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The only way I see to prevent PoW mining from becoming centralized is to make mining unprofitable altogether. This requires having enough miners willing to min
by tromp 11y ago
The only way I see to prevent PoW mining from becoming centralized is to make mining unprofitable altogether.
This requires having enough miners willing to mine at a loss, just like we have millions of people willing to play the lottery at a loss.
In fact mining should be made to resemble an ongoing lottery as much as possible, by
1) limiting the custom hardware efficiency advantage to less than an order of magnitude, using a memory bound PoW
2) allowing users to mine with a single click, either to install an app that mines on their smartphone while charging overnight, or from their WebAssembly supporting browser
- api 11y agoInteresting... and I wonder if the best option would also be to concentrate mining rewards. Mining gives you a chance to win very big. In that case it would become equivalent to the lotto, and would result in a financial system sustained by gambling. You could argue this would be morally superior to one sustained by bloodshed and political power mongering. (Fiat currency is ultimately backed by state power, a.k.a. violence.)