Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus • Hacker News Board

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#581

Post by tomp » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #247

inter_netuser wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you consider nuclear energy sustainable? It's probably not renewable (well, neither is the Sun on large enough timescale), but do you believe nuclear, either fission or fusion, will play a large role in the future?

You make it sound like I need a new hobby - which I might haha. > Do you consider nuclear energy sustainable? Low-carbon, yes. Sustainable, yes. Renewable, not until we productionize extraction of uranium from seawater. [1] > ... but do you believe nuclear, either fission or fusion, will play a large role in the future? Fusion if we can crack it, totally. Seems like a clear winner. Fission probably will if there's so…

This article is complete FUD.

> of which the following sources are considered to be renewable

in other words, it attempts to define the world "renewable" along favoured political ideologies.

From Wikipedia:

> Advances in breeder reactor technology could allow the current reserves of uranium to provide power for humanity for billions of years, thus making nuclear power a sustainable energy

TL;DR: nuclear is just as renewable as solar (beyond any likely duration of the human civilisation).

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#582

Post by seoaeu » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #554

seoaeu wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, the difficulty of switching to renewable energy is directly proportional to the amount of capacity you need to build. That we’ll eventually reach net zero carbon so emissions now don’t matter is a rather outrageous claim

99.9% has nothing to do with crypto.

Did you mean to reply to a different comment or something? Not sure where the 99.9% number is coming from

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#583

Post by ben-schaaf » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

Geee wrote: post #491

arbuge wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 f…

There's also the need to heat water, and that requires resistive heaters. Also, heat pumps don't really work in colder climates as the only heat source. Resistive heating is the most common way to heat spaces with electricity.

> There's also the need to heat water, and that requires resistive heaters.

In terms of a kettle or cooking you're right, but you also can't cook/boil using mining hardware as they're heat limited to ~100C. For hot water heat pumps work great.

> Also, heat pumps don't really work in colder climates as the only heat source.

Ground source heat pumps work just fine in cold climates and have been rapidly getting cheaper.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#584

Post by duped » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

janeroe wrote: post #108

duped wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gold standard was decentralized. Over a century of monetary policy has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with political or economic goals.

> Over a century of monetary policy has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with political or economic goals. Or rather it has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with the political or economic goals of those who conceive the monetary policy.

Which often aligns with the people that elect them. Central banking fixes serious flaws in money systems, and provides levers to mitigate disasters caused by external forces.

Compare it to a boat. Central banking gives you the ability to steer, sure someone might be bad at it and lead you into dangerous waters. But decentralized currency is like shooting the helmsman and ripping out the rudder because someone did a bad job of it once.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#585

Post by Magnusmaster » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

marcus_cemes wrote: post #226

mission_failed wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smelting metals actually produces something, proof of work just burns electricity for the random chance of winning a lottery

It's burning electricity (that could in an ideal world be renewable, maybe one day) to provide a service to the network, therefore making it more secure by providing additional processing capacity that is controlled by a good actor, making it harder for a bad actor to get 51% of the pie. It is a waste, but there are also a lot of other sources of wasted resources/energy that we could tackle first and get larger retur…

The service is worthless if you can trust a central authority like a government that 99.99% of people do.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#586

Post by dcow » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

The author suggests proof of space as an interesting option but then deliberately avoids commenting on Chia’s implementation of proof of space time. Can someone explain that to me? Is it the pre-mine that drives people away? If so there is already a fork (Flax) with a much smaller pre-mine that is surely worthy of assessment and scrutiny at an algorithmic/system level... Or is the author simply acknowledging they aren't ready or qualified to comment on PoST versions of Nakamoto consensus?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#587

Post by wmf » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

ulzeraj wrote: post #250

My opinion on PoS is that because no other community that I know of outside of bitcoin has a culture of running nodes normal people will just stake through exchanges. Now you have these exchanges acting not only as the in and out ramps but also as the biggest network validators meaning that they can direct transactions. Congratulations. You’ve just went full circle and invented central banks. Am I wrong? Would gladly…

In practice PoS chains have hundreds of nodes or more. In Bitcoin, nodes can't stop a 51% attack and I don't know if the software would even alert you when a 51% attack is likely going on.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#588

Post by otiose_tortoise » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

This article completely misunderstands proof-of-stake and the distributed consensus space in general. Both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are mechanisms for making distributed consensus sybil-resistant.

Distributed consensus is the problem of getting a bunch of computers to agree on some state when some of the computers can behave maliciously. In the case of cryptocurrency, the state is a log of transactions, which when replayed tells you who owns what. There are well-known algorithms for distributed consensus, such as Paxos and Raft, that are used in real-world applications, e.g., the Chubby lockservice.

Distributed consensus algorithms can be proven to reach consensus as long as at most a fixed percentage (e.g., 1/3) of the computers are behaving maliciously. This assumption is fine for applications like Chubby, where Google is running all 5 of the computers participating in the consensus, and no one can add additional computers. However, this assumption breaks down in the case of cryptocurrency, where anyone can spin up computers to participate. In fact, an adversary can effectively spin up an infinite number of computers. This form of attack is known as a sybil attack.

Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake add sybil-resistance to distributed consensus algorithms by requiring the adversary to commit a scarce resource in order to participate in the consensus process. In the case of proof-of-work, the scarce resource is computing power. For proof-of-stake, the resource is the currency secured by the system itself. This may seem a bit circular, but it's fine. In order to attack the system, the adversary would have to purchase or borrow a bunch of the currency on the open market, which has an economic cost. Proof-of-work permits the same attack, where the adversary buys or rents computing power instead.

From this perspective, the bitcoin consensus algorithm is in fact the odd one. Most distributed consensus algorithms (like Paxos and Raft) rely on some kind of voting system.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#589

Post by everfree » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

leishman wrote: post #565

eftychis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Proof of Work is better because the haves buy equipment the have-nots can't buy to vote? Unless you have a citizenship based voting of some short where a single person gets a single vote and they actually vote (automatically I guess and assuming without delegating to the big whale because "I am bored") what do you think agreement via resource scarcity implies? P.S. Also lobbying...

Yes PoW is way better because miners need to constantly expend resources to maintain their right to participate. PoS validators keep their throne for life at virtually no cost.

But like PoS, PoW returns all spent resources and more back to the miner - both are designed to be profitable and self-sustaining.

I don't see much difference between a PoW mining setup that does $1000/day gross, $990/day expense, $10/day profit and a PoS staking setup that does $12/day gross, $2/day expense, $10/day profit. Both earn $10/day, both require maintenance, and both are run not at a net cost but at a net profit.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#590

Post by lukifer » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #437

amelius wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should insert humans in the loop, to verify whether useful work was performed. Or some AI because humans are prone to bribery to some extent. Or we could make it democratic. "Jeff Bezos asserts that he provided useful work for society and that he therefore deserves $1B this year. Please cast your votes".

PoB: Proof of Bullshit

PoW should actually stand for Proof of Waste. It's not even unprecedented in nature: many species will intentionally waste energy or resources to demonstrate mating fitness, as with a peacock's tail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory