Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Low Energy Bitcoin PoW
A few things jump out at me as I read this proposal First, deriving the hardness from capex as opposed to opex switches the privilege from those who have cheap electricity to those who have access to chip manufacturers/foundries. While this is similarly the case for Bitcoin ASICS today, the longevity of the PoW algorithm has led to a better distribution of knowledge and capital goods required to create ASICS. The creation of a new PoW of any kind, hurts this dimension of decentralization as we would have to start over from scratch on the best way to build, distribute, and operate these new pieces of hardware at scale. While I have not combed over the PoW proposed here in fine detail, the more complicated the algorithm is, the more it privileges those with specific knowledge about it and the manufacturing process. The competitive nature of Bitcoin mining is such that miners will be willing to spend up to their expected mining reward in their operating costs to continue to mine. Let's suppose that this new PoW was adopted, miners will continue to buy these chips in ever increasing quantities, turning the aforementioned CAPEX into a de facto OPEX. This has a few consequences. First it just pushes the energy consumption upstream to the chip manufacturing process, rather than eliminating it. And it may trade some marginal amount of the energy consumption for the set of resources it takes to educate and create chip manufacturers. The only way to avoid that cost being funneled back into more energy consumption is to make the barrier to understanding of the manufacturing process sufficiently difficult so as to limit the proliferation of these chips. Again, this privileges the chip manufacturers as well as those with close access to the chip manufacturers. As far as I can tell, the only thing this proposal actually does is create a very lucrative business model for those who sell this variety of chips. Any other effects of it are transient, and in all likelihood the transient effects create serious centralization pressure. At the end of the day, the energy consumption is foundational to the system. The only way to do away with authorities, is to require competition. This competition will employ ever more resources until it is unprofitable to do so. At the base of all resources of society is energy. You get high energy expenditure, or a privileged class of bitcoin administrators: pick one. I suspect you'll find the vast majority of Bitcoin users to be in the camp of the energy expenditure, since if we pick the latter, we might as well just pack it in and give up on the Bitcoin experiment. Keagan On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 2:33 PM Bogdan Penkovsky via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > Hi Bitcoin Devs, > > We would like to share with you a draft proposal for a durable, low > energy Bitcoin proof of work. > > > > > BIP: ? > Title: Durable, Low Energy Bitcoin PoW > Author: Michael Dubrovsky , Bogdan Penkovsky > > Discussions-To: > Comments-Summary: No comments yet. > Comments-URI: https://github.com/PoWx-Org/obtc/wiki/BIP > Status: Draft > Type: Standards Track > Created: 2021-05-13 > License: BSD-2-Clause >OPL > > > > == Simple Summary == > > Bitcoin's energy consumption is growing with its value (see Figure below). > Although scaling PoW is necessary to maintain the security of the network, > reliance on massive energy consumption has scaling drawbacks and leads to > mining > centralization. A major consequence of the central role of local > electricity > cost in mining is that today, most existing and potential participants in > the > Bitcoin network cannot profitably mine Bitcoin even if they have the > capital to > invest in mining hardware. From a practical perspective, Bitcoin adoption > by > companies like Tesla (which recently rescinded its acceptance of Bitcoin as > payment) has been hampered by its massive energy consumption and perceived > environmental impact. > > [[https://github.com/PoWx-Org/obtc/raw/main/img/btc_energy-small.png]] > > Figure. Bitcoin price and estimated Bitcoin energy consumption. > Data sources: [https://cbeci.org Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity > Consumption Index], [https://www.coindesk.com CoinDesk]. > > We propose a novel proof-of-work paradigm for Bitcoin--Optical > proof-of-work. It > is designed to decouple Bitcoin mining from energy and make it feasible > outside > of regions with low electricity costs. ''Optical proof-of-work'' (oPoW) is > a > modification of Hashcash that is most efficiently computed using a new > class of > photonic processors. Without compromising the cryptographic or > game-theoretical > security of Hashcash, oPoW shifts the operating expenses of mining (OPEX), > to > capital expenses (CAPEX)--i.e. electricity to hardware. oPoW makes it > possible > for billions of new miners to enter the market simply by investing in a > low-energy photonic miner. Shifting to a high-CAPEX PoW has the
[bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Low Energy Bitcoin PoW
Hi Bitcoin Devs, We would like to share with you a draft proposal for a durable, low energy Bitcoin proof of work. BIP: ? Title: Durable, Low Energy Bitcoin PoW Author: Michael Dubrovsky , Bogdan Penkovsky Discussions-To: Comments-Summary: No comments yet. Comments-URI: https://github.com/PoWx-Org/obtc/wiki/BIP Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Created: 2021-05-13 License: BSD-2-Clause OPL == Simple Summary == Bitcoin's energy consumption is growing with its value (see Figure below). Although scaling PoW is necessary to maintain the security of the network, reliance on massive energy consumption has scaling drawbacks and leads to mining centralization. A major consequence of the central role of local electricity cost in mining is that today, most existing and potential participants in the Bitcoin network cannot profitably mine Bitcoin even if they have the capital to invest in mining hardware. From a practical perspective, Bitcoin adoption by companies like Tesla (which recently rescinded its acceptance of Bitcoin as payment) has been hampered by its massive energy consumption and perceived environmental impact. [[https://github.com/PoWx-Org/obtc/raw/main/img/btc_energy-small.png]] Figure. Bitcoin price and estimated Bitcoin energy consumption. Data sources: [https://cbeci.org Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index], [https://www.coindesk.com CoinDesk]. We propose a novel proof-of-work paradigm for Bitcoin--Optical proof-of-work. It is designed to decouple Bitcoin mining from energy and make it feasible outside of regions with low electricity costs. ''Optical proof-of-work'' (oPoW) is a modification of Hashcash that is most efficiently computed using a new class of photonic processors. Without compromising the cryptographic or game-theoretical security of Hashcash, oPoW shifts the operating expenses of mining (OPEX), to capital expenses (CAPEX)--i.e. electricity to hardware. oPoW makes it possible for billions of new miners to enter the market simply by investing in a low-energy photonic miner. Shifting to a high-CAPEX PoW has the added benefit of making the hashrate resilient to Bitcoin's price fluctuations - once low-OPEX hardware is operating there is no reason to shut it down even if the value of mining rewards diminishes. oPoW is backward compatible with GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs meaning that a transitional period of optical and traditional hardware mining in parallel on the network is feasible More information is available here: [https://www.powx.org/opow]. == Abstract == As Bitcoin gained utility and value over the preceding decade, the network incentivized the purchase of billions of dollars in mining equipment and electricity. With the growth of competition, home mining became unprofitable. Even the most sophisticated special-purpose hardware (ASIC miners) doesn’t cover its energy costs unless the miner also has direct access to very cheap electricity. This heavy reliance on energy makes it difficult for new miners to enter the market and leads to hashrate instability as miners shut off their machines when the price of Bitcoin falls. Additionally as the network stores ever more value, the percentage of world energy consumption that is associated with Bitcoin continues to grow, creating the potential for scaling failure and a general backlash. To ensure that Bitcoin can continue scaling and reach its full potential as a world currency and store of value, we propose a low-energy proof-of-work paradigm for Bitcoin. ''Optical proof of work (oPoW)'' is designed to decouple Bitcoin’s security from massive energy use and make bitcoin mining feasible outside of regions with low electricity costs. ''Optical proof-of-work'' is a modification of Hashcash that is most efficiently computed using a new class of photonic processors that has emerged as a leading solution for ultra-low energy computing over the last 5 years. oPoW shifts the operating expenses of mining (OPEX), to capital expenses (CAPEX)–i.e. electricity to hardware, without compromising the cryptographic or game-theoretical security of Hashcash. We provide an example implementation of oPoW, briefly discuss its cryptographic construction as well as the working principle of photonic processors. Additionally, we outline the potential benefits of oPoW to the bitcoin network, including geographic decentralization and democratization of mining as well as hashrate resilience to price fluctuations. == Copyright == This BIP is dual-licensed under the Open Publication License and BSD 2-clause license. == Motivation == As Bitcoin has grown over the past decade from a small network run by hobbyists to a global currency, the underlying Proof of Work protocol has not been updated. Initially pitched as a global decentralized network (“one CPU-one vote”), Bitcoin transactions today are secured by a small group of corporate entities. In practice, it is only feasible for [http://archive.is/YeDwh
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
Am 17.05.2021 um 04:58 schrieb Luke Dashjr: It increases security, and is unavoidable anyway. You can't. There must be a way. dRNG + universal clock + cryptographical magic?! I'll think about more. Because if there is a safe way of knowing when a block was mined then this can work and no security is lost. The run für the next coinbase starts now at 0 seconds and should end after 600 seconds. There is no real change if you start (proofable) 540 seconds later und must finish in 60 seconds. I see this 10 times harder than 10 times softer. It is just a blocktime of 60 seconds with 9 minutes of idle time. But for this time thank you for all your great answers :D :) ps: it wasnt a pointing fingers musk move. it was the opposite. more like "we try hard to be more efficient than everything else before even if we still are". ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
In principle the idea of making your transactions not mineable except by miners who follow some particular practice is something that can and should be discussed. For instance, it could help give economic signals for future soft forks such that users can declare preference in a costly, sybil resistant way. As I understand what you are asking, you want users to be able to issue transactions that can only be included in blocks that are signed by miners whose certificates can be traced back to some set of certificates that the sender has "whitelisted". The trouble here is that in order for this to be an open system, the user would need to be able to include an unbounded number of optional certificates in the transaction itself, otherwise the rest of the network would be unable to validate whether or not the transaction, when included in the block fit the consensus rules or not. This is not possible for rather obvious reasons: 1. transaction sizes cannot be allowed to be unbounded because this creates denial of service attacks for the broader network 2. if the valid certificate set is not unbounded, then centralization pressure will mount on the bound between the Nth and N+1th certifier. Finally, all of this would require a rather large consensus change to even implement. Given how contentious the proposal of a "choose your miner/certifier" is, it is unlikely to gain the necessary support in the form of code, review, miner signaling, or user uptake for a UASF. That said, not all is lost. If you truly care about only having your transactions mined by "green" miners or whatever other qualification you are going after, then this can likely be implemented in upper layers as you suggested. You can submit your transaction via an overlay network directly to any miners that fit your criteria. Since miners operate in a selfish way, it is not in their interest to share your transaction with other miners, and the probable case is that your transaction will only be included in a block that is signed by your preferred authority. I should note though, that you may be waiting forever for your transactions to be mined and your business partners might choose not to do business with you in the future due to delays caused by virtue signaling to nocoiners. > Please don't be dismissive, it is an open forum and everybody is entitled to his/her/its own opinion. It is, in fact, an open forum and everyone is entitled to their view, including being dismissive of yours. > I respectfully submit that people who know how to launch rockets to the sky and beam high-speed internet from the satellites to every place on earth are at least capable of understanding how Bitcoin works. There is even an english expression which reads 'it is not a rocket science' which I think fits especially nicely in this particular case :) No one is contesting that Elon and the rest of the technical staff at Tesla are *capable* of understanding Bitcoin. We are just asserting that, at present, they do not understand the underlying mechanics well enough to give consistent rationale for their choices, and because their public statements reveal either a deep hypocrisy, or deep ignorance in their understanding of Bitcoin. Keagan On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 8:11 AM Anton Ragin via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > Hello, list > > >Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, > and get > >rid of PoW entirely... > >No, it is not centralization - > > No, it is not centralization, as: > > (a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for > 'green' status, there are many already; > > > >> That does not refute the claim at all. Just because you can choose from > multiple centralized authorities, which are well known and can collude, it > does not mean it is decentralized by any reasonable definition of the term. > > (b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather > creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of > energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose > to run dirty energy will still be able to do so. > and > > > >> Who is to issue these credits? A centralized entity I guess ... There > is no place for such in Bitcoin. > > If I am to concede on the point that *voluntarily* green-status miner > certification is 'centralization', can you please explain *in detail* why > aren't 'bitcoin.org' and GitHub repo similar examples of > 'centralization'? You make a correct point that bitcoin.org and the > GitHub repo are not 'official' things of Bitcoin network, however nowhere > in my proposals on green miner certification I was suggesting to introduce > an 'official' certificate for such a thing. May be I mis-formulated my > ideas, in that case I apologize: > > The only thing which I suggested was to introduce an option to have some > transactions encrypted in the mempool to allow Bitcoin users some control >
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Opinion on proof of stake in future
Verifiable Delay Functions involve active participation of a single verifier. Without this a VDF decays into a proof-of-work (multiple verifiers === parallelism). The verifier, in this case is "the bitcoin network" taken as a whole. I think it is reasonable to consider that some difficult-to-game property of the last N blocks (like the hash of the last 100 block-id's or whatever), could be the verification input. The VDF gets calculated by *every* eligible proof-of-burn miner, and then this is used to prevent a timing issue. Seems reasonable to me, but I haven't looked too far into the requirements of VDF's nice summary for anyone who is interested: https://medium.com/@djrtwo/vdfs-are-not-proof-of-work-91ba3bec2bf4 While VDF's almost always lead to a "cpu-speed monopoly", this would only be helpful for block latency in a proof-of-burn chain. Block height would be calculated by eligible-miner-burned-coins, so the monopoly could be easily avoided. There has been some decent earlier work on blind/uncensorable burns: https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/1096.pdf A miner could then reveal A) the VDF and B) proof-of-burn as a part of a block. Nodes would simply select the block with A) a valid VDF and B) the highest "qualified" POB. With most burns running at a loss, and no way to predict the next "winning burn", and the VDF providing timing, I'm not sure how this is worse than Bitcoin's existing system. On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 5:51 PM Jeremy wrote: > > re: 2, there's been some promising developments with Verifiable Delay > Functions that make me think that the block regulation problems are solvable > without requiring brute-force search proof of work. Are those inapplicable > for some reason? > ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
Hello, list >Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and get >rid of PoW entirely... >No, it is not centralization - No, it is not centralization, as: (a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for 'green' status, there are many already; >> That does not refute the claim at all. Just because you can choose from multiple centralized authorities, which are well known and can collude, it does not mean it is decentralized by any reasonable definition of the term. (b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose to run dirty energy will still be able to do so. and >> Who is to issue these credits? A centralized entity I guess ... There is no place for such in Bitcoin. If I am to concede on the point that *voluntarily* green-status miner certification is 'centralization', can you please explain *in detail* why aren't 'bitcoin.org' and GitHub repo similar examples of 'centralization'? You make a correct point that bitcoin.org and the GitHub repo are not 'official' things of Bitcoin network, however nowhere in my proposals on green miner certification I was suggesting to introduce an 'official' certificate for such a thing. May be I mis-formulated my ideas, in that case I apologize: The only thing which I suggested was to introduce an option to have some transactions encrypted in the mempool to allow Bitcoin users some control over who mines their transaction - full stop. Users could then decide how to use this functionality themselves, and such functionality could have uses way beyond 'green miners' - for example, some users might prefer to send their transactions *directly to trusted miners* to prevent certain quantum computer enabled attacks (e.g. when there is a window of opportunity to steal coins if you have fast QC when you spend even from p2phk address). Another example - if users are given some flexibility whom to send the transactions, they might actually want to steer them away from huge mining pools such as Antpool to support small independent miners, smth of this sort - which actually would boost diversity in the network. You may or may not agree that climate change is real, or may or may not agree that Bitcoin energy consumption is a problem - I respectfully submit it is not the right forum to find truth on these topics. We are discussing ideas which *might *make Bitcoin a better solution for users who care about certain things, *without *making it worse for somebody else (like you, for example - who don't like centralization in any form). >> (c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool can go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions directly instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that it would make the transfer 'greener'. >> And if there was an economic advantage in doing so, miners would quite likely already implement that. Yet, somehow, they are not doing that. Arguments of the sort 'if something could be done or should have been done - it would be done already' are flawed, in my opinion, as following the same logic nothing (including Bitcoin itself) should have been done ever. As a matter of fact, we are working on a green miner initiative with certain miners, having a call with Hut8 in 20 minutes myself - and I know that we are not the only ones. Green crypto initiatives are actually widespread, and the solutions will be popping up soon. >> Please stop with the carbon credit nonsense. There is likely no such thing to exist on a free market and no one is interested in these state regulations. Please read this Wikipedia Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset "There are two types of markets for carbon offsets, compliance and *voluntary*" [emphasis added]. Voluntary carbon offset markets are actually growing really fast. >> Just because a big company is controlled by people who do not understand Bitcoin, it does not make the issue valid. There are no such environmental concerns once you understand how Bitcoin and free market work. Don't help to spread the FUD. I respectfully submit that people who know how to launch rockets to the sky and beam high-speed internet from the satellites to every place on earth are at least capable of understanding how Bitcoin works. There is even an english expression which reads 'it is not a rocket science' which I think fits especially nicely in this particular case :) >> Once people stop spreading FUD, the price will likely skyrocket. Start with yourself please. I guess you misinterpret my intentions, I think it doesn't matter what Bitcoin price is - my personal interest is the widest possible adoption of blockchain as a peer-to-peer way to transfer value between consenting individuals free from government control or intervention.
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
Hello list, >>Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and get >>rid of PoW entirely... >>No, it is not centralization - > > No, it is not centralization, as: > > (a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for > 'green' status, there are many already; That does not refute the claim at all. Just because you can choose from multiple centralized authorities, which are well known and can collude, it does not mean it is decentralized by any reasonable definition of the term. > (b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather > creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of > energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose to > run dirty energy will still be able to do so. > and Who is to issue these credits? A centralized entity I guess ... There is no place for such in Bitcoin. > (c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool can > go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions directly > instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that it would > make the transfer 'greener'. And if there was an economic advantage in doing so, miners would quite likely already implement that. Yet, somehow, they are not doing that. > What is being proposed is some community effort to standardize & promote this > approach, because if we manage to make Bitcoin green(er) - we will remove > what many commentators see as the last barrier / biggest risk to even wider > Bitcoin adoption. And you listen to those "many commentators" why exactly? Because they have many followers or they are trained to speak nicely? This is not how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin does not favor number of followers, popularity, or beauty, it is based on merit and these ideas have none. The only risk here is that too many people will fall for such false narratives and FUD (which is what the energy consumption "issue" really is) because other people, like yourself, who do not understand Bitcoin comment on it and present it as an actual issue. > Not to mention the fact that some aspects of the Bitcoin community are pretty > centralized already - 'www.bitcoin.org', GitHub repo, certain global internet > cables / protocols / providers. Centralization is evil only when it enables > (or makes significantly easier) a threatening attack on the network, which > does not appear to be the case. It is my personal opinion only, though, I > would respect it if someone disagrees. I disagree. You are making false claims here and above and spreading FUD. For example, www.bitcoin.org is by no means an official website of Bitcoin. There is no such thing as an official website of Bitcoin. Anyone can buy bitcoin.TLD and put whatever content they want and it may or may not be relevant to Bitcoin, but it will absolutely not represent Bitcoin. As for GitHub repo - learn about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) which is what this repo is. In no way it is an ultimate and fixed point of Bitcoin and it can change at any time - for example if GitHub project turned to be malicious. So again, you are wrong. > On a separate note, I just want to draw everyone's attention to the fact that > - assuming if my calculations are correct - carbon credits to offset dirty > energy burned by miners would cost only approx 5% of block rewards in USD > terms max. Please stop with the carbon credit nonsense. There is likely no such thing to exist on a free market and no one is interested in these state regulations. > On the other hand, BTC price has just collapsed 20% because Tesla dropped > their adoption citing environmental concerns. Just because a big company is controlled by people who do not understand Bitcoin, it does not make the issue valid. There are no such environmental concerns once you understand how Bitcoin and free market work. Don't help to spread the FUD. > If every miner on the planet agrees to go green or buy carbon credits, it > will actually be commercially beneficial to everybody, as the price will > likely skyrocket - the problem is that such situation absent community > coordination is not a Pareto-equilibrium state, which means that every single > miner is incentivised to break away from the commitment to the green energy. Once people stop spreading FUD, the price will likely skyrocket. Start with yourself please. > Maybe there is another solution to the problem, and huge mining pools need to > establish a 'green cartel' like OPEC and all start buying carbon credits in > order to make Bitcoin greener and more widely adopted for their own benefit. Maybe not. > On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 3:58 AM Luke Dashjr wrote: > >> On Friday 14 May 2021 21:41:23 Michael Fuhrmann via bitcoin-dev wrote: >>> Bitcoin should create blocks every 10 minutes in average. So why do >>> miners need to mine the 9 minutes after the
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
>> 2. I am not a huge data-center specialist, but it was my understanding that they charge per unit of installed (maximum) electricity consumption. It would mean that if the miner needs X kilowatts-hour within that 1 minute when they are allowed to mine, he/she will have to pay for the same X for the remaining 9 minutes - and as such would have no economic incentive not to draw that power when idling. >That sounds kind of exotic, could you take charge of checking to see >how true it is? I am pretty sure that is how it works in data centers absent 'special deal', as we use some DCs in our business. However, after reading some discussion on this thread it is pretty clear that some (maybe even majority?) of miners have some sort of special deal on electricity - some use 'spill over' electricity which would otherwise be wasted etc. This kind of disproves my point, but not entirely - even 'special deal' electricity is very unlikely to be available like water in the tap - you open it when you need it, and pay for what you use only. Variations in power consumption in the grid are very difficult to compensate for: (a) there is no efficient way to store electricity; (b) some (majority?) power-generating assets are notoriously difficult to throttle up and down - it takes almost a day in some cases to throttle down power production on the nuclear power plant for example. (did you know that sometimes the spot price for electricity goes below zero, and consumers are being paid to consume - exactly because it is cheaper to pay somebody to consume electricity than to switch off the reactor?) Because of this, an enormous spike in energy consumption every 1 minute in 10 is the worst possible load profile to any power grid, and would most likely result in either miners or power grid infrastructure itself just burning off peak energy during the 9 minutes 'cool-down' period. >> 4. My counter-proposal to the community to address energy consumption >> problems would be *to encourage users to allow only 'green miners' process >> their transaction.* In particular: >>... >> (b) Should there be some non-profit organization(s) certifying green miners >> and giving them cryptographic certificates of conformity (either usage of >> green energy or purchase of offsets), users could encrypt their >> transactions and submit to mempool in such a format that *only green miners >> would be able to decrypt and process them*. >Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and get >rid of PoW entirely... >No, it is not centralization - No, it is not centralization, as: (a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for 'green' status, there are many already; (b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose to run dirty energy will still be able to do so. and (c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool can go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions directly instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that it would make the transfer 'greener'. What is being proposed is some community effort to standardize & promote this approach, because if we manage to make Bitcoin green(er) - we will remove what many commentators see as the last barrier / biggest risk to even wider Bitcoin adoption. Not to mention the fact that some aspects of the Bitcoin community are pretty centralized already - 'www.bitcoin.org', GitHub repo, certain global internet cables / protocols / providers. Centralization is evil only when it enables (or makes significantly easier) a threatening attack on the network, which does not appear to be the case. It is my personal opinion only, though, I would respect it if someone disagrees. On a separate note, I just want to draw everyone's attention to the fact that - assuming if my calculations are correct - carbon credits to offset dirty energy burned by miners would cost only *approx 5%* of block rewards in USD terms max. On the other hand, BTC price has just collapsed 20% because Tesla dropped their adoption citing environmental concerns. If every miner on the planet agrees to go green or buy carbon credits, it will actually be commercially beneficial to everybody, as the price will likely skyrocket - the problem is that such situation absent community coordination is not a Pareto-equilibrium state, which means that every single miner is incentivised to break away from the commitment to the green energy. Maybe there is another solution to the problem, and huge mining pools need to establish a 'green cartel' like OPEC and all start buying carbon credits in order to make Bitcoin greener and more widely adopted for their own benefit. On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 3:58 AM Luke Dashjr wrote: > On Friday 14 May 2021 21:41:23 Michael Fuhrmann via
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
> > > Are there people who can freely produce new mining equipment to an > arbitrary degree? > Close. Bitmain for example produces their own ASICs and rigs which they mine with. Antpool is controlled by Bitmain and has a significant amount of the hash power. The marginal cost of an ASIC chip or mining rig is low compared to R and setting up of the production lines etc. For Bitmain it’s relatively cheap to produce an additional mining rig. Unfortunately I failed to make sense of your other remarks which looked rather confused so I take the liberty to disregard them. Zac ___ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
This is silly, but I'll add my take: This would create the incentive to have chips that are idle 50% of the time and work harder 50% of the time. This means miners would buy twice the chips to use the same amount of power, for example. This in turn means a greater portion of your operational costs are spent on chips, and a smaller portion on electricity, reducing the incentive to use cheaper power and turn off when it's expensive, because you need to recoup your investment. That seems like a bad thing. Here's my proposal: if you want a PoW algorithm that's better for the environment, make one where the chips are easier to manufacture, so power costs become a greater portion of miner expenditures. Maybe SIMON/SPECK would do it. It could also incentivize someone to find that NSA backdoor... On 2021-05-14 21:41, Michael Fuhrmann via bitcoin-dev wrote: Hello, Bitcoin should create blocks every 10 minutes in average. So why do miners need to mine the 9 minutes after the last block was found? It's not necessary. Problem: How to prevent "pre-mining" in the 9 minutes time window? Possible ideas for discussion: - (maybe most difficult) global network timer sending a salted hash time code after 9 minutes. this enables validation by nodes. - (easy attempt) mining jobs before 9 minutes have a 10 (or 100 or just high enough) times higher difficulty. so everyone can mine any time but before to 9 minutes are up there will be a too high downside. It is more efficient to wait then paying high bills. The bitcoin will get a "puls". I dont think I see all problems behind these ideas but if there is a working solution to do so then the energy fud will find it's end. Saving energy without loosing rosbustness. :) ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
On 5/16/21, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev wrote: > https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Efficiency-Paradox > https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Proof-of-Memory-Fallacy The chain security actually reduces by 10% in this proposal. So the efficiency paradox is not violated, it is just the real cost of confirming a transaction is reduced, because there is actually less security. This eventually reduces the price of bitcoin and reduces the amount of electricity the block reward can eventually buy. ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
