This is very close the the finality layer idea being discussed currently.
The idea is to record somewhere that this or that block has been seen and is considered final. At that point, even if someone publishes a longer chain afterwards, the longer chain will be ignored as it does not continue from the blocks that have been finalized already.

It is an interesting and good idea @qwerty@discuss.tchncs.de. There are some technical and community details that need consideration as to how exactly to implement that, but it’s one of the good options on the table.

For example, one of the technical details is were/how should we record that a block is finalized.
For this, we need to align a lot of decentralized nodes on a common state of things (which block is finalized), so that they are aligned on what has happened and what has not.
We actually already have a solution for that: a blockchain. Blockchains are a solution to the byzantine general’s problem (a.k.a aligning decentralized actors with each other on a shared state of things, even though they do not all communicate with one another, they communicate at different speed, etc).
So we could use a blockchain to record that this or that Monero block is finalized.
It needs to be a different blockchain, and have some characteristics like fast enough block time, a way to avoid deep re-orgs (POW with enough security budget or POS),…
Right now if you directly apply these conditions, you end up on the bright idea of using Ethereum or something like Litecoin.
The Monero community does NOT want to have to rely on ETH or LTC for security.
That would feel like a huge blow and a huge let down…

But yeah, if need be, for me, this is still a perfectly acceptable temporary solution.
What do you think?

If I remember correctly, that’s partly because p2pool requires access to a full node with the whole blockchain, while a lot (or some?) of the current hash rate is not running their own nodes.
If you somehow force everyone to p2pool we are not sure of the distribution and decentralization of the remaining miners, as some mining will drop out instead of running their own node.
Sometimes it’s because they don’t have the 200gb available for storing the blockchain. Sometimes they are mining multiple blockchains and requiring a full monero node is too much hassle.

Granted, with p2pool you can mine using someone else’s full node and let it spy on you a bit. Do we want that?

The other big issue is that you would have to hard-fork changes to the protocol to impose p2pool and that’s a big change that should be carefully considered, not done in a rush.

We have to remember that Monero is fine for now (as in not dying right now), we are preparing mitigations for POW centralization issues and the cure should not be more severe than the disease.

Thanks! I have fixed it now

Wait! You don’t know about the blocksize war?
You will be amazed after reading Hijacking Bitcoin

Monero and Bitcoin Cash have a lot of common in their goals and community, don’t pay attention to the downvotes.

Monero is still fine, maybe if something unexpected happens we can use BCH for the finality layer of Monero? I don’t remember the hash rate on BCH and it’s potential for the same centralization. The 10 minutes block time might be an issue for that though.

I am using a new wallet for this, I don’t actually plan on using the cents I will receive there.
Using the smaller pools is an interesting idea, I might try that later on

Thank you for supporting the network!

Right now the difficulty setup of the mining is the same for all the miners.
All the miners are trying to solve the same equation, randomly trying this or that value to see if it matches.
The first one to propose a value that solves the equation gets to mine the new block and gets the block reward.
When new miners join in, there is no mechanism to differentiate them, from the protocol’s POV. If a miner joins p2pool there are things there to identify them, but not on the general Monero protocol.
In the general Monero protocol, you just need to be the first to find a solution to the equation and propose the new block. You don’t even have to be the one that mined it (found the solution and proposed the block) you just need to send it, so someone could do all the heaving mining and send you the new block and you will be the first one to send it to the network.

The way the protocol manages miners arriving and leaving is via the difficulty adjustment. When a lot of new miners join, the increased hash rate will make it easier to find the solution to the equation, so new blocks will come more often.
That means that the time between blocks will be less than the desired 2 minutes. After a while, the protocol will notice that and increase the difficulty so that we get back to 2 minutes. The same happens when miners leave, there is less computational power to find the new blocks, it takes more than 2 minutes, and the protocol will reduce the difficulty to get back to 2 minutes.

Right now the difficulty is not for single miners, but for the network as a whole. There is no easy way to implement this idea, I am not sure adding name tags to this or that hash power would be a good thing, and it looks easy to bypass.

p.s: Thank you for no longer keeping to yourself, we are glad to have another voice to chat with, and this forum will grow thanks to that!
KabayaNerve (Monero dev) has made a github issue where people are invited to post their ideas. You can get more inspiration from there.

Thanks, I am going to try this

Yes, engaging a huge attack directly this way would mean having in the end a lot of regular users spinning up gupax.
But the main benefit here is that for me and anyone else doing that, it’s practically free to run the miner.
We don’t need to have a million users running gupax, it starts with 10, then 100, then 1000, then more.
We don’t need to reach a million in any case. Each additional miner, as small as his share is, is a direct additional cost for the attacker.
The small miners can add hashrate for free, and the attacker always needs to compensate that and add some more on top.
Remember, this attack is expensive for the attacker, and its funds are limited.

This asymmetry is key, don’t let the whale discourage the shrimps from banding together.

And as Malcom X said, don’t let your enemy tell you how many of you there are.

“A.I is drunk” is a intriguing theme.
Imagine fighting the Terminator, but you know it’s just an LLM, drunk on power, always hallucinating, and shooting targets that do not exist.
You are not even sure if it will achieve destroying humans before destroying itself…

In any case, no A.I. was used to make this story. I wrote it myself.
Please have a look at my other stories, on arseneoaa.me, I am looking for feedback on how to improve them.

Well, as long as you understand the consequences of that choice, that’s fine.

I’ve lost count of how many evil, nazi or literal genocidal companies I have been giving my money to, every month for the past several years.
These include everyday companies with bad goals like Nestlé working to privatise your access to water.

You may dislike the devs of Lemmy, but at least they are offering something great to the world without requiring users to give them money in exchange, or requiring users to agree to the sale of their personal data.

BTW banning users they don’t like on their instance, or blocking them is perfectly expected behaviour on the fediverse.
lemmy.ml is not special, no instance is special.
Everyone is free to create or join his favorite nazi, piracy, neoliberal or whatever lemmy instance, and on each instance, the mods are free to act as they please.

If you don’t support the Lemmy software because the devs are tankies, that’s still fine.
For me personally, it’s still worth it to send them 5 bucks in Monero for all the value I get out of this.

Imagine if we had to pay for Reddit 🤣

It’s still there for them to use if they want.

Also, the capitalist overlords of our time (right now) already “seek control over others” and are actively dissuading people from using Monero.

I don’t know any commies against currencies though.

In any case, it’s still there for them to use if they want.

Yes,

And Monero is the communist money.

And Monero is the alt-right money.

And Monero is the alt-left money.

And Monero is the extreme-center money.

It is money for the collectivists, the individualists, the mercantilists, the financialists,…
Monero means money.

Did you read the post?

Or do you mean that Monero is not for this or that group because they don’t have brains?

The first part of the privacy disclaimer is not correct.
If you use this script, CoinMarketCap will not know about any amount displayed on your browser, they will not know about how much you have in your bank account when you visit your banking website with this script.

The second part is very correct, be careful using random people 's scripts, read the source code to see what it really does.

Please read it, and let us know if that changed any of your views, particularly about decentralization. Right now, it seems that you think btc is very decentralized while Roger thinks it’s very centralized around Blockstream.

Feel free to make a new post, I am genuinely interested in other POVs.

Thank you! I was thinking that people on this instance were downvoting the post right after seeing the title, and without reading it. It makes more sense now.

Why the downvotes?

Thanks! Please share it far and wide