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

befreeandopen befreeandopen at protonmail.com
Mon May 17 13:14:18 UTC 2021


Hello list,

>>Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and get
>>rid of PoW entirely...
>>No, it is not centralization -
>
> No, it is not centralization, as:
>
> (a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for 'green' status, there are many already;

That does not refute the claim at all. Just because you can choose from multiple centralized authorities, which are well known and can collude, it does not mean it is decentralized by any reasonable definition of the term.

> (b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose to run dirty energy will still be able to do so.
> and

Who is to issue these credits? A centralized entity I guess ... There is no place for such in Bitcoin.

> (c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool can go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions directly instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that it would make the transfer 'greener'.

And if there was an economic advantage in doing so, miners would quite likely already implement that. Yet, somehow, they are not doing that.

> What is being proposed is some community effort to standardize & promote this approach, because if we manage to make Bitcoin green(er) - we will remove what many commentators see as the last barrier / biggest risk to even wider Bitcoin adoption.

And you listen to those "many commentators" why exactly? Because they have many followers or they are trained to speak nicely? This is not how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin does not favor number of followers, popularity, or beauty, it is based on merit and these ideas have none. The only risk here is that too many people will fall for such false narratives and FUD (which is what the energy consumption "issue" really is) because other people, like yourself, who do not understand Bitcoin comment on it and present it as an actual issue.

> Not to mention the fact that some aspects of the Bitcoin community are pretty centralized already - 'www.bitcoin.org', GitHub repo, certain global internet cables / protocols / providers. Centralization is evil only when it enables (or makes significantly easier) a threatening attack on the network, which does not appear to be the case. It is my personal opinion only, though, I would respect it if someone disagrees.

I disagree. You are making false claims here and above and spreading FUD. For example, www.bitcoin.org is by no means an official website of Bitcoin. There is no such thing as an official website of Bitcoin. Anyone can buy bitcoin.TLD and put whatever content they want and it may or may not be relevant to Bitcoin, but it will absolutely not represent Bitcoin.

As for GitHub repo - learn about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory) which is what this repo is. In no way it is an ultimate and fixed point of Bitcoin and it can change at any time - for example if GitHub project turned to be malicious. So again, you are wrong.

> On a separate note, I just want to draw everyone's attention to the fact that - assuming if my calculations are correct - carbon credits to offset dirty energy burned by miners would cost only approx 5% of block rewards in USD terms max.

Please stop with the carbon credit nonsense. There is likely no such thing to exist on a free market and no one is interested in these state regulations.

> On the other hand, BTC price has just collapsed 20% because Tesla dropped their adoption citing environmental concerns.

Just because a big company is controlled by people who do not understand Bitcoin, it does not make the issue valid. There are no such environmental concerns once you understand how Bitcoin and free market work. Don't help to spread the FUD.

> If every miner on the planet agrees to go green or buy carbon credits, it will actually be commercially beneficial to everybody, as the price will likely skyrocket - the problem is that such situation absent community coordination is not a Pareto-equilibrium state, which means that every single miner is incentivised to break away from the commitment to the green energy.

Once people stop spreading FUD, the price will likely skyrocket. Start with yourself please.

> Maybe there is another solution to the problem, and huge mining pools need to establish a 'green cartel' like OPEC and all start buying carbon credits in order to make Bitcoin greener and more widely adopted for their own benefit.

Maybe not.

> On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 3:58 AM Luke Dashjr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:
>
>> 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...
>
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