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This paper describes three alternatives to Bitcoin's proof-of-work: proof of blockchain storage, alternate proofs of work, and proof-of-stake. These ideas have

This paper describes three alternatives to Bitcoin's proof-of-work: proof of blockchain storage, alternate proofs of work, and proof-of-stake. These ideas have come up many times in Bitcoin before. 1. Proof of blockchain storage: This provides no security on its own but has been suggested many times to prevent SPV mining. 2. Alternate proofs of work: the idea is to have "cheaper" proofs of work. One of the proofs of work is a "super-agent", which would basically make a federated system, not a distributed one. There are also arguments that cheaper proof of work will just mean proportionally more work is done: http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/ 3. Proof-of-stake: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf

314 10y ago
There is another interesting idea buried in there: switch from a "lottery" to a "raffle" (their terminology). Or in more standard terms - change from a winner takes all distribution of rewards to a proportional distribution: everybody who mines the next block in the chain get some reward. I did not see any ideas for how this could be implemented, but it could remove a drive towards centralisation from the current blockchain approach.
- jerguismi 10y ago
  Don't mining pools do this already to some extent?
  - duozerk 10y ago
    They do; but the proposed system would do the same thing in an entirely non-centralized way. This would be a good thing because as it is now, there are multi-coins pools that will switch their users' hashing power to other chains depending on how profitable coins are. The concern is that large mining pools have a lot of combined hashing power and some dishonest ones could consider switching that power to specific coins not based on the revenue potential but for other reasons (51% attacks and the like).
duozerk 10y ago
What I'd love to see (don't know if this has been explored to some extent yet) would be proof of work but for useful work: think Folding@home or Einstein@home (BOINC stuff in general) in order to mine a blockchain. It's very hard to do (if it is even possible) in a non-centralized way though. Who submits the work ? who validates it has been performed properly ? and so on.
- UweSchmidt 10y ago
  This is Ethereum: "Mining" generates Ethers, but also runs code, potentially powering useful blockchain apps.
  - duozerk 10y ago
    The current PoW algorithm in ethereum is ethash and does not perform useful work during coin generation, unless I'm mistaken. You spend ether to fuel useful work. Also, Ethereum (forked) aim to switch to PoS soon (ETC may not).
    - UweSchmidt 10y ago
      Of course you are right, coin generation is a waste. The part where ether is changing hands for useful work is at least somewhat "useful". Best we can hope for is a future blockchain that emphasizes this kind of work more. A seti@home-coin or cure-cancer-coin is, as you suggested, hard to implement.
- codingmyway 10y ago
  The http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest link given above explains why you can incentivise useful processing but it won't stop the 'waste' issue. You also have the problem of regulating the difficulty if you want consistent rewards. Non-pure math problems aren't going to allow that.

314 10y ago

There is another interesting idea buried in there: switch from a "lottery" to a "raffle" (their terminology). Or in more standard terms - change from a winner takes all distribution of rewards to a proportional distribution: everybody who mines the next block in the chain get some reward. I did not see any ideas for how this could be implemented, but it could remove a drive towards centralisation from the current blockchain approach.

jerguismi 10y ago
Don't mining pools do this already to some extent?
- duozerk 10y ago
  They do; but the proposed system would do the same thing in an entirely non-centralized way. This would be a good thing because as it is now, there are multi-coins pools that will switch their users' hashing power to other chains depending on how profitable coins are. The concern is that large mining pools have a lot of combined hashing power and some dishonest ones could consider switching that power to specific coins not based on the revenue potential but for other reasons (51% attacks and the like).

duozerk 10y ago

What I'd love to see (don't know if this has been explored to some extent yet) would be proof of work but for useful work: think Folding@home or Einstein@home (BOINC stuff in general) in order to mine a blockchain. It's very hard to do (if it is even possible) in a non-centralized way though. Who submits the work ? who validates it has been performed properly ? and so on.

UweSchmidt 10y ago
This is Ethereum: "Mining" generates Ethers, but also runs code, potentially powering useful blockchain apps.
- duozerk 10y ago
  The current PoW algorithm in ethereum is ethash and does not perform useful work during coin generation, unless I'm mistaken. You spend ether to fuel useful work. Also, Ethereum (forked) aim to switch to PoS soon (ETC may not).
  - UweSchmidt 10y ago
    Of course you are right, coin generation is a waste. The part where ether is changing hands for useful work is at least somewhat "useful". Best we can hope for is a future blockchain that emphasizes this kind of work more. A seti@home-coin or cure-cancer-coin is, as you suggested, hard to implement.
codingmyway 10y ago
The http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest link given above explains why you can incentivise useful processing but it won't stop the 'waste' issue. You also have the problem of regulating the difficulty if you want consistent rewards. Non-pure math problems aren't going to allow that.