4 ms·

How is this permission-less if in order to participate in mining you need to spend thousands of dollars nowadays?

by viach 9y ago

shawabawa3 9y ago
> in order to participate in mining you need to spend thousands of dollars nowadays? Because that has nothing to do with being permissionless?
- viach 9y ago
  It depends on how do you define "permission". "Of course, you can join our club, it's free to join for everyone. Oh, small detail, the entry ticket is 100K$"
  - shawabawa3 9y ago
    A few problems with that analogy: 1) Mining isn't required to use the network 2) You don't have to pay any specific "club" to start mining. You need to be able to generate hashes efficiently, how you do that is up to you 3) It's still unrelated to what "permissionless" means in this case "Permissionless Blockchains allow anyone to participate. The transactions are validated and processed by votes / consensus. A vote does not depend on having a prior identity of any kind within the ledger and no pre-existing trust is assumed between participating nodes."
    - viach 9y ago
      > 1) Mining isn't required to use the network I define participate as "be able to mine and use the network". You can't do both for free anymore with Bitcoin. > 2) You don't have to pay any specific "club" to start mining. You need to be able to generate hashes efficiently, how you do that is up to you Sorry, but it sounds like "In order to learn how to fly you just have to flap your hands more efficiently, how you do that is up to you" > 3) It's still unrelated to what "permissionless" means in this case From your definition "Permissionless Blockchains allow anyone to participate". Okay, you can sort of participate in tsunami by jumping in the sea, but do you really do?
      - shawabawa3 9y ago
        > You can't do both for free anymore with Bitcoin You never could. Mining has always had a cost and by design the cost increases to match the block rewards I'm bored of this argument. You're arguing against a different definition to me and I'm not sure what your point is - that mining is expensive?
        viach 9y ago
        I'm saying that "permission-less", in my view, should be defined as "an average person can use network and participate in mining", which is not the case with Bitcoin anymore.
        lagadu 9y ago
        The "average person" doesn't have access to a computer or stable internet connectivity, if we're arguing for what the average person should be able to do/access we have a lot more basic problems to discuss before we get to decentralised virtual networks. That aside, technically anyone with a computing device can contribute to most networks.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    Compare your example with: "You can't join our club."
    - viach 9y ago
      Realistically, there are no clubs you can't join if have enough money
chvid 9y ago
If you start a new blockchain then you probably don't need as hard proof-of-work problems as there is now in bitcoin. One thing that the article is missing to discuss is that for a blockchain to truly work there needs to be a reward system for the nodes to participate in the network (basically to cover the cost of this crazy expensive infrastructure). Ie. a cryptocurrency that can be mined.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  This. I always thought that any blockchain could only work if there was a reward system (otherwise you're dealing with trusted parties and thus no blockchain in the strict sense is needed), and thus it never made any sense to me to see people implementing blockchains everywhere. News: "Company X is using blockchains internally." Me: "Does that mean Company X have created a token that can be mined by its own computers, in a crazy internal competition that will waste thousands in energy consumption and hardware?"
  - lagadu 9y ago
    Cryptocurrencies don't necessarily have to be mined. Some newer ones have systems that aren't computationally intensive; they do that by effectively inverting the system of responsibility: they work by saying "if you hold our token, you have a vested interest in the integrity of the chain, therefore we trust you to validate transactions for the network" where "validate" means "vote on whether a transaction is legitimate". It's fairly interesting and still under research but on some smaller cryptocurrencies it seems to be working. Google "proof of stake" for more. edit: for a single organization that might not be very useful, as you already have one big central entity that you trust (the organization itself) but it is potentially an additional layer of security that can be tailored to the organization's needs.
pjc50 9y ago
You don't need to mine to make Bitcoin transactions. By "permissionless" people tend to mean that you can send money to and from another user of the system regardless of the legality and without a payment processor to intervene and forbid it.
- chvid 9y ago
  That is not the meaning here. Here it means that new nodes can join the network without being permissioned by an authority.
gomox 9y ago
It's permission-less because you participate as a node in the network without anyone granting you permission to do so. You don't have to spend thousands to be a bitcoin miner. You can use any old computer. Making a profit is a different story. Still, resources can be pooled together to buy a competitive mining rig for a few grand. Even then, a few thousand dollars is realistically not a large entry fee for anything. Wiring your house for Internet access would cost around that much if it wasn't subsidized.

How is this permission-less if in order to participate in mining you need to spend thousands of dollars nowadays?

by viach 9y ago

How is this permission-less if in order to participate in mining you need to spend thousands of dollars nowadays?

> in order to participate in mining you need to spend thousands of dollars nowadays? Because that has nothing to do with being permissionless?

viach 9y ago
It depends on how do you define "permission". "Of course, you can join our club, it's free to join for everyone. Oh, small detail, the entry ticket is 100K$"
- shawabawa3 9y ago
  A few problems with that analogy: 1) Mining isn't required to use the network 2) You don't have to pay any specific "club" to start mining. You need to be able to generate hashes efficiently, how you do that is up to you 3) It's still unrelated to what "permissionless" means in this case "Permissionless Blockchains allow anyone to participate. The transactions are validated and processed by votes / consensus. A vote does not depend on having a prior identity of any kind within the ledger and no pre-existing trust is assumed between participating nodes."
  - viach 9y ago
    > 1) Mining isn't required to use the network I define participate as "be able to mine and use the network". You can't do both for free anymore with Bitcoin. > 2) You don't have to pay any specific "club" to start mining. You need to be able to generate hashes efficiently, how you do that is up to you Sorry, but it sounds like "In order to learn how to fly you just have to flap your hands more efficiently, how you do that is up to you" > 3) It's still unrelated to what "permissionless" means in this case From your definition "Permissionless Blockchains allow anyone to participate". Okay, you can sort of participate in tsunami by jumping in the sea, but do you really do?
    - shawabawa3 9y ago
      > You can't do both for free anymore with Bitcoin You never could. Mining has always had a cost and by design the cost increases to match the block rewards I'm bored of this argument. You're arguing against a different definition to me and I'm not sure what your point is - that mining is expensive?
      - viach 9y ago
        I'm saying that "permission-less", in my view, should be defined as "an average person can use network and participate in mining", which is not the case with Bitcoin anymore.
        lagadu 9y ago
        The "average person" doesn't have access to a computer or stable internet connectivity, if we're arguing for what the average person should be able to do/access we have a lot more basic problems to discuss before we get to decentralised virtual networks. That aside, technically anyone with a computing device can contribute to most networks.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Compare your example with: "You can't join our club."
  - viach 9y ago
    Realistically, there are no clubs you can't join if have enough money

chvid 9y ago

If you start a new blockchain then you probably don't need as hard proof-of-work problems as there is now in bitcoin. One thing that the article is missing to discuss is that for a blockchain to truly work there needs to be a reward system for the nodes to participate in the network (basically to cover the cost of this crazy expensive infrastructure). Ie. a cryptocurrency that can be mined.

fiatjaf 9y ago
This. I always thought that any blockchain could only work if there was a reward system (otherwise you're dealing with trusted parties and thus no blockchain in the strict sense is needed), and thus it never made any sense to me to see people implementing blockchains everywhere. News: "Company X is using blockchains internally." Me: "Does that mean Company X have created a token that can be mined by its own computers, in a crazy internal competition that will waste thousands in energy consumption and hardware?"
- lagadu 9y ago
  Cryptocurrencies don't necessarily have to be mined. Some newer ones have systems that aren't computationally intensive; they do that by effectively inverting the system of responsibility: they work by saying "if you hold our token, you have a vested interest in the integrity of the chain, therefore we trust you to validate transactions for the network" where "validate" means "vote on whether a transaction is legitimate". It's fairly interesting and still under research but on some smaller cryptocurrencies it seems to be working. Google "proof of stake" for more. edit: for a single organization that might not be very useful, as you already have one big central entity that you trust (the organization itself) but it is potentially an additional layer of security that can be tailored to the organization's needs.

pjc50 9y ago

You don't need to mine to make Bitcoin transactions. By "permissionless" people tend to mean that you can send money to and from another user of the system regardless of the legality and without a payment processor to intervene and forbid it.

chvid 9y ago
That is not the meaning here. Here it means that new nodes can join the network without being permissioned by an authority.

gomox 9y ago

It's permission-less because you participate as a node in the network without anyone granting you permission to do so. You don't have to spend thousands to be a bitcoin miner. You can use any old computer. Making a profit is a different story. Still, resources can be pooled together to buy a competitive mining rig for a few grand. Even then, a few thousand dollars is realistically not a large entry fee for anything. Wiring your house for Internet access would cost around that much if it wasn't subsidized.