rich1.0Zac Greenwood [ARCHIVE] (npub1gy…dvff7)https://yabu.me/npub1gymmksd9tgwzc5w33umlx08sc2ggys3v2cucmpvl7yy9720wh49s8dvff7njumphttps://yabu.me📅 Original date posted:2021-05-18 📝 Original message: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. Zac On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 09:07, ZmnSCPxj via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > Good morning Erik, > > > Verifiable Delay Functions involve active participation of a single > > verifier. Without this a VDF decays into a proof-of-work (multiple > > verifiers === parallelism). > > > > The verifier, in this case is "the bitcoin network" taken as a whole. > > I think it is reasonable to consider that some difficult-to-game > > property of the last N blocks (like the hash of the last 100 > > block-id's or whatever), could be the verification input. > > > > The VDF gets calculated by every eligible proof-of-burn miner, and > > then this is used to prevent a timing issue. > > > > Seems reasonable to me, but I haven't looked too far into the > > requirements of VDF's > > > > nice summary for anyone who is interested: > > https://medium.com/@djrtwo/vdfs-are-not-proof-of-work-91ba3bec2bf4 > > > > While VDF's almost always lead to a "cpu-speed monopoly", this would > > only be helpful for block latency in a proof-of-burn chain. Block > > height would be calculated by eligible-miner-burned-coins, so the > > monopoly could be easily avoided. > > Interesting link. > > However, I would like to point out that the *real* reason that PoW > consumes lots of power is ***NOT***: > > * Proof-of-work is parallelizable, so it allows miners consume more energy > (by buying more grinders) in order to get more blocks than their > competitors. > > The *real* reason is: > > * Proof-of-work allows miners to consume more energy in order to get more > blocks than their competitors. > > VDFs attempt to sidestep that by removing parallelism. > However, there are ways to increase *sequential* speed, such as: > > * Overclocking. > * This shortens lifetime, so you can spend more energy (on building new > miners) in order to get more blocks than your competitors. > * Lower temperatures. > * This requires refrigeration/cooling, so you can spend more energy (on > the refrigeration process) in order to get more blocks than your > competitors. > > I am certain people with gaming rigs can point out more ways to improve > sequential speed, as necessary to get more frames per second. > > Given the above, I think VDFs will still fail at their intended task. > Speed, yo. > > Thus, VDFs do not serve as a sufficient deterrent away from > ever-increasing energy consumption --- it just moves the energy consumption > increase away from the obvious (parallelism) to the > obscure-if-you-have-no-gamer-buds. > > You humans just need to get up to Kardashev 1.0, stat. > > Regards, > ZmnSCPxj > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20210518/2f1a992a/attachment.html>