Croutonrant #331 - Marketing a waste of time/money currently! Also PoW is an exclusionary dead end!

[moli]

It isn't PoStake. Users aren't staking anything, they're contributing a few CPU cycles now and again and getting a little in return. Earnings, not interest, how much DASH you have in your wallet makes no difference. Provide service, get paid, same as MNs.

And we'll have to disagree about where the value to the user comes from I suppose. Currency is a tool, and like any other product that costs money to purchase, whether someone buys a tool or not depends on the value it brings to them, not how much it cost to produce. Though I'll grant you that while manufacturing cost may be a factor in affordability for most tools, what a unit of currency costs to acquire is irrelevant as that cost is reclaimed upon spending of said currency unit.

I think every single user should be a value-adding participant, this is a way of achieving that.

Have you written a white paper on this idea and sent to Evan? I'm still not following everything you've said because I'm technically challenged on mining and crypto, but I'm wondering if there's anything in your ideas Evan can look at? I'm more curious if you have an idea to help remove the reference node. (Did he say it's going to be removed in the next version?)

 

[thelonecrouton]

Have you written a white paper on this idea and sent to Evan? I'm still not following everything you've said because I'm technically challenged on mining and crypto, but I'm wondering if there's anything in your ideas Evan can look at? I'm more curious if you have an idea to help remove the reference node. (Did he say it's going to be removed in the next version?)

Thanks for just reading. Thread certainly deviated a bit from intent... but I think lots of good ideas have been posted by various people and theloneneuron has some cogitating to do.

There's already a perfectly working solution to MN payment variance that's blockchain based, needs no reference node, and shares the same code base, but I'd get moaned at for naming names.

 

[David]

Very thought-provoking post, Crouton. I've asked repeatedly in the past why we can't go to a pure "Proof of Service" model to secure the blockchain, but no developer has ever replied.

eduffield flare UdjinM6 or anybody else who would like to at least comment on the feasibility of such a thing, I would be interested in hearing from y'all.

In any event, I'd like to take a moment to address two things:

1) If we wait until the tech is perfect before spreading the word, we will be waiting forever. Ever heard of emunie? Not many people have. Eighteen months ago they were working on something that was literally revolutionary. The problem is that they never released it--the main dev wanted it to be perfect and so he is still working on the code. Unfortunately for them, the project is now (IMO) mostly irrelevant, because their better ideas have been implemented already in other coins which did not wait for perfection before they released. The same goes for marketing. I'm not suggesting a superbowl ad or anything, but you can have the most perfect technology in the world, and if nobody knows about it, then it's all for naught.

2) The mining-is-good-for-the-little-people argument is a straw man, and it's about time that it died. By far the biggest reason I see people promoting PoW is because it allows people with less money to get involved in crypto. That's true to an extent, but people seem to forget that buying a PoS (or Proof of Service) coin on an exchange is a perfectly valid way to get involved. So you spend $500 on mining equipment and get x number of coins. You have the option, of course, of spending $500 on Cryptsy and getting x number of coins as well. Hardcore PoW advocates seem to have this idea that the only valid way to acquire coins is to mine them, and that there is somehow something "dirty" or unsavory about buying them. But let me ask, for those of you who own gold or silver...did you mine it yourself? Or did you buy it from somebody who already owned it? For those of you who own U.S. dollars, did you make them yourself (okay, you might not want to answer that publicly!), or did you buy them?

 

[David]

As an addendum to my previous post:

I would really like to see something done about the centralization that's inherent in PoW mining pools. I know Ethereum claims to be doing something to basically incentivize smaller pools, but I'm not sure on the technical details.

It may not be the top priority right now, and that's fine, but we eventually need to do one of three things, IMO. Mining centalization is a very real threat.

I suggest:
1) Move to a pure PoS or PoSe model. I prefer PoSe because you're actually doing something, but to do that I think we need a trustless shared masternode system to allow smaller holders the opportunity to share in coin emissions.
2) Do something like Ethereum where you somehow incentivize small pools / deincentivize large pools. Make it so the ideal pool size is no more than 5% of the overall network hashrate and you've done well.
3) Revise the p2p mining software and figure out how to convert the entire network to only accept blocks solved by p2p miners. This is probably by far the most difficult (and dangerous, in forking terms) option, but it would be highly effective.