Quote from: tdryja on July 09, 2014, 09:08:07 AM

I don't understand your "bad actor" scenario. There is no reason for a miner to "contract with themselves", because the contract transactions are not made public, and don't appear on the blockchain until one of the two nLockTimes becomes valid. Why would you send coins to yourself? Nobody sees the proof of power responses except the node creating the bounty.

i put the idea into many many scenarios (most not wrote down) as im always personally and professionally into seeing if things are feasible. so this is not a personal attack on you. i actually liked your video and thought you were good.. but this is about the protocol

now, as for why 'bad actor' would form a contract. well in the first post i scenario'd that GHash (being the bad actor) just wouldnt even bother entering into a contract. and just fool the system switing off units then switcing on, but then i thought that for the PoI protocol to even have a chance to work, it would have to be coded into everyones mining software that everyone had to be in a contract.. else who would even bother.. so thats why i envisioned the bad actor forming a contract with itself, just to cover the bases that all miners had to have a contract to be able to mine.

Quote from: tdryja on July 09, 2014, 09:08:07 AM

Also, if smaller miners who were hoping to idle their hash power and receive a bounty see that the network is running at a high rate, they will assume the bounties will not be fulfilled and adjust their hash rates to the optimum without a bounty payout. So if at 00:03 am, some mining pool starts running full blast, well, everyone can see that, and the whole PoI contract is off, mining continues as before, and the bounties are returned to the sender a few days later.

in reply to jjdub7 also:
but this can also be faked. lets say someone wants to be an idler.. they set up their miners for the test. make the test address. and then they pretend to be in idle. yet, they have switched their miners over to a different IP address a different pool, a different receive address and mined there. thus they get a reward from the contract from one person that they tested with on eligius by pretending to idle. and they get part of the block rewards by actually mining on ghash or btcguild. without the contract partner knowing. after all the address on eligius that is attached to the contract is not showing any rewards or hashpower in the stats Cheesy

Quote from: tdryja on July 09, 2014, 09:08:07 AM

Sorry if this wasn't clear in the talk, I'll try to have a nice PDF of it out soon. The slides linked on the youtube page explain most of it though.

you seem smart, well educated etc, all i would say is you do seem to like your graphs and numbers. but in many cases statistics on a graph are not everything, and normally just theory. put things into real life case scenarios too, experiment with actual examples. EG with those graphs you made in the video. before making the graphs did you ever put 2 computers side by side and set both to mine.. then.. one to mine-one to idle.. or then.. rev up the threadconcurrency on one- and have low thread concurrency on the other.. and mine a crap altcoin with low hashrate to see your idea in action?

Quote from: tdryja on July 09, 2014, 09:08:07 AM

This does not help with decentralization at all in fact. I'm not advocating this idea, I'm just saying that my research has indicated that it is possible, optimal, and likely to be inevitable if the right conditions are met (mainly a low opex profitability and somewhat stable network with large mining entities). Miners would still need to have equipment to pose credible threats to mine, but would not have to mine at full capacity.

(Also this should possibly be moved to Development & Technical Discussion, but I didn't create the thread.)

I'll post responses tomorrow if people have other questions. Thanks for the interest!

don't get me wrong we do need people like you thinking of solutions.. just dont be afraid when others feasibility test them.. usually people find it helpful as it makes you realise some flaws that need to be worked out, or helps you save time by not working weeks on an idea that could be spent on a better or different idea.

in my eyes there is no problem with POW.. the cost of mining going up is the reasons miners refuse to sell for $2 and only want something over $500 (above their costs).. if gold mining for instance still only cost a pickaxe and a days labour to mine 5 ounces of gold.. then today 5 ounces of gold would be on the market for a hell of alot less then it is now..