[HN Gopher] Lynx: Power-Efficient Cryptocurrency Using RPi [pdf]
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Lynx: Power-Efficient Cryptocurrency Using RPi [pdf]
Author : xiii1408
Score : 24 points
Date : 2021-02-11 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cdn.getlynx.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (cdn.getlynx.io)
| popol12 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this Hybrid PoW doesn't work. All these arbitrary
| rules can be circumvented by an industrial miner by generating
| the right addresses at the right moment with right amounts of
| coin. It just needs some statistics.
| Benjamin6731 wrote:
| Transparency: I'm the founder of Lynx Core and I designed the 3
| Hybrid PoW Rules.
|
| The system has been running stable (but a little slow) for over
| a year and a considerable amount of research and time has been
| spent focusing on each of the 'arbitrary rules'. I would agree
| with your initial sentiment of the comment though, popol. Each
| of the rules can be circumvented. But look deeper.
|
| Each of the individual Hybrid PoW Rules are designed to be part
| of a bigger picture. With a combination of time and money, a
| bad actor could overcome each one of the individual Rules, yes.
| The challenge lies in being able to coordinate and consistently
| overcome all of the Rules for a sustained contiguous series of
| blocks.
|
| The first rule forces the miner to rotate reward addresses
| after a block win. Not a huge deal, to be honest. 60 blocks is
| the wait time. So an attacker would probably need to work with
| 61 addresses for starters. Research with GPU mining software
| and some research with ASICs show that this isn't an easy thing
| to do (right now). We all know that that isn't an excuse as
| once incentives exist to do it, some smart person will fork
| cgminer(?) to rotate reward addresses. It's only a matter of
| time. But it works for now, and since Lynx mining isn't
| profitable, the financial incentive to do it doesn't exit
| (yet).
|
| The second rule requires the respective reward address to have
| a fluctuating minimum balance at the time the block is won.
| Kind of like PoS, but not really. You don't increase your
| chances of winning a block by having a greater balance, nor do
| you win a greater coinbase reward (plus fees). Also, the
| requirement amount is correlated to the network difficulty.
| Once the network diff starts to increase (due to an array of
| reasons including an attack with an ASIC) the minimum balance
| requirement in each address changes. The ceiling on the per
| address balance is 100 Million Lynx or ~$46k USD (at todays
| prices). The minimum is 100 Lynx or $0.46 USD at todays price.
| So today the cost to fund 61 addresses would be ~$28 USD.
| Again, not a big deal. But once the ASIC is enabled and the
| network diff changes, that cost increases quickly so funding
| those addresses might be prohibitive. (As a result, the system
| is the most secure as long as we have 2 or more concurrent
| attackers.)
|
| The third rule is the most tedious. A random selection match
| must occur with a 1 in 256 chance of match. Without a match,
| the candidate block is flagged as invalid. As well, the network
| consensus rules will not pass a block that doesn't meet the
| requirement. The values for the match are embedded in the block
| header, so it's easily verifiable. Again, easy to overcome with
| time and money.
|
| The 3 Rules operate on top of the normal business rules of
| Proof of Work that we are used to with Bitcoin/Litecoin. The
| design is inspired by the idea of not relying on a single
| threshold or security layer that is all encompassing to secure
| PoW, but instead rely on a combination of weak layers that when
| combined create a stronger solution. With effort, anyone can
| break a bamboo shoot, but breaking a bundle of bamboo is a near
| impossible feat.
|
| It's been stable for over a year. The question remains. Does it
| really work? Did we implement it poorly? Does it scale?
| Interested in your thoughts. -ben
| wsp78 wrote:
| I think the fact that the reward address is part of the hash,
| and has to have the balance would prevent just swapping out the
| reward address.
| bseidensticker wrote:
| You can just have multiple addresses each with the required
| balance.
| hosh wrote:
| You can. However, there is a 1 week delay in cashing out
| for a miner, and award is randomized. First to mine does
| not guarantee the mining award. To guarantee a reward,
| you'd need to run at least 4096 nodes, for a 1 block
| payoff.
| wsp78 wrote:
| So, a lot of staked addresses. That sounds like a good
| thing.
| eterevsky wrote:
| I don't see how it could work even in principle. If mining is
| profitable at all, what would stop a single miner from
| impersonating multiple miners? If it doesn't work, why would it
| be profitable to an intended user with RPi?
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Well exactly. As a system for preventing sybil attacks this
| doesn't do anything.
| hosh wrote:
| The intended design is for mining to _not_ be profitable.
|
| It looks like the phased introduction of Rules 1 and 2 have
| already achieved a breakup of mining power. There looks like
| the occasional ASIC miner that pops in, causes a disruption,
| and the miner leaves.
|
| Time will tell if these set of incentives will achieve what
| the designer intended.
| api wrote:
| I've seen a ton of proposals similar to this and even thought
| of a few myself, and all of them fail to prevent a motivated
| and funded attacker from monopolizing a plurality or even 100%
| of mining. The only way around this is to explicitly identify
| miners (like Libra a.k.a. Facebucks), but that introduces
| centralizing forces.
|
| AFAIK proof of stake is the _only_ approach that I 've seen
| that could potentially work in principle but it has its own
| problems including encouraging wealth centralization,
| contributing to the deflationary nature of the currency, and
| being vulnerable to attacks by players with large fractions of
| the currency's float under their control.
|
| This is a hard problem. PoW works but at absolutely mind
| boggling cost.
| cause wrote:
| FWIW Lynx is not designed to be mined for profit. It's meant to
| turn that logic on its head and be mined only to secure the
| network and your investment in it. The rewards are very low and a
| high powered miner would waste FAR more costs on electricity than
| they would ever make attempting to attack it.
| cause wrote:
| There's a service built on top of Lynx called Logware.io which
| is a data storage API service. A small amount of Lynx is burned
| to create each storage transaction. Over time this will both
| deflate the overall supply plus create natural buy pressure as
| the Logware company will eventually need to buy more Lynx for
| their own service to continue operating.
|
| The more clients they get the more data will be stored thus the
| more Lynx will be burned.
|
| If you'd like to learn more come hang out with us in Discord!
| https://discord.gg/yTfCs5J
| andred14 wrote:
| Let's use this where/how can we get some Lynx?
| elenchev wrote:
| I'm a tiny bit disappointed that I can't open your website with
| the lynx web browser :)
| xiii1408 wrote:
| As a fan of both the text-based browser and the cryptocurrency,
| I find the name collision humorous. We'll have to bring up the
| lack of lynx browser support with the devs :)
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(page generated 2021-02-11 23:03 UTC)