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Topic: Proof of stake mining of bicoin - page 3. (Read 25670 times)

legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1000
December 31, 2014, 02:01:40 PM
Bitcoin is very hard to upgrade but you can hold bitcoin on a DPOS (delegated proof of stake) chain on BitShares as bitBTC and earn interest.  So individuals can choose to upgrade but the network itself can't.

There is no need to 'upgrade' Bitcoin now as such. A non-PoW complement to Bitcoin already exists in BitBTC, though granted at this particular moment the peg is not holding too well (it needs more volume). It can be used as BTC with bells and whistles and will also allow users to see how a non-PoW option works.

I eventually see Bitcoin moving on to a different scheme, whether its completely non-PoW or partly PoW. I expect Bitcoin holders to be not too happy in the future when they realize that they may not need to pay this much to secure the network thus reducing inflation.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1042
White Male Libertarian Bro
December 31, 2014, 01:43:33 PM
As far as attacking, yes you do need some stake at least initially to attack a poS coin, so it's not truly free.  probably you would need something on the order of a 1% stake.  But on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily mean poS will work at larger scales; many have serious concerns about the security model.  You are right that the concerns are theoretical as of now.

It would need significantly more than 1% stake. Again, I am thinking in terms of DPoS, as I don't have a thorough knowledge of the alternatives.

Whether the security remains as robust with scaling remains to be seen, but that is only possible when it gets big. I haven't seen any good theoretical attack vectors which may compromise it on a bigger scale. In case it does, the developers have to look at improving the solution, like DPoS itself was an evolution through a series of steps.

DPoS (aka Delegated PoS) is a joke because it adds a social construct to chain security which is easily manipulated.  This makes it susceptible to Sybil attack and breaks it.  There is no way to prove the delegates are unique individuals.  THIS IS A FATAL FLAW!

An individual can create multiple delegates and get stakeholders to approve them via deception.  This gives the illusion that there are 101 unique delegates when in reality many delegates are in fact one individual.  When you consider that multiple individuals could collude to create these faux delegates, it becomes obvious that gaining control over 51% of the delegates would not be that difficult.  It's even more vulnerable because Bitshares is trying to attract "businesses and developers" as delegates.  All someone would have to do to get voted in as a delegate is to post a convincing but fake business plan or resume and the stakeholders would eagerly pull in the Trojan horse.

Some Bitshares' users ask about how to tell if delegates are unique, but they get no response from the devs.

Bitshares has already had a Sybil attack occur earlier this year when it was uncovered that an individual named "sfinder" actually controlled the TOP 5 DELEGATES!

It becomes laughable when the main Bitshares' dev, Daniel Larimer (aka Bytemaster), appears in the thread and starts asking if anyone else knows what other delegates "sfinder" controls.  The Bitshares' devs obviously know about this problem, but they still have the audacity to say that "Bitshares is your gateway to the decentralized world!"

The truth of this matter is, that as everyone knows who was around in 2013, Bitshares was originally going to be PoW.  The Bitshares' devs only decided to switch to PoS after they saw the success of NXT.  In a flawed attempt to look original, they added "delegates" to PoS which effectively destroyed it by adding centralization and opening it up to the aforementioned Sybil attacks.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1000
December 31, 2014, 09:42:40 AM
As far as attacking, yes you do need some stake at least initially to attack a poS coin, so it's not truly free.  probably you would need something on the order of a 1% stake.  But on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily mean poS will work at larger scales; many have serious concerns about the security model.  You are right that the concerns are theoretical as of now.

It would need significantly more than 1% stake. Again, I am thinking in terms of DPoS, as I don't have a thorough knowledge of the alternatives.

Whether the security remains as robust with scaling remains to be seen, but that is only possible when it gets big. I haven't seen any good theoretical attack vectors which may compromise it on a bigger scale. In case it does, the developers have to look at improving the solution, like DPoS itself was an evolution through a series of steps.
newbie
Activity: 3
Merit: 0
December 31, 2014, 07:55:34 AM
Also I would straight up say: Switching bitcoin will be impossible. How would a transition even work without compromising the security of the network? What will happen to all the gear?

I think it's a good example of the problem of divided incentives. Should POS in theory prove to be better for the coin, the miners would still block it - and rather harm the coin to prevent their financial loss. They will have the ultimate decision.

You're giving miners way too much credit for being able to decide on the protocol specifications. If some significant part of the community decides that they would prefer a POS based bitcoin and to change to POS at blockheight x then the miners have no real power to combat this change. They can only decide on whether or not they think it is still profitable to keep mining on the POW fork of "bitcoin".

Who is that "significant part of the community"? If it excludes most core devs (who seem to hate POS) and most miners... which also means most big exchanges, since they have massive mining ventures too - e.g. Huobi and BTC-China. Adding then that most users are unmotivated to look into any of those issues, then we talk about a tiny minority that has to take over the system.
Technically possible - but improbable close to the point of "never gonna happen". And if it would (maybe because of a government attack), it will be major chaos.

It seems much more logical that people who don't like the system switch to an alt with the desired properties.


First of all, I definitely agree that it's unlikely to happen due to the reasons you've just given (and because I don't think POS is a viable alternative [currently] but that's beside the point). I was only trying to point out that it's not a decision the miners have some ultimate say in. If a part of the community forks the bitcoin blockchain at some blockheight and changes to POS, there is little the miners can do about it. That being said, if such a fork would occur in the near future there probably wouldn't be a lot of support for it from the current userbase (partly because currently miners are also related to other parts of the ecosystem as you stated).

sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
December 31, 2014, 03:32:31 AM
Also I would straight up say: Switching bitcoin will be impossible. How would a transition even work without compromising the security of the network? What will happen to all the gear?

I think it's a good example of the problem of divided incentives. Should POS in theory prove to be better for the coin, the miners would still block it - and rather harm the coin to prevent their financial loss. They will have the ultimate decision.

You're giving miners way too much credit for being able to decide on the protocol specifications. If some significant part of the community decides that they would prefer a POS based bitcoin and to change to POS at blockheight x then the miners have no real power to combat this change. They can only decide on whether or not they think it is still profitable to keep mining on the POW fork of "bitcoin".

Who is that "significant part of the community"? If it excludes most core devs (who seem to hate POS) and most miners... which also means most big exchanges, since they have massive mining ventures too - e.g. Huobi and BTC-China. Adding then that most users are unmotivated to look into any of those issues, then we talk about a tiny minority that has to take over the system.
Technically possible - but improbable close to the point of "never gonna happen". And if it would (maybe because of a government attack), it will be major chaos.

It seems much more logical that people who don't like the system switch to an alt with the desired properties.
sr. member
Activity: 406
Merit: 250
AltoCenter.com
December 30, 2014, 10:17:13 PM
I am not seeing any realistic hopes of Bitcoin switching from PoW.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
Bitcoin trolls back
December 30, 2014, 04:49:38 PM
Centralization remains an issue

That's why PoW provides a 51% mechanism.
It works both ways, any 51% attack can be 51% attacked.

Don't make me laugh.  You think you can 51% the government?  lol

That's why we have an anarchy of competing governments.

Governments aren't going to be 51% attacking each other to protect BTC users' autonomy.  The majority of governments work in concert with each other.  "Competing governments" are an illusion.

... unless governments themselves become BTC users, which they should.

It's a good question though. In the scenario of a single totalitarian world government PoW might not be the best option and instead a myriad of anonymous PoS coins will serve better. Though it would not be a perfect global money system for variety of reasons. This solution is temporary and so is the one world government. Once it falls apart PoW provides a neutral playground for competition.

We are far from the scenario described above, because there are clearly big countries who agreed to disagree. We need both systems as each serves its own purpose, so we will see how this plays out.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1042
White Male Libertarian Bro
December 30, 2014, 02:54:52 PM
What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin or people just used it with the Bitcoin protocol. This may happen in the future.

What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.
 

Would it help mitigate 51% attacks?

Depends upon what you mean by a 51% attack. It would not protect PoW layer at all directly but would protect the end user because after you receive payment you could depend upon the combined trust(with both the strengths and weaknesses of both consensus algos) of both systems. So If a 51% attack was occurring on the mining pools and the nodes on the TaPoS blockchain were not confirming than one could delay accepting and trusting the transaction until the community figured out what the problem was.

This brings up many other complicated questions though like if it is an act of supererogation and introducing new potential attacks but overall the benefits could be really nice as it would bring a lot more decentralization back into bitcoin, increase security overall, allow for decentralized instant confirmations,  and act as a backstop against the asic manufacturers or mining pools from any mis-behavior.

I don't think that is necessarily true.  If a government were to coerce or more likely impel pools and mining corporations to act a certain way, for instance, freezing some peoples' accounts, would the currency users running the TaPoS chain not abide by the PoW chain and revolt?  I think that would be very unlikely, because the PoW chain will still dominate.  The mass majority of TaPoS nodes will fall in line with whatever "rules" the PoW chain decides to enforce, because if they don't, they will fork and lose their investment.
newbie
Activity: 3
Merit: 0
December 30, 2014, 01:46:12 PM

my question was a combination of a) how exactly does PoS work 

read this:  http://peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf

Or this: https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Whitepaper:Nxt#Proof_of_Stake


Also I would straight up say: Switching bitcoin will be impossible. How would a transition even work without compromising the security of the network? What will happen to all the gear?

I think it's a good example of the problem of divided incentives. Should POS in theory prove to be better for the coin, the miners would still block it - and rather harm the coin to prevent their financial loss. They will have the ultimate decision.


You're giving miners way too much credit for being able to decide on the protocol specifications. If some significant part of the community decides that they would prefer a POS based bitcoin and to change to POS at blockheight x then the miners have no real power to combat this change. They can only decide on whether or not they think it is still profitable to keep mining on the POW fork of "bitcoin".
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1042
White Male Libertarian Bro
December 30, 2014, 01:42:28 PM
Centralization remains an issue

That's why PoW provides a 51% mechanism.
It works both ways, any 51% attack can be 51% attacked.

Don't make me laugh.  You think you can 51% the government?  lol

That's why we have an anarchy of competing governments.

Governments aren't going to be 51% attacking each other to protect BTC users' autonomy.  The majority of governments work in concert with each other.  "Competing governments" are an illusion.
sr. member
Activity: 252
Merit: 250
December 30, 2014, 12:48:29 PM

my question was a combination of a) how exactly does PoS work 

read this:  http://peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf

Or this: https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Whitepaper:Nxt#Proof_of_Stake


Also I would straight up say: Switching bitcoin will be impossible. How would a transition even work without compromising the security of the network? What will happen to all the gear?

I think it's a good example of the problem of divided incentives. Should POS in theory prove to be better for the coin, the miners would still block it - and rather harm the coin to prevent their financial loss. They will have the ultimate decision.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
Bitcoin trolls back
December 30, 2014, 12:10:14 PM
SlipperySlope started a project to implement PoS in Bitcoin.

Implementing PoS in Bitcoin is indeed a SlipperySlope Cheesy
Nothing is coincidental.
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
December 30, 2014, 12:08:30 PM
i was wandering in the future can bitcoin switch to proof of stake?

This is an obvious troll thread that belongs in alt coins. Bitcoin has never considered any other design. Please move this thread.

SlipperySlope started a project to implement PoS in Bitcoin. Looks like he gave up and tries to make his own new coin now: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ai-coin-development-diary-584719

Edit: Actually he didn't give up but is just going another way to make Bitcoin a PoS coin.
Super! I wish his project well.
sr. member
Activity: 321
Merit: 252
December 30, 2014, 12:03:37 PM
i was wandering in the future can bitcoin switch to proof of stake?

This is an obvious troll thread that belongs in alt coins. Bitcoin has never considered any other design. Please move this thread.

SlipperySlope started a project to implement PoS in Bitcoin. Looks like he gave up and tries to make his own new coin now: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ai-coin-development-diary-584719

Edit: Actually he didn't give up but is just going another way to make Bitcoin a PoS coin.
member
Activity: 70
Merit: 10
Bitcoin trolls back
December 30, 2014, 11:53:24 AM
I wonder how much energy has been wasted in this circlejerk of a thread.
If you really want to see energy waste, go check out reddit.com/r/bitcoin.
It is one huge circle jerk, and r/buttcoin makes fun of them (us)

So the mass-debating continues Smiley

There is no white paper because the wiki is speaking in general terms.
One example is Meni's implementation of adding proof of stake
checkpoints.... One of the key words here is adding proof
of stake, NOT replacing proof of work entirely.

If you were meaning to say that replacing proof of work entirely
with proof of stake shouldn't even be considered (rather than
being in the category of "disputed"), then I would generally
agree, as it is too huge of a change.

And by the way, this is a perfect example.  Meni's idea sounds
appealing, but the core devs (and even Meni) dispute it being
implemented because they do not believe it will make bitcoin
more secure.

I wonder what happens if stakeholders hire a small group of miners and simply start checkpointing the blockchain they produce, even though it's not the longest one?

Would it help mitigate 51% attacks?

51% attacks is a cornerstone of PoW design.
If attack is not possible then the entity/mechanism preventing the attack becomes the central point of failure.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
December 30, 2014, 11:51:10 AM
What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin or people just used it with the Bitcoin protocol. This may happen in the future.

What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.
 

Would it help mitigate 51% attacks?

Depends upon what you mean by a 51% attack. It would not protect PoW layer at all directly but would protect the end user because after you receive payment you could depend upon the combined trust(with both the strengths and weaknesses of both consensus algos) of both systems. So If a 51% attack was occurring on the mining pools and the nodes on the TaPoS blockchain were not confirming than one could delay accepting and trusting the transaction until the community figured out what the problem was.

This brings up many other complicated questions though like if it is an act of supererogation and introducing new potential attacks but overall the benefits could be really nice as it would bring a lot more decentralization back into bitcoin, increase security overall, allow for decentralized instant confirmations,  and act as a backstop against the asic manufacturers or mining pools from any mis-behavior.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
December 30, 2014, 11:22:00 AM
What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin or people just used it with the Bitcoin protocol. This may happen in the future.

What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.
 

Would it help mitigate 51% attacks?
donator
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1014
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
December 30, 2014, 11:21:03 AM
What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin. This may happen in the future.
What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.

I am agnostic on side chains. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
December 30, 2014, 11:17:47 AM
What could happen is another consensus layer that gave the right features and supplemented PoW was added to Bitcoin or people just used it with the Bitcoin protocol. This may happen in the future.

What if you had a TaPoS layer that had 1-10 second confirmations which worked with the miners where peoples wallets reflected both the ~10 min confirmation and the 1-10 second ones for added security and to allow for on the sidechain transactions to occur while not giving up on PoW security.

So a TaPoS blockchain could indeed supplement Bitcoin and at the same time would not change any of the core principles like disinflation 21 million , PoW, ect..

The fact that this can be done does not bode well for Nxt or Bitshares and should have them concerned.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
December 30, 2014, 11:17:23 AM

my question was a combination of a) how exactly does PoS work 

read this:  http://peercoin.net/assets/paper/peercoin-paper.pdf
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