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Children Playing Blockchain

jott.live

11–20 of 104 posts

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#11
post #2

> The first class lost the students that simply couldn't keep up with the increasingly difficult sudokus. This is the story of every proof-of-work cryptocurrency. After a certain point, they only serve to make the rich even richer. Look at Bitcoin for example, where over 50% of the hashing power is controlled by big Chinese mining operations.

Looks like someone missed the buying opportunity lol.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#12

I found the site's architecture quite interesting: It uses inline JS to transform the Markdown in HTML. view-source: https://jott.live/markdown/elementary_blockchain Ideally it would be as a Service Worker that pulls pages and transforms them into HTML, so you could serve your Markdown directly, without a separate build step.

For me there was a noticeable FOUC.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#13
post #11
post #2

> The first class lost the students that simply couldn't keep up with the increasingly difficult sudokus. This is the story of every proof-of-work cryptocurrency. After a certain point, they only serve to make the rich even richer. Look at Bitcoin for example, where over 50% of the hashing power is controlled by big Chinese mining operations.

Looks like someone missed the buying opportunity lol.

These types of comments are honestly unhelpful. Unfortunately the said can be about my comment, but I do not have the ability to downvote, alas.

If they held bitcoin would their opinion matter more or less? Why should it matter?

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would contest that assertion - some blockchains regularly change their PoW algorithm in an attempt to stay "ASIC-resistant."

That simply makes two currencies - before-fork, and after-fork. There's no rule that the one that "should" win does, especially in the face of large computing power making the former more attractive. See Bitcoin Cash, versus Bitcoin Classic.

OP may be referring to algorithms that rotate between a fixed set of widely dissimilar POW puzzles, in an attempt to make it discouragingly expensive to design and fabricate a rather complex ASIC requiring a lot of die space.

IIRC it didn't work for long (the of promoters of these tokens were likely well aware of this), and ASICs for them appeared anyway, once an ROI probability threshold was reached.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#15
post #11
post #2

> The first class lost the students that simply couldn't keep up with the increasingly difficult sudokus. This is the story of every proof-of-work cryptocurrency. After a certain point, they only serve to make the rich even richer. Look at Bitcoin for example, where over 50% of the hashing power is controlled by big Chinese mining operations.

Looks like someone missed the buying opportunity lol.

Is this the level the discussion has reached, Facebook-level 'Dear haters, you are just jealous!' posts?

I guess in a way comments like these are actually a really good indication that PoS is superior in virtually every way.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#16
I'm not sure I see how this relates to cryptocurrency. It misses the core attributes that give crypto value: scarcity, and the fact that it can be exchanged for other things of value.

If there's no shortage of bricks, and those bricks can't be used (or exchanged) for anything other than the material for making the tower taller, then of course that would be pointless.

But that's not how cryptocurrency works. The whole purpose of proof-of-work is to protect the attribute of scarcity in a distributed way where one actor can't control (or change) the rules.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#17

I found the site's architecture quite interesting: It uses inline JS to transform the Markdown in HTML. view-source: https://jott.live/markdown/elementary_blockchain Ideally it would be as a Service Worker that pulls pages and transforms them into HTML, so you could serve your Markdown directly, without a separate build step.

Honestly it just seems like a beginner's weekend idea rather than something useful.

If I squint, I can almost pretend I'm insulted that my browser/Javascript had to render the Markdown instead of their server doing it.

I can't see how their infrastructure is making any real savings by doing this. There are usually more reasons to just cache the HTML next to the input Markdown. e.g. You can then make money breaking changes to the transformation without breaking old posts. Not to mention it now kinda pointlessly needs Javascript to do something trivial.

Unlike what seems to be the prevailing opinion on HN, I'm quite pro-Javascript and pro-SPA. I never saw the need to damn webpages to server-rendered HTML just because it's the only client/server system with the quirk of being able to send markup from the server.

But this sending Markdown over the wire with a 24kB Markdown script + `$('post').markdown()` is just cheeky. ;) Does it really matter though? Nah.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#18
A third class plays using a consensus model based on explicit relationships of trust.

Each student keeps track of which of the others they consider trustworthy. Since they all play together everyday, they know who is nice, and who is naughty.

When a supermajority trusts the student placing a new block, that student is allowed to place it anywhere.

When not enough people trust the student placing the block, they prevent that person from doing so. That person may try again, but until they're willing to play nice and act trustworthy, they cannot place any blocks. They sit in the corner and pout until they come to their senses.

No one has to solve any puzzles, or roll any dice.

The tower is built efficiently, and all sorts of interesting designs are made by the creative energy that would have otherwise been wasted on busywork.

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#19
post #8

Funny. The first class was a public class & anybody could join in at any time. The second class had reserved early seats based on the initial supply of the dices; without investment in the initial dices the game doesnt start, whereas sudoku generation is free.

Could you explain? Anyone can run a node for a proof-of-stake, or delegate/stake to the node they want. Why do you add the reserved seat to the story?

Re: Children Playing Blockchain

#20
post #2

> The first class lost the students that simply couldn't keep up with the increasingly difficult sudokus. This is the story of every proof-of-work cryptocurrency. After a certain point, they only serve to make the rich even richer. Look at Bitcoin for example, where over 50% of the hashing power is controlled by big Chinese mining operations.

Proof of stake literally makes rich richer, thats the point of it - holders can mint new blocks. With proof of work there is actual work involved tol, not just minting money with your capital.
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