Your BitTorrent seeders would also be losing money if they host a lot of data, or am I missing something?
ArseneSpeculoos
joined 2 years ago
I think the whole PoS finality layer thing got out of proportions because people heard PoS and flipped.
At the beginning, the Monero Research Lab was just gathering ideas on how to deal with the situation and that was one of the ideas proposed.
People heard PoS, and it went viral, with all the misunderstanding that virality and oversimplification bring.
If you listen to KabayaNerve on MoneroTalk you will see that he proposed that and immediately said that the PoS finality layer will not get community approval and is very unlikely to be implemented.
You still have people on Twitter saying that some undefined people that may or may not be Monero devs are pushing for Monero to become a PoS coin like Ethereum. It's simple, it's emotional, it got viral, the only issue is that it's wrong (it's not an accurate description of what is happening).
For BTC, I think that the huge network effects are the main reasons for it maintaining its price and thus security budget until now (as for any coin, you could say).
As you said, it will be interesting to see how the situation develops after 2 more halvings.
A conclusion in my article is that BTC now has a king, and its name is Blockstream. They control the network and will update it as they see fit, what the plebs and jealous people like us think is of no importance. They will never let that much power evaporate from their hands, and will rather hardfork into PoS than letting that happen because some miner does not make enough money.
The original Bitcoin is dead, long live Bitcoin
Haha! STDs for Monero devs! The analogy is funny.
You got it, the finality layer is complex and needs a lot of conditions to be done right, and it's outsourcing security to another network, not great.
I don't think that the current BTC POW is that elegant though. Mining rewards are declining, and the fees are not coming. So the security budget is declining at each halving. At some point, mining hashrate will decrease, because miners run a business, and BTC will also be open for the same kinds of disruptions.
I once wrote an article on the topic.
I agree that a PoS consensus is not suitable for what Monero wants to be.
BTW, how come you have a laser eyes profile pic, but you can critically analyze things about BTC? I always thought that people with laser eyes profile pics where maxis that did not accept any criticism of BTC. It's refreshing to see a change!
I don't think it will happen either, the community too much opposed.
First there are people that don't take the time to read about it and think it's about changing from RandomX mining to staking. Then there are people like me that do not want to rely on another chain for the security of Monero.
It's still good to discuss it openly. This way, we can get to a better solution and the community can decide in what way this PoS finality layer can be a contingency plan or not.
I understand, I also agree that it would be a shame.
Nevertheless, I want people to feel free to discuss it, discussing this as one option among many could bring the community to a better, stronger solution.
Good point, as it's not POW it's much easier to do.
Do you have any stats on who is currently running the blockchain?
It's true that we should not rush into action without carefully considering the consequences in the short and long term.
The attack still demonstrates an important point of improvement for the Monero ecosystem. We now have a hostile mining pool with too much hashrate and it's time to dust off the theoretical attack scenarios and see what harm it can do and what we can do about it.
The attacker can and does reorg blocks as a consequence of selfish mining. That means less mining rewards for the other miners.
The attacker cannot censor any specific transaction (because the transactions are private so there is no easy way to differentiate any specific one). They could still decide to only mine empty blocks or their own transactions, and that would increase confirmation times for all the other users.
The attacker can try a double spend attack, for example on an exchange. They can deposit XMR at the exchange, get BCH for it and withdraw it. Then they reorg the latest blocks up to before depositing their XMR to add a transaction before that deposit. That transaction will send that previously deposited XMR to one of their other wallets instead of going to the exchange.
If this attack is successful, in the end, they will have both the BCH from the exchange and the XMR in their other wallet.
This is actually why Kraken has increased their confirmation times for XMR to 24 hours. When you increase the confirmation time, you increase the number of blocks between the XMR deposit and the BCH withdrawal in the scenario above. So much so that even with 80% of the hashrate the attack is no longer feasible.
There are other points I guess, but we need to address these. Some action needs to be taken to improve, but as you said, we need to be careful.
Not all coins should be privacy coins, not all flowers should be red. The diversity of the ecosystem is very important.
It's good that you are interested in it. Described like this, it seems a bit strange. Who's paying for the security of the network if there are no fees?
My first idea when I hear that is, someone is running the blockchain at his own cost, very few people can do this. So that part of the network will be quite centralized.
If that's good or bad depends on what dance you want for yourself over there.
Xenu was using moneroocean and you can actually visually see the bump in hash on mining pool stats when he started.
It's true that this effort would have been even better if we had a way to outbid the hostile mining pool when they start their attack.
This is still a valid and valuable effort IMO.
Monero's PoW mining pool centralization discussions covered problems, principles, PoW improvements, non-PoW alternatives like Trailing Finality Layer, vulnerability of Nakamoto consensus to rented hashrate and balancing decentralization with security. liberachat
Core principles to uphold in solutions: Privacy, decentralization, censorship resistance, accessibility, and permissionlessness, avoiding complexity, monetary policy integrity. articmine: We have to be careful that we do not create a cure that is far worse than the disease
Improvements to Existing PoW: Tevador's bandwidth-based mining protocol proposal to penalize large pools & encourage decentralization. Sech1's idea of allocating 1% of rewards directly to miners. Short-term mitigations: Renting hashrate, temp raising tx fees as a relay rule.
Non-PoW Consensus Mechanisms: Trailing Finality Layer as an overlay for finality, potentially using PoS for validators, to prevent deep re-orgs and enable faster unlocks. https://xcancel.com/MoneroResearchL/status/1956119998004384085 TEEs withdrawn due to security issues.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term actions and research needs:
Immediate: Rent hashrate during spikes; explore PoW tweaks.
Long-term: Research Trailing Finality Layer, PoS failure modes, hardening PoW.
Calls for CCS proposals and literature reviews.
Broad agreement on the urgency of addressing centralization, support for PoW tweaks as realistic short-term steps, rejection of TEEs, and the need for further research. sgp_: I personally think that on the PoW tweak front, tevador's proposal is the most realistic, by far.
kayabanerve: I like tevador's proposal but am concerned about the risk... tevador did respond to this concern though. articmine: I would suggest instead that we focus on hardening our existing POW both at the consensus and node really levels.
Did you know that there are 14 supernodes that form the beating heart of Monero's network?
Listen closely and you will hear their tune.
Can you hear it?
As soon as you get your node online, they are never very far away.
Look at your friends, look at the friends of your friends. You have already found a few of them!
Watch! They sing sweet, and most importantly, they open their ears and listen to the songs of so many of their friends.
Without tiring, time and time again, they meet new friends and let those new friends start singing, joining the chorale.
You see, that is actually what makes them special. They unselfishly open their ears to listen to so many friends.
Too few are the friends willing and ready to do that nowadays...
They sing sweet, and you know them directly, or your friends know them.
Don't be shy, you can get closer and watch them all chant. That's the song I was talking about earlier.
If you ask me, this is the heartbeat of the network.
How do I know all that, you ask? The sorceress of the High Rains showed it all to me.
Mind you, I can't do that kind of divination, I am a priest of the degen spirit.
I was the Monerokon powwow, and many priests, sorcerers and magicians were coming off their trances
to show us the results of their divinations. It was magnificent!
You weren't there, it seems. That's ok. Just come one of the next times.
Anyway, you are lucky. Our sorceress of the High Rains even made a picture, just so you can admire them every time you feel like it.
Here, take a look. Aren't they beautiful?
Fascinating! Isn't it? They look like 14 beating hearts of the network, 14 unsung champions of the symphony. They lead the chorale and give the rhythm of the spectacle.
They are important. Maybe, too important? In a way, this play starts to look quite fragile, doesn't it? What would happen if one of them stopped singing and listening? What would happen if all of them stopped? Would that be the end? Would the little nodes be forever cut off from their friends in other neighborhoods? Would the whole symphony just stop and disintegrate into noise and chaos?
I am also a bit worried about that. Don't worry, the sorceress of the High Rains assured me that the network's symphony is robust, and I shouldn't worry too much for now.
Still, I would feel better, and it would be better if me too, I could get in with my little node, open my ears to listen, just like them, and sing with all my little voice.
You can join me, you know?
Most little friends in the chorale don't know how to listen, they can only sing.
We have to show them how to listen. When they see us do it, they will learn and start listening too!
Let's make our little nodes, let them listen to their friends, let them sing, let the music play on, let the music take control...
From the Sorceress of the High Rains:
https://arxiv.org/html/2504.15986v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2504.17809v1
We are at the bottom left grey corner.
Some exponential breakthrough is needed to get to the green or red lines, where quantum computers can be used for chemistry or to break older encryption like RSA.
Don't forget that your data is forever, though.
For example, there are a lot of intercepted diplomatic messages that are just waiting for quantum computers to get better. At that point, state secrets will be revealed.
The same applies for your pgp encrypted messages to share cat memes on dread.
The switch to quantum-resistant crypto is still needed.
Source, OC by Sam Jacques.
Monero is for capitalists,
Monero is for the oppressed,
Monero is for the oppressors,
Monero is for the little people,
Monero is for the kings,
...
Monero is peer-to-peer digital cash.
Monero Means Money
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Yes, it could be interesting to have some service where you transfer funds and it takes care of splitting it and sending it for you every month to your different favorite projects.
A kind of crypto-focused liberaPay?