Topic: Why BTC POW is technically moving towards an dead end (Read 511 times)

I see you two have your comedy routine practice well in hand and serious conversation is not what you want.

This reminded me of Feynman. 

Hmm, I suddenly feel an association swinging around my head. Couldn't the same thing had been said for the hundreds of years standing fiat currencies back in 2009? I think this changes the subject; we currently examine the potential of a crypto. In other words: Its underlying technology.

A Comparison to Bitcoin PoW, is if any one knows the 3 to 4 mining pool operators that have over 51% hashrate, all they have to do is corrupt them.

If you still don't understand , and still are not believing even the person who won a turing award.

Take some computer programming classes until you find someone that can explain it to you.

I don't believe in 'argumentum ab auctoritate'; we don't do that in science.

Except that no merchant would consider a new not yet proven altcoin (one of 10,000) instead of 10+ years standing Bitcoin.

But newer tech has greater possibilities. 

The PoS design of Algorand makes forks impossible and that is according to
Silvio Micali, a Turing award winner.  *Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing*

First, the Algorand blockchain overcomes one significant problem that has been observed with any chain that becomes popular, a hard fork.

“The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Each new block is separately agreed upon and is guaranteed to remain on the Algorand chain forever.

The Algorand consensus is not a drawn-out process. The fact that more and more blocks are attached to a given block B does not make it more and more probable that consensus on B has been reached. Algorand separately reaches agreement on a new block. When this is done, it reaches agreement on the next block. And so on.”

Thus, its users can immediately rely on the transactions as soon as they appear in a new block without having to wait for the block to become sufficiently deep in the chain.

So instead of haggling with clients over an unconfirmed funds transfer (as may be the case with Bitcoin), a merchant accepting tokens that are underpinned by the Algorand blockchain is assured of the finality of the transfer

Interesting to know that algorand gives a more secure transaction at a almost instant speed while not needing to compromise the majority % of the power grid like bitcoin.

A Comparison to Bitcoin PoW, is if any one knows the 3 to 4 mining pool operators that have over 51% hashrate, all they have to do is corrupt them.

Take some computer programming classes until you find someone that can explain it to you.

I still wait to find out how.

Security.

Now we come to security. Assume that I am a very powerful adversary, capable of corrupting users extremely quickly whenever I want. Clearly, I would love to corrupt the members of the committee, but I have a problem: I do not know who they are.

This is so because committee members are selected by a secretly run, cryptographically fair, individual lottery. Thus, only they know who they are, up to the moment in which they propagate through the network both their winning tickets and their opinions about the block. Only at that time I might learn who the committee members are and, given my super powers, I can immediately corrupt the entire committee. But so what? Corrupting them at this time is too late. Whatever the committee members had to say, they have already said, and their winning tickets and up-or-down opinions about the block are virally propagating throughout the network. I have no more power to put their messages back in the bottle than a government has the power to put back in the bottle messages virally propagated by WikiLeaks.

In other words, the Algorand approach is secure because beforehand, an adversary does not know whom to corrupt, and by the time he does, corruption is useless.

First, the Algorand blockchain overcomes one significant problem that has been observed with any chain that becomes popular, a hard fork.

The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Each new block is separately agreed upon and is guaranteed to remain on the Algorand chain forever.

The Algorand consensus is not a drawn-out process. The fact that more and more blocks are attached to a given block B does not make it more and more probable that consensus on B has been reached.

Algorand separately reaches agreement on a new block. When this is done, it reaches agreement on the next block. And so on.

Thus, its users can immediately rely on the transactions as soon as they appear in a new block without having to wait for the block to become sufficiently deep in the chain.

So instead of haggling with clients over an unconfirmed funds transfer (as may be the case with Bitcoin), a merchant accepting tokens that are underpinned by the Algorand blockchain is assured of the finality of the transfer

This is a very good point. It's also worth mentioning the halvings; meaning not only are ASIC improvements going to hit a certain performance wall, also the rewards will get lower, pushing down the amount of miners running. So effectively, the power consumption will always be bound to price/coin and coins/block.

It's impossible to 'ban forks' because they're not something you deliberately 'make', but something that emerges in a decentralized blockchain inherently.

First, the Algorand blockchain overcomes one significant problem that has been observed with any chain that becomes popular, a hard fork.

As Silvio Micali, a Turing award winner and founder at Algorand explained in a blog post:

“The Algorand blockchain does not fork. Each new block is separately agreed upon and is guaranteed to remain on the Algorand chain forever.

The Algorand consensus is not a drawn-out process. The fact that more and more blocks are attached to a given block B does not make it more and more probable that consensus on B has been reached. Algorand separately reaches agreement on a new block. When this is done, it reaches agreement on the next block. And so on.”

Thus, its users can immediately rely on the transactions as soon as they appear in a new block without having to wait for the block to become sufficiently deep in the chain.

So instead of haggling with clients over an unconfirmed funds transfer (as may be the case with Bitcoin), a merchant accepting tokens that are underpinned by the Algorand blockchain is assured of the finality of the transfer

The energy consumption has grown because the reward has grown

You think there will be a technically limit how fast to solve the SHA 256 function. Dont believe so.

sorry off topic :-)

This doesn't make much sense. If it's implementing a blockchain, it's doomed to have forks one way or another. Not allowing them sounds vague.

I already reported to the mods to lock this topic.

Actually Algorand does not allow any forking, so double spends are impossible.

With proof-of-work protocols like Bitcoin, in which users solve crypto puzzles, there is a chance that two users could solve for a valid block at the same time. When two nodes get a valid block simultaneously, the blockchain forks into two because different groups of users may see different candidates for the next block. A fork may persist for a while, and its branches may even be elongated by the addition of new blocks. But eventually, all branches but one (the longest) will die , and all the blocks in the dead branches will disappear. The transactions on the dead branches are considered invalid; they basically never happened.

Similarly, an adversary could partition the network, convincing different groups of users to accept different blocks at the same height in the blockchain. As a result, contradicting transactions will be accepted by different users, causing a fork in the chain. This allows the adversary to double-spend their money.

Forks are an unwelcome source of uncertainty and delay.

This is because a branch may overcome the current chain and your block may end up in a dead branch and disappear. Before considering yourself paid, you would need to wait for a sequence of blocks to be added to yours, so as to minimize the chance that the block containing your payment will end up on a dead branch.

Some people recommend waiting for six blocks to be added after yours to be confident that your block will remain on the chain

In contrast, the Algorand blockchain never forks.

Two blocks can never be added to the chain at once because only one block can have the required threshold of committee votes.

At most, one block is certified and written to the chain in a given round.

Accordingly, all transactions are final in Algorand.

When the consensus protocol decides on a block, this decision is never changed.

Every honest user soon learns of this decision, and no honest user ever thinks that a different block at the same height was chosen.

Once a block appears, users can rely on the transactions it contains immediately and they can be confident that the block will forever be part of the chain, which means the money they receive is safe.

And in the event of a network partition in Algorand, the adversary is never able to convince two honest users to accept two different blocks for the same round.

This is true even when the partition may last for an indefinite amount of time and nobody knows when it will be resolved.

Algorand’s chain never forks and users’ balances remain secure.

This is half-true or maybe even false. The system protects you from double-spending as long as the ones who own the most of the money supply sign their blocks honestly. The system cannot ensure those few won't double-sign for the given block. We've already explained that it's designed to centralize overtime anyways:

Algorand’s Immediate Transaction Finality

With proof-of-work protocols like Bitcoin, in which users solve crypto puzzles, there is a chance that two users could solve for a valid block at the same time. When two nodes get a valid block simultaneously, the blockchain forks into two because different groups of users may see different candidates for the next block. A fork may persist for a while, and its branches may even be elongated by the addition of new blocks. But eventually, all branches but one (the longest) will die , and all the blocks in the dead branches will disappear. The transactions on the dead branches are considered invalid; they basically never happened.

Similarly, an adversary could partition the network, convincing different groups of users to accept different blocks at the same height in the blockchain. As a result, contradicting transactions will be accepted by different users, causing a fork in the chain. This allows the adversary to double-spend their money.

Forks are an unwelcome source of uncertainty and delay. If a payment made to you appears in the latest block added to the chain, you cannot immediately consider yourself paid. This is because a branch may overcome the current chain and your block may end up in a dead branch and disappear. Before considering yourself paid, you would need to wait for a sequence of blocks to be added to yours, so as to minimize the chance that the block containing your payment will end up on a dead branch. Some people recommend waiting for six blocks to be added after yours to be confident that your block will remain on the chain; others recommend an even longer wait if the payment made to you is sizable. So rather than waiting ten minutes (Bitcoin’s transaction time) to have reasonable confidence in the finality of a transaction, in reality you have to wait hours.

In contrast, the Algorand blockchain never forks. Two blocks can never be added to the chain at once because only one block can have the required threshold of committee votes. At most, one block is certified and written to the chain in a given round. Accordingly, all transactions are final in Algorand. When the consensus protocol decides on a block, this decision is never changed. Every honest user soon learns of this decision, and no honest user ever thinks that a different block at the same height was chosen. Once a block appears, users can rely on the transactions it contains immediately and they can be confident that the block will forever be part of the chain, which means the money they receive is safe.

And in the event of a network partition in Algorand, the adversary is never able to convince two honest users to accept two different blocks for the same round. This is true even when the partition may last for an indefinite amount of time and nobody knows when it will be resolved. Algorand’s chain never forks and users’ balances remain secure.

see Proof of Stake designs achieve as low as a 4 second block speed with 100% protection from double spends.

it's because those who want to secure the network need those who are securing the network. In PoW, anyone's free to setup their hardware and start securing, but in PoS, it's down to those entities' judgment if new people can enter.

The difference I was trying (and failed miserably at it) to point out is that unlike POS in order to get more votes you don't have to make the other guys rich by doing so nor do you have to force them to give you a share of it in a redistribution of wealth.
They will keep accumulating wealth (coins) while you're going to keep losing as you will never afford to put aside as much money as they do.

The difference I was trying (and failed miserably at it) to point out is that unlike POS in order to get more votes you don't have to make the other guys rich by doing so nor do you have to force them to give you a share of it in a redistribution of wealth.

I am starting to think the only people who are really pushing POS are people who either don't want to deal with mining or really just want to pump their shitcoin / token for some reason.