Botnets exist today and mine today, this is not fiction. That said, if we assume AI will become more advanced like we do with CPUs becoming more efficient then yes eventually there is a tipping point. Bitcoin will not be mined by human beings in 2100 as there is no in my opinion it will take AI that long to figure it out. AI does not have to be AGI, but can be narrow insect level intelligent AI, and that alone would be enough for a botnet to take over mining. The thing about Bitcoin, it could evolve into a fully autonomous agent while POS or DPOS will always be semi-autonomous until the stakeholders are bots

Thank you @dan! I really enjoy reading anything you post. Keep up the good work, you've got lots of fans here!

I suggest everyone [use busy.org](https://busy.org/eos/@dan/in-defense-of-consortium-blockchains) to access the Steem blogs, not Steemit.com, because for example just one spiteful dolphin-whale (e.g. @chryspano) downvoting my blog <sup><sub>(the blog of mine Dan is responding to)</sub></sup> or comment can censor it entirely from Steemit.com, but not from busy.org. Note that using busy.org won't prevent one or two spiteful whales from removing my rewards received from 100s of voters, as a few whales have done on some of my controversial blogs.

Daniel congratulations on your hard work and accomplishments. Somehow I still believe you're sincere about the ideological pursuit in spite of the premeditated whale money grabs for both EOS and Steem. Psychologically I think you justify your money grabs and potentially securities law violations with your ideological quest. Both EOS and STEEM have been sold by the insiders (aka affiliates) to USA persons thus likely fall under SEC jurisdiction (STEEM being an obfuscated ICO with a premediated sneakyfastmine), regardless of what your attorneys have advised. SEC head Clayton [warned earlier this month that all token sales](https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/bitcoin-with-segwit-is-not-the-austrian-fork-9efd890489b0) are securities. Unfortunately I do not think that ideological rationalization of breaking the law is going to work out well for you. I am just stating what I believe to be the facts. For example, I commented on BCT about you and I had a similar frustration with divorce and perhaps somewhat similar motivations for entering this technology area.

@dan wrote:
> What we know is that Fiat Whales control the majority of the hash power and that they hold the network ransom for fees.

Note I  also criticized proof-of-work in my blog:

@anonymint wrote:
> <sup>Well Satoshi’s proof-of-work has an [analogous design weakness](https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/study-the-design-of-bitcoin-24f8265a4d34) in that as significant revenue for miners comes from transactions fees as the protocol block reward declines and transaction volume increases, the incentive for the consensus to converge is lost and requires a colluding oligarchy, which of course will also extract maximum rents in either blatant ways such as constrained block size causing higher and higher fees, or [obfuscated trickery for extracting rents](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2268216.msg23892499#msg23892499).</sup>

I also [wrote](https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/okay-youre-at-least-attempting-to-write-something-marginally-technically-coherent-this-time-c44d7e66e2a4):
> <sup>Byzantine Generals Problem has no perfect solution. Byzantine agreement is an approximate solution with the flaws of a liveness threshold and a safety margin and lacking permissionless and trustless properties. Proof-of-work is another approximate solution which does not have liveness threshold, is permissionless and trustless up to the lower safety margin of 50% attack. However, proof-of-work has another economic flaw which I mentioned in my blog.</sup>

-----

@dan wrote:
> The claim is that overlording "whales" can extract higher and higher rents. This claim cannot exist in a vacuum, but must be compared to alternatives of which Proof of Work is presented.

Afaics, the salient difference is that the nothing-at-stake means DPoS can be attacked, gamed, and controlled at no market competitive cost, thus any relatively small-capitalized group of scammers who are lying about material facts can leverage up and create a $2 billion money grab (even obfuscating the ways the insiders are accomplishing an obfuscated winner-take-all grab of the ICO as I documented in my blog) from a speculative bubble. Note I see [ongoing posts at BCT](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1904415.msg24785004#msg24785004) about the suspicious activity that might possibly be indicative of the insiders are obfuscating the buying of the EOS ICO from themselves.

Whereas, proof-of-work requires a massive amount of capital to scam with because as you stated, it is competitive and open to all comers possessing hashpower. Do you really think TPTB are going to let you eat from their hand without corrupting you or destroying you in the end game with for example global securities regulation law. The Zionists (note I didn't write Jews) who presumably control the only 14nm ASIC fabs are likely the clients behind the curtain of the largest Chinese miners. They also clearly executed 9/11 (just study the damn facts as an engineer), so that will give you some indication that they have supranational power. So you're correct that PoS does enable a proliferation of deceptive hype and speculative bubbles that will end as toast (or controlled by the same TPTB who control proof-of-work) with the insiders walking away with the loot after they've paid off TPTB. What a wonderful innovation you have there.

I [wrote](https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/okay-youre-at-least-attempting-to-write-something-marginally-technically-coherent-this-time-c44d7e66e2a4):
> <sup>My issue is that you and Dan are misrepresenting the facts.</sup>
>
>> <sup>Attackers can’t come back over and over again like they can on PoW and other chains.</sup>
>
> <sup>Au contraire, the antithesis is more true. Because of the nothing-at-stake problem, proof-of-stake can be attacked over and over again at no cost. Y’all presume not, because y’all implicitly assume an oligarchy in control of voting (whether you realize it or not if you’re not knowledgeable about the political-economics science of voting). I described in my blog one of the possible attacks against DPoS employing shorting by whales. And TaPoS does not eliminate such attacks. Whereas, it requires an expenditure of electricity to attack proof-of-work</sup>

And you're not addressing the fact that if TPTB rubber hose or otherwise influence or take out the small number of whales which possess 50+% of the stake (which is true due to the power-law distribution of wealth regardless if there was no scamming by insiders), then there is no way to get an objective consensus ever again. I will get into this more below, because you still do not understand Byzantine math.

-----

@dan wrote:
> Mining profitably means economies of scale and ultimately alternative revenue streams derived from the political power the miners possess. Many governments in the world can trivially make mining unprofitable for all free market actors.

But no single government nor grouping of governments can shut down mining completely. You continue to fail to understand/acknowledge that the liveness threshold issue does not apply to proof-of-work.

> What we can conclude from this is that mining is a dead-end, winner takes all, system.

I also explained in my my blog (and links in it) that DPoS is also a dead-end, winner takes all, system. True that numerous DPoS chains can be created, all of them each a winner-take-all dead-end. I fail to see any claimed improvement that DPoS provides w.r.t. to overlords (DPoS does provide a performance benefit).

Actually it is very depressing that current blockchain technologies are headed for oligarchies. Why do you think I continue to work on researching/developing fundamental technological innovation and not rushing to grab $2 billion with a technology which is clearly a dead-end.

I would not feel comfortable misrepresenting material facts and taking $2 billion in investment (intentionally obfuscated as "useless token" sales and intentionally apparently not doing any KYC!!) in such a convoluted _global_ securities law and anti-money laundering law regulation environment.

@dan wrote:
>  This means that stake holders can vote out malicious actors even if 51% are malicious, so long as their exists at least 1 honest producers willing to accurately tally an election on a temporarily minority fork.

Daniel, that is mathematically incorrect. You have enough money now. Go hire a PhD to explain my blog to you properly. I'm not going to repeat myself.

Apparently you're not understanding the conceptualization of the marbles in jars example and why nothing can be objectively concluded when the liveness threshold is exceeded. You're not conceptualizing it holistically. Given I have already tried to explain it in my blog to a layman, I think rather than trying to explain it again and again, it is better for your team to hire someone to explain it to you. Or have that PhD come here and refute me.

> Once an election occurs on the 1/3 network it will gain speed to 3/3 and eventually overtake the "bad guys".
>
> This is still the underlying "rule of DPOS" on STEEM and BitShares and everything else is simply establishing a high probability of irreversibility.

It doesn't matter how many times you repeat this incorrect understanding, it will never be correct.

-----

@dan wrote:
> Bitcoin never reaches finality and without timely finality inter-blockchain communication is not practical.

Your argument distills to that proof-of-work has slow confirmations. Because as you presumably know, DPoS is also never final (i.e. has probabilistic finality), because of the nothing-at-stake problem. DPoS employs TaPoS (which you invented) to create probabilistic finality w.r.t. to the nothing-at-stake issue.

So please be honest and conclude that both PoW and PoS reach probabilistic and social consensus (i.e. Vitalik's "weak subjectivity" concept) on finality. I agree DPoS has much faster confirmations if the oligarchy in control doesn't leverage the nothing-at-stake vulnerability. Since your 0.5 second claim relies on 0-confirmations then it is faster than Bitcoin's (perhaps 15 seconds) 0-confirmations but it is not accurate to compare it to 1 hour. You're misrepresenting the facts again. As for transaction volume scalability on chain, I concur that DPoS has a significant advantage compared to Bitcoin.

> If we are going to rely on 5 mining pools, then we might as well let them sign off on things in seconds rather than waiting an hour or more. The resulting security will be the same, but the latency will be dramatically reduced.

Incorrect. The security model is not equivalent. I explained it in my blog and retouched on reasons in this comment.

Also I debunked this 5 mining pools hype/misrepresentation of the technological facts in [my debate at BCT](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1904415.msg23311260#msg23311260) with @chryspano.

Dan, you still talk over my head with most stuff as you know LOL, but I am doing my best.  

I am not from your coding genius world but I get a charge out of the fact a guy like  me, gets to interact, use things you built, and be alongside you, and it grieves me seeing people mudsling stuff against you, I kind of view you like a brother now.  

I've written twice this week again on BTS and about you and @stan and what you have done, here is mine from tonight, with this TETHER mess -- and try to express how I feel about BTS and your projects being undervalued and underused/underappreciated across the board.  

God bless  ya my Liberty brother.  I believe in you.  We can encourage people daily.  

[I finally learned how to do this LOL, so here it is (:](https://steemit.com/bitshares/@barrydutton/so-tether-project-was-hacked-another-use-case-for-bitshares-and-dan-larimer-blockchain-genius-which-remains-undervalued-and)

Sorry to be off topic, but as you are a really big whale, *(not even a minnow here)* A **Friend** could use some whale help. 

Please Help  - - - https://steemit.com/steemit/@michelle.gent/i-writer no ONE person should be able to dictate how much a person earns on post. And I apologize  for using this method to contact you.

Congratulations @dan, this post is the  most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Superhero or Legend account holder (accounts hold greater than 100 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Superhero and Legend account holders during this period was 28 and the total pending payments to posts in these categories was $804.44. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, [click here](www.steemit.com/steemit/@bitgeek/payout-stats-report-for-18th-november-2017--part-i). 

If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, please reply stop to this comment.

Dear @dan.
Below guys,
@ngc
@newsflash
@nextgencrypto
@ozchartart
@berniesanders
they keeping downvote Our attendent event posting everyday in Kr tag. the attendant posting:
https://steemit.com/kr/@redbanana/11-27-steem
It reason gang down vote make us injured any reason. but we can talk them. How can we make stop them? please help us.

### Interesting post. 

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You and Anonymint have been debating these issues since before Bitshares. I remember reading on Bitcointalk.

My opinion on Proof of Work is it favors TOTAL Proof of Work. Eventually botnets run by AI will do all the mining, probably by stealing CPU cycles. If government can come up with Stuxnet they can figure out a botnet to own Bitcoin. I think it is actually only a matter of time before humans are no longer profitable to be involved in mining because human labor has a cost while botnets don't require any human labor.

Proof of work in my opinion WILL be ungovernable once the block reward halving, difficulty increases, etc, push all the humans out of the mining roles. But hey maybe that was the idea all along? To be ungovernable by any human and let the AI control the whole of POW.

If Bitcoin is supposed to have mining for 50+ more years there is no way in hell human beings will be running mining farms by then. The whole industry will be automated, so we have to consider what that might mean right now. Personally I favor hybrid Proof of Work+Proof of Stake networks, as Total Proof of Work is not ideal.

I know these posts may make me unpopular or look like a lunatic but no one else is willing to post anything about the AI angle to POW. Demand for unlimited efficiency increases due to years of block reward having etc, put market forces on a certain evolutionary trajectory.

Reference
---
1. https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dana-edwards/will-an-artificial-intelligence-ultimately-become-the-global-mining-cartel-ai-as-mining-monarch

With my experience on Steem, and what I see going on with the miners(BTC vs BCH) I believe we still have to search for solution....
While the economies of scale tip Delegated Proof of Stake as it may be a longterm solution to the energy challenges miners may face, DPOS is still very much influence by Human Nature which would always act in their own self-interest.....
I believe the challenge moving forward is removing that human nature while maintaining the economic incentive to encourage participants....