271–280 of 431 posts
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There can't be 2 equally valid chains or your protocol is buggy. One chain must have more votes from stakers than the other after a while.
The chains themselves determine who has more stakers. The whole concept is self-referential and flawed.
Please expand on what you think is flawed and what are the downsides.
One of the reasons I'm bearish on Bitcoin in the long term is there are systemic risks like this around miners.
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That may be true, but the toothpaste is out of the tube. If we can't abruptly stop the use of fossil fuels to stop climate change, I don't think any amount of pointing out how much energy BTC uses is going to change the fact that it's been well established.
Although I believe it is well-established, there's still a lot of people spreading industry talking points about how it's mostly renewables, in spite of stories like this to the contrary. Motivated reasoning is a helluva drug.
A good reminder that Bitcoin runs on cheap renewables is BS. See also miners buying gas power plants in New York.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479
Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).
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Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).
Could you or someone else say how the model that uses the token itself to replace the "proof of work model" works? Which crypto(s) is using this model?
Here's a brief excerpt of how PoS makes sense: "Unlike proof-of-work, validators don't need to use significant amounts of computational power because they're selected at random and aren't competing."
If you want to go deeper, there's more info here:
https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...
A good reminder that Bitcoin runs on cheap renewables is BS. See also miners buying gas power plants in New York.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479
Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also a good time to point out that there are energy efficient blockchains that work differently from bitcoin -- not all crypto is as power hungry (some use disk space, or memory, or even just the tokens themselves to replace bitcoin's proof of work model).
Could you or someone else say how the model that uses the token itself to replace the "proof of work model" works? Which crypto(s) is using this model?
It starts with a fairly traditional BFT protocol that reaches consensus as long as everyone follows the rules. These have been known in computer science for decades.
The twist is that if anyone breaks the rules, you can prove they did it. So everybody deposits some ETH as a security bond, and if they break the rules, any other staker can submit proof of that to get a small reward, and inflict a penalty on the offender.
An offense by a small amount of stake does no damage and is assumed to be an accident, so the penalty is small. An offense by enough stake to cause problems is completely destroyed so the attack can't continue.
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> doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there? Yes, in theory. There's a coordination problem to get all the pools to do what you want, but if they (or anyone) could pull that off, then yes. So then what happens? If a single entity controls >50% of the hash power of the network, they could start finding blocks with arbitrary (invalid) transactions and a…
inserting invalid transactions is not the double spend issue. If their hash rate is over 50% they can "unconfirm" a confirmed transaction by making a chain with more work on it. This is how the attack plays out in simplified form: Bitcoin is sent to an exchange by the attacker, confirmed, sold and withdrawn for cash. Attacker then makes a chain with more work on it than the chain where the Bitcoin was sent to the exc…
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Heat generation really is the stupidest way of doing things. With things like storage, at least you can reuse it after the fact. Tho, all these systems require some ressource scarcity and will inherently maintain/promote scarcity. This is completely unacceptable in the coming years. People don't realize how much we need to cut back on natural ressource extraction and energy expenditure. Out whole world is build on ma…
> Heat generation really is the stupidest way of doing things. With things like storage, at least you can reuse it after the fact. For what it's worth - something like a house heating unit could easily be done by a coin miner, and there have been such projects presented on Reddit and HN before.
Like, I appreciate trying to dual purpose energy use... but I dont see a specialized computer that pumps heat as practical. I'm pretty sure it's going to be wasted watts too instead of using a real heater. My 800w box doesn't generate anywhere near as many BTUs as a 600w ceramic box heater. Even though I may joke otherwise. While on hot days in Florida, there is a difference when it's on or off in a room... on the 5 actual cold days we get, it can barely keep my feet warm. When I lived in Colorado... Haha no. The little office I had with a buddy, there were 4 servers in a room, either rendering or doing video analytics crunching. They didnt do shit when ambient was 60f, plus our desktops. Using bitcoin miners as home heaters seems as practical as Juiceroo was to "fresh juice".