Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy

From: yanmaani@cock•li
To: Michael Fuhrmann <fuhmic@web•de>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 05:17:54 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <2b26e45240fad320b3ee584551223455@cock.li> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d35dee03-2d19-e80a-c577-2151938f9203@web.de>

This is silly, but I'll add my take:

This would create the incentive to have chips that are idle 50% of the 
time and work harder 50% of the time. This means miners would buy twice 
the chips to use the same amount of power, for example.

This in turn means a greater portion of your operational costs are spent 
on chips, and a smaller portion on electricity, reducing the incentive 
to use cheaper power and turn off when it's expensive, because you need 
to recoup your investment. That seems like a bad thing.

Here's my proposal: if you want a PoW algorithm that's better for the 
environment, make one where the chips are easier to manufacture, so 
power costs become a greater portion of miner expenditures. Maybe 
SIMON/SPECK would do it. It could also incentivize someone to find that 
NSA backdoor...

On 2021-05-14 21:41, Michael Fuhrmann via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Bitcoin should create blocks every 10 minutes in average. So why do
> miners need to mine the 9 minutes after the last block was found? It's
> not necessary.
> 
> Problem: How to prevent "pre-mining" in the 9 minutes time window?
> 
> Possible ideas for discussion:
> 
> - (maybe most difficult) global network timer sending a salted hash 
> time
> code after 9 minutes. this enables validation by nodes.
> 
> - (easy attempt) mining jobs before 9 minutes have a 10 (or 100 or just
> high enough) times higher difficulty. so everyone can mine any time but
> before to 9 minutes are up there will be a too high downside. It is 
> more
> efficient to wait then paying high bills. The bitcoin will get a 
> "puls".
> 
> 
> I dont think I see all problems behind these ideas but if there is a
> working solution to do so then the energy fud will find it's end. 
> Saving
> energy without loosing rosbustness.
> 
> 
> 
> :)
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