BUIP015 - Decentralize mining with the FAIR PoW algorithm and an user-configurable PoW setting

Zangelbert Bingledack · Jan 25, 2016

That's a good point, @go1111111, though unlike with ASIC miners where a change in hashing algo is the only way to make their investment worthless, for botnet runners something like a bugfix or Windows upgrade could kill their cashcow so they may have an incentive toward short-term profit. Although they still will probably make more money mining than doublespending, it is somewhat less of an incentive than the investment of a mining farm.

Roy Badami · Jan 28, 2016

I'm against changing the PoW. The hundreds of millions of dollars invested in SHA256 mining hardware is one of Bitcoin's greatest strengths. IMHO changing the PoW would be the death of Bitcoin, and viable cryptocurrencies more generally, for the foreseeable future.

YarkoL · Jan 29, 2016

go1111111 said:
Did someone ever use a botnet to attack Bitcoin though? Anyone controlling a botnet has a choice between honest mining and attack. If they have enough hash power to launch an attack, they have enough hashpower to make huge sums of money through honest mining. Their opportunity cost is huge.

Bitcoin avoided such attacks because it was a special case, a novelty that could keep on growing under the radar. Alts have been targets of such attacks, though.
In addition, a percentage of botnets consists of zombie machines controlled by malware.

go1111111 · Jan 29, 2016

@YarkoL even if many botnets are controlled by malware, I don't see how that changes the liklihood that the malware author is better off mining honestly than trying to attack Bitcoin.

If we did reset the PoW and go back to CPU mining briefly, any botnet attacker would need at least 51% of all the botnets that are mining Bitcoin (ignoring any honest mining power). Wouldn't we expect lots of botnets to be re-purposed for Bitcoin mining? How likely is it that one group controls 51% of them?

Do you know how expensive alt attacks have been in the past?

YarkoL · Jan 30, 2016

@go1111111
The point was that ASICs make this type of malware impossible... The cost of an attack depends on hash rate, which can be ridiculously low with many alts. The only protection they have is their insignificance, which might not be the case with Bitcoin.

VeritasSapere · Feb 25, 2016

Christoph Bergmann · Feb 29, 2016

I don't like this. As a member of bitcoin unlimited I can vote with "no"?

Why I don't like it: because as much as asics suck, they are the reason bitcoin is by far the strongest computer network in the world. Also a pow-change is something that defines in my eyes an altcoin. I would not run such a software.

bitcartel · Feb 29, 2016

@VeritasSapere @Christoph Bergmann Thanks. This is currently only a discussion, not for voting.

SysMan · Mar 4, 2016

- Change of PoW/PoS to anything - will change whole coin economy seriously & irreversibly.
- PoW is fundamental coin protection by hash-power, changing algo we will change everything.
- Change of mining - will impact private miners, virtual contracts, group miners, company miners as investors and related businesses ecosystem - they will all fail, they will loose all investments. they never came back as miner-class because they will loose trust in coin/chain. As an impact this will immediately remove aprox. 1BB$ from bitcoin market-cap and even more from price by mass coin sales (to compensate looses and safe the left founds), also impacting by chain all other businesses.
- ASIC's is just efficient technical solutions & proof of industry trust. for any hash algo doesn't matter are you using CPU(btw higher risk or fraud/51%) or GPU(same risks), or even FPGA - ASIC's deliver best hashing power at lower power consumption and cost. ASIC's is just about trust, evolution & technology.
- then miners as group trust, they invest more for long term - this also add market-cap price for coin, if they doesn't invest, we will get lower hashrate in result less stability higher risks.
- lower hash-rate means less protected coin-asset. less protected coin as asset, will never cost higher price and will never store itself high-costly assets(color-coins/smart-contract/etc) because there are no protection.

- btw economy formula coin price = ( transaction price - opex/capex expenses, eq mining expenses), meaning more electricity consumes CPU/GPU/FPGA/ASIC', and less efficient they are more higher fee per transaction will be. so ASIC's or any other solution just deliver lower fee, because they more efficient at electricity usage, and they are cheaper vs CPU/GPU as cost vs hash-power.
MY IMHO

btw the old times then CPU/GPU mining on coin born was super-profitable will never came, only is we are not starting the coin from scratch.

sickpig · Mar 4, 2016

@SysMan

Alex is that you?

(sorry can't resist, former twitter handle of Alex Petrov, Bitfury CIO, was @SysMan. now it appears to be @sysmannet, though)

freetrader · Mar 4, 2016

I really like that someone with a mining mindset shares his views on these matters here.
It's so much better than 140-character arguments on Twitter.

SysMan · Mar 4, 2016

sickpig said:
@SysMan

Alex is that you?

(sorry can't resist, former twitter handle of Alex Petrov, Bitfury CIO, was @SysMan. now it appears to be @sysmannet, though)

Sure its me - I'm never hiding. good guys never hide. (c) The Jackal movie ;-)

P.s. all written upper is fundamental economical points & they are similar for all coins.

Open Source means: you can suggest change/add changes - pull for discussion/improve code, you can also copy and use copy to build another alt-coins.
But you should be responsible - for any changes you make on Bitcoin community - you impact ppls who uses bitcoin, who own bitcoin, who build businesses on top of it, this is not a toy anymore, its belongs to community and should keep the old ideas. You can not just came irresponsibly release in network your own software and then disappear.
Bitcoin doesn't belongs to someone, its belongs to community.

sickpig · Mar 4, 2016

SysMan said:
Sure its me - I'm never hiding. good guys never hide. (c) The Jackal movie ;-)

welcome to forum then !

SysMan said:
Open Source means: you can suggest change/add changes - pull for discussion/improve code, you can also copy and use copy to build another alt-coins.
But you should be responsible - for any changes you make on Bitcoin community - you impact ppls who uses bitcoin, who own bitcoin, who build businesses on top of it, this is not a toy anymore, its belongs to community and should keep the old ideas. You can not just came irresponsibly release in network your own software and then disappear.
Bitcoin doesn't belongs to someone, its belongs to community.

what can I say? we're in violent agreement for all points but one: Satoshi disappeared leaving behind released software, albeit he didn't released it irresponsibly.

cypherdoc · Mar 4, 2016

@SysMan

i don't think the POW algo should be changed either. but that assumes miners like you get your head on straight.

VeritasSapere · Mar 4, 2016

I think if the miners do not get their head straight we can just do a genesis fork, with the same POW algorithm importantly. Essentially only changing the blocksize limit, if our theories are correct then the value should move back to this chain and miners will simply just follow the profit. The genesis fork might be important just to give the users more choice in case the miners continue to make the wrong choice for us.

Erdogan · Mar 4, 2016

@SysMan

How common is it, amongst miners, to compile their own version of bitcoid with changes. I imagine some miners do, to mine empty blocks and to choose selectively what transactions to include.

johnyj · Mar 4, 2016

Changing POW will destroy the mining infrastructure investor's motivation and they won't adopt it, a new pow without hash power support worth nothing

hellobitc0inworld · Mar 27, 2016

I like all the changes proposed for this fork, with the exception of changing the PoW method.

If it is possible to do it without the change of PoW I think this may be best.

This is mainly because so much of the Bitcoin infrastructure and mining investment has been invested built up around SHA256.

While I agree that other proof of work methods are more effective and more decentralized, If we remove SHA256 I believe the value of this fork would quickly drop to near zero purely because none of the existing miners would be able to secure it. This means it would be starting from scratch, and as such I suspect its value would drop suddenly as well. And since its value will drop so suddenly, what incentive would anyone have to use this over any other alt coin?

Right now the only thing that really sets Bitcoin apart from other coins is its price is higher (due to network effect and first mover advantage). Other coins are more advanced. So if we lose this final redeeming quality (Bitcoin's higher price per coin), then what is left as a motive for keeping this fork versus using another coin such as Dash or Ether?

bitcartel · Mar 27, 2016

@hellobitc0inworld

"If we remove SHA256 I believe the value of this fork would quickly drop to near zero purely because none of the existing miners would be able to secure it."

If the fork is given a long enough lead time and well advertised, there should be a large number of new CPU miners ready to start mining when the fork activates. @johnyj Whether or not existing SHA256 ASIC miners want to adjust their business operations to support this fork is entirely up to them, but the fork's survival should (ideally) not depend upon their actions.

"what is left as a motive for keeping this fork versus using another coin"

All existing coin holders will have their assets transferred to the new fork at the activation date. This provides motivation to support the fork, unlike Dash, Ethereum or some other altcoin where your balance begins at zero.

hellobitc0inworld · Mar 27, 2016

@bitcartel

>"If the fork is given a long enough lead time and well advertised, there should be a large number of new CPU miners ready to start mining when the fork activates. @johnyj Whether or not existing SHA256 ASIC miners want to adjust their business operations to support this fork is entirely up to them, but the fork's survival should (ideally) not depend upon their actions."

Yes, but what of all the lost merchant adoption and all the use-cases? Bitcoin's present value per coin is derived from its adoption and from its utility. True, having a larger block size increases the utility in the long run (the entire point of this fork), but in the short term, the loss of all the existing use-cases would destroy the value. This is all my speculation of course.

>"All existing coin holders will have their assets transferred to the new fork at the activation date. This provides motivation to support the fork, unlike Dash, Ethereum or some other altcoin where your balance begins at zero."

That is true, the fact of carrying over your existing coins is an incentivizing quality for using this fork over an alt coin.

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