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From: Gareth Williams <gacrux@gmail•com>
To: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proof-of-Stake branch?
Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 09:44:13 +1000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <bf916afe-6617-43c9-9738-486316ce308f@email.android.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <535C1980.7000505@monetize.io>

What about using fraud proofs? Your coinbase only matures if nobody publishes proof that you signed a competing block. 

Then something is at least at stake. When it's your chance to sign a block, attempting to sign and publish more than one at the same height reliably punishes you (you effectively waste your chance and receive no reward.)

I can't remember who I saw discussing this idea. Might have been Vitalik Buterin?

On 27 April 2014 6:39:28 AM AEST, Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize•io> wrote:
>There's no need to be confrontational. I don't think anyone here
>objects
>to the basic concept of proof-of-stake. Some people, myself included,
>have proposed protocols which involve some sort of proof of stake
>mechanism, and the idea itself originated as a mechanism for
>eliminating
>checkpoints, something which is very much on topic and of concern to
>many here.
>
>The problems come when one tries to *replace* proof-of-work mining with
>proof-of-stake "mining." You encounter problems related to the fact
>that
>with proof-of-stake nothing is actually at stake. You are free to sign
>as many different forks as you wish, and worse have incentive to do so,
>because whatever fork does win, you want it to be yours. In the worst
>case this results in double-spends at will, and in the best case with
>any of the various proposed protections deployed, it merely reduces to
>proof-of-work as miners grind blocks until they find one that names
>them
>or one of their sock puppets as the signer of the next block.
>
>I sincerely doubt you will find a solution to this, as it appears to be
>a fundamental issue with proof-of-stake, in that it must leverage an
>existing mechanism for enforced scarcity (e.g. proof-of-work) in order
>to work in a consensus algorithm. Is there some solution that you have
>in mind for this?
>
>Mark
>
>On 04/25/2014 12:33 AM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
>> Do it. Someone will scream harm. The loudest voices screaming how it
>would
>> be harmful are doing the most harm.
>> 
>> The only way to know is build it, and test it. If the network breaks,
>then
>> it is better we find out sooner rather than later.
>> 
>> My only suggestion is call it 'bitstake' or something to clearly
>differentiate
>> it from Bitcoin. This also might be an interesting application of the
>side
>> chains concept Peter Todd has discussed.
>> 
>> On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 04:32:15PM -0700, Stephen Reed wrote:
>>> Hello all.
>>>
>>> I understand that Proof-of-Stake as a replacement for Proof-of-Work
>is a prohibited yet disputed change to Bitcoin Core. I would like to
>create a Bitcoin branch that provides a sandboxed testbed for
>researching the best PoS implementations. In the years to come, perhaps
>circumstances might arise, such as shifting of user opinion as to
>whether PoS should be moved from the prohibited list to the hard-fork
>list.
>>> -----
>>>
>>> A poll I conducted today on bitcointalk,
>https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=581635.0 with an
>attention-grabbing title suggests some minority support for Bitcoin
>Proof-of-Stake. I invite any of you to critically comment on that
>thread.
>>>
>>> "Annual 10% bitcoin dividends can be ours if  Proof-of-Stake full
>nodes outnumber existing Proof-of-Work full nodes by three-to-one. What
>is your choice?"
>>>
>>> "I do not care or do not know enough." - 5 (16.1%) 
>>> "I would download and run the existing Proof-of-Work program to
>fight the change." - 14 (45.2%) 
>>> "I would download and run the new Proof-of-Stake program to favor
>the change. " - 12 (38.7%) 
>>> Total Voters: 31 
>>> -----
>>>
>>> Before I branch the source code and learn the proper way of doing
>things in this community, I ask you simply if creating the branch is
>harmful? My goal is to develop, test and document PoS, while exploring
>its vulnerabilities and fixing them in a transparent fashion.
>>>
>>> Thanks for taking a bit of your time to read this message.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.



  reply	other threads:[~2014-04-26 23:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-24 23:32 Stephen Reed
2014-04-25  7:33 ` Troy Benjegerdes
     [not found]   ` <D95AE4AB-DC67-4136-901A-D8F712EB7357@acidhou.se>
2014-04-25 10:35     ` Stephen Reed
2014-04-26 18:18       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-26 20:39   ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-26 23:44     ` Gareth Williams [this message]
2014-04-27  1:22       ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-27  2:01         ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-28 12:03       ` Alex Mizrahi

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