Vladimir Zamfir and Why he believes Proof Of Stake has Higher Characteristics than Proof of Work.
Vladimir Zamfir has been working on the analysis and specification of “proof-of-stake” blockchain architecture since September 2014. While Vitalik and him dont agree on all of the details of the spec, they do have consensus on many properties of the proof-of-stake protocol that will likely be implemented for the Serenity release. It is called Casper “the friendly ghost” because it is an adaptation of some of the principles of the GHOST (Greedy Heaviest-Observed Sub-Tree) protocol for proof-of-work consensus to proof-of-stake.
While I agree that it is very interesting and a logical way to increase the cost of forking, I am of the opinion that complex protocols and increased fork cost are unnecessary. If the fork penalty is zero, a fork is still unlikely to gain value and nonzero trade volume without rational purpose and community. The complexity can result in restrictions, such as the minimum bond value. I also want to point out the way the proof of stake has to some degree become a ‘proof of smart betting’. This gives economic superiority to people who use proprietary mechanisms to get a leg up on the validating process. It’s definitely interesting, and not too far a stones throw from how proof of work beats the sybil attack. It seems like it would tend toward validation pools.
Now, if we assume that I’m wrong about how subjectivity and PoS contentious forking works, then Casper is a really cool implimentation that should cause rapid consensus. It’s a legitimate sybil attack solution and it will be exciting to see it in action.
It is ridiculous what complex constructions are being invented these days. Forking can be very easily avoided by reducing the possibility to mint on multiple chains by referencing previous block info in the stake hash like is done in our protocol.
Also the delegated PoS system is stupid. What they don’t tell you is that they need delegated PoS to reduce the chance of forks due to their high blockrate and transaction validation cost. No way you can mint eth on a RPI, you need a powerful machine for that.
Let’s face it, peercoin solved the PoS issues. These guys need to reinvent it because it doesn’t work on their overly complex and bloated blockchain.
People keep making new chains, when all they really needed to do, is create a sidechain branch that uses Peercoin as its store of value.
We’re going to get there one day, after people stop banging their heads into a wall trying to create their own store of value on their own separate main chain.
They think re-inventing the wheel is easier than just buying some ownership in Peercoin and building a side chain and using your token there.
When new chain developers do this, I get suspect. If what your building is that great, you didn’t need to invent your own coin to do it. There are plenty of other ways to profit from a new venture and still use Peercoin as your base.
Of course this is just my own opinion. I don’t know if anyone agrees.
[quote=“hrobeers, post:3, topic:4047”]It is ridiculous what complex constructions are being invented these days. Forking can be very easily avoided by reducing the possibility to mint on multiple chains by referencing previous block info in the stake hash like is done in our protocol.
Also the delegated PoS system is stupid. What they don’t tell you is that they need delegated PoS to reduce the chance of forks due to their high blockrate and transaction validation cost. No way you can mint eth on a RPI, you need a powerful machine for that.
Let’s face it, peercoin solved the PoS issues. These guys need to reinvent it because it doesn’t work on their overly complex and bloated blockchain.[/quote]
People keep thinking they know better than the inventor of proof-of-stake himself and create new blockchains just so they can claim that they’ve fixed its “supposed” flaws. We’ve got coins like Neucoin or Blackcoin who created PoS 2.0 and 3.0, then we’ve got PoS time and now Casper. People act like Vitalik is the go to guy about all things PoS, like he’s the complete expert on the topic.
I would personally love to get you on Beyond Bitcoin again in the near future so you can expand on this topic and demolish our competition. I think it would really help if we had an audio interview we could point people to that explains why Peercoin is not an outdated PoS protocol with flaws like everyone thinks it is, rather it actually knows what it’s doing better than all our competitors do.
They’re taking votes for which people get on the show next Friday (just a couple hours ago)
PROBLEM:
You need a Steemit account to propose a topic (luckily hrobeers and intelliguy have one)
You need Steemit users to “upvote” the topic to see if you get on the show. They only take the top 4 or 5…
Not enough PPC people have a steemit account yet.
…but we could try, if we had enough enthusiasm to do a show, whether it be next Friday, or the Friday thereafter, or …
How did we get 1st time slot last time on the show? Was it because enough people voted for us?
If we were going to do this, we should first see what hrobeers has to say about it. Does he feel confident enough in his knowledge of Peercoin’s PoS protocol and the various PoS implementations of our competitors to be able to talk extensively about it? Would he need to do some research first? Would he even want to do it and does he have time?
Also, do you know if Intelliguy would have anything to say about the topic? He did a great job last time. Maybe hrobeers could cover the more technical side of things and Intelliguy could cover the more basic ideas, kinda like a two man team.
If we were going to do it, we should first work on getting more people from the community registered to Steemit, so we don’t come out last place in voting when we do try.
It would require a that I invest a serious amount of time studying all the possible PoS algorithms out there and check them with the possible attacks and how they claim to solve them.
What I said is based on the fact that I know PPC’s algorithm quite well and by listening to Vlad I could guess the reasons why they need this different algorithm. However I got bored quite quickly, didn’t listen to it all. So what I said is not based on in depth research, so going in a direct debate with these guys would be a bad idea without investing a lot of time studying it all first.
I’m not sure how much we have to win here, but there is definitely a lot to lose if we don’t do this properly.
Maybe it would be better if we don’t go out and try and pick a fight. We are on a pretty good track lately expecially thanks to peerchemist and hrobeers.
[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:7, topic:4047”]How did we get 1st time slot last time on the show? Was it because enough people voted for us?
If we were going to do it, we should first work on getting more people from the community registered to Steemit, so we don’t come out last place in voting when we do try.[/quote]
We negotiated our way on well in advance before they changed the RSVP rules for the show. There was also some miscommunication, and Fuzzy decided to honor us going on even if it meant he was going to get flack from the community.
It also helped that PeerPlays key staff “was away” for that particular show, and just had an update to read.
So we lucked out. We won’t “luck out” again.
Proof-of-stake and Proof-of-work is like abortion / anti-abortion. It doesn’t matter how much facts or logic you lay down, people will still resist what you’re saying if they are knee deep invested in other coins.
The best thing we can do is what SLKRD says. Don’t pick a fight. Let’s highlight our usefuless and debunk attacks on us. But let’s not storm the price getting too almighty and righteous. We’ll come off as snobs and give the wrong impression.
I agree with you, we need more steemit users on board from our community.
Also, keep in mind the benefits of this show:
It’s known. They’re up to show 171 or something, that’s a lot. There are lots of little shows up to show #7 or show #15. They don’t have the following that this one does.
It’s free, and the server is stable. Fuzzy is well experienced at running it
Fuzzy doesn’t just run the show, and throw up the archive onto soundcloud “as is”… He will actually edit out all the silence, the garbled speakers when there is internet lag, all the excessive “ummm ummm ummm” the best he can. He produces a show that is quite easy to listen to… That takes him 2-3 hours to edit it after the 2 hour show is recorded. Sometimes longer. All for free.
If that wasn’t enough, he also will often give SBD back to certain communities at times (not fully sure how that works), as well as “Sharebits” which is a token on Bitshares I think.
It’s a great place to be, with a lot of smart people. We should strive for more on there.
But if we would go out there, I’d rather do something like writing an open letter from the Peercoin community with questions for the Casper developers.
In this letter we could ask them to elaborate on specific questions we have on their design.
However, I still agree with [member=32858]SLKRD[/member] that we just keep doing what we do.
[quote=“hrobeers, post:11, topic:4047”]But if we would go out there, I’d rather do something like writing an open letter from the Peercoin community with questions for the Casper developers.
In this letter we could ask them to elaborate on specific questions we have on their design.[/quote]
Doing this shows these things:
We believe CASPER to be a contender in our space, and overtake us, because their system is better and we’re terrible.
A: If it isn’t then why would we show concern?
It draws more attention to CASPER by other Peercoiners
A: Do we want this go back/forth between us and CASPER? Once it’s starts, it is hard to stop.
My attitude is that we’d spend better time at looking at our own plate infront of us, and not looking at what someone else is eating on the other side of the restaurant. If something CASPER has that we need, let’s discuss it. But we shouldn’t try to convince CASPER’s devs, or CASPER’s followers that their system is sub-par. That’s the wrong way to handle this type of situation.
Postive campaigning works better than negative campaigns. This is something I learned about politics. When you try to damage someone else’s reputation, you look bad for doing it too.