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How Monero’s proof of work works

blog.alcazarsec.com

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Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#141

Post by tardedmeme »

hyc_symas wrote: post #130
tardedmeme wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real value deteriorates due to entropy. If I harvested some lettuce this week, in a year I don't still have lettuces - I have a pile of stinky mush. Keeping value steady requires a continual input of effort. I'd accept "leaky currency" as a substitute for inflation. The important thing about inflation is that you have to keep running just to stay in one place - not that the numbers keep going up. Stable prices are ni…

Monero is disinflationary , not inflationary. The rate of new coin emission is only enough to maintain equilibrium with the rate of coins being lost (due to people losing wallet keys, etc.). So your comment about being forced to keep earning doesn't apply to Monero.

The price is intended to decrease. If people are losing money (causing the price to increase) at the same rate the price decreases that's on them.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#142

Post by twic »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #140
nerdsniper wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heat pump would arguably be more efficient for society (can provide 4x heat for 1x energy), but if you make enough money on the mined monero I guess it might be rational. Would be curious if the marginal savings from a heat pump would allow you to buy more monero than you mine with this energy.

The only heatpumps in my house are airconditioner[†] and waterheater ( mild winter climate doesn't justify replacing HVAC — but if/when it dies, I'll put in a modern minisplit) [ƒ]. [†] It's an older model, without reversing valve (circa early-2000s). [ƒ] ...and refrigerator (thanks /u/twic) ---- >if the marginal savings from a heat pump would allow you to buy more monero than you mine with this energy. In a colder c…

You don't have a refrigerator or freezer?

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#143

Post by nmz »

tt24 wrote: post #29
Aeroi wrote: post #7

[flagged]

This talking point is so silly I can use my compute and energy how I like, whether that’s for AI or crypto or a Minecraft server. You don’t have a right to call one “wasteful” and one not

Legalities aside, You can use compute how you want, that doesn't stop anybody from accurately measuring its usefulness. Given that this is an objective measurement.

I can have a computer on an endless loop without any idling, consuming as much CPU time as it can, I do not know any other classification of this action than wastefulness. crypto mining is useful of course, the end goal of mining is to get crypto, of course, there is no further goal beyond that.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#144

Post by ProllyInfamous »

hyc_symas wrote: post #120
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working battery ≠= avoiding system crashes | my local node has a UPS, and still Monero's client is dicey (Mac & Linux distros). Particularly on its initial sync, Monero's daemon is flakeyAF. If you (e.g.) don't allow `sync in background` (why is this not the default behavior? !), the official Monero client is notorious for locking up on wakeup. Once you kill the process, your local blockchain is [most likely] unusabl…

> Once you kill the process, your local blockchain is [most likely] unusable. Totally false. LMDB is perfectly crash-proof in that scenario and killing the process never damages the DB. The only thing that's not guaranteed is turning off syncs, in the face of an OS crash/power outage. If you don't sync, you're not abusing the SSD. If you run on Windows, the OS is too unstable to use without safe sync mode though.

>Totally false.

This is a well-documented failstate. Usually results in "unable to connect to 127.0.0.1:18081" errorlog, which is most-commonly due to a corrupt database/blockchain (from hardstop/kill).

In order of crashout likelihood: Windows >> MacOS > Linux

>If you don't sync, you're not abusing the SSD.

If you don't sync then you're not (cannot be) a fullnode / network verifyer / ringsigner.

----

>LMDB is perfectly crash-proof

It is my understanding that once your initial-sync has completed, the default monero node behavior is to then automatically enter the --safe flag (I described above).

This may be old behavior... I go way back (years beyond a decade). My only modern use in xmrworld is as a personal foot-heating ATM.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#145

Post by nerdsniper »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #140
nerdsniper wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heat pump would arguably be more efficient for society (can provide 4x heat for 1x energy), but if you make enough money on the mined monero I guess it might be rational. Would be curious if the marginal savings from a heat pump would allow you to buy more monero than you mine with this energy.

The only heatpumps in my house are airconditioner[†] and waterheater ( mild winter climate doesn't justify replacing HVAC — but if/when it dies, I'll put in a modern minisplit) [ƒ]. [†] It's an older model, without reversing valve (circa early-2000s). [ƒ] ...and refrigerator (thanks /u/twic) ---- >if the marginal savings from a heat pump would allow you to buy more monero than you mine with this energy. In a colder c…

> In a colder climate, DEFINITELY.

Actually, I suspect heating-by-monero-mining is more likely to economically beat heat pumps only in the very coldest climates. Heat pump efficiency goes down when the temperature delta between inside and outside is very large. Below 0F or so, it's quite difficult to find heat pumps that will work sufficiently well, and generally they transition to resistive heating.

Caveat: I'm only talking about marginal advantage, ignoring the capital costs of the Xeon servers or the heat pump itself.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#147

Post by ProllyInfamous »

nerdsniper wrote: post #145
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only heatpumps in my house are airconditioner[†] and waterheater ( mild winter climate doesn't justify replacing HVAC — but if/when it dies, I'll put in a modern minisplit) [ƒ]. [†] It's an older model, without reversing valve (circa early-2000s). [ƒ] ...and refrigerator (thanks /u/twic) ---- >if the marginal savings from a heat pump would allow you to buy more monero than you mine with this energy. In a colder c…

> In a colder climate, DEFINITELY. Actually, I suspect heating-by-monero-mining is more likely to economically beat heat pumps only in the very coldest climates. Heat pump efficiency goes down when the temperature delta between inside and outside is very large. Below 0F or so, it's quite difficult to find heat pumps that will work sufficiently well, and generally they transition to resistive heating. Caveat: I'm only…

For hobbyists such as myself, the capital cost of already-owned (and obsolete) Xeons are infinitely less than replacing an otherwise-functional (albeit cooling-only) AC in a sub-tropical rainforest climate (like mine), which only has a few weeks of annual frost (snow "sticks" once every decade).

As far as placement of the machine: underneath your computer desk is ideal, as this directed heating allows you to keep the house's thermostat a few degrees cooler.

----

If anybody were to ask me "what would you BUY to mine monero@home," I would definitely tell them to [instead] buy a heatpump-heater, -watertank, -&c (presuming they don't have each, already).

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#148

Post by jjk7 »

AureliusMA wrote: post #46
Aeroi wrote: post #7

[flagged]

You would be surprised at how efficient cryptocurrency mining is compared to other ways of storing value. And most improvements happen to reduce the overall cost of securing value (PoS, PoST, etc)

Once you buy gold, you don't have to rely on other people continuing to burn resources indefinitely. You pay upfront for the cost of mining, and that's it.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#149

Post by 3form »

grey-area wrote: post #76
3form wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly the same argument could be applied to gold, and yet it has been used as a value store for ages. Can't say I like crypto, but I think better arguments can be made against it.

Gold has a use value.

So do beanie babies. Might be less than gold, but that's why I'm calling this argument flawed.

The second part is that despite these disclaimers, I don't think gold has, in modern history, or will in our lifetimes, reach a price reflecting just the use/intrinsic value. The reasons being twofold: the storage of value IS a use itself; and importantly, which applies to Bitcoin and others, there are always people that will be willing to buy the dip, which is how the requested new generation of "fools" comes from.

Re: How Monero’s proof of work works

#150

Post by fluffypony »

dgacmu wrote: post #3

If folks are interested in the old Monero PoW function (and, uh, the reason they changed it), I wrote up a thing about it a long time ago: https://da-data.blogspot.com/2014/08/minting-money-with-mone... The history of people trying to design GPU or ASIC-resistant proof-of-work functions is long and mostly unsuccessful. I haven't looked into RandomX; it's possible they've succeeded here (or possible that with the alt-…

Hmmm. That's not the reason we changed it. We just got tired of tweaking things to prevent ASICs.

I'll add that there was such a large influx of miners at the outset, that (statistically) it seems any crippling of the original algorithm was fairly futile - the edge was both short-lived and minimally impactful. We're over a decade later, and nobody mining in the first month (even with that unfair advantage) was able to gain any meaningful percentage of Monero's emission.

I'll add that RandomX has proven that it is indeed possible to create a GPU and ASIC-resistant PoW algorithm. I'd encourage you to dig in further - the closest to an "ASIC" is a multi-CPU miner (Bitmain X9) with a bunch of RISC-V CPUs in it.

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