4 ms·

“Runs fine” doesn’t mean it’s energy efficient. If we can get whatever value out of a payment system with 1 wind turbine instead of 10,000, the former is obviou

by hudon 5y ago

“Runs fine” doesn’t mean it’s energy efficient. If we can get whatever value out of a payment system with 1 wind turbine instead of 10,000, the former is obviously a better choice. And right now it’s not obvious that PoW provides anything that other technologies can’t. Bitcoin itself has shown that when PoW doesn’t produce the results people want, developers can just release code that makes users ignore the most work chain... so the system ends up just as political as any other money system, and PoW is just a clever trick to fool investors into thinking there’s some magic “decentralization” going on.

jude- 5y ago
If all it's using is surplus green energy (something regulators can enforce), then efficiency isn't a concern. That energy was wasted either way. Re: PoW, the thing it does provide that no other tech can't is Sybil-resistant open-membership replicated state machines. Anyone can join in deciding state transitions because the barrier to entry (access to mining tech and electricity) is decoupled from the system's operation -- there are no protocol-defined gate keepers. Sybil-resistance comes from the fact that votes on the next epoch of state transitions comes from an irreversible expenditure on the voter's part (i.e. you can't vote for 2 conflicting blocks in PoW without having 2x the mining power). Making the system process state transitions at a fixed pace under these two constraints is the scientific breakthrough that PoW contributes.
- hudon 5y ago
  Of course you can mine 2 “conflicting blocks” in PoW cryptobeans, you can just tweak the clients of a fork to require negligible work for the next block and convince everyone that the most-work chain is a hostile takeover. Satoshi did not anticipate how forking clients with tweaked implementations invalidate the whole security model. This is the same attack model that leads there being a public debate about “Segwit coin VS BCash”. It’s also what happened with the 2013 fork[0]. The system ends up needing politics and power games just like the current financial system. The technology is a distraction to fool intelligent engineers into thinking this system is different. It isn’t. [0] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...
  - jude- 5y ago
    > you can just tweak the clients of a fork to require negligible work or the next block and convince everyone that the most-work chain is a hostile takeover If I have the power to tweak any/all peers of any p2p system arbitrarily, then I already have supreme authority over what that system does. So your hypothetical is vacuous and uninformative. Wake me up when you've found a way to reliably mine two conflicting Bitcoin blocks using the same amount of PoW guesses. > This is the same attack model that leads there being a public debate about “Segwit coin VS BCash”. It’s also what happened with the 2013 fork[0]. Wanna know something truly mind-blowing? You can fork Bitcoin at any time! And yet, none of the forked pretenders have come close to replacing the original Bitcoin. The biggest pretender by marketcap has a measly _2.21%_ of Bitcoin's hashpower [0], despite having the same PoW algorithm. > The system ends up needing politics and power games just like the current financial system Per the above, PoW has so far done a great job indicating which system is the real Bitcoin, and which are the pretenders. Wake me up when one of them overtakes the original. > The technology is a distraction to fool intelligent engineers into thinking this system is different. It isn’t. Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man. [0] https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate
    - hudon 5y ago
      > If I have the power to tweak any/all peers of any p2p system arbitrarily, then I already have supreme authority over what that system does. This is not my argument and is your straw man. The point is most clients run whatever the politicians tell them to. What makes it even harder for engineers to see what’s actually going on with Bitcoin is that we suck at politicking and don’t even see it when it’s happening: the shaming if you’re running the wrong version, the worshipping of certain devs to help identify shepherds the sheep should follow, the scapegoating of dissenters, etc. You’re doing it right now by calling a specific chain a “pretender”. If PoW actually worked as advertised, none of these games would be necessary.
      - jude- 5y ago
        > The point is most clients run whatever the politicians tell them to. What makes it even harder for engineers to see what’s actually going on with Bitcoin is that we suck at politicking and don’t even see it when it’s happening: the shaming if you’re running the wrong version, the worshipping of certain devs to help identify shepherds the sheep should follow, the scapegoating of dissenters, etc. Woah there buddy, speak for yourself, and only yourself. You may be terrible at politics, but I can assure you, not every engineer is. Also, you are the one who's trying to make the case that the ability to make a derivative work of Bitcoin means that PoW has somehow failed. I'd say it's just the opposite -- the fact that one chain has a lot more PoW than the other is a very strong reading of the collective affinities borne by each chains' stakeholders. That's something you couldn't measure in pre-Bitcoin p2p systems. If anything, it means political shenanigans are harder to come by -- in order to legitimately claim one chain is more well-received than another other, you have to pony up actual energy. Hype, paid followers, ad blitzes, charismatic leaders, etc. only get you so far. > You’re doing it right now by calling a specific chain a “pretender”. Bitcoin came first. BCash, BSV, etc. are derivative works, not the original. Bitcoin has nearly two orders of magnitude of hashes per second behind it than the rest. Each project styles itself as "Bitcoin." These are all facts. My characterization of these other systems as "pretenders" is meant to convey these facts, and nothing more. > If PoW actually worked as advertised, none of these games would be necessary. Bitcoin is still Bitcoin, derivative works notwithstanding, but people will believe whatever they want at the end of the day. Honestly, I don't care, because as of right now, far more people believe that the original Bitcoin is the Bitcoin, as evidenced by its significantly higher PoW.

by hudon 5y ago

jude- 5y ago

If all it's using is surplus green energy (something regulators can enforce), then efficiency isn't a concern. That energy was wasted either way. Re: PoW, the thing it does provide that no other tech can't is Sybil-resistant open-membership replicated state machines. Anyone can join in deciding state transitions because the barrier to entry (access to mining tech and electricity) is decoupled from the system's operation -- there are no protocol-defined gate keepers. Sybil-resistance comes from the fact that votes on the next epoch of state transitions comes from an irreversible expenditure on the voter's part (i.e. you can't vote for 2 conflicting blocks in PoW without having 2x the mining power). Making the system process state transitions at a fixed pace under these two constraints is the scientific breakthrough that PoW contributes.

hudon 5y ago
Of course you can mine 2 “conflicting blocks” in PoW cryptobeans, you can just tweak the clients of a fork to require negligible work for the next block and convince everyone that the most-work chain is a hostile takeover. Satoshi did not anticipate how forking clients with tweaked implementations invalidate the whole security model. This is the same attack model that leads there being a public debate about “Segwit coin VS BCash”. It’s also what happened with the 2013 fork[0]. The system ends up needing politics and power games just like the current financial system. The technology is a distraction to fool intelligent engineers into thinking this system is different. It isn’t. [0] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-...
- jude- 5y ago
  > you can just tweak the clients of a fork to require negligible work or the next block and convince everyone that the most-work chain is a hostile takeover If I have the power to tweak any/all peers of any p2p system arbitrarily, then I already have supreme authority over what that system does. So your hypothetical is vacuous and uninformative. Wake me up when you've found a way to reliably mine two conflicting Bitcoin blocks using the same amount of PoW guesses. > This is the same attack model that leads there being a public debate about “Segwit coin VS BCash”. It’s also what happened with the 2013 fork[0]. Wanna know something truly mind-blowing? You can fork Bitcoin at any time! And yet, none of the forked pretenders have come close to replacing the original Bitcoin. The biggest pretender by marketcap has a measly _2.21%_ of Bitcoin's hashpower [0], despite having the same PoW algorithm. > The system ends up needing politics and power games just like the current financial system Per the above, PoW has so far done a great job indicating which system is the real Bitcoin, and which are the pretenders. Wake me up when one of them overtakes the original. > The technology is a distraction to fool intelligent engineers into thinking this system is different. It isn’t. Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man. [0] https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate https://fork.lol/pow/hashrate
  - hudon 5y ago
    > If I have the power to tweak any/all peers of any p2p system arbitrarily, then I already have supreme authority over what that system does. This is not my argument and is your straw man. The point is most clients run whatever the politicians tell them to. What makes it even harder for engineers to see what’s actually going on with Bitcoin is that we suck at politicking and don’t even see it when it’s happening: the shaming if you’re running the wrong version, the worshipping of certain devs to help identify shepherds the sheep should follow, the scapegoating of dissenters, etc. You’re doing it right now by calling a specific chain a “pretender”. If PoW actually worked as advertised, none of these games would be necessary.
    - jude- 5y ago
      > The point is most clients run whatever the politicians tell them to. What makes it even harder for engineers to see what’s actually going on with Bitcoin is that we suck at politicking and don’t even see it when it’s happening: the shaming if you’re running the wrong version, the worshipping of certain devs to help identify shepherds the sheep should follow, the scapegoating of dissenters, etc. Woah there buddy, speak for yourself, and only yourself. You may be terrible at politics, but I can assure you, not every engineer is. Also, you are the one who's trying to make the case that the ability to make a derivative work of Bitcoin means that PoW has somehow failed. I'd say it's just the opposite -- the fact that one chain has a lot more PoW than the other is a very strong reading of the collective affinities borne by each chains' stakeholders. That's something you couldn't measure in pre-Bitcoin p2p systems. If anything, it means political shenanigans are harder to come by -- in order to legitimately claim one chain is more well-received than another other, you have to pony up actual energy. Hype, paid followers, ad blitzes, charismatic leaders, etc. only get you so far. > You’re doing it right now by calling a specific chain a “pretender”. Bitcoin came first. BCash, BSV, etc. are derivative works, not the original. Bitcoin has nearly two orders of magnitude of hashes per second behind it than the rest. Each project styles itself as "Bitcoin." These are all facts. My characterization of these other systems as "pretenders" is meant to convey these facts, and nothing more. > If PoW actually worked as advertised, none of these games would be necessary. Bitcoin is still Bitcoin, derivative works notwithstanding, but people will believe whatever they want at the end of the day. Honestly, I don't care, because as of right now, far more people believe that the original Bitcoin is the Bitcoin, as evidenced by its significantly higher PoW.