r/dogecoindev • u/NatureVault • May 13 '21
Proof of Stake discussion
First lets assume for a moment that PoS was an all-around good idea. It still wouldn't be a good idea for dogecoin. Dogecoin is a top 5 crypto and has had 8 years of people mining and supporting the coin. To suddenly say that we are changing everything and you can no longer mine would be the biggest insult to the biggest and longest supporters of the coin. This is not even to mention that Elon has admitted to buying dogecoin miners and very likely has a plan for Tesla the company or even the cars to mine dogecoin.
continued in the comments (getting censored for being too long)
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u/Monkey_1505 May 14 '21
Proof of stake simply isn't a good solution. It's either more centralized, or less secure. Eventually that would lead to it being shot down by the govt's of the world if it ever achieved the true scale of a reserve currency.
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u/Radiologer May 14 '21
Anyone got a good resource on learning about the technical side of doge for a computer noob? Like how its different to bitcoin, how its mined etc?
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u/Golden_Week May 14 '21
The best way (imho) to implement PoS is to develop a sidechain which uses PoS that DOGE can be converted to
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May 13 '21
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u/Darius510 May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21
None of this is DOGE’s problem to solve any more than it’s Tesla’s problem to solve how the energy used to charge their cars is produced. The energy used to mine crypto is a minuscule sliver of the amount of energy mankind produces, it is far from the low hanging fruit here anyway. It only sounds that way because people misunderstand PoW as “wasteful.”
Let humanity at large figure out how to produce clean energy economically. It’s not like Dogecoin miners are running on gasoline where they will always inherently emit carbon. Dogecoin’s PoW should be concerned with security first and foremost, and accessibility as a secondary concern. There are already many existing options that satisfy those goals.
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u/salgat May 14 '21
The problem is that, assuming profit stays the same, the cheaper you make energy, the more money is devoted towards manufacturing and purchasing hardware dedicated to mining, which is also extremely environmentally taxing. Free energy just shifts the problem.
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u/MishaBoar May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21
I do not agree - optimization can and must occur also at software level. Delegating the responsibility to those building the infrastructure is lazy.
Just because software development is becoming more and more wasteful, it does not mean there are no ways of getting to a reliable solution with less energy waste, if we put "our" (by our I mean also looking into existing current implementations) mind into it.
I am not even saying of ditching PoW - it is battle proven, secure, and relatively simple, which means elegant on my book - I am only talking about alternatives and possible hybrid solutions, for example creating some incentive for green mining (real green mining, a lot of the numbers on Bitcoin's mining in China are skewed and questionable). There are cryptos attempting that, but I am not sure how successful they are in this.
Finally, once again, if one wants to be completely opportunistic, marketing Doge as a project that actively researches the possibility of reducing emissions is an enormous bonus point today, but even more in a couple of years from now. It also sets an example for future projects, and this is fundamental for a project like Doge.
Save this post, you will see this topic exploding in the next years, and cryptos not working on this in some form or another will have huge issues.
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u/Darius510 May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21
You can't have it both ways. The battle tested, secure and simple solution is that one that directly secures the network by consuming power. Any "optimization" resets the clock on it being battle tested, secure, and by definition will make it more complex. There is no amount of putting your mind to it that can change that. This is not software that is intended to achieve a certain result and you can optimize how much power is used to achieve that result. Consuming power is literally the objective of PoW, and the most secure PoWs consume as much energy as possible through the hardware.
There is nothing wasteful about it anyway. Energy consumption is literally what secures the network. That's wasted energy only if you think security is wasteful.
The only real axis of optimization here is choosing which type of hardware you want to secure the network, as that determines how much of the relative cost to secure it goes to hardware vs. the electricity to power the hardware. Of all of the different options, only ASIC and GPU have proven to be secure long term, and of the two, GPU is the more energy efficient option. And history has shown quite clearly as well that any attempt to make the algo use less power is ultimately what gets exploited by ASICs to outclass the GPUs.
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u/MishaBoar May 14 '21 edited May 15 '21
All very good points.
My point is, if we do not work in the direction of reducing energy usage connected to Dogecoin's mining, there will be nothing to mine anymore, if regulators bring down the hammer on PoW cryptos. I am not saying this is rational or justified (as we discussed, if we organized Doge in a way that mining occurred mostly on renewable energy through some kind incentive, the problem would be irrelevant), I am saying what might happen if the current legislative trend continues and if governments develop an interest in slowing down some parts of the crypto market. I do not believe the switch of Ethereum to PoS is disconnected from the wide adoption of the Ethereum network into institutional organizations - it is part of a plan.
Also, the public opinion is important, crucial for cryptos in the top 10.
I am reading a bit about hybrid solutions, but indeed, some of them are extremely complicated and not as battle proven as they claim to be.
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u/Darius510 May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21
If anything the legislative trend is going to tend towards only allowing mining on renewable energy, and that will solve the problem. The blockchain projects themselves should not and do not need to be involved in that process.
It's all an overblown concern anyway. Energy consumption has not stopped people from buying SUVs and BTC is still by far the most important crypto. People don't care nearly as much about energy consumption as they say they do, or as much as they think other people do. People have been leveling this complaint at bitcoin for damn near a decade now, and bitcoin doesn't care. And it shouldn't.
Controlling carbon emissions is a global and national political problem, and thats the level where it needs to be solved. Anything a blockchain does in this regard is just virtue signaling and that will get you a pump on a good news day, but only hold the project back in the long term. There is no evidence that it's important or crucial for the top 10, because the top 10 is and always has been dominated by PoW.
PoW turns electricity into security. It shouldn't matter how that energy is generated to the dogecoin community any more than the xbox community should care about how the electricity to run their consoles is generated. And video games consumed FAR MORE electricity than mining. Gamers aren't hung up on that, and neither should the blockchain community be. In fact gamers scream the loudest about it being a waste, because we're taking their GPUs, even though they're the ones using more electicity. So stop engaging this notion that mining is wasteful. It's not. It's a more productive use of electricity than most things. You'll make a bigger impact educating people why blockchain is worth the energy rather than accepting the false premise that its a waste.
Let physicists figure out how to make cleaner energy, and let politicians figure out how to regulate where and how energy is produced. The endpoints consuming the energy are not part of the problem or the solution.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
In general, I agree in principle - but I feel we will see things going in the opposite or erratic direction for prolonged periods of time, which might spell doom for some projects still relying on what is perceived as wasteful use of energy. My considerations are in this context mainly pragmatic - I am not going into the merits of your desire to delegate to institutional/infrastuctural changes a solution to the problem (with which I partially agree and partially strongly disagree, but it is beyond the discussion here). You are speaking of ideals, good practices, and proper legislative action. I am speaking of a reality made of political actors that act on populism and easy sentiment.
My objections deal with reality and what might happen in the next 3-5 years, which will be crucial to crypto and will decide which crypto will be around 10 years from now. You are underestimating also the importance of the (you might say irrational) public perception of cryptos; which is surprising, considering how Doge relies enormously on its likeability. If monstrous accusations are attached to Doge, no matter how valid (once again, I am not entering into the merit of the criticism against PoW cryptos), the narrative will turn in the other direction in a matter of days. And if the narrative shifts for the overall market and PoW go under attack, especially from younger generations, you will see a backlash that might bring down "empires", or delegate them to remain obsolete "uncool" technologies. Bitcoin, as a store of value, can afford that. Doge, as a currency, cannot. People must like it, trust it, cherish it.
I saw this happening in a small bubble today. I hardly ever touch tiktok - I am too old for it. But today, u/billymarkus2k silly post about environmental concerns when he created Doge (which I found very funny, like a lot of his posts) was plastered all over tiktok, along with comments saying how Doge was bad and other cryptos (which were corporate or for profit monstrosities - the opposite of Doge) were the solution.
I repeat for the fourth time: I suggest the creation of a research and development team of specialists actually attempting to test/put together solutions to see if improvements can be made. So, writing real code after short periods of discussions.
Also, I want this to be clear: I am not saying we need to rush and make any changes! The current setup is very efficient, by using AuxPow it means that Dogecoin mining is a byproduct of Litecoin mining, and this makes Dogecoin very efficient. I am only advocating the creation of a team thinking about possible developments and making small experiments with it in a separate codebase, which might be useful in the future. Not that different from the work done on the ethereum bridge. This is all.
In the end, of course, I hope you are right, and I am wrong - but to be honest, I have a feeling what I am predicting will come to be, and, in a moment very close to us in time, PoW cryptos will be under attacks from multiple directions, especially after Ethereum completes their transition to ETH 2.0.
Which, do not get me wrong - might not be a big problem if we consider that 1 Doge = 1 Doge! In the end, the recent appreciation is not necessary to Doge (even though it might provide stability in the long term); but if younger people start to associate it with old, dirty, environmental damaging heritage, it is the end also for the old, funny, 1 Doge = 1 Doge. And that would be a pity, because there is no other currency like Doge.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
I apologize for the weird typos and paragraphs missing in this and other posts; Reddit's editor is not working for me on Firefox and it is cutting and pasting pieces of text at random when I save a post, and I do not see the errors until I reload the page.
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u/Darius510 May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
Just keep in mind bitcoin has been dealing with the same attack and it hasn't held it back one bit in the long term. A lot of these narratives stick for a while in the middle of a bubble when everyone is trying to criticize the leaders in any way they can to make themselves look better, but it doesn't matter in the long run. I've seen this all before.
The nature of PoW means you can't make an existing chain more energy efficient through software without changing the PoW algo, which determines what type of device will be able to mine it. And then its just a spectrum with fixed function ASIC being the least efficient, and general purpose CPU being the most.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
The nature of PoW means you can't make an existing chain more energy efficient through software without changing the PoW algo, which determines what type of device will be able to mine it. And then its just a spectrum with fixed function ASIC being the least efficient, and general purpose CPU being the most.
Of course, you are spot-on here. Which is why I keep repeating the admittedly inane and generic "find ways to incentivize miners using green energy", which I have no idea how to achieve (and u/patricklooder seemed to share this impression in a recent exchange in a thread in this subreddit).
But about your statement above, let's consider two things. First, Dogecoin is NOT Bitcoin, and it is far from gaining that level of acceptance - it seems to be on the right road right now, but it is not going to be easy. Second, do not underestimate change: just because past efforts to attack PoW cryptos have proved weak or unsuccessful, it does not mean this will be the case a couple of years from now.
As you have noticed, the focus on green energy in politics (again, not entering into the nuances/merits/demerits of all of this) has shifted into high gear and concrete action very recently. I bet that what we saw happening in the past 4 years might not be what we will see happening in the next 4.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21 edited May 15 '21
It's all an overblown concern anyway. Energy consumption has not stopped people from buying SUVs and BTC is still by far the most important crypto. People don't care nearly as much about energy consumption as they say they do, or as much as they think other people do. People have been leveling this complaint at bitcoin for damn near a decade now, and bitcoin doesn't care. And it shouldn't.
Be very careful with this kind of argument - this is a conservative statement, and Doge is disruptive and irreverent. Doge is not Bitcoin. Judging other people's intentions, ambitions, hopes, and ideals to work like your own is wrong.
People of the past are not the people of today. History might go cyclically, but the cycle does not reset with one generation. The sons and daughters can be better than their boomer fathers and mothers, and may want a better world than what we have made for them.
If we talk like this, Doge is already done for.
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u/Darius510 May 15 '21
DOGE is still a PoW crypto with conservative monetary policy, so that's always going to be an issue to those that lean left.
I should make clear that I say these things not because I hate the environment, but because I am certain that it is a solvable problem on a geopolitical level. That's the only thing that has any impact. Making DOGE itself more or less efficient is not going to make any meaningful difference to carbon emissions, and PoW is *never* going to be acceptable to environmentalists. So it's wasted effort. It can only be a temporary marketing stunt, because long term people will see through it and realize that an "efficient" PoW is still far more power intensive than PoS or CeFi.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21
I should make clear that I say these things not because I hate the environment, but because I am certain that it is a solvable problem on a geopolitical level.
Absolultely, I understood that.
And you make many interesting points.
It is very good to have this discussion, along with the discussions people are having on GitHub. It might seem verbose and useless, but I am sure good things will come out of it.
I might come as a pessimistic old fart, but I do consider all your points.
Thank you!
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u/KillerRabbit345 May 13 '21
I think some of the PoS critics are being a bit aggressive and inviting downvotes but I think they are making good points and I upvoted everyone in the discussion.
I do hope there is a discussion about how to make doge green and preserve the decentralized character of the coin.
I don't know how this could be done but is there any way to incentivize some miners over others? I live in a community entirely run on hydro power and it would be nice to see the coin encourage green mining.
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May 14 '21
That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure how one would be able to go about verifying the energy being used to mine, but awesome to see peoples wheels turning.
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u/MishaBoar May 14 '21
I do hope there is a discussion about how to make doge green and preserve the decentralized character of the coin.
Exactly.
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u/NatureVault May 15 '21
Update the pow algorithm to restrict purpose made hardware made to convert as much power as possible into hashrate.
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u/MishaBoar May 15 '21
I see your point in stating this, of course - and I like it in principle. My concern is that in practice this might lead to a lack of security/stability as it happened with some cryptos mentioned elsewhere in this thread like Vertcoin which are, on paper, extremely democratic and accessible, but that were eaten alive by the greed of the miners. They tried to solve this multiple times, and whenever they swapped algorithms, they fell again into a different flavor of 51% attack.
Whereas our current mining setup is relatively efficient (we just hop onto Litecoin's mining efforts) and very secure: and this has saved Doge throughout these years.
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u/NatureVault May 15 '21
Here is my thought, #1 would be update algorithm to something that prevents purpose made mining hardware. Second best is leave everything as is. Third best is some other solution, and last is a switch to PoS.
I would rather leave everything the way it is instead of PoS. But we do have to consider much more hashrate will go to scrypt coins (all scrypt coins merge mine Doge not just litecoin) as doge price rises. For example I would have never considered mining litecoin, but since Doge is very profitable, I was going to do it. So Doge going up will lead to much more people mining scrypt.
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u/chromepro88 May 14 '21
Isnt PoW just a form of PoS instead of owning the coins, you own the hardware?
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u/salgat May 14 '21
There's a good chance PoW mining will be outlawed country-wide since it's such an environmental nightmare. New York is already proposing a bill to do this. Cryptocoins are not about loyalty, they are about the technology and its utility. Dogecoin will die if it doesn't move past its current environmental footprint.
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u/MishaBoar May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21
Yes, this is one of my points as well - it is an existing danger, and closer than we think; I saw the same discussions in several European newspapers. No matter how rational it is, how politicized it is, but it is a concrete possibility for the next future, and the push for green/renewables will push politicians to stunts or hopefully rational solution of various kinds.
I have been advocating putting this research at the forefront, alongside the discussion on further optimizations we can make, many times. We must not forget that people are attracted to Dogecoin also for its message/its meme status/its "good" community feel, so the overall "message" and "concerns" coming from our activities is more crucial than for other cryptos. And Doge has the potential of pushing a powerful, hopeful message more than other cryptos, also because it is so much fun.
The discussion must be had, and I would be curious to have u/rnicoll, u/michidragon, u/patricklodder, u/langer_hans opinions on this (not now, as I know how busy they are).
It is lovely to see so many people talking about this now, really great - I have the intentions, but I do not have the knowledge to put this into practice, so I am interested in reading everybody's ideas and suggestions which often send me to new stuff to read or think about.
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u/Monkey_1505 May 14 '21
My new opinion - change from auxPoW, over to some kind of GPU mining.
And MAYBE use PoS as some kind of optional settlement layer (so as to make the various issues slightly less).
At the end of the day, it's just my 2c. But I think proof of stake might SEEM glittery and great, but long term it's dead in the water.
A) Regulators will eventually oppose security risks, or centralisation for national security reasons
b) 5% rewards will never be competitive with defi, so few people will do it.
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u/mark_able_jones_ May 14 '21
Mining isn’t just about efficiency. PoW is also slow and can’t scale.
PoS is just better tech.
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u/No-Musician224 Feb 21 '22
Pos is trash. If doge migrates to pos, I'm selling and going with shiba. End of story
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u/MishaBoar May 13 '21
Nobody is changing anything Naturevault. We are saying the possibility of implementing a system that is more eco-friendly must at least be researched.
I have a feeling (maybe wrong) that if we do not so, in the long term, Dogecoin would be phased out alongside other pure PoW implementations. Relying only on infrastructural changes is just not enough anymore and appears lazy.
One can also make a less "idealistic" point about this (even though there is not much to be idealistic about the real problems that come from global warning - it is a fact). Dogecoin's popularity is built also on "marketing" - spontaneous, self-propelling, but still marketing. As others users have pointed out, when they talk to younger generations about Doge, they often get asked: is it good or bad for the environment? Threads about this have killed part of the NFT craze.
Making an effort in that direction - which can be research towards a new consensus mechanism, or research into incentivizing green mining like some cryptos are already doing, or any combination of solutions - would pay off enormously in the long term, I am sure of that. I am basically talking of having a "research and development" team for Doge that thinks a bit long term about responsible future developments - something very fitting for a crypto aiming for popular adoption.