Re: [bitcoin-dev] Opinion on proof of stake in future

[Zac Greenwood <zachgrw@gmail.com>]

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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.

Zac


On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 09:07, ZmnSCPxj via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Good morning Erik,
>
> > Verifiable Delay Functions involve active participation of a single
> > verifier. Without this a VDF decays into a proof-of-work (multiple
> > verifiers === parallelism).
> >
> > The verifier, in this case is "the bitcoin network" taken as a whole.
> > I think it is reasonable to consider that some difficult-to-game
> > property of the last N blocks (like the hash of the last 100
> > block-id's or whatever), could be the verification input.
> >
> > The VDF gets calculated by every eligible proof-of-burn miner, and
> > then this is used to prevent a timing issue.
> >
> > Seems reasonable to me, but I haven't looked too far into the
> > requirements of VDF's
> >
> > nice summary for anyone who is interested:
> > https://medium.com/@djrtwo/vdfs-are-not-proof-of-work-91ba3bec2bf4
> >
> > While VDF's almost always lead to a "cpu-speed monopoly", this would
> > only be helpful for block latency in a proof-of-burn chain. Block
> > height would be calculated by eligible-miner-burned-coins, so the
> > monopoly could be easily avoided.
>
> Interesting link.
>
> However, I would like to point out that the *real* reason that PoW
> consumes lots of power is ***NOT***:
>
> * Proof-of-work is parallelizable, so it allows miners consume more energy
> (by buying more grinders) in order to get more blocks than their
> competitors.
>
> The *real* reason is:
>
> * Proof-of-work allows miners to consume more energy in order to get more
> blocks than their competitors.
>
> VDFs attempt to sidestep that by removing parallelism.
> However, there are ways to increase *sequential* speed, such as:
>
> * Overclocking.
>   * This shortens lifetime, so you can spend more energy (on building new
> miners) in order to get more blocks than your competitors.
> * Lower temperatures.
>   * This requires refrigeration/cooling, so you can spend more energy (on
> the refrigeration process) in order to get more blocks than your
> competitors.
>
> I am certain people with gaming rigs can point out more ways to improve
> sequential speed, as necessary to get more frames per second.
>
> Given the above, I think VDFs will still fail at their intended task.
> Speed, yo.
>
> Thus, VDFs do not serve as a sufficient deterrent away from
> ever-increasing energy consumption --- it just moves the energy consumption
> increase away from the obvious (parallelism) to the
> obscure-if-you-have-no-gamer-buds.
>
> You humans just need to get up to Kardashev 1.0, stat.
>
> Regards,
> ZmnSCPxj
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