Quote from: pebwindkraft on March 05, 2018, 04:40:34 PM

Quote from: januszbiznesu on March 05, 2018, 03:39:15 PM

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forumtheymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).
...

@pebwindkraft, sorry, you were responding to a plagiarist who copied one of my old posts (and also a post by bob123), as reported by BitCryptex.

Quote from: nullius on December 21, 2017, 05:57:20 AM

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forumtheymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).

Replying to you, with corrected attribution:

Quote from: pebwindkraft on March 05, 2018, 04:40:34 PM

Quote from: nullius on December 21, 2017, 05:57:20 AM

Wherefore ideas such as Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA) (blogged, reblogged, discussed on this forumtheymos immediately pointed out one obvious problem).

We have sidechains/drivechains/Alpha Elements, where new concepts can be tested. I wouldn't expect something being "the right thing" from the very beginning, but the more development we have, the better it secures bitcoin future. And everything which looks at things that are more than low-level increase of blocksize or amount of coins should benefit future work.
There are many people worried about miner centralization(three countries: Canada, Island and China...), unhappy situation with ASIC miners and BCH support, and possibly growing size of blockchain... And then we learned, hard forkes are probably a "no-go". Further development is necessary.
So if UASF inspired hardforks are a no-go for MR POWA (wow, what a combination of buzz words!) is not visible, we should encourage ongoing research from many areas, and not only Altcoins, also sidechains can be used.

First, I wish to highlight my critical next sentence, which you cuthere in boldface:

Quote from: nullius on December 21, 2017, 05:57:20 AM

I do not endorse that proposal; I think its interesting, but I have no desire to see collateral damage made of all the fine folks who invested their lives savings in SHA-256 hardware, and swore they would mine Bitcoin or nothing.

Sidechains/drivechains/etc. which you mention are irrelevant to concepts such as the MR POWA proposalor total POW change. These are aptly described as nuclear options for the main chain, in case certain ill-intended large centralized miners become an existential threat to Bitcoin. But nuclear war is not a desirable prospect; it always has collateral damage, and it could be MAD. Consider that in recent months, certain evil miners have tried to seriously compromise Bitcoinand they failed, because other miners kept their own ASICs mining Bitcoin, and the network is much more resilient than some people expected.

Quote from: pebwindkraft on March 05, 2018, 04:40:34 PM

Quote from: nullius on December 21, 2017, 05:57:20 AM

I want to see commodity SHA-256 ASICs sold cheaper than GPUs, and as readily available. I think thats probably the best solution, long-term. Too bad I am not a hardware guy.

Yes, in principle I agree. Economies of scale in the manufacturing environments have shown centralization. So even if we find new ASICs with independency from the evil ASIC provider of today, I would guess, that after finding a new cheap SHA256 ASIC cheaper as GPUs, we'd do the race again and find centralization of manufacturer of these new devices, and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light... Decentralization (to keep independency) is a very, very hard topic. Economically and especially at sociological level...

Imagine you could get ten million devices each doing a modest 800 GH/s out on store shelves at a moderate pricemade plug-and-play, and advertised as the hot new thing. Just make sure the thing runs quietly, and has sleek industrial design. Congratulations, you just added 8 EH/ssomewhere around (waves hands) doubling the global hashrate, with half of the global hashrate now spread amongst computer enthusiasts, gadget fetishists, people who want a show-off conversation piece, finance people, maybe even gamers (many of whom have a gadget fetish, and want to show off to their friends).

I know that there have been previous attempts to create something along these lines. What is needed is for a well-established, competently managed Bitcoin company with in-house brains and leadership who cares about Bitcoin to take a serious interest in making hardware happen for miner decentralization. I know that the whole process from ASIC development to fabbing, to device design, to manufacturing, to (sometimes most difficult for engineers) distribution would be a challenging task. It is not a project which some genius lone-gun could pull off by himself.

(In my dreams: Wheres a Blockstream conspiracy when you need one? If they could do a satellite feed, theyre adept at the sorts of contracts they would need to arrange. They are already hated by Jihan & Co. Go for it.)

As for this:

Quote from: pebwindkraft on March 05, 2018, 04:40:34 PM

and maybe they implement then a hidden function to flood the blockchain with invalid blocks, bringing new attack vectors to light...

Behold the power of nodes: Invalid blocks do not exist, insofar as the blockchain is concerned. Malicious miners can try to make all the invalid blocks they want, whether via hidden functions or otherwise; theyd only be wasting their electricity. Malicious hardware manufacturers who added such hidden functions would be criminally defrauding their customers, but could not thus damage the Bitcoin network. This is a non-issue.