Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

colorfulwolf.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 158 posts

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#21

Post by weavejester »

icegreentea wrote: post #14

Why can't we tie the bitcoin mining process to some sort of useful calculation? Maybe some variant of folding @home or something? We just need some problem with a hard to calculate, but easy to verify 'right answer' right?

More than that. It needs to be a problem that takes a predictable time to solve, it needs to be a problem that we're unlikely to discover faster algorithms for, and it needs to be something we can tie to a set of data.

Cryptographic hashes are designed to have these exact properties. If we wanted to replace this with a "useful" calculation, you'd essentially need to create a new hashing algorithm that also had some practical use beyond hashing a set of data.

Given that creating good cryptographic hashing algorithms is hard enough, I suspect that creating one that is tied to a "useful" result is not feasible.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#22

Post by gus_massa »

vladd wrote: post #6

Any system of checks and balances will have its price. Look at what we do with gold: we dig it from a hole in Africa, we transport it in other countries, we dug holes or build vaults and throw it there. Like Warren Buffett said, it has no utility, if Martians were to look at the process they would scratch their heads. Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. Which is one of the most powerful invariants against corrupt…

Gold also is usefull in the industry and electronics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Industry

http://www.gold.org/technology/uses/

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#23

Post by mike_esspe »

icegreentea wrote: post #14

Why can't we tie the bitcoin mining process to some sort of useful calculation? Maybe some variant of folding @home or something? We just need some problem with a hard to calculate, but easy to verify 'right answer' right?

Even if such calculation could be possible, bitcoin network probably would be less secure, because attacker can attack it and be compensated for attack.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#25

Post by iqster »

The way I understand bitcoins might be flawed but would certainly appreciate clarification ...

My problem with bit coins is that early people who start mining have a greater advantage than later ones. While that's not the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme (in the classic definition, payouts at each round are funded by new participants), it is a feature bitcoin shares with them. If someone started mining bitcoin when it first started, they have a significant stash created by now. As people start to assign value to the virtual currency, these people are getting a significant proportion of value for simply being early adopters.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#26

Post by joezydeco »

wccrawford wrote: post #2

Excellent article. I would only add that we're using a LOT of energy to create a fake (read: virtual) resource. The best part about virtual resources is that they don't use many real resources, but this one is the opposite. Granted, it's a 1-time cost, but as the article notes, it could be created with a much lower 1-time cost.

How much manpower and energy does it take to make a paper US dollar with nothing backing it up?

[EDIT] Since I'm getting downvoted, I'll answer my own question: $0.042 every 18 months.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#27

Post by gus_massa »

rheide wrote: post #18
weavejester wrote: post #10

The author misses the point. The security of the Bitcoin network (at least in terms of double-spending) is tied to the level of work required to generate a block. If everyone decided to use only 1% of their computing power, they'd use less electricity, but the Bitcoin network would then be 100 times less secure. When people talk about "wasting resources", it's an indication they don't understand how Bitcoin works. On…

The trick lies in changing the bitcoin protocol. If the majority of clients can agree on a way to use less resources, then that's what will be enforced by the network. If a new bitcoin client enforced a mandatory delay of one hour and invalidated blocks that were made before that one hour, we would effectively have added one hour of idle time to the network. This is not a solution, but it is a demonstration of how th…

The problem is that it is easy to simulate that you are waiting.

  1) Save current time
  2) "Precalculate" the current block
  3) Wait until the 3601th second
  4) Publish the block that you "calculate" in just 1 second
  5) Profit??

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#28

Post by weavejester »

rheide wrote: post #18
weavejester wrote: post #10

The author misses the point. The security of the Bitcoin network (at least in terms of double-spending) is tied to the level of work required to generate a block. If everyone decided to use only 1% of their computing power, they'd use less electricity, but the Bitcoin network would then be 100 times less secure. When people talk about "wasting resources", it's an indication they don't understand how Bitcoin works. On…

The trick lies in changing the bitcoin protocol. If the majority of clients can agree on a way to use less resources, then that's what will be enforced by the network. If a new bitcoin client enforced a mandatory delay of one hour and invalidated blocks that were made before that one hour, we would effectively have added one hour of idle time to the network. This is not a solution, but it is a demonstration of how th…

The problem is what you define as "a majority".

If it's just a majority of clients, then an attacker could just start up a million new client processes and outvote the existing network.

If we're talking a majority of unique IP addresses, then anyone with access to a large IP address block could outvote the network. This approach also wouldn't be feasible for IPv6, where IP addresses are not a scarce resource.

The Bitcoin approach is to define "a majority" as the majority that has the most computing power. Because computing power is always going to cost money, this guarantees that anyone wishing to subvert the network needs to outspend all the honest miners.

If you can think of another way of defining "a majority" without needing a lot of CPU resources, a lot of people would be interested in hearing your solution.

Re: Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins

#29

Post by rheide »

gus_massa wrote: post #27
rheide wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick lies in changing the bitcoin protocol. If the majority of clients can agree on a way to use less resources, then that's what will be enforced by the network. If a new bitcoin client enforced a mandatory delay of one hour and invalidated blocks that were made before that one hour, we would effectively have added one hour of idle time to the network. This is not a solution, but it is a demonstration of how th…

The problem is that it is easy to simulate that you are waiting. 1) Save current time 2) "Precalculate" the current block 3) Wait until the 3601th second 4) Publish the block that you "calculate" in just 1 second 5) Profit??

If the calculation for the next block requires the (network's validation of the) current block then you can only always calculate one block ahead.
Post reply on HN