Quote from: humbepirate on November 18, 2016, 01:20:27 AM

Quote from: georgem on November 17, 2016, 03:50:35 PM

Quote from: rhinomonkey on November 17, 2016, 03:16:35 PM

For future reference if Georgem is not in the forum for a while, everyone can begin espousing ideas that lead to centralization. He will magically appear. It's like rubbing a genie's lamp.

At what point do I consider this a "denial of service" attempt on my available time? Wink

I'm kidding, I will never get tired of teaching you guys a little bit about decentralization.

Now back to work. Wink

BTW I'm in the BCT forum all the time, but 99% of the time it's because I'm looking up technical bitcoin stuff.

In the interest of bumping the thread and having a bit of discussion, I thought I would ask more about decentralization and how it is best achieved.

Georgem and others seem to put a heavy emphasis on the miners, as in POW they are bringing the hash power and thus the decision making capabilities. However, my question is why do you think POW is better for decentralization than POS?

Decentralization as I understand it has nothing to do with democracy or fairness, but rather accessibility. Would it not seem that POS is far more accessible, requiring nothing more than a standard laptop or raspberry pi to operate the wallet? Compared with the expenses of mining equipment the general level of decentralization seems higher (as more people have the capability of accessing and influencing a POS coin).

However, even taking into consideration the fairness of POS v. POW I do not see demonstrable benefits to POW. POW is highly wasteful (estimated that by 2020 Bitcoin mining will use as much energy as the country of Denmark) and both POW and POS require initial fiat investments that are proportionally linked to the relative influence you might wield. The difference seems to be the massive amount of waste POW necessitates.

I have heard various arguments against POS (mostly regarding the potential security issue of a 51% attack, which seems unlikely based on the motivations of anyone holding that many coins) but I would love to hear what the community has to say about POS and the relative merits and demerits? Right now I see POW as an antiquated protocol that will eventually need to be modified to compete with less wasteful alternatives.

PoS v PoW

Both have good and bad points.

Spreadx11 solves the centralisation problem which, other than wasting electricity, is the main disadvantage of PoW. But wasting electricity is the core security feature of PoW, but only when the level of mining reaches an escape velocity, ie. it would cost someone too much money to attempt an attack. There are very few coins that have reached this escape velocity, Bitcoin being one of them.

If you want a detailed overview of PoS v. PoW:

* Ethereum has a good overview as it is migrating from PoW to PoS https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/

* Cointelegraph on why a new algo is needed https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-inevitable-failure-of-proof-of-stake-blockchains-and-why-a-new-algorithm-is-needed

* Others like Charlie Lee trying to solve this issue https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf

The issue with focusing on PoS or PoW is that most people don't really care. You may believe that solving this issue is going to change your world, but it won't. If you get something working, Bitcoin will use it.

Look at x11. When it was launched, it was copied to death. It didn't really add anything to Darkcoin.
Look at Spreadx11. When it was launched, it was seen as innovative, but the price of SPR tanked to $15k.

Miners simply want to earn some steady money and make some profits, but ultimately they are like a lothario, always looking to move on to the next conquest.

For all its internet money promises, Bitcoin is now having an identity crisis in that it can't compete with free services like PayPal. The argument about developing a fee market to pay miners is crippling progress. If it turns to PoS, the value of each coin means it becomes an easy target, Bitcoin value goes to zero.

The one area that is of interest is creating a requirement for miners to also be linked to ServiceNodes - the collateral to mine idea.

Solving the nothing at stake problem for PoS, gets you back to square one: why should anyone bother with xyz coin?

End user features and benefits. That's what people want.

But even more than that, it's all about profit. You can engage with thousands of people if you can show them a way to make some profits. As shown in the Spread PoBN whitepaper, it doesn't actually have to be a big profit, either. People are quite happy to spend hours on end to make small profits, if there is something else that engages them about a project, like supporting the decentralisation of Bitcoin, or xyz coin.

It is a worthwhile goal to try to solve the PoS vs. PoW or even PoS & PoW problem, but it might not lead to any meaningful profits, if that's the problem your ultimately trying to solve.