[HN Gopher] "Proof-of-work" proves not to work for spam preventi...
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"Proof-of-work" proves not to work for spam prevention (2004) [pdf]
Author : bravogamma
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-11-13 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cl.cam.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cl.cam.ac.uk)
| max_ wrote:
| Alot of sentiment today thinks proof of work is a waste of
| energy, but I assert that it can solve a lot more problems beyond
| its use for "Nakamoto Consensus".
|
| I don't think anything else can solve decentralized rate limiting
| more effectively than proof of work.
|
| I wrote a short blog post about the use of Proof of work beyond
| crypto mining [0]
|
| [0] https://as1ndu.xyz/2019/11/proof-of-work-on-layer-two/
| jacoblambda wrote:
| You may be interested in this paper:
|
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1379
|
| It provides a Proof-of-Useful-Work algorithm that is resistant
| to pre-computation and most other weaknesses that would
| otherwise prevent useful work from being done while achieving
| Nakamoto Consensus while at the same time managing to convert
| ~50% of the computation spent into useful work. Additionally
| the work being done is pretty generally useful and is
| applicable to a lot of different problems.
|
| I think the space is starting to reach a point of academic
| maturity and formalisation of the tech stack such that we can
| start meaningfully trying to solve these types of problems.
| xg15 wrote:
| The fundamental technical problem I see with PoW is that it
| only seldomly really aligns with the "good guy/bad guy"
| boundary.
|
| I.e. the basic purpose of PoW is security: Allow desirable
| actors in, keep malicious actors out. But this implies that
| "ability to put in more work" is actually a working way to
| distinguish good actors from bad actors. This is true in very
| specific cases, like blockchains - but I believe in most cases,
| this is actually not given, such as emails.
|
| E.g., suppose we're using PoW to secure email: We do away with
| SPIF and all that and simply require each email to contain some
| hash that a sender had to bruteforce (just an example: use
| whatever PoW scheme you want).
|
| If the scheme has a fixed difficulty, spammers can easily
| defeat it - they just have to rent (or capture) more machines.
| So you have to dynamically adjust the difficulty to meet some
| message/time unit quota. Congrats, suddenly the whole network
| is limitited to some maximum throughput. Alternatively, you can
| have separate difficulties for each user - but then, you need a
| way to track individual users, compute individual difficulties,
| etc. All of this needs some centralized entity again and agents
| that enforce the rules. If you have all that, why not use
| traditional rate limit and forgo the energy (or resource)
| waste?
| delusional wrote:
| > Alot of sentiment today thinks proof of work is a waste of
| energy, but I assert that it can solve a lot more problems
| beyond its use for "Nakamoto Consensus".
|
| When you use "but" it's customary for the following statement
| to disprove or argue against the previous statement. How does
| it being applicable to more stuff stop it from being a gigantic
| waste of energy?
| robbedpeter wrote:
| It being a waste is a matter of opinion. There are negative
| externalities in some cases, but profit and services
| generated by the use of crypto have value to people.
|
| If the problem is the pollution produced by power generation,
| then it's disingenuous to single out crypto for criticism. We
| really should be enforcing accountability and forcing markets
| to price in the negative externalities. Carbon capture and
| other technologies are surfacing to allow for that, and
| within a decade or so we should see widespread
| implementation. Legislation will arise out of the consensus
| of voters and mate technology and regulation.
|
| If the problem is that you think crypto is frivolous or
| implicitly a waste of resources?
|
| "Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man..."
| lwansbrough wrote:
| It's not a matter of opinion. Crypto provides incredibly
| little value to the average person vs. its energy usage. It
| takes an entire tank of gasoline to make a single Bitcoin
| transaction, don't insult me by telling me it's a matter of
| opinion that that's a waste.
|
| And Proof of Waste is about more than it's impact on the
| environment through it's egregious energy use. Even in
| places that use clean energy, Bitcoin mining is putting a
| strain on the grid. (I suspect mining had something to do
| with Texas' grid problems last winter.) Even if you're
| harnessing off grid energy, you're a leech sucking value
| out of the economy by being a major contributor to the
| chip/GPU shortage.
|
| And for what? All to contribute to a system that has
| greater wealth inequality than the existing financial
| system. Brilliant stuff.
| vernon99 wrote:
| Is sun radiating energy in all directions also a waste in
| your terminology? You can call any use of energy "waste"
| this way.
|
| Would bitcoin mining be better if it would use clean
| energy? I think you really are mixing two things here:
| energy production (that can be "good" or "bad" from
| ethical or evological perspective) and energy consumption
| that cannot be bad, just inefficient in terms of the
| return in business value (but it's for the owners or
| customers to calculate, not bystanders to judge).
|
| Imo mixing two is a massive fallacy.
|
| Edit: typos.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| > Would bitcoin mining be better if it would use clean
| energy?
|
| No, Bitcoin mining should not exist. It serves no
| demonstrable net-positive value to society.
|
| > I think you really are mixing two things here
|
| I'm not, you seem to be confused. Energy production is
| produced only because it is economically viable to do so.
| Bitcoin makes it economically viable to produce most
| forms of energy, regardless of that specific source's
| environmental impact. This is harmful consumption of
| energy. Like leaving the lights on when you're not home,
| simply because you don't care. Bitcoin is not
| indifferent, its core function is to increase energy
| usage. Some people would have you believe Bitcoin's core
| value is its use as a currency. Its value is as
| infrastructure that wastes energy for profit, and the
| collective buy-in and infrastructure created to ensure it
| remains a store of value.
|
| You could maybe argue this is worth it, if there were
| absolutely no other way to do it. But there is, and it
| works much better. Central banking is strictly superior
| to cryptocurrency for most reasons that the average
| person cares about. If you don't agree, that's
| irrelevant, because you're an outlier. Most people want
| cheap transactional costs, fast transactions, and for
| their money to have stable value. They couldn't care for
| a second if the transaction is cryptographically secure
| as long as it's reasonably insured.
| awrence wrote:
| This is your opinion.
| nathias wrote:
| something is a waste if it is not useful, making new uses
| makes it less of a waste by definition
| max_ wrote:
| >How does it being applicable to more stuff stop it from
| being a gigantic waste of energy?
|
| "Applicable" means that it is useful, as it solves the
| problems I talk about in the post.
| wackro wrote:
| It's all in the link he posted
| michaelscott wrote:
| Everything expends energy in order to solve some problem or
| accomplish some goal. Whether the problem is worth solving or
| the goal worth pursuing given the required energy is
| subjective, but beside the point. If it can solve more
| problems then the expending of energy becomes more justified.
| kaba0 wrote:
| But if something has a fundamentally monotonically
| increasing cost in terms of energy, when will we reach the
| point where it no longer worth the tradeoff?
|
| Is taking more energy than Argentina really worthwhile for
| the few that uses cryptos?
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Whether the problem is worth solving or the goal worth
| pursuing given the required energy is subjective, but
| beside the point._
|
| No, it's very much not besides the point - and I'd argue
| it's one of the core issues with PoW and the reason why
| people are so appalled by it.
|
| Yes, everything expends energy, but the special property of
| PoW is that the energy cost is _intentional_. Therefore it
| 's fundamentally impossible to reduce the energy cost as
| that would defeat the whole point: If someone manages to
| find a more efficient way to mine, this is a threat to the
| network and has to be counteracted by raising the
| difficulty. Conversely, the amount of energy that _can_ be
| expended for mining a single block is potentially
| unbounded, in contrast to other problems ehere the energy
| actually perform useful work.
|
| This leaves belief whether or not the problem is worth
| pursuing as the only measure about the energy cost of PoW.
| And this belief is influenced by all kinds of factors from
| technical to financial to psychological. But it is
| generally not influenced by the amount of energy already
| spent.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| This is factually incorrect. I'm not a fan at all of
| proof of work schemes, but it's important to criticize
| them correctly.
|
| Energy consumption is not fundamental in any way. Proof
| of work depends only in the consumption of some resource
| that has economic value. It doesn't have to require any
| energy at all.
|
| For example, Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses
| disk storage instead of computation. It uses comparably
| very little energy and the difficulty is not
| substantially sensitive to energy efficiency because the
| cost is dominated by space rather than computation.
|
| There are other examples that attempt to use things like
| spatially distributed network bandwidth as a resource.
| I'm not a fan of most of these, but the point is that
| energy is not fundamental.
| spurgu wrote:
| > Energy consumption is not fundamental in any way.
|
| Isn't the opposite true though? That everything is either
| directly or indirectly tied to energy?
|
| Cost of disk space vs computing power is just an equation
| of the energy put into it (mining, manufacturing,
| marketing, shipping).
|
| Maybe I'm too hungover to think this through. :D
|
| > It uses comparably very little energy and the
| difficulty is not substantially sensitive to energy
| efficiency because the cost is dominated by space rather
| than computation.
|
| I don't see how this would equate in the end. If you want
| to keep the level of difficulty high enough it would have
| to go hand in hand with real life resources (= energy).
|
| Granted there are complex externalities in the
| calculation and computing continuously uses energy while
| disk space is more of an "expend and forget" type of
| scenario, but to me that would simply result in malicious
| actors being able to afford to put more resources into it
| (buying more disk space) until we're at the level of the
| same energy expenditure.
| lisper wrote:
| > Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses disk
| storage instead of computation
|
| And how do you think those disks get made? (And how do
| you run those disks without expending energy?)
| mgraczyk wrote:
| They do use energy, but it's very small compared to other
| economic activity.
|
| For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a
| few households. Would that be acceptable?
|
| Alternatives aren't quite that efficient, but my point is
| that the relative energy consumption matters a lot.
| lisper wrote:
| > suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few
| households
|
| That's not possible. The marginal cost of mining has to
| equal the value of the coins mined.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| The cost can come from things that do not consume energy,
| for example fabricating a complex chip that includes rare
| materials.
| slavik81 wrote:
| So, proof-of-gold?
| xg15 wrote:
| > _For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy
| as a few households. Would that be acceptable?_
|
| But in this scenario, Bitcoin would consume rising
| amounts of some other resource, say SSDs or network
| capacity.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It doesn't change the fact that they are fundamentally
| wasteful
| mgraczyk wrote:
| "waste" is purely subjective. Is it wasteful that
| televisions exist just because I don't like watching
| them? What if televisions used more or less resources?
| Shouldn't the actual quantities matter more than our
| opinions about the merits of the activity?
| xg15 wrote:
| > _" waste" is purely subjective_
|
| Nope.
| can16358p wrote:
| It depends on what you value. If you value energy
| efficiency, Bitcoin is extremely wasteful for sure.
|
| However if you value freedom/decentralization, it isn't.
| (I know about the debatable parts of decentralization and
| Bitcoin but you probably got the main idea)
| xg15 wrote:
| > _However if you value freedom /decentralization, it
| isn't._
|
| Then your passion for freedom has to grow in lockstep
| with the Bitcoin market cap, because this is what tracks
| the actual cost per unit of work with Bitcoin.
|
| Also note who has to bear the cost: PoW resource waste is
| something that affects everyone, even if only a small
| group perceives it as valuable.
| can16358p wrote:
| Well a total economic revolution isn't going to happen
| overnight. It will take many more years if that's going
| to happen, and where it's going, even with all the
| scalability and PoW/waste problems, is still in the right
| direction given today's economic system.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Energy consumption is not fundamental in any way.
| Proof of work depends only in the consumption of some
| resource that has economic value._
|
| Yes, or in other words: PoW has to waste _something_
| valuable. This something doesn 't have to be energy, it
| can also be physical devices + the energy needed to
| produce/operate them - or whatever else someone can think
| up.
|
| My actual point was that the amount of cost per unit of
| work is unbounded - and to my knowledge this is true for
| all PoW schemes: Otherwise, an attacker could simply
| invest enough resources to produce more work units than
| everyone else and capture the network.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Your facts are true, but I disagree with your conclusion.
| The resource consumption is actually bounded by the
| economic value of the network, or the value of attacking
| the network. If the network generates $100 of value (in
| terms of market cap etc) for each $1 spent to operate it,
| then the resource consumption if the network is
| essentially bounded to 1/100 of global GDP. This is also
| assuming network operators capture 100% of the value of
| the network, which is too high by at least an order of
| magnitude for most networks.
|
| Networks with bigger ratios truly are more efficient,
| even in absurd hypotheticals in which all economic
| activity is devoted to operating the network. All I'm
| assuming here is that actors don't put in more than they
| get out of it.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _If the network generates $100 of value (in terms of
| market cap etc) for each $1 spent to operate it, then the
| resource consumption if the network is essentially
| bounded to 1 /100 of global GDP._
|
| I agree with this point - but over the last few years, we
| have seen how wildly the perceived value of
| cryptocurrencies can fluctuate. There are a lot of actors
| who are strongly interested in driving up the value -
| either through legitimate means, but just as often
| through fraud, e.g. manipulated exchanges, wash trading,
| etc.
|
| So the market cap can easily reach fantasy numbers which
| aren't really justified by economic utility - but because
| this fantasy valuation represents real money for miners,
| energy consumption will follow it.
| tromp wrote:
| Chia's Proof of Space Time is not Proof of Work. They are
| different forms of Proof of Resource.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well as an example, it's used in cryptographic key generator
| functions.
|
| But there aren't many things it solves well. The easiest and
| most economical solution to "decentralizing rate limiting" is
| usually centralizing something.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| > I don't think anything else can solve decentralized rate
| limiting more effectively than proof of work.
|
| Have you heard of Rate Limiting Nullifiers?
|
| https://github.com/vacp2p/research/blob/master/rln-research/...
| jayd16 wrote:
| I guess to some degree waste is value judgement but by
| definition POW is never not incredibly expensive relative to
| the value it provides.
|
| It needs to always be expensive or the system is vulnerable to
| a sudden burst of new and malicious workers.
| staticassertion wrote:
| I certainly look forward to seeing real problems solved with
| these algorithms, but right now that work seems to be lost in
| the noise of crypto.
|
| I'd be curious to hear more about decentralized rate limiting.
| That sounds like a reasonable problem to solve with PoW.
| Although it also sounds like a problem I can solve pretty
| easily today without PoW so idk.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| I posted about this elsewhere in this thread but you might be
| interested in this paper:
|
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1379
|
| It gets about 50% efficiency compared to the current state of
| the art for the problem space without compromising any of the
| security properties that make for a good PoW algorithm.
| Generally I'm not a fan of PoW and prefer internal resource
| based consensus algorithms but PoUW algorithms seem rather
| interesting. I think we are reaching a point of maturity in
| the space that'll allow these types of self-securing service
| marketplaces (which really is what PoUW is) to reach their
| logical conclusion.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I'm "old" enough to remember Bill Gates talking about getting rid
| of spam with puzzles in 2004:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2004/jan/25/billgates...
| jancsika wrote:
| Ben Laurie posted a link to this paper in response to Satoshi's
| posting his first version of Bitcoin[1], with this comment:
|
| > Richard Clayton and I claim that PoW doesn't work:
|
| > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf
|
| It's in the context of a discussion about why PoW-based tokes are
| a bad idea in terms of burning CPUs and their carbon footprint.
| The generous interpretation is that he was claiming that this
| discussion was moot because the bigger issue was that PoW
| wouldn't actually work as a feature of Bitcoin.
|
| The less generous (but probably accurate) interpretation is that
| he posted that without reading either the Bitcoin whitepaper
| itself or the abstract of the whitepaper. IIUC his paper is about
| how PoW applied to email would either break a lot of the
| desirable features or the difficulty would be too low to prevent
| spam.
|
| I'm not sure why this bothers me enough to post about it on HN--
| I'd actually prefer it to be true and Bitcoin fanbase never to
| have existed. Nevertheless, his paper wasn't really relevant to
| that discussion and I'm not sure why he posted it there.
|
| 1: https://www.mail-
| archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10...
|
| Edit: clarification
| debacle wrote:
| For everyone who is a big fan of crypto, what is the next "big
| step" after PoS.
|
| I am more than happy to use a cryptocurrency where I can take 1
| USD and receive a coin that is worth ~1 USD, without needing the
| promise that it will be a moonshot "investment," merely a vehicle
| for value.
|
| When is that coin coming our way?
| Kranar wrote:
| https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/multi-collateral-dai/
| intunderflow wrote:
| Delegated Proof of Stake is pretty cool, particularly as its
| applied in Nano (instant and feeless transactions), if someone
| manages to combine that with the transaction privacy of Monero
| that would be awesome in my view.
| 0x64 wrote:
| There is nothing cool about dPoS. Compared to PoS, it's an
| objectively worse system in terms of decentralization.
| rvz wrote:
| > When is that coin coming our way?
|
| Today. It is called USDC; but on the Stellar Blockchain. [0]
|
| You will always know that 1 USDC will always be worth 1 USD and
| you won't have to deal with ridiculously slow transactions or
| incredibly high gas fees for every operation and it is not
| using PoW. [0]
|
| [0] https://stellar.org/usdc
| analog31 wrote:
| PoD = Proof of Dollar. ;-)
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| That's what Tether is... ostensibly
| zenogais wrote:
| What you're looking for exists today and is called a stable-
| coin (for example, USDC).
| vmception wrote:
| MIM - Magic Internet Money, a stablecoin that just leans into
| the meme because the space is big enough to just ignore
| crypto/blockchain skeptics (and maxis) as you dont need buyin
| from them anymore to attract billions of dollars for
| validation. It competes with DAI, same system just natively
| crosschain (via AnySwap bridging function added to the erc20
| class) and potentially maintains better collateral choices.
| Right now they use yield bearing collateral like liquidity pool
| shares which earn enough to reduce loan to value ratios and
| even pay interest on their own. In comparison, DAI was released
| in a world without onchain distributed asset backed securities
| and its users eventually picked completely centralized assets
| like USDC for collateral. This limits that communities' risk
| tolerance for raising debt limits.
|
| That part of your question about stablecoins doesn't have much
| to do with a Proof of Stake though-a consensus model.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| DAI is still an extremely important in decentralized finance.
| It is simply easier to scale a centralized stable coin than a
| collateralized one as the collateralized one is less capital
| efficient. The centralized coin has different risk parameters
| though, such as a bank run scenario or the fact that USDC
| funds can be frozen at will by Circle.
| vmception wrote:
| I didn't write that anything was wrong with any of the
| three assets mentioned
|
| I wrote how they compete on collateral choices which lets
| people predict their growth/issuance trajectory. MIM grows
| faster than DAI for a variety of reasons that DAI didn't
| have when it launched, which is not likely that DAI can
| replicate now or at least not quickly.
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| "When is that coin coming our way?"
|
| My guess is around the time central banks start issuing it.
| [deleted]
| adhoc32 wrote:
| Proof of work is the only system where you can look at the
| blockchain data and figure out the consensus. All other systems
| depends on people agreeing on what is the truth. PoW is not
| just superior, it's essential for true decentralized crypto.
| 0x64 wrote:
| On Ethereum the three most popular ones are DAI, USDC, and
| USDT. All are pegged to $1. There are also more niche
| stablecoinds, such as RAI.
|
| https://ethereum.org/en/stablecoins
| capableweb wrote:
| Worth to keep in mind is that USDT is involved in a lot of
| shady stuff (and run by Bitfinex), USDC is run by a
| centralized organization (and Coinbase is involved in that
| too) while DAI is based on algorithmic stability/stableness.
| Which one is the best choice for the normal user is left as
| an exercise to the reader.
| PKop wrote:
| Really? Stable-coins as a concept have existed for years, and
| in practice have blown up in trading volume and circulation the
| past 2 years.
|
| USDC stable-coin [0]($34 Billion in circulation) is arguably
| the most trustworthy in terms of having a 1 to 1 exchangeable
| backing through a regulated centralized custodian
| (Circle/Coinbase primarily but also BlockFi and other entities
| that hold USD reserves for exchange).
|
| Many of these entities (as well as "DeFi" decentralized finance
| platforms that use Ethereum or similar smart contracts to
| decentralize the process) allow for various forms of deposit
| and lending accounts that provide a whole range of yields way
| way above traditional banking deposits. On top of this, some of
| these custodians add an additional layer of payment ability to
| these deposit accounts. Crypto.com[1] for example has a Visa
| debit card that ties into your USDC/stable coin deposits that
| you can transact from, in theory avoiding needing to use fiat
| at all. As well as "CD-like" 3-month lockups where you can get
| 8-12% yield.
|
| There are also many decentralized stable coins that have
| various forms of over-collateralized crypto-asset reserves
| backing the coin and algorithms to stabilize the value by
| buying or selling from these reserves, trading off possible
| volatility and uncertainty around peg to avoid centralization
| and KYC and other regulations of 1:1 backed coins.[2]
|
| [0] https://www.circle.com/en/usdc
|
| [1] https://crypto.com/us/earn
|
| [2] $MIM dollar stable-coin:
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/magic-internet-money-races-pa...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There is already nearly $100B worth of stable coins available
| on the Ethereum blockchain (and other EVM chains such as
| Polygon): https://defipulse.com/usd.
| larsiusprime wrote:
| Other than proof of stake I've heard of two validation systems:
|
| 1. Proof of space and/or time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr
| oof_of_space#:~:text=A%20pro....
|
| 2. Proof of authority:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_authority
|
| Not sure either makes a huge difference
| jacoblambda wrote:
| Proof of Authority is extraordinarily useful but it's not
| inherently complex by any means (really it's just the old
| school consensus problems).
|
| I'd argue though that Proof of Authority definitely is the
| most useful outside of Proof of Stake and the slowly maturing
| Proof of Useful Work consensus systems. It's simplistic but
| it perfectly covers the needs of a lot of government systems.
| skerit wrote:
| Helium network's proof of coverage is also interesting.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| DAI has remained stable, even when ETH crashed 90%, Maker
| worked perfectly and DAI remained $1 USD.
| bradwood wrote:
| funny how everyone refers to coins which are pegged to a
| massively inflationary fiat currency as "stable"...
| ogogmad wrote:
| The "stable" refers to the absence of massive short-term
| volatility. The purpose of stablecoins is "banking the
| unbanked" - in other words, allowing people to spend money
| who don't have bank accounts. At least I _think_ that 's
| what they're for. It allows people to use USD in the wild,
| wild west.
| ogogmad wrote:
| This is an honest question, and I'm not trying to pour cold
| water on DAI. What would happen if DAI had a single
| centralised source of truth which could be mirrored as needed
| if people lost faith in the central entity? This is a bit
| like what Wikipedia has, which is a fully open database that
| can be mirrored ad infinitum -- but still remains the central
| source of truth as long as people respect the organisation
| that runs it. More broadly, does DAI _really_ need to be on a
| blockchain*? Are there efficient non-blockchain ways to make
| verifiable stablecoins?
|
| I ask this question because a lot of things that are run on
| blockchains seem like they're losing more than they're
| gaining. It makes me suspicious of even DAI.
|
| When I say "fully open database", you might object that this
| compromises a person's privacy in order to make the database
| mirror-able. But then again, all blockchains are fully open
| and public, so there's nothing more to be lost there.
|
| * - By which I mean the Ethereum blockchain, which is
| inefficient like all blockchains currently are.
| cvdub wrote:
| The US government could make a centralized digital currency
| without a blockchain. That makes way more sense to me than
| dealing with all the overhead associated with a trustless
| decentralized ledger.
| zie wrote:
| They are working on it. they call it a "digital dollar".
| shawnz wrote:
| I suspect if such a service was _not_ hosted on a
| blockchain, it would be quickly shut down by regulators
| ogogmad wrote:
| Does mirroring deal with this? Somebody downloads the
| database and hosts it somewhere else, a bit like TPB or
| Sci-hub. I suggested this in my original post. Which host
| gets "elevated" to be the official source of truth is
| decided by community concensus.
| shawnz wrote:
| Then you run into the problem of deciding who is running
| the authoritative mirror when the existing one goes down.
| If there's no single authoritative mirror then you could
| potentially double-spend your money by spending it in
| different places on different mirrors.
| terafo wrote:
| Mirroring doesn't deal with this because there's always a
| single target, elimination of which disrupts the whole
| system, since some time will pass until yet another
| person puts a target on his back, and there is the
| problem of finding out which one is legitimate in case if
| there are few successors.
| DennisP wrote:
| Ethereum is going to stop being so inefficient in about six
| months. The proof-of-stake migration will reduce its energy
| usage by about 99.95%. So that will make it an efficient
| way to make verifiable stablecoins.
|
| https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| the moonshot premise is the growth hack - a reason for people
| to want the coin. anything stable is unlikely to find
| widespread adoption, unless it's introduced by central banks,
| in which case it's called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)
| larsiusprime wrote:
| For context, Bitcoin launched in 2008, and this paper, concerning
| proof-of-work as an anti-spam prevention measure, launched in
| 2004.
|
| Question: has any email system attempted proof of work? Did it
| run into the problems this paper predicted?
| surajs wrote:
| Ouch, I guess there's a bureaucracy behind the ontology of any
| proof of work, although spam/email was a good use case but
| perhaps crypto is a finer expression, so the paper's main
| thesis is partially right but it's still used as a spam filter
| so I guess there's a utility there.
| max_ wrote:
| > Has any email system attempted proof of work?
|
| You might want to have a look at hashcash[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
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