What if YOU could put 1 feature, change, whatever, into the Bitcoin protocol? - page 3.

QuestionAuthority

legendary

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You lead and I'll watch you walk away.

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 10:19:04 AM

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:52:43 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:41:51 AM

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:15:58 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:02:11 AM

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, write down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

What's a floppy? lol

My TRS-80 uses these: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/galleries/transtech/informationtechnology/slides/quarter_inch_disk.htm

I still got a bunch of them. They were an upgrade from the cassette drive. haha

My god, I haven't heard about a TRS-80 since the 70s. Since you're still using that stuff, I'll loan you my old Winchester hard drive. It's 5mb and about the size of a briefcase. lol

haha, I'd probably need to track down an interface to use it. How much did that cost when it was new?

I think I purposely blocked that out of my memory. I want to say $500 but I'm not really sure anymore.

R2D221

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Activity: 658

Merit: 500

Quote from: Amph on April 09, 2015, 09:56:47 AM

Quote from: R2D221 on April 09, 2015, 08:35:47 AM

Quote from: ensurance982 on April 09, 2015, 07:05:27 AM

Quote from: Kprawn on April 09, 2015, 01:29:07 AM

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining. Wink

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream. Sad

The idea is very interesting and I think you are trying to tackle a very important problem, but building specialized machines (ASICs) in order to solve a PoW-based task will always be possible, I believe :-/

Even if you have ASIC-resistance, big companies can buy thousands of CPUs and have mining farms as well. It may not be as efficient as ASIC, but they will certainly have an advantage over the common users.

common users in this case, would have a bit of breath, because they could use gpu, which are far better than cpu, they will still be behind, but they at least will put a dent on it

If GPU is viable, companies would use GPU instead. Same result: advantage for companies.

Bitware

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Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:52:43 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:41:51 AM

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:15:58 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:02:11 AM

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, write down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

What's a floppy? lol

My TRS-80 uses these: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/galleries/transtech/informationtechnology/slides/quarter_inch_disk.htm

I still got a bunch of them. They were an upgrade from the cassette drive. haha

My god, I haven't heard about a TRS-80 since the 70s. Since you're still using that stuff, I'll loan you my old Winchester hard drive. It's 5mb and about the size of a briefcase. lol

haha, I'd probably need to track down an interface to use it. How much did that cost when it was new?

Amph

legendary

Activity: 3248

Merit: 1070

Quote from: R2D221 on April 09, 2015, 08:35:47 AM

Quote from: ensurance982 on April 09, 2015, 07:05:27 AM

Quote from: Kprawn on April 09, 2015, 01:29:07 AM

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining. Wink

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream. Sad

The idea is very interesting and I think you are trying to tackle a very important problem, but building specialized machines (ASICs) in order to solve a PoW-based task will always be possible, I believe :-/

Even if you have ASIC-resistance, big companies can buy thousands of CPUs and have mining farms as well. It may not be as efficient as ASIC, but they will certainly have an advantage over the common users.

common users in this case, would have a bit of breath, because they could use gpu, which are far better than cpu, they will still be behind, but they at least will put a dent on it

QuestionAuthority

legendary

Activity: 2156

Merit: 1393

You lead and I'll watch you walk away.

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:41:51 AM

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:15:58 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:02:11 AM

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, write down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

What's a floppy? lol

My TRS-80 uses these: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/galleries/transtech/informationtechnology/slides/quarter_inch_disk.htm

I still got a bunch of them. They were an upgrade from the cassette drive. haha

My god, I haven't heard about a TRS-80 since the 70s. Since you're still using that stuff, I'll loan you my old Winchester hard drive. It's 5mb and about the size of a briefcase. lol

Bitware

hero member

Activity: 926

Merit: 1001

weaving spiders come not here

Quote from: QuestionAuthority on April 09, 2015, 09:15:58 AM

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:02:11 AM

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, write down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

What's a floppy? lol

My TRS-80 uses these: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/galleries/transtech/informationtechnology/slides/quarter_inch_disk.htm

I still got a bunch of them. They were an upgrade from the cassette drive. haha

QuestionAuthority

legendary

Activity: 2156

Merit: 1393

You lead and I'll watch you walk away.

Quote from: Bitware on April 09, 2015, 09:02:11 AM

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, write down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

What's a floppy? lol

Bitware

hero member

Activity: 926

Merit: 1001

weaving spiders come not here

I would add a CheckBox-suppressible ('never show again' and 'remind me later') popup that prompts users to encrypt their wallets, copy-&-paste/write-down their passphrase so they dont forget it, and present them with an option to download a wallet copy to any media source (cd, floppy, thumb drive, local file, memory chip/card, external device etc.)

R2D221

hero member

Activity: 658

Merit: 500

Quote from: ensurance982 on April 09, 2015, 07:05:27 AM

Quote from: Kprawn on April 09, 2015, 01:29:07 AM

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining. Wink

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream. Sad

The idea is very interesting and I think you are trying to tackle a very important problem, but building specialized machines (ASICs) in order to solve a PoW-based task will always be possible, I believe :-/

Even if you have ASIC-resistance, big companies can buy thousands of CPUs and have mining farms as well. It may not be as efficient as ASIC, but they will certainly have an advantage over the common users.

ensurance982

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Trust me!

Quote from: Soros Shorts on April 09, 2015, 07:34:38 AM

Quote from: ensurance982 on April 08, 2015, 04:06:28 PM

Quote from: reRaise on April 08, 2015, 12:47:43 PM

Quote from: arlekyn13 on April 08, 2015, 12:23:21 PM

Quote from: reRaise on April 08, 2015, 12:19:27 PM

Block reward down to every year.

You mean block reward halving?

Yes halving, that would cause some fireworks.

You wouldn't necessarily have to cut down the reward in half every year, you could just go and multiply it by 0.9 or something, which would smoothen things up a bit.

The current implementation using an integer shift operation to approximately halve the reward is very simple and elegant to those who can read and understand the code. There are lots of problems associated with replacing that with some kind of floating point operation, the biggest one being that you need to make sure that the reduction of reward is the same across all platforms. This is not as simple as it sounds because different computing platforms have different rounding errors. The second problem is how you would deal with the last few Satoshis? I mean if you were down to 3 Satoshi block rewards you can't reduce it so 2.7 Satoshis at the next reduction.

Ah well you can tackle those problems: Store Bitcoins as integers/longs (already being done this way) and then divide them with fixed-point arithmetics in a precisely defined manner. Drop all the remaining Satoshis (we're already getting pretty weird rewards in a couple of 4*n years, actually!)
But I see the problems and understand the beauty in the current implementation.

Soros Shorts

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Quote from: ensurance982 on April 08, 2015, 04:06:28 PM

Quote from: reRaise on April 08, 2015, 12:47:43 PM

Quote from: arlekyn13 on April 08, 2015, 12:23:21 PM

Quote from: reRaise on April 08, 2015, 12:19:27 PM

Block reward down to every year.

You mean block reward halving?

Yes halving, that would cause some fireworks.

You wouldn't necessarily have to cut down the reward in half every year, you could just go and multiply it by 0.9 or something, which would smoothen things up a bit.

The current implementation using an integer shift operation to approximately halve the reward is very simple and elegant to those who can read and understand the code. There are lots of problems associated with replacing that with some kind of floating point operation, the biggest one being that you need to make sure that the reduction of reward is the same across all platforms. This is not as simple as it sounds because different computing platforms have different rounding errors. The second problem is how you would deal with the last few Satoshis? I mean if you were down to 3 Satoshi block rewards you can't reduce it so 2.7 Satoshis at the next reduction.

ensurance982

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Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Trust me!

Quote from: 1K on April 09, 2015, 07:17:15 AM

Quote from: R2D221 on April 08, 2015, 09:55:15 PM

Most answers show how much people don't know about the details of Bitcoin and the reasons the current features are like that. They try to reduce the confirmation time, because they imagine people waiting in the supermarket line for ~10 minutes, when in reality most transactions today are accepted with 0 confirmations, with little risk (proportional to the supermarket-type purchase, anyway).

Little do these people know the workings of their debit and credit card processing which would take much longer than 10 minutes to confirm. Bitcoin payment processors would be used with most merchants so they'd be ok and insured against any potential problems. One bitcoin has been sent it's as good as received instantaneously.

Also, if confirmation times are shorter, the security a single confirmation adds to the transaction is getting smaller and smaller the shorter the target confirmation-time is!

1K

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Quote from: R2D221 on April 08, 2015, 09:55:15 PM

Most answers show how much people don't know about the details of Bitcoin and the reasons the current features are like that. They try to reduce the confirmation time, because they imagine people waiting in the supermarket line for ~10 minutes, when in reality most transactions today are accepted with 0 confirmations, with little risk (proportional to the supermarket-type purchase, anyway).

Little do these people know the workings of their debit and credit card processing which would take much longer than 10 minutes to confirm. Bitcoin payment processors would be used with most merchants so they'd be ok and insured against any potential problems. One bitcoin has been sent it's as good as received instantaneously.

ensurance982

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Trust me!

Quote from: Q7 on April 09, 2015, 07:11:43 AM

The only thing I want if let's say modifying the protocol is possible is to make centralized mining become obsolete or in a way turn it to become unprofitable. Something similar like hash rate contribution from the same IP will have less chance of solving the block or maybe there are better mechanisms to prevent this. This will ensure that everyone from the community has the chance to actually mine bitcoin, including a guy who owns a simple mining machine. This will solve on the distribution issue.

Not possible. You can always spread your hash rate across several IP addresses. You are introducing metrics (different IP addresses = better) that can be faked. PoW can't.

Q7

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The only thing I want if let's say modifying the protocol is possible is to make centralized mining become obsolete or in a way turn it to become unprofitable. Something similar like hash rate contribution from the same IP will have less chance of solving the block or maybe there are better mechanisms to prevent this. This will ensure that everyone from the community has the chance to actually mine bitcoin, including a guy who owns a simple mining machine. This will solve on the distribution issue.

ensurance982

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Trust me!

Quote from: Kprawn on April 09, 2015, 01:29:07 AM

I would like normal people with low spec computers. {CPU/GPU's} to be once again able to mine Bitcoins. It should have built in code to detect mining farms and throttle/reduce their income, to make it less viable for them to mine on such a big scale. {ASIC proof}

Then, companies like DELL can pre-install mining software with every computer the sell, to be enabled by the user, when the computer is not in use. {The user will then get rewarded for sharing his CPU/GPU to help with mining and he can pay his electricity bill automatically} In a perfect world, this should cover his full bill, with the added electricity he used for normal use and the extra electricity he used for the mining. Wink

This will put some money back into the pockets of MANY people, who are in debt and enable projects where electricity costs are a issue and also help with sustaining Bitcoin mining.

We can just dream. Sad

The idea is very interesting and I think you are trying to tackle a very important problem, but building specialized machines (ASICs) in order to solve a PoW-based task will always be possible, I believe :-/

ensurance982

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Trust me!

Quote from: R2D221 on April 09, 2015, 06:58:26 AM

People saying that we should have an ASIC-resistant algorithm (however that's mathematically possible) kind of reminds me of homeopathy, where “less is better”. In this case, less device power will somehow bring better security.

Even if homeopathy is nonsense (which it definitely is), in some cases less can actually be more. The thing with ASIC-resistant is the idea that it's impossible to have such a great advantage (10^3 or more) by using specialized machines, which can put the decentralization at risk!

R2D221

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Activity: 658

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People saying that we should have an ASIC-resistant algorithm (however that's mathematically possible) kind of reminds me of homeopathy, where “less is better”. In this case, less device power will somehow bring better security.

ensurance982

hero member

Activity: 518

Merit: 500

Trust me!

Quote from: johnyj on April 08, 2015, 07:56:25 PM

IMO, the changes should not be on the protocol, but on the team that write the core nodes. In fact, only a few of core devs control the git hub, this means if these people are compromised, then the whole bitcoin project is down. They must get enough protection

Gavin also said that it is difficult to reach consensus between core devs. Since the decision of a protocol change is seldom a technical but a political one, they really need some kind of transparent decision making mechanism

In fact, infrastructure wise the bitcoin has many area to improve to become a truly trusted world currency, there are so many uncertainties in its security model. Today, people just download a software and pray for the rest part, but when a retirement fund wants to put billions of dollar in this currency for 20 years, the bitcoin network is still not enough robust in many aspects. The risk of ruin is still larger than our financial system today

Phew... sophisticated input this early in the morning. Yeah that's one of the real problems. Core devs could be compromised, etc. But I think it's more probable that they don't earn enough for their work on the code and therefore leave. I think maybe... a voting system for which fork to use or which pull requests to implement maybe? Of course PoW-based!

R2D221

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Quote from: e1ghtSpace on April 09, 2015, 06:01:05 AM

I would make the mining algo double after 5 years.
It would start at sha128 for the first 5 years. Maybe a few people'll get hacked, it'd be cool.
Then on the 5th year (at this current time) it would be sha256 and everyone will be confident that their coins are secure.
Then on the 10th year its sha512 and people will be very secure.
And it keeps going up.
Ultimately it'll probably never work. Addresses will keep getting longer and longer. (I think) but hey, it'd be a funny altcoin. I don't know how it would work though.

SHA1024? I don't think that exists yet.

Topic: What if YOU could put 1 feature, change, whatever, into the Bitcoin protocol? - page 3. (Read 3162 times)