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Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#11

Post by ddrdrck_ »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

Some projects try to resolve initial distribution issue by issuing airdrops.

At least one project even gone further by doing what they called a "fairdrop", so that small holders receive more than large holders : https://medium.com/osmosis/osmo-token-distribution-ae27ea2bb...

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#13

Post by simiones »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

> If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins.

Don't Proof of Work coin issuers do the same? Even Satoshi has a pretty large amount of Bitcoin.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#14

Post by tromp »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

Indeed; whereas PoS is only a consensus mechanism, PoW is both a consensus and a coin distribution mechanism.

While Ethereum started out as PoW, its huge premine still constitutes a big trust issue.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#15

Post by PeterisP »

simiones wrote: post #13
Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

> If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. Don't Proof of Work coin issuers do the same? Even Satoshi has a pretty large amount of Bitcoin.

The thing is that PoW "works" even in the case where Satoshi-equivalent has most of coins, as the transactions are controlled by the mining power and new coins will be distributed through mining. With PoS, if founders hold most of the coins, then the scheme does not work as they de facto arbitrarily control the transactions and there's no way for a community to get that control unless they hand over the coins - thus, in PoS (unlike PoW) the founders need to solve the distribution problem before the scheme can become useful.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#16

Post by CuriousCosmic »

runeks wrote: post #6
lahoda-xyz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what qbout zkp or vdf extensions to pos?

PoS relies on the possession (“keeping secret”) of private keys. No matter what you do, private keys (information) can be stolen, including in a covert manner (in a way that no one discovers that anything has been stolen). PoW relies on hardware, for which the same problem does not exist.

There's been some work done to work around this issue. One of the approaches is to keep an always offline "fallback" key that can be used to "lock" an account and transfer ownership to a new account in the case that a private key is leaked.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/872

This doesn't solve the issue entirely but it does provide a mechanism for recovering in the case of a major attack.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#18

Post by visualradio »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

Ideally a system of credit based on proof of work is based on proof of productive work embodied in artifacts which competition can increase the supply of without restraint.

A proof of productive work system can be implemented by having public employees of local loan office assess the minimum labor replacement cost of crops, equipment, structures, materials, and working inventory held on sites. Then allowing loans to be issued on security of the material capital at a duration which ensures the money is repaid before the value of the work stored in the material capital fully depreciates.

So bitcoin's proof of work algorithm is proof of unproductive work rather than proof of productive work. A public system of credit based on proof productive work stored in material capital stored on land does require establishing and maintaining a well organized state. But this is not necessarily an ethical dilemma for the majority of the population and may be necessary to solve global problems that society may be faced with in the future.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#20

Post by Yizahi »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

This is actually quite fun to say out loud - "here is a revolutionary trustless system of currency, but you must trust a group of anonymous developers in the non-extradition offshore not to screw you with premine"
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