A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space
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Spacemint* : A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space Sunoo Park ∗§ , Krzysztof Pietrzak †§ , Albert Kwon ∗ , Jo ̈el Alwen † , Georg Fuchsbauer † , and Peter Gaˇzi † ∗ MIT IST Austria*Spacemint is not an existing cryptocurrency.
Excerpt:
One of the original ideas behind basing Bitcoin
mining on computational power was that anyone
could participate in the network by dedicating their
spare CPU cycles, which incurs little cost since it uses
the idle time of already-existing personal comput-
ers. However, modern Bitcoin mining dynamics have
become starkly different [40]: the network’s mining
clout is concentrated in large-scale mining farms, of-
ten in collaboration with electricity producers. Cur-
rently, mining with your spare CPU cycles will result
in net loss, due to electricity costs: newcomers must
make a rather substantial initial investment in hard-
ware, usually in the form of dedicated ASICs, to enter
the game. This phenomenon is sometimes known as
the mining oligarchy, and it undermines much of the
motivation (stability and security) behind the decen-
tralized system design.
Bitcoin also depletes large amounts of natural re-
sources. The Bitcoin network constantly consumes
electricity at a massive scale, in the order of hun-
dreds of megawatts [34], as it mines a block every 10
minutes or so. Moreover, most mining is currently
done by specialized ASICs, which have no use be-
yond mining Bitcoins. For these reasons, Bitcoin is
considered an “environmental disaster” [22] by some.
To address these issues, we propose SpaceMint,
a cryptocurrency that replaces the costly proofs
of work underlying Bitcoin with proofs of space
(PoSpace) [17]. In SpaceMint, in order to mine blocks
(and thereby mint coins and confirm transactions),
miners must invest disk space rather than computa-
tional power, and prove to the network that they are
dedicating certain amounts of disk space.
In SpaceMint, miners who dedicate more disk space
have a proportionally higher expectation of success-
fully mining a block and reaping the reward. It is
therefore clear that miners will be incentivized to in-
vest in hard-drive capacity, just as Bitcoin miners
are incentivized to invest in electricity. However, we
highlight three key differences:- In SpaceMint, the investment is in the form of
capital expenditure, and the mining process af-
ter hard-drive initialization incurs negligible on-
going monetary and natural-resource cost. In
contrast, in Bitcoin, the mining process requires
perpetual energy expenditure. - In Bitcoin, resources are “used up” by mining:
electricity is a depletable resource which once
used is gone; and Bitcoin mining hardware is a
specialized, single-purpose resource that is not
useful for anything once the need for Bitcoin
mining is removed. In contrast, the resource
consumed by SpaceMint is recyclable, in that it
can be used again and again, and multi-purpose,
since hard drives have intrinsic value in their
ability to store useful data. 2 - Ordinary people have (many) personal devices
with unused disk space available, which can be
repurposed for SpaceMint mining with very low
set-up and maintenance costs. Since mining is
cheap, and even small players get a proportional
fair share of rewards, we argue that we can ex-
pect large amounts of space in the network and
a more distributed, decentralized miner body.
Source: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/528.pdf
As we all know the theoretical concept of "Spacemint" exists today and is known as BURST.
From theory of being better decentralized to reality and hard facts:
Thanks to @Gadrah_ for polishing the diagrams.
- In SpaceMint, the investment is in the form of
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@daWallet this is basically a copy-paste of Burst. Do they bring anything new at least?
I could nt understand the pie charts btw, is this disctibution in terms of pools or accounts?
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@vExact Spacemint is the basis of Burst. The pie chart shows that early on, network capacity consisted only of a few major players. Now, as the "others" category grows, it shows increasing decentralization of the mining network.
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@k.coins said in A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space:
@vExact Spacemint is the basis of Burst. The pie chart shows that early on, network capacity consisted only of a few major players. Now, as the "others" category grows, it shows increasing decentralization of the mining network.
Apologies for my ignorance :/ I thought it was going to be a new asset out there, did not click the link to the pdf :) So, it has been proven decentralization mining with our hard drives works much better! Cool stuff indeed. Did anyone add that to the wiki page?
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@vExact I think we need more data points for the wiki page. It would be good to verify a trend.
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@daWallet definitely it would be much better and clearer. Is there any data available before the first chart? It could maybe be shown couple of pie charts and next to it a graph with a decentralization parameter vs time. Not sure what kind of function coul it be fitted to (linear or most likely to a saturation function)
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@daWallet <sniff> I was on that first pie, but then I got kicked off :(
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@vExact It could be done. Each block has the "block generator" address saved. It is all in the blockchain db. "Just" has to be extracted and visualized. Anyone? ;)
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@daWallet I'd love to learn how to do that, as I am relatively new to crypto and would like to learn more about basic stuff like how to read the blockchain, visualize data in there etc... But at the moment do not have too much time to spare on that :/ however if no one steps up ill keep it in mind...
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Holy crap I just had the best idea for a visualization of the network..... Must work through it!
-IceBurst
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Can I ask about /bin/laden here? Hehe =D
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@k.coins I was always curious what went down with him. I have my fears...
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@crutsy yeah, just curious of anyone's account, if they were around... I find it an interesting part of history.
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Wats difference between burst and spacemint? It's an idea or launched in market wow hard disk mining ll get popular if there more than one in market
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@dvndr007 people are getting confused here... This is the original white paper publishing the conecept of a PoC crypto-currency. It is what Burst is based on. Through his beautiful figures, @daWallet has highlighted the fact that the concept, which holds a central theme of decentralized mining, is flourishing.
Edit: "central theme of decentralization" - lol!
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@daWallet @gadrah what are the others represented in that graphs (like accounts with less than x% of mining power? how much percent?)? the ones represented individually are pools right?
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@gpedro @luxe knows the exact function.
@Daforce You can't compare your diagram with the one of Burst: Yours sums up the pools. Burst is way younger as a network and doesn't have as much pool as Bitcoin. http://util.burst-team.us:8888/pool . The diagram here shows the individual account that found a block in a timeframe of 1000 blocks.The paper quoted and linked above got released in 2015 but it may be worked on for at least two years, possibly longer. Some part of me believes that one of these guys (or multiple of them) from this paper or of the related papers are tied to the creation of Burstcoin.
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@gpedro No pools shown there, it's the biggest mining accounts, others are smaller (less blocks). The chart is hardcoded to a limited number of accounts shown.
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@daWallet said in A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space:
Spacemint* : As we all know the theoretical concept of "Spacemint" exists today and is known as *BURST*.I almost got confused with the write-up, Spacemint/Burst ...all thanks to the last paragraph
"As we all know the theoretical concept of "Spacemint" exists today and is known as BURST"
The truth is, with POS or POC ...everybody can easily be part of the party (BurstCoin)
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@daWallet @luxe this graphs should be on biz too ;D
@luxe Regarding that looks cool to me but if you guys put this into biz site please make the range of "Others" to be lower... it appear more decentralized if there is more bars in the graph even if it is the same end result ;D
And if you guys put the graphs in there maybe it would be great if we can have a graph like this to pools... It can even help people to decide wich pool to choose and then help distribute the network a little better xPI know i only give you guys work hahahaha Let me know if you have any questions regarding what i said above ;D





