[bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes to save 90% of mining energy

[Luke Dashjr]

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...