rich1.0Zac Greenwood [ARCHIVE] (npub1gy…dvff7)https://yabu.me/npub1gymmksd9tgwzc5w33umlx08sc2ggys3v2cucmpvl7yy9720wh49s8dvff7njumphttps://yabu.me📅 Original date posted:2021-05-18 📝 Original message:Hi ZmnSCPxj, Please note that I am not suggesting VDFs as a means to save energy, but solely as a means to make the time between blocks more constant. Zac On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 12:42, ZmnSCPxj <ZmnSCPxj at protonmail.com> wrote: > Good morning Zac, > > > VDFs might enable more constant block times, for instance by having a > two-step PoW: > > > > 1. Use a VDF that takes say 9 minutes to resolve (VDF being subject to > difficulty adjustments similar to the as-is). As per the property of VDFs, > miners are able show proof of work. > > > > 2. Use current PoW mechanism with lower difficulty so finding a block > takes 1 minute on average, again subject to as-is difficulty adjustments. > > > > As a result, variation in block times will be greatly reduced. > > As I understand it, another weakness of VDFs is that they are not > inherently progress-free (their sequential nature prevents that; they are > inherently progress-requiring). > > Thus, a miner which focuses on improving the amount of energy that it can > pump into the VDF circuitry (by overclocking and freezing the circuitry), > could potentially get into a winner-takes-all situation, possibly leading > to even *worse* competition and even *more* energy consumption. > After all, if you can start mining 0.1s faster than the competition, that > is a 0.1s advantage where *only you* can mine *in the entire world*. > > Regards, > ZmnSCPxj > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20210518/abd8b876/attachment.html>