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Most proponents of Proof of Work don't celebrate the use of energy. They celebrate the use cases that PoW enables. I don't know of any other way to trustlessly
by Taek 6y ago
Most proponents of Proof of Work don't celebrate the use of energy. They celebrate the use cases that PoW enables. I don't know of any other way to trustlessly establish a consensus ordering, and I believe that being able to trustlessly establish a consensus ordering is very valuable, therefore I believe PoW is worth the expense.
These decisions get made on an open market, it's not like anybody is forced to put money into a wasteful system if they aren't getting value out of that system.
- rektide 6y agoI personally don't feel like identity & naming want or need concensus ordering. I cited HIP & Wireguard, which don't require that total ordering. The issues of control & power that come into play when we create distributed systems then make them all agree & work in the same way seems antithetical, to me, to the very idea of distributedness itself. I'm far more interested in systems that can range & explore possibility spaces untethered from any notion of root consensus. I would have us rely on informal weak trust models, friend of a friend, web of trust relations, rather than distributed-but-totalizing. Thank your for your reply. I've talked some about my questions & what I want to explore, but I appreciate your comment a lot. Talking about what proof of work buys us, that it's there for total ordering, is I think a wonderful assessment, & even though it's not my priority or desire, I do think it buys a lot of interesting technical capabilities & assurances we may otherwise not be able to have.