Topic: replacement for pow (Read 352 times)

Wrong, that only means there's no financial incentive to run full node. @pooya87 mention security incentive, but some people also run full node due to privacy concern or prefer not to rely on 3rd party to obtain block/transaction data.


Why would you determine so many nodes as a mistake?


Could you elaborate why?

You cannot build such a system into a decentralized and permissionless network like BTC, 'identity system', 'kyc' or whatever is for centralized systems and networks and not for BTC. This suggestion does not make too much sense and i don't know how you believe something like this can work, but the message from the replies in this thread is that 'fake nodes' is not a problem and is a waste of time for the node because if they are not following the network rules, their message would not be relayed further, and a 51% attack is impossible because of the cost and little possibility of success.

Proof of Work is the only true Consensus Mechanism for any truely Decentralized & Trustless Cryptocurrency. It currently has no better/proper alternative that I'm aware of.  And it simply means to Prove Miners Works before they are rewarded and their works accepted.
Higher price tend to attracts more workers/miners (possibly with more powerful mining hardware to be able to keep up with mining difficulty) thus making the Network more secure against 51% attacks and increasing the energy usage.


By the way, Bitcoin is a Freedom System/Cryptocurrency that isn't supposed to limit users like PoS does with stake limit, lock limit, consensus limit etc . It's dangerous to limit the freedom its features gurantee to people that may need them to escape or survive a tyrannical opposite system or invaders. The proper way to solve problems on the Network is to creatively build on the existing foundation/principles, like on the Permissionless feature you mentioned. If you are worried about 51attack or the so called fake nodes, then create a decentralized identity system anyone can easily have, then get anyone who wishes to be monitored less (or have a smooth stay on the network) probably against 51% attack to verify their identity. Miners identity information must be hidden/private and should only controlled by them. Once there is an attack from a miner or group of miners the Network can have their identities unmasked via consensus. You can also use ID scheme to build miners reputation... If you choose only reputation without ID , I think that could easily be cheated.

People don't run bitcoin full nodes because they are bored! They run them to secure the money they are using, whether by contributing to the security of the network or by having full control of the complete verification of everything in the blockchain. That is more than enough incentive for them to keep them safe.

How are they a weakness?! YOUR node will always verify everything so regardless of what other nodes do, you remain safe.

Let’s see if there is at some point a possibility to get nodes under your control with hacking. Nodes do cost money and at the same time earn you nothing. This means that people have no incentive to keep them updated and secure them. I feel that this was a mistake at the beginning of bitcoin more then now, since there are now so many nodes. However the nodes are still some kind of a weakness, even if they are also one of the main benefits of the bitcoin network.

Nodes are not important, it's the miners that matter. You can spin up all the nodes you want and change anything you want with them. Unless the miners see and then mine the transactions that those nodes provide it does not matter. AND THEY WILL NOT MINE THEM since they would not be valid transactions on the network so the miners nodes would reject them. Period. Full stop.

There is zero reason to change the way BTC works. It is functioning with no issues. If you want to fork off and make an altcoin, that is fine. If you come up with a better way of doing it, people will follow. If not, then they will not.

-Dave

It sounds like a solution that's searching for a problem.  The whole idea of a blockchain is that it lessens the need to rely on trust, so trying to shoehorn trust back in to the equation is regressive.  We used to have some hardliner fanatic types around here who maintained their own "Web of Trust", but they were just elitist loons and they've (thankfully) fallen pretty silent in recent years. 

Bitcoin has had an open and permissionless ethos from day one and I can't ever see that changing.  Would-be gatekeepers don't tend to make much progress around here.

Don't try to re-invent the wheel. It has been already invented and it is called Bitcoin and blockchain. An better than that is that it is already working. Believe me that if there were yet better solution than Bitcoin and blockchain, that solution woud be in Bitcoin.
Don't worry, Bitcoin is the best solution in pretty much all aspects when we talk about permissionless, decentralization, sovereignty, property, hard money and many other aspects!

It is not a worry in the BTC network. The cost of carrying out a 51% attack is unthinkable and the chances of being successful is not guaranteed, so if you sum it up it makes it impossible. Who wants to spend billions of dollars to purchase millions of Asic miners, and spend thousands of dollars on other things like electricity, coolers, building for the equipments, etc, just to attempt to gain more mining hashrate than all of the network, which may fail. If we even agree that the attacker successfully gains control, but for how long, in a secure network like BTC i don't think it would be too long before other nodes and miners discover and a solution is immediately implemented, which would leave the attacker with egg on their face after spending so much for nothing really.

In a small and shady network like BTC Gold for example, a 51% attack can and has already happened in the past, but the security of the BTC network and the cost to attempt a 51% attack on it makes it impossible and not a threat or worry.

controlling 51% of the node is possible but impossible hahaha

so in the network big like bitcoin or litecoin in this case as PoW it would be heard to get 51% even pool operator sometimes said to their user to distribute their hashrate although this would possible to new altcoin but Im rarely hear of it

and if you talk about Proof of Stake controlling 51% will be hard too since you need buy dozen of coin to stake which mean need dozen ton of money we took example of ETH, ETH need 32 ETH to build single node which cost around 60K at todays rate

the other hand BNB smart chain that only have 21 Validator super tigh competition even need other user of BNB to join the validator which need hundred of dollar so yeah

If 51% attack is impossible, why worry about it?

The linked non article already speaks volumes.


Have you never been hacked, never trusted an exit scam?
Trust and Internet is not synonymous unfortunately,

The idea just keeps sounding worse the more it is broken down. Bitcoin is a permission-less and trust-less network, losing these two features to prevent a nonexistent threat of fake nodes is taking bitcoin several steps back in terms of decentralization. Running on a centralized platform like discord effectively centralizes the network.

You do not need to fix what is not broken.

- Jay -

Permissionlessness is exactly the point though. Decentralization is only a means to an end.

Simply put, Bitcoin is not permissionless so that it can be decentralized. Bitcoin is decentralized because that's the only way for it to be permissionless.

Decentralization is the easy part, it's permissionlessness that's the tricky one.

By running a full node (fake or real) you don't gain any kind of advantage or disadvantage. So you can't call "being easy to create fake nodes" a weakness. It also has nothing to do with bitcoin being permissionless and decentralized.

The real question that you forgot to answer first is "Why would we want to prevent 'fake' nodes from entering the network". They certainly aren't gaining any kind of advantage and they also not capable of harming the network in any way since they will be banned quickly if they act maliciously.

They are also very good at abusing their power to some day start banning those who they don't like hence ruining the whole decentralized system.

P.S. Considering your title and your title only contains the word "PoW" I think you are confused about what a node is and what a miner is. You can create a fake node but you can't create a fake miner because to be a miner you have to have real computing power.

1) Fake nodes are not a problem.
2) You prefer to have to receive permission to use the network rather than allow it to be permissionless....this would greatly weaken the idea of Bitcoin
3) And you would allow whoever is in the permission-giving 51% to decide the fate of everyone else who wants to be in the network.
4) PoW doesn't waste energy, it USES energy for a very important purpose. It also CAN use wasted energy, which is a huge benefit.
5) You think its a good thing to ban nodes....

Sounds like you just want a centralized altcoin that isn't useful.

There is a problem with only allowing nodes to join if they have 51% approval. A group with 51% control could kick out the other 49% and gain 100% control forever, and it would cost them nothing.

Bitcoin has a similar problem except that the 51% must be maintained in order to keep control, and also it is difficult (and dangerous) to reach 51% given that the largest miners are pools.

A web of trust cryptocurrency was the first idea for Ripple. The project was already around before Bitcoin, approximately from 2004 on.

Some ideas can be found in old versions of the Ripple wikipedia article, and on their old website on Sourceforge (as an example, look at a short description in 2007).

I remember that because I admit that I first believed Ripple to be something more useful than Bitcoin. (Well, I changed my opinion drastically.) I believe the current Ripple system has no real web of trust elements anymore. XRP is simply a quite centralized cryptocurrency where servers of the issuers control almost everything, and the algorithm seems to use traditional BFT consensus.

Web of trusts imo provide not enough security for a cryptocurrency, at least without another element, due to the sybil attack threat.

(PS: what I wanted to write was more or less: XRP failed implementing a web of trust cryptocurrency, and instead went for a traditional centralized BFT-based one.)

'fake nodes' is not a big weakness to the BTC network, i don't think the idea of fake nodes can be a problem if they don't control 51% of the network's hashrate, if they don't control 51% of the hashrate, then whatever malicious transaction would be detected by other nodes and would be dropped because there are far more good nodes than malicious ones.
If permission is required to run the BTC client, then i don't think it is decentralized anymore, it is now somehow centralized and people can now be censored, BTC works the way it does because it is censorship resistant and permissionless, and the pow algorithm ensures optimum security of the network, the worry is only if a 51% attack happens, and it is impossible.

Bitcoin's decentralized and permissionless nature is its biggest advantage but also its biggest weakness: it's too easy to create fake nodes.
But I believe that a permissioned and decentralized network is also possible. For a node to enter the network, a 51% approval of validators already approved in the network is required.
Then we created a community on some social network or on this forum and created a kind of web of trust  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust.
Thus it will be possible to establish a decentralized network without energy waste. Humans are very good at identifying bots.
At the same time that it will be possible to enter the network with 51% approval, it will also be possible to ban nodes.
If anyone is interested in creating this mechanism please let us know.