1. i never suggested vdf's to replace pow. 2. my suggestion was specifically *in the context of* a working proof-of-burn protocol
- vdfs used only for timing (not block height) - blind-burned coins of a specific age used to replace proof of work - the required "work" per block would simply be a competition to acquire rewards, and so miners would have to burn coins, well in advance, and hope that their burned coins got rewarded in some far future - the point of burned coins is to mimic, in every meaningful way, the value gained from proof of work... without some of the security drawbacks - the miner risks losing all of his burned coins (like all miners risk losing their work in each block) - new burns can't be used - old burns age out (like ASICs do) - other requirements on burns might be needed to properly mirror the properties of PoW and the incentives Bitcoin uses to mine honestly. 3. i do believe it is *possible* that a "burned coin + vdf system" might be more secure in the long run, and that if the entire space agreed that such an endeavor was worthwhile, a test net could be spun up, and a hard-fork could be initiated. 4. i would never suggest such a thing unless i believed it was possible that consensus was possible. so no, this is not an "alt coin" On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 10:02 AM Zac Greenwood <zach...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi ZmnSCPxj, > > Please note that I am not suggesting VDFs as a means to save energy, but > solely as a means to make the time between blocks more constant. > > Zac > > > On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 12:42, ZmnSCPxj <zmnsc...@protonmail.com> wrote: >> >> Good morning Zac, >> >> > VDFs might enable more constant block times, for instance by having a >> > two-step PoW: >> > >> > 1. Use a VDF that takes say 9 minutes to resolve (VDF being subject to >> > difficulty adjustments similar to the as-is). As per the property of VDFs, >> > miners are able show proof of work. >> > >> > 2. Use current PoW mechanism with lower difficulty so finding a block >> > takes 1 minute on average, again subject to as-is difficulty adjustments. >> > >> > As a result, variation in block times will be greatly reduced. >> >> As I understand it, another weakness of VDFs is that they are not inherently >> progress-free (their sequential nature prevents that; they are inherently >> progress-requiring). >> >> Thus, a miner which focuses on improving the amount of energy that it can >> pump into the VDF circuitry (by overclocking and freezing the circuitry), >> could potentially get into a winner-takes-all situation, possibly leading to >> even *worse* competition and even *more* energy consumption. >> After all, if you can start mining 0.1s faster than the competition, that is >> a 0.1s advantage where *only you* can mine *in the entire world*. >> >> Regards, >> ZmnSCPxj _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
