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Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

yanmaani.github.io

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Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#731

Post by ogogmad »

lottin wrote: post #309
anonporridge wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't need to trust a "friend" while bootstrapping into the network with PoW, because the proof of work is irrevocably embedded within the blockchain, and the real world cost of creating those blocks can be pretty easily estimated. So long as you have a general idea of how much hash power is being used currently for the network, or even just how efficient ASIC computing is in general at your point in histo…

Same thing applies to PoS.

How the hell do you know? You've just admitted that you don't actually know how PoS and PoW work. You've repeatedly refused to "do your homework" by researching what's known about these things. And yet you have repeatedly been rude to other people who have done their homework, and have informed opinions, unlike you. Just shut up and stop talking about blockchains. You're an entitled internet nobody.

For other people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367857

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#732

Post by Dylan16807 »

keymone wrote: post #363
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether leader election happens at the same time as the block is proposed or not is completely irrelevant to the nature of the problem from a distributed systems perspective. The point is that in each round, the leader both wins the election, and proposes the next block. There are other variants of proof of work in which the leader is allowed to continue generating new blocks for a period of time and (AFAIK) these in…

There is no leader election. You trying to insist on this terminology is like trying to explain that the earth is really flat by proposing some very special space metric. All miners “vote” by hashing and one of them wins. They don’t win because somebody voted for them, they win because they happened to find a satisfactory hash. The chance to win that hash faster than other miners is proportional to hashrate. The hash…

> Just read, please.

You're coming off worse in this argument because you seem to realize on some level they're just using different (possibly wrong) terms in their accurate description of the mechanisms, but then you keep making snide remarks that imply they don't understand the mechanisms.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#733

Post by jimmydorry »

benlivengood wrote: post #114
ricardolopes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bitcoin Core client includes a hardcoded list of DNS servers that point to thousands of nodes. These lists get updated frequently by different people. Other clients may use other lists. What is the threat model you're suggesting here, exactly? Do you know any other way to bootstrap a peer to peer network without centralised authorities? All network participants are forced to verify the full chain from genesis. So…

> Do you know any other way to bootstrap a peer to peer network without centralised authorities? In IPv4 a client might have a chance at auto-discovering peers. It's also not necessary to rely on a single centralized authority. There are many things (DNS, Encyclopedias, Linux kernel mirrors, etc.) where the majority of existing centralized authorities agree with each other.

DNS is based around central authority though. Every root zone has name servers that serve as the authority. Their responses get cached at various levels but take those servers offline until TTLs start expiring and everything breaks.

What part of DNS do you feel is possible without a centralized authority?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#734

Post by dlubarov »

yanmaani wrote: post #639
comex wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is an open source permissionless protocol, so you have multiple clients to chose from, each with their own list of bootstrapping nodes, many open source where you can submit a PR to add your node too. You can even build your own client and point to whatever you want. You can also just ignore them and just point directly to nodes in a list from a public forum, a private chat, whatever. I characterized this a…

I want to take a moment to note what you're doing here. You're making a negative argument, in want of a better word. It goes something like this: 1. X is a problem? 2. But Y is also a problem, in my opinion. 3. X and Y are both the same, I think. 4. Therefore X is not a problem. We can - theoretically - verify the correctness of PoW software by downloading the source code, reading it over, etc. We can also refuse to…

> 3. X and Y are both the same, I think.

It seems like you reject this premise, maintaining that PoW networks are objectively verifiable? But you didn't really refute the parent's point there, which was that there are no "objective standards" in deciding which bootstrap nodes to use; it's ultimately a matter of trust. If I trust the wrong bootstrap nodes, I can be eclipsed from the real network.

Granted, I only have to trust that a single bootstrap node from the list will faithfully connect me to the honest network. But PoS involves a very similar 1-of-n trust model; I can request checkpoints from n semi-trusted sources and check that they match.

Also, granted, if I pick bad bootstrap nodes, I can still detect if I'm being eclipsed by looking at the hash rate. But how do I know what hash rate to expect? I could check n websites with hash rate charts, but that brings us back to 1-of-n trust.

> 4. Therefore X is not a problem.

IMO it's a manageable problem. Users just need to be cognisant of these trust assumptions they're relying on, and be thoughtful about picking semi-trusted peers (whether bootstrap nodes or checkpoint providers).

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#735

Post by lottin »

ogogmad wrote: post #731
lottin wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing applies to PoS.

How the hell do you know? You've just admitted that you don't actually know how PoS and PoW work. You've repeatedly refused to "do your homework" by researching what's known about these things. And yet you have repeatedly been rude to other people who have done their homework, and have informed opinions, unlike you. Just shut up and stop talking about blockchains. You're an entitled internet nobody. For other people:…

I will talk about whatever I want to talk. If you don't like it, too bad.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#736

Post by [deleted] »

anonporridge wrote: post #63
josnyder wrote: post #8

PoW systems rely on the "phone a friend method" as well. When you download a Bitcoin client from a "friend", you are trusting them to honestly introduce you to the network. If you fall asleep for a period of years, you have to trust your friends to honestly inform you of all of the PoW forks and policy changes that have occurred over that interval. The only difference is that PoS blockchain clients must be bundled wi…

You really don't need to trust a "friend" while bootstrapping into the network with PoW, because the proof of work is irrevocably embedded within the blockchain, and the real world cost of creating those blocks can be pretty easily estimated. So long as you have a general idea of how much hash power is being used currently for the network, or even just how efficient ASIC computing is in general at your point in histo…

[deleted]

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#737

Post by md_ »

zocoi wrote: post #727
cs702 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said. Please don't attack a straw man. My main point was, and is, that the same attack-logic applies to ANY transaction network. The example with Doctor Evil was about other transaction networks. Why would Doctor Evil attack a block chain network when he could attack global/national/regional credit card/wire transfer/ACH networks, many of which are built upon ancient pre-Internet technology, are ful…

You didn’t answer the parent post. Your point was, in game theory, there’s no benefit in attacking the network or the loss is huge that it doesn’t worth the the attack. The parent post gave the counter point that there could be a benefit which we haven’t thought. If Dr Evil is heavily invested in 2 network, he might destroy one to focus on the remaining. The chance of the attack is low but it is not zero

I like this point, but (as I think you are saying as well) it’s true for POW as well, right?

Fundamentally, if there are off-chain incentives to destroy the value of a given blockchain, much of our reasoning about the game theory doesn’t hold up.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#738

Post by md_ »

inter_netuser wrote: post #176
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...

This is a common misunderstanding. Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all. PoW is a service to the network, to create an immutable ledger. It comes with a very real nuclear option that will bankrupt miners if you misbehave and get fired by hashing algo change. It's just a boring industrial business, like smelting aluminum or iron.

> Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all.

Hmm, maybe I’m ignorant, but in practice, don’t miners (socially, not technically) have substantial say in issues like the block size debate?

If you want to create a hard fork of the chain for any reason, whether people accept your fork as legitimate will in part reflect the total hashing power of that forked chain, right? So in practice what miners choose to follow will have a big impact.

Maybe not quite the same as PoS in-chain voting, but it still seems to give large miners outsized power, no?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#739

Post by Siira »

cs702 wrote: post #655
brianolson wrote: post #133

(my day job is developer on Proof-of-Stake Algorand block chain, I'm a developer, this may not be polished official PR) Article's theory about malicious old blocks doesn't hold up. Let's say I start a new node and verify history since the beginning. Somewhere along the line I'm connected to a malicious node which hands me a fictionalized block. It would need to have been signed by not just one but about 30-45 account…

I would add that the silly argument that a super-wealthy individual or a government could in theory degrade or destroy a transaction platform is applicable, not just to Algorand and other block chains, but also, more generally, to ANY transaction platform . I mean, if Doctor Evil suddenly decided to spend tens of billions of dollars to destroy the three main credit card networks, he could probably do it. In fact, it…

Provided a shorting mechanism for X, destroying X will be incentivized.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#740

Post by [deleted] »

hedora wrote: post #616
comex wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history still needs to be signed by former stakers to be valid. The "nothing at stake" problem is that a staker might break the rules by signing two mutually incompatible histories. During the staking period, they are strongly disincentivized from doing this because anyone can present proof that they've done so, causing the network to punish them by taking away all the funds they staked. But once that period expi…

This is the “nothing at stake problem” from the article. Warren Buffet buys up 70% of the network, induces a network partition, and then double spends it all, signing both transaction histories. By the time he’s caught, he’s converted 2x the value of the POS network to POW bitcoins. Replace “warren buffet” with “crypto exchanges selling bundled securities”, and the above is not just plausible, it’s inevitable. The sa…

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