[Bitcoin-ml] Alternative difficulty algorithm for Bitcoin Cash

Tom Zander tomz at freedommail.ch
Wed Oct 4 13:43:50 UTC 2017


Can you actually address the points made, please?


On Wednesday, 4 October 2017 15:14:50 CEST Amaury Séchet wrote:
> The truth of the matter is that satoshi's way of adjusting the difficulty
> is plain broken when you have more than one chain sharing the same hashing
> infrastructure. The only reason it worked well so far for bitcoin is that
> it is the only significant chain using SHA256 and it has dedicated
> hardware to do so.
> 
> What changed isn't EDA or whatnot, it is that 2 chains are sharing the
> same infrastructure for mining. This is not a new problem. Many altcoins
> are facing this problem to a much greater extent than we are. Indeed, any
> coin mined using GPUs effectively share the same hashing infrastructure
> with all other GPU mined coins. The hashrate can migrate from one to the
> other as profitability changes.
> 
> The #1 reason we went for the EDA mechanism is that many actors were
> opposed to any change to the DAA at all, and EDA was the bare minimum
> possible change that could ensure the chain's survival in face of a
> hashrate drop at the fork point. Not because it is the best solution. Not
> because it even is a good solution, because it is what people were ready
> to accept. It is clear by now that more is required, and it would be a
> shame to not leverage all the great work that people working on alts have
> done. Some will call this copyright infringement, I on my side, call this
> science.
> 
> Among this body of work, zawy12's is the most interesting. He came up with
> a solution that do not filter based on time, but on hashrate, which is a
> significant improvement of the state of the art compared to previous
> generation of solutions, which base themselves on time. In effect,
> because difficulty is constant over a 2016 block windows in bitcoin,
> basing oneself on time works. But if difficulty is adjusted every blocks,
> then the block time in itself isn't a good proxy to estimate hashrate
> anymore.
> 
> I don't think there is any significant portion of the ecosystem left that
> doesn't want to change the algorithm, so I don't see any reason to stay
> with something EDA flavored. I don't think there is any reason to ignore
> the research that has been done in the area either. I see a lot of reason
> to not stick with what satoshi designed.
> 
> 
> 
> 2017-10-04 12:35 GMT+02:00 Tom Zander via bitcoin-ml <
> 
> bitcoin-ml at lists.linuxfoundation.org>:
> > On Wednesday, 4 October 2017 00:43:44 CEST Shammah Chancellor wrote:
> > > My goal was something simple to understand that changes difficulty
> > > both
> > 
> > up
> > 
> > > and down
> > > without large jumps,
> > 
> > I agree with that. Fixing the problem introduced by Deadalnix at the
> > start of Bitcoin Cash. That is a goal all of us will get behind.
> > 
> > > Like Shammah said I don't agree that we should be targeting miners or
> > > their earnings;
> > 
> > If you want to change the *ecnomic* incentives that underly the concepts
> > we got from Satoshi, I personally need a LOT more than “I don’t agree”.
> > 
> > Your (and deadalnix’s) proposals are drastic change to the economics of
> > mining.
> > 
> > Can we do minimal changes that just fix the issue that needs to be fixed
> > instead?
> > 
> > Maybe something like this;
> > 
> > we keep the 2016 interval called the difficulty adjustment period.
> > In this period the difficulty is set to a certain number based on the
> > previous
> > period. As it has always been.  This difficulty we call “base”.
> > On top of that we have an EDA, just like deadalnix described. Its goal;
> > difficulty can be adjusted downwards.
> > On top of that we add a reverse-EDA. When blocks come too fast,
> > difficulty goes up again, I suggest it should go up even more agressive
> > than it went down.  Difficutly never goes above baseline.
> > 
> > This is a minimal change that keeps all the economic incentives and
> > removes the problem we have today with miners gaming the system.
> > 
> > How does that sound?


-- 
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel


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