ZmnSCPxj [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: đź“… Original date posted:2019-11-24 đź“ť Original message: Good morning Bastien, > ...
đź“… Original date posted:2019-11-24
đź“ť Original message:
Good morning Bastien,
> While I agree with most of your points, I think there are subtleties to explore before
> completely rejecting the idea.
>
> > every use of proof-of-work today (other than to power Bitcoin itself, as Bitcoin cannot support itself) can instead be done by using Bitcoins to impose this economic cost.
>
> That is philosophically true, but the complexity of integrating that small PoW into LightningÂ
> is much lower than the complexity of integrating *fair, un-gameable* upfront payments.
> And not all PoW is born equal: there are a lot of PoW schemes that have different trade-offs
> than Bitcoin mining (think ASIC-resistance such as variants of Cuckoo Cycle).
>
> Another key point is that creating ASICs for this PoW is fundamentally different from creating
> ASICs for mining a crypto-currency. Solving this PoW doesn't earn you any money: it merely
> allows you to spam to temporarily disrupt the network.
> Since this PoW isn't used in any consensus, we can change the spam PoW algorithm anytime
> we want, making all previous ASICs obsolete.
> So it's not obvious to me that anyone would find it viable to invest in creating such ASICs.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Proof-of-Work-Fallacy
While it is true that we do not need consensus at the Lightning layer, we still require that senders are compatible with intermediate nodes to the extent that they use intermediate nodes.
Thus a PoW change here would require that intermediate nodes reject older PoW (that is the entire point) while senders must be prepared to provide either the old PoW algorithm or the new one (as arbitrary intermediate nodes may not update immediately).
Specialization will arise to the extent that we design the system to allow it.
In this case, specialized PoW-providers will be paid in order to provide PoW that will be presented to intermediate nodes.
Far better to just pay intermediate nodes directly and remove this additional friction.
>
> > As hardware specialization for the specific Lightning-Network-proof-of-work arises, we will find that to practically limit spam, intermediate nodes will have to increase and increase the threshold for accepting proof-of-work, as spammers are going to switch to the more-specialized hardware.
>
> That's where I think it can be more subtle than what you describe (I may be wrong though as
> predicting future behavior is hard).
>
> Since I'm ruling out ASICs, we're only dealing with "normal" hardware bottlenecks (cpu/ram).
> That means attackers are not playing at a completely different scale than normal users.
How many botnets does a normal user control?
> The cost for attackers to generate an amount of spam mimicking N normal users will then be
> somewhat linear in N (to be investigated further).Â
> That's exactly the same result as upfront payments, where an attacker can still spam like
> he's N users if he's ready to pay a cost linear in N.
Then just use upfront payments.
> > requiring a fee is equivalent to requiring proof-of-work, incentive-wise.
>
> Not necessarily, given that
> 1) there is a finite bitcoin supply but an eventually infinite PoW
> supply (relevant in the unlikely case fees are burned)
> 2) sats are transferrable, whereas PoW isn't (relevant in the case fees
> are paid)
Not actually.
Again, let me point out that PoW can be *bought*, that is precisely what Bitcoin blockchain layer does.
And the blockchain layer PoW is bought with two things: fees and subsidies (inflation).
Thus PoW, being purchaseable, is incentive-wise equivalent to paying somebody to spend electricity (possibly with efficiencies at scale).
Just cut the middleman.
Regards,
ZmnSCPxj
đź“ť Original message:
Good morning Bastien,
> While I agree with most of your points, I think there are subtleties to explore before
> completely rejecting the idea.
>
> > every use of proof-of-work today (other than to power Bitcoin itself, as Bitcoin cannot support itself) can instead be done by using Bitcoins to impose this economic cost.
>
> That is philosophically true, but the complexity of integrating that small PoW into LightningÂ
> is much lower than the complexity of integrating *fair, un-gameable* upfront payments.
> And not all PoW is born equal: there are a lot of PoW schemes that have different trade-offs
> than Bitcoin mining (think ASIC-resistance such as variants of Cuckoo Cycle).
>
> Another key point is that creating ASICs for this PoW is fundamentally different from creating
> ASICs for mining a crypto-currency. Solving this PoW doesn't earn you any money: it merely
> allows you to spam to temporarily disrupt the network.
> Since this PoW isn't used in any consensus, we can change the spam PoW algorithm anytime
> we want, making all previous ASICs obsolete.
> So it's not obvious to me that anyone would find it viable to invest in creating such ASICs.
https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Proof-of-Work-Fallacy
While it is true that we do not need consensus at the Lightning layer, we still require that senders are compatible with intermediate nodes to the extent that they use intermediate nodes.
Thus a PoW change here would require that intermediate nodes reject older PoW (that is the entire point) while senders must be prepared to provide either the old PoW algorithm or the new one (as arbitrary intermediate nodes may not update immediately).
Specialization will arise to the extent that we design the system to allow it.
In this case, specialized PoW-providers will be paid in order to provide PoW that will be presented to intermediate nodes.
Far better to just pay intermediate nodes directly and remove this additional friction.
>
> > As hardware specialization for the specific Lightning-Network-proof-of-work arises, we will find that to practically limit spam, intermediate nodes will have to increase and increase the threshold for accepting proof-of-work, as spammers are going to switch to the more-specialized hardware.
>
> That's where I think it can be more subtle than what you describe (I may be wrong though as
> predicting future behavior is hard).
>
> Since I'm ruling out ASICs, we're only dealing with "normal" hardware bottlenecks (cpu/ram).
> That means attackers are not playing at a completely different scale than normal users.
How many botnets does a normal user control?
> The cost for attackers to generate an amount of spam mimicking N normal users will then be
> somewhat linear in N (to be investigated further).Â
> That's exactly the same result as upfront payments, where an attacker can still spam like
> he's N users if he's ready to pay a cost linear in N.
Then just use upfront payments.
> > requiring a fee is equivalent to requiring proof-of-work, incentive-wise.
>
> Not necessarily, given that
> 1) there is a finite bitcoin supply but an eventually infinite PoW
> supply (relevant in the unlikely case fees are burned)
> 2) sats are transferrable, whereas PoW isn't (relevant in the case fees
> are paid)
Not actually.
Again, let me point out that PoW can be *bought*, that is precisely what Bitcoin blockchain layer does.
And the blockchain layer PoW is bought with two things: fees and subsidies (inflation).
Thus PoW, being purchaseable, is incentive-wise equivalent to paying somebody to spend electricity (possibly with efficiencies at scale).
Just cut the middleman.
Regards,
ZmnSCPxj