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Besides proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, I’m surprised the more ecologically-friendly proof-of-space system isn’t being looked at harder. FileCoin uses it (it’

Besides proof-of-work and proof-of-stake, I’m surprised the more ecologically-friendly proof-of-space system isn’t being looked at harder. FileCoin uses it (it’s integral to the system to prove you have the space you’re selling) but it could also be used by other distributed Blockchains to prove that a node’s operator has invested in the ecosystem (by buying lots of storage) - I’d say I’d prefer to run out of HDD supply than destroy the earth through fossil-fuel power plant emissions.

schmichael 7y ago
Does Proof of Space work? I seem to remember there being fundamental issues FileCoin hadn't resolved, but I probably last looked into it months or years ago. Maybe this? https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/open-problems.md https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/ope... I don't have the time/desire right now to figure out how the project is doing and the soundness of the approach.
avhwl 7y ago
Proof-of-Capacity schemes would incur ecological cost as well, replacing a constantly escalating energy demand for a constantly escalating rare-earth metal demand.
davidgerard 7y ago
Proof-of-space rapidly goes to the price of the cheapest bulk storage, which is who can rent space on AWS cheapest, per David S. H. Rosenthal: https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html > Note also that it is possible at low cost to rent very large amounts of storage and computation for short periods of time in order to mount a 51% attack on a PoSp/VDP network in the same way that "mining as a service" enables 51% attacks on alt-coins. > For example, a back-of-the-envelope computation of a hour-long Petabyte attack at Amazon would start by using about 7 days of AWS Free Tier to write the data to the sc1 version of Elastic Block Storage. The EBS would cost $35/PB/hr, so the setup would cost $2940. Then the actual hour-long attack would cost $35, for a total of just under $3000. > I'm skeptical that the low-reward approach to maintaining decentralization is viable.
woah 7y ago
If Filecoin works (still haven’t shipped), then it’s unclear whether it’s less wasteful than PoW. This is because coins are mined by using up hard drive capacity, whether or not useful data is stored. The theory is that it will be better to store useful data for people because miners will get paid for that in addition to the mined coins. You could have a situation where 99 percent of the storage used in Filecoin is storing junk.
knopkop_ 7y ago
Burstcoin uses proof-of-space. IIRC it was launched in 2014.

schmichael 7y ago

Does Proof of Space work? I seem to remember there being fundamental issues FileCoin hadn't resolved, but I probably last looked into it months or years ago. Maybe this? https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/open-problems.md https://github.com/filecoin-project/research/blob/master/ope... I don't have the time/desire right now to figure out how the project is doing and the soundness of the approach.

avhwl 7y ago

Proof-of-Capacity schemes would incur ecological cost as well, replacing a constantly escalating energy demand for a constantly escalating rare-earth metal demand.

davidgerard 7y ago

Proof-of-space rapidly goes to the price of the cheapest bulk storage, which is who can rent space on AWS cheapest, per David S. H. Rosenthal: https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/03/proofs-of-space.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html https://blog.dshr.org/2018/09/chia-network.html > Note also that it is possible at low cost to rent very large amounts of storage and computation for short periods of time in order to mount a 51% attack on a PoSp/VDP network in the same way that "mining as a service" enables 51% attacks on alt-coins. > For example, a back-of-the-envelope computation of a hour-long Petabyte attack at Amazon would start by using about 7 days of AWS Free Tier to write the data to the sc1 version of Elastic Block Storage. The EBS would cost $35/PB/hr, so the setup would cost $2940. Then the actual hour-long attack would cost $35, for a total of just under $3000. > I'm skeptical that the low-reward approach to maintaining decentralization is viable.

woah 7y ago

If Filecoin works (still haven’t shipped), then it’s unclear whether it’s less wasteful than PoW. This is because coins are mined by using up hard drive capacity, whether or not useful data is stored. The theory is that it will be better to store useful data for people because miners will get paid for that in addition to the mined coins. You could have a situation where 99 percent of the storage used in Filecoin is storing junk.

knopkop_ 7y ago

Burstcoin uses proof-of-space. IIRC it was launched in 2014.