4 ms·
So, your argument is: "you say our thing sucks at X, but if you really think so, why aren't you trying to fix it?" Filling in the variables differently, we coul
by CobrastanJorji 9y ago
So, your argument is: "you say our thing sucks at X, but if you really think so, why aren't you trying to fix it?" Filling in the variables differently, we could construct an argument like "If civil engineers really cared about structural stability, then that's exactly why they ought to be working on my bridge made out of playing cards."
It's not their job to fix someone else's bad idea.
- darawk 9y agoCryptocurrencies aren't going away. Which means that if your primary motivation to not work on cryptocurrency is that it wastes energy, then there's a whole lot of room for you to be making it better, and that is a stupid motivation. I'm not saying that they are obligated to work on it because it wastes energy. But the comment I was responding to implied that distributed systems engineers didn't want to work on blockchains because they are wasteful - which is clearly illogical. That'd be like Elon Musk not working on electric cars because they're inefficient. Or Solar cells. Etc, etc..
- dboreham 9y agoBut the entire point is that it wastes energy. That's why it works. It isn't like a car that can be made more efficient and therefore better. The central premise is that we're going to waste energy to do something that can be done in other ways without wasting energy.
- darawk 9y agoThe entire point is that it wastes something. Not specifically energy. The idea is that there is a sunk, unrecoverable cost associated with mining. That cost may be able to take other forms, though. In the case of proof-of-stake, that cost is the time-value of money.
- nullstyle 9y agoNo, wasting energy is not why blockchain works. proof of work is just one way a blockchain can work. There are alternatives: https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/scp.html https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/scp.html disclosure: I work at stellar
- jethro_tell 9y agoNo that's not illogical, Why would I work to bend something like block chain, that was designed to be inefficent, to my will when I can just start from scratch using projects that were designed to be efficient first? That's very logical, the kind of decision that an engineer that's getting paid the make the best distributed system for the least money would make.
- darawk 9y agoIt's not designed to be inefficient. It's designed to solve the distributed consensus problem in an adversarial environment. There are other now proposed mechanisms of doing that (e.g. PoS) that are quite efficient. Working on those would be extremely beneficial to the cause of environmental efficiency.
- jethro_tell 9y agoEvironmental efficiently solving a problem I don't have is still inefficient. I still can't think of a mojor user for proof of work in a destributed system. I have trouble thinking of a distributed system that someone would pay for to not be centrally trusted, usually by the benefactor of employment? We always hear what a great solution blockchain is. Even if that's true, I never hear the actual problem it solves. Sure, say distributed ledger, and proof of work but those are solutions of sorts. Name a problem that would best be solved with blockchain.
- darawk 9y ago> Name a problem that would best be solved with blockchain. Money. E.g. Bitcoin.
- dogecoinbase 9y agoBitcoin as money has all the worst properties of both credit cards (traceable, non-anonymous) and cash (irreversible, theft-prone).