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Proof of work gives you spam resistance basically. Add a computational cost to do something to make it computationally expensive to do. Eg ddos protection, your
by carlsborg 9y ago
Proof of work gives you spam resistance basically. Add a computational cost to do something to make it computationally expensive to do. Eg ddos protection, your browser needs to solve a hashing problem to proceed.
It allows bitcoin to be decentralised (unordered message passing, eventually consistent nodes, no on off switch, no single point of failure) trust-less (no authority to complain to who can arbitrate or make changes), and resilient to attack .. all of this: in consensus on mining new blocks, in immmutability of the transaction history, in releasing new coins into the system at a predefined rate. To name some.
- brucephillips 9y agoHuh? BTC doesn't have spam.
- coralreef 9y agoSpamming the network with low value transactions?
- brucephillips 9y agoI guess you could call that spam. Proof of work has nothing to do with it though.
- coralreef 9y agoProof of works puts a real cost on confirming transactions in the form of computing power/electricity, preventing any miner from filling the blockchain with garbage, and economically incentivizing them to serve the network.
- carlsborg 9y agoSorry if I wasn't clear - I was only referring to spam and ddos protection to explain the concept of proof of work. Take the case of immutability of past transactions.. the computational cost to create the blockchain would be enormous.