the millions or higher instead of a simple 1000 ratio. *



I was saying that GL, was the only thing they all had in common, I was not implying it made them all banks.

PoS coins are not made out of thin air, they were generated by Electricity, Program Code, & Time, no different than PoW in that aspect.

Debt can be added to an external offchain system such as LN, but can not be added to an onchain system in PoS or PoW.
Debt requires a representation of value , onchain system are the actual value and therefore onchain debt is impossible with the current designs.



As far as # 3 went, we seem to be agreeing more than disagreeing .  
I would state that a PoS coin is a resource and that it's inflation rate and usage would determine it's price.
A PoS coin value is tied to the quantity of coins and it's usage, while the Fiat based currencies are tied to nothing, except promises of government officials.
Just as ASICS requirement gives PoW coins value in your mind, because it allows new coins to be generated and transactions to occur,
PoS Coins themselves generate new coin and make transactions occur without the unnecessary energy waste of PoW.
 
 

Centralization of PoW  mining by pools sucks. Although I've proposed an improvement to replace 'winner-takes-all' approach with 'contributor-takes-share' to fix infamous pooling pressure in PoW, I have to acknowledge this as a flaw for current implementations of PoW.
But you are taking advantage of this issue, too much:
1- PoS systems are vulnerable to this threat in a higher order because of the availability dilemma. And in PoS it is even worse because they need to lock the stakes for a long period and people can't move easily between these "banks".

2- The very fact that despite the situation with pools, we have bitcoin with $110+ billion market cap, speaks for itself. Pools, are bad and yet PoW is that good to survive and get even stronger, why? It is because of the beauty of PoW, its objectiveness. Some people think it is because of bitcoin being popular and using its premium as the first crypto, they are wrong. Bitcoin is big because it is highly secure.

3- Through scaling debate in bitcoin, we learned lessons among them we discovered the importance of users. SegWit adopted by a UASF, i.e. it was enforced by users and not miners. Although Jihan Wu was controlling a huge share of hashpower (he still is) he failed dictating his agenda.

Conclusively, bitcoin is secure because to do anything harmful to it you should invest a lot and consume a lot and risk losing everything because of huge hashpower requirements and large user base that simply ignores your unfaithful messages.

This is absurd.
Miners don't get permission for electricity, they buy it! In subsidizing countries, it makes sense but not all over the globe! It has been a decade and bitcoin has been popular for at least 5 years and miners are doing their job.

If it is about your false prophecy about "exponential growth" in electricity demand of mining, I have already refuted it. There will be no growth in middle term and we will experience mild corrections in long term (my prophecy).

Really?  
In PoW coins are generated and granted to people because they are consuming resources to become qualified for such a grant. In PoS we have a subjective credit that is inflating with almost zero cost.  It is just like any other subjective article, nothing! You put no-thing in stake to get more no-thing and you wish people recognize your no-things as a medium of exchange. hmmm ... sounds familiar, Feds do this with USD on a daily basis, don't they? Sure they do.

No, it is not an answer. Having a GL does not make them all the same.

PoS coins are made out of thin air just like fiat, there should be banks of stakes to guarantee availability and hence income. These banks will sooner or later, shard transaction space for scaling purposes and eventually have to be regulated under a clearance protocol for their intra-shard transactions, etc. Nothing new.

As for lending and extra-income, they will figure out a way for this. e.g.  borrowers who suggest an interest rate higher than the network could look tempting enough for our banks of stake.

Again It is not an answer. Other than fiat currency any resource has a value determined by the amount of average labor needed to produce it and has a price determined by the balance between its respective supply and demand. It is true for every single good everytime and everywhere other than fiat currencies as I mentioned above. And you are introducing another 'thing', a PoS coin, that has no value but has a price while we have such things right now and they got names: USD, Euro, Pound, Bulivar, ...

The only resource in the world that its value is based on a compromise and not on labor is fiat.  

The problem with new systems is reaching the critical mass.
Only the largest PoS by capitalization will be considered secure, or most secure (similar to PoW in terms of hashrate).
But hashrate is physical, whereas exchange rates are subjective and can be manipulated
(that is the reason why capitalization needs to be big).
People will also look into distribution - and if they see 80% belonging to founders
(as is often the case) they will let such opportunity (to buy those coins) pass.

The interest generated acts as inflation,
by forever increasing the quantity of coins it always guarantees their will eventually be a lowering of value per coin,
if the quantity consumed does not exceed the quanity of new coin, the price per coin will eventually fall.

Most PoS devs give a coin 5% or higher , trying to mimic old saving account rates,
the problem with that is the bank were able to do so by giving loans at higher rates on that savings in the form of credit cards & other loans at over double or triple the savings rate. When a Crypto coin gives out a rate, they have nothing but consumer demand to try to nullify the increase, which over time can't sustain high rates forever, and then the price drops begin.
Which is why Satoshi built in bitcoin a forever decreasing number of coins generated per block every 4 years, until the miners no longer created new blocks but only make money by processing transaction fees only.
Which causes further problems : http://randomwalker.info/publications/mining_CCS.pdf


https://github.com/zeitcoin/zeitcoin
ZEITCOIN is based on peercoin originally, peercoin is still a hybrid running PoW & PoS.  https://github.com/peercoin
ZEITCOIN dropped PoW after the 1st two months.
Peercoin PoS design destroys all transaction fees as a way to offset their inflation from staking.


Last year Zeitcoin moved to an Ultra Low Inflation rate of .0005% yearly, even if the entire network were staking less than 500 new coins could be created daily.
So our Proof of Stake is purely for consensus at the present time and all of the transaction fees are currently burned.
The plan is in the next few years to no longer burn the fees but grant them to the block staker in addition to the ULI.
That is some ways off and for now the fees will continued to be burned.
* To offset the concerns raised in the pdf on randomwalker on transaction only coins, our coin will always and forever have the ULI reward.*

Due to the extremely low energy cost needed to run a Proof of Stake network ,
ZEITCOIN can run a network that outperforms bitcoin in transaction capacity , transaction fee prices , and speed, at a fraction of their input costs.
It is only a matter of time before the public becomes award of these improvements and acts according.
If you want more info
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/zeit-community-knights-ultra-low-inflation-micro-payments-487814
  
FYI:
Nxt was a custom PoS implementation, including the ability to create other tokens on their network .
the normal standard of the majority of PoS coins is based on peercoin,
the developer of peercoin Sunny King was one of the original creators of Proof of Stake as a consensus method.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-history-and-evolution-of-proof-of-stake

Hmm didn't know there is inflation in PoS coins - I thought once they leave the hybrid phase, tokens are just redistributed in transaction fees
like in Next.
What is Zeitcoin based on? I didn't find the source code on their website.

LOL, you confuse faith with Logic.

Your conclusion is false, the energy waste has not secured bitcoin it is dooming it.
1.  The Chinese Mining Pools have had a ~70% domination of bitcoin for years now.
     The only security in bitcoin is what they grant you nothing more.
    
2.  The energy waste means that future miners have to request permission from government regulators to allow them to increase capacity.
     If the Governments approve these energy requests of miners, they can use that as a way to coerce their approval or disapproval of transactions.
     Making bitcoin another government minion no different than banks.

Just to clarify Bitcoin Security is provided by the Chinese Miners Collusion not the energy waste.



Answer to 1.
The amount one owns of the coin and the original code defines how much they stake and who earns.
And hopefully one research that code before buying.

Answer to 2.
All blockchain crypto is a general ledger that is the only thing they have in common,
Fiat is controlled by governments, PoS Crypto are defined by the code and therefore outside the control of those government elite.
Banks make up money out of thin air based on debt which they worsen with fractional reserve nonsense,
Crypto has a defined amount, with a defined growth, with ZERO DEBT built into it and No fractional reserve shenanigans.

FYI:   (Excluding Tether of course since Tether is running a fraction reserve scam claiming 1 to 1 with the US$)

Answer to 3:
The only thing we agree on is PoS is a method of consensus.  
Ownership of everything is subjective to personal & group compromise, why this bothers you is strange.
IE:
You own apples and the guy down the road owns oranges,
You both exchange apples and oranges with each other , but the exchange rate is defined by the community preferences of which they favored more at the time of exchange. That is what you have to live with if there is more in the community than just you.
The value of any item is defined by how much others are willing to pay for it.
  

Amen to that!

Unfortunately, Trump cannot set a good example of conservationism.
USSR had this historical chance to force vegetarianism or even veganism (it only needed to borrow it from India properly,
with spices and science of ayurveda - which of course was counter to the state ideology!) on its population.
Alas, we had Khruschev who did his PR by promising "catching up and getting ahead of America in production of meat and milk" (how stupid...)
As the result, late Soviet Union had de-facto veganism with people surviving on potatos and pasta without spices or ayurveda or beans or nuts etc. which was ugly as hell. I remember those times with shudder of disgust.

People like Trump who do not care, typically eat meat too much as well. Just look at his fans. 
Methane or de-oxide carbon production and emission is what humanity should take care and control of, it is indisputable.

Bitcoin energy consumption is not the primary target for energy conservation tho, we have a LOT more fields to conserve electricity in.

The energy deficit is subjective.
Let me remind you how the futurists of XVIII century were projecting forward the growth of cities: that as a result, streets will be thickly covered in horse manure.
This carbon dioxyde argument against technical progress sounds very familiar, isn't it?
The Earth will be heated a bit more during next 10 or 20 years due to reduced solar activity (as it's inversely correlated to the climate warmth) but then we will start to cool down. So why not have Bitcoin and PoW for another 30 years just to keep today's temperatures around.

And no, carbon dioxyde is not the primary cause of "greenhouse effect" - the primary cause is methane, which we produce a lot because of our derelict habit of eating meat.

I'm aware that you are a fan of PoS, an enthusiast, but this "energy wasting" argument won't help your faith, believe me.

First of all, energy is not wasted in PoW, it is the only objective way to keep a system secure and the way I look at it, the energy that network consumes now, is one of the most decent use cases for electricity ever:
setting people free from feds, preparation phase for such a freedom, at least.
I prefer not to use my car rather than turning my miner off when it comes to conserving energy because of its environmental consequences. Remember, the most reckless move  against the planet was Trump withdrawal from Kyoto Protocol. Defending the planet is a political movement with bitcoin in its heart.

Secondly, your speculative argument about energy demand of bitcoin "growing exponentially" is absolutely wrong. Bitcoin demand for energy has reached to its pick growth rate and it won't go much further in mid-term and will decline in long term because of a few important factors:
1- Moore law that is promising for more efficient devices.
2- Halving that de-incentivizes wild increases in hashpower. Unlike bitcoin-as-gold proponents, I believe transaction fees won't go that high, to put it more correctly, I think we should improve to have both tr fees and block reward very low.
3- Economics, that proves any exponential growth in the society is temporary and reaches its equilibrium state very soon as there is not enough resource to satisfy such a growth anyway.
4-... you say.

There are again a few more real problems with PoS:

1- It has no measure to tell us who deserves how much stake and why?

2- It is eventually a computerized version of fiat currencies, banks, interest rates, ... with obvious lack of Resistance Axiom, which is the main driving force behind cryptocurrency movement.

3- Its consensus algorithm (any variant), is basically subjective, based on a compromise between people about the distribution of stakes. It is inherently defective because of this subjectivity. Historically we had this idea in reputation systems before bitcoin and with no significant outcome.

4- ... I can say more.

Actually due to the energy wasting failures of PoW , Bitcoin is doomed within 5 years as the energy requirements are growing exponentially.
Your belief that Proof of Stake is failing is just plain wrong.
Currently it is the only one not draining the energy resources of the planet for wasteful attempts at being a global payment system.

The only real problem with Proof of Stake system is the ones that inflation rate is just too high.
That issue is easily mitigated by going to a ultra low inflation rate.
Like gold, the reason it value held over time was the expense/ hardship of getting the ore limiting the new amount, therefore keeping a low inflation rate,
by moving a PoS system to an ultra low inflation rate, we mimic that process.

Simple! Bitcoin implementation of PoW, is the first version, an experiment and a proof of concept as far as I can understand.

I mean, come on! How is it possible at all, a complete revolution just with one shot 

The unfortunate coincidence of bitcoin getting popular and becoming a high stake game with Satoshi's disappearance  caused it to become rigid and resist evolution, obviously, but it doesn't change the fact that it is nothing more than a beta version of a proof of concept for PoW.

Proof of concept for PoW, not for cryptocurrency I have to emphasis as I see most people are not used to re-think everything and just follow the media.

According to their story: 1-Bitcoin is the ultimate form of PoW, 2- PoS is an alternative, much modern approach to cryptocurrency as a decentralized, public and permissionless system.

Both claims are void:
1- Bitcoin is not the end but a beginning for PoW, 2- PoS is nothing new, it has been around as reputation systems and has failed its mission because of its subjective nature. There is no way to publish money, a justifiable legitimate way I mean, so it doesn't deserve to be considered neither an alternative nor a modern approach to cryptocurrency.