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From: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr.org>
To: Michael Fuhrmann <fuhmic@web.de>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>, Karl <gmkarl@gmail.com>,
	Anton Ragin <anton@etc-group.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy
Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 02:58:12 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <202105170258.13233.luke@dashjr.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <d35dee03-2d19-e80a-c577-2151938f9203@web.de>

On Friday 14 May 2021 21:41:23 Michael Fuhrmann via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Bitcoin should create blocks every 10 minutes in average. So why do
> miners need to mine the 9 minutes after the last block was found? It's
> not necessary.

It increases security, and is unavoidable anyway.

> Problem: How to prevent "pre-mining" in the 9 minutes time window?

You can't.

> Possible ideas for discussion:
>
> - (maybe most difficult) global network timer sending a salted hash time
> code after 9 minutes. this enables validation by nodes.

PoW *is* the global network timer.

> - (easy attempt) mining jobs before 9 minutes have a 10 (or 100 or just
> high enough) times higher difficulty. so everyone can mine any time but
> before to 9 minutes are up there will be a too high downside. It is more
> efficient to wait then paying high bills. The bitcoin will get a "puls".

There's no timestamp at this stage of consensus.

On Sunday 16 May 2021 18:10:12 Karl via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> The clock might be implementable on a peer network level by requiring
> inclusion of a transaction that was broadcast after a 9 minute delay.

That requires a centralised authority.

On Sunday 16 May 2021 20:31:47 Anton Ragin via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> 1. Has anyone considered that it might be technically not possible to
> completely 'power down' mining rigs during this 'cool-down' period of time?
> While modern CPUs have power-saving modes, I am not sure about ASICs used
> for mining.

That would be miners' problem, not the network's... New ASICs would no doubt 
be made to work more efficiently.

> 2. I am not a huge data-center specialist, but it was my understanding that
> they charge per unit of installed (maximum) electricity consumption. It
> would mean that if the miner needs X kilowatts-hour within that 1 minute
> when they are allowed to mine, he/she will have to pay for the same X for
> the remaining 9 minutes - and as such would have no economic incentive not
> to draw that power when idling.

Actually, this would be a good thing: it would heavily discourage datacentre 
use (which is very harmful to mining decentralisation).

> 4. My counter-proposal to the community to address energy consumption
> problems would be *to encourage users to allow only 'green miners' process
> their transaction.* In particular:
>...
> (b) Should there be some non-profit organization(s) certifying green miners 
> and giving them cryptographic certificates of conformity (either usage of
> green energy or purchase of offsets), users could encrypt their
> transactions and submit to mempool in such a format that *only green miners
> would be able to decrypt and process them*.

Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and get 
rid of PoW entirely...



  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-05-17  2:58 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-05-14 21:41 [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy Michael Fuhrmann
2021-05-15 22:14 ` René Pickhardt
2021-05-15 22:19 ` Pavol Rusnak
2021-05-16 15:30 ` Zac Greenwood
2021-05-16 18:10 ` Karl
2021-05-16 20:31   ` Anton Ragin
2021-05-16 22:06     ` Eric Voskuil
2021-05-16 23:29       ` Karl
2021-05-16 21:15   ` Zac Greenwood
2021-05-16 22:05     ` Karl
2021-05-17  9:34       ` Zac Greenwood
2021-05-17  2:58 ` Luke Dashjr [this message]
2021-05-17 12:39   ` Anton Ragin
2021-05-18  7:46     ` ZmnSCPxj
2021-05-17 19:17   ` Michael Fuhrmann
2021-05-18  8:04     ` ZmnSCPxj
2021-05-17  5:17 ` yanmaani
2021-05-17 13:14 befreeandopen
2021-05-17 13:53 ` Anton Ragin
2021-05-17 17:28   ` Keagan McClelland
2021-05-17 23:02     ` Anton Ragin

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