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I don't think you can really split one from the other, the blockchain and its surrounding algorithms is how "you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incent
by simias 9y ago
I don't think you can really split one from the other, the blockchain and its surrounding algorithms is how "you can bootstrap issuance of a new asset by incentivizing participants to assist in maintaining a specified computer network in exchange for cryptographically-{verifiable|enforced} units".
I find the blockchain technology very interesting because it solves a very hard problem in an inventive way and at the same time once you hear how it works it sounds almost obvious. All the individual parts have been known for ages but they're combined in an innovative way.
I'm personally not convinced by the "political" side of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies but on the technical side it's one of the most inspiring piece of software in the past decade IMO.
- xg15 9y agoIf you talk about the general idea of an append-only distributed database with no central point of control, I agree with you. However the proof-of-work/auto-adjusting-difficulty method of asserting truth still seems horrible to me from a technical perspective. Politically, I don't want to live in a world where this principle catches on and an ever-growing % of energy production would be spend on solving meaningless math problems.
- simias 9y agoYeah the proof of work is probably the less elegant aspect of it all, I can agree with that. But theoretically you could replace by any other function that's difficult to compute but easy to verify. Maybe it's just a solution in search for a problem.
- ufo 9y agoI don't understand how that would fix proof of work. The whole point is that the voting power is proportional to how much computational power you are willing to burn away, in order to protect against Sybil attacks.
- simias 9y agoI was thinking that eventually we may discover a proof of work that would actually compute something useful instead of burning electricity away. One can hope at least.
- arthurcolle 9y agoEthereum
- xg15 9y agoI'm not savvy in the technology, but are the contracts actually executed as part of mining?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- akhosla 9y agoRecommend you check out Proof-of-Stake. It solves the problem of power wastage. ;)
- Klathmon 9y agoBut many people (including those who are actively developing it) aren't even sure if Proof-of-Stake is even fully possible. As far as I know there are still some pretty big holes in PoS that still need to be filled in.
- rocqua 9y agoThat requires solving the 'nothing at stake' problem. I recall reading some proposed solutions, but they were complicated. If anything is great about proof-of-work, it's how simple it is.