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

Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

yanmaani.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 822 posts

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#451

Post by DennisP »

Geee wrote: post #443
wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

PoW generates heat, which is not waste, if it is utilized. The endgame of Bitcoin mining is that every bit of heat is utilized, because that's the only way mining will be profitable. Running these miners is profitable even without block rewards (heat alone is sold at a profit). You didn't take into account, that: - Bitcoin price growth won't continue forever; it'll find a stable price - Mining rewards halve every 4 y…

You would think then that large bitcoin miners would already be doing this. Maybe installing their miners in large office buildings in cold climates. In theory they could eliminate their cost of electricity and outcompete other miners. Why isn't this happening?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#453

Post by arbuge »

Geee wrote: post #443
wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

PoW generates heat, which is not waste, if it is utilized. The endgame of Bitcoin mining is that every bit of heat is utilized, because that's the only way mining will be profitable. Running these miners is profitable even without block rewards (heat alone is sold at a profit). You didn't take into account, that: - Bitcoin price growth won't continue forever; it'll find a stable price - Mining rewards halve every 4 y…

> PoW generates heat, which is not waste, if it is utilized.

There are far more energy-efficient ways of generating that heat than PoW. This is an (extremely) flawed argument.

PoW is roughly akin to resistive heating. Heat pumps are about three times as energy-efficient as resistive heating. This does not even begin to take into account that there is no practical way to transfer the heat generated in massive server farm installations to where it would actually be useful without incurring massive losses.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#454

Post by javert »

lottin wrote: post #314
inter_netuser wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because something is intangible and invisible, like atoms, does not make it any less valuable. It's a system with an immutable monetary policy. Literally unprecedented in human history.

> Literally unprecedented in human history. Hardly unprecedented, considering that until very recently nations did not have a monetary policy.

Monetary policy goes at least as far back as the Roman Empire, which adulterated their money supply over time.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#455

Post by user-the-name »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #410
wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

All of this makes sense if you assume people won’t build new power plants for bitcoin. But they already are. They are renewable plants because these are now much cheaper. Bitcoin acts as a subsidy for the construction of new green power plants.

Nonsense.

However, people are starting up coal plants that have been previously shut down in order to mine bitcoin.

Bitcoin is causing massive harm.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#456

Post by oblio »

inter_netuser wrote: post #276
Avshalom wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So literally one guy has control of Ethereum?

and every other PoS chain that relies on USDC and major exchanges. So probably more than 1 guy. maybe 5-10.

And how is that better than a government?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#457

Post by javert »

meribold wrote: post #335
inter_netuser wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply because something is intangible and invisible, like atoms, does not make it any less valuable. It's a system with an immutable monetary policy. Literally unprecedented in human history.

> It's a system with an immutable monetary policy. Is it though? It seems minor protocol tweaks aren't uncommon and hard forks managing to eclipse the original protocol in popularity are also conceivable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks

Every time there is a fork, the market decides how much to value each of the forks.

Personally, I think people will value bitcoin as good money if fiat money fails. And because they are seeking good money, will value the fork(s) that preserve bitcoin's prior monetary policy.

A fork that changes the monetary policy drastically (particularly, changing the 21M cap) would obviously make for bad money in practical terms.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#458

Post by analog31 »

DennisP wrote: post #451
Geee wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW generates heat, which is not waste, if it is utilized. The endgame of Bitcoin mining is that every bit of heat is utilized, because that's the only way mining will be profitable. Running these miners is profitable even without block rewards (heat alone is sold at a profit). You didn't take into account, that: - Bitcoin price growth won't continue forever; it'll find a stable price - Mining rewards halve every 4 y…

You would think then that large bitcoin miners would already be doing this. Maybe installing their miners in large office buildings in cold climates. In theory they could eliminate their cost of electricity and outcompete other miners. Why isn't this happening?

If they could generate electricity with the heat from the miners, they could use it to power the miners.

... Oh.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#459

Post by ogogmad »

lottin wrote: post #340
ogogmad wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Did you not read the comment you were responding to?

Yes, I read it. As far as I can see, it talks about 'staking', so it doesn't address what happens when the tokens and 'expended' as opposed to 'staked'.

You have two competing chains: Chain 1 and chain 2. On chain 1, you spend a token on a good. On chain 2, you spend no token. You wait for chain 1 to win the race. You then stake on chain 2 to get your money back. If chain 2 then overtakes chain 1, you've executed a double-spend attack.

An equivalent attack wouldn't work on a PoW chain. If you do the equivalent of "staking" on chain 2, then you're computing hashes, which is costing real-life resources. In the PoS case, without slashing, staking on chain 2 is free. In fact, this is the rational move to make every time you spend a token; stake on competing chains to get your token back.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#460

Post by seoaeu »

lottin wrote: post #440
seoaeu wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops miners from sending their tokens somewhere, then hard forking from a previous block where they didn’t send them? This has a clear answer in PoW, but not in your scheme

Easy, you put the transaction in the previous block. So the miner can only mine a block if they have already made the expenditure.

What stops me from doing a hard fork to roll back both blocks?
Post reply on HN