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The article assumes that PoW cannot be done in an energy efficient way. Last year I wrote an article on how to do PoW in an energy efficient way by using the d

by janmo 5y ago

The article assumes that PoW cannot be done in an energy efficient way. Last year I wrote an article on how to do PoW in an energy efficient way by using the digital signing capability from the NFC chip of modern passports. The proposal was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477

dandanua 5y ago
You don't need PoW mining or any sophisticated consensus at all if you use tamper-proof hardware. Here is my proposal of using FIDO keys https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26214175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26214175
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
  > tamper-proof hardware Does not exist. FIDO keys are merely tamper resistant.
  - dandanua 5y ago
    There is a market of secure microchips and it's evolving. Of course, there are no 100% secure solutions, but we're heading towards practical security. There are no full-proof solutions for anything in life. Even Bitcoin is not full-proof. You just need to capture coordinators of a couple of mining pools. I believe collecting those in China will be enough to gain 51% control.
pornel 5y ago
That's trusting private keys of passport-issuing governments and makers of the NFC chips. If you can trust an authority like that, then you don't even need a blockchain. The whole scheme will fall apart as soon as value of cheating will be higher than the cost of equipment needed to extract keys from a passport.
- janmo 5y ago
  That's of concern but solutions to these problems have been discussed in the original post. This includes: - Have a custom difficulty for every single passport so that it wont be profitable to extract the private key. Let's say a passport has already mined a block, then it will be twice as difficult for that same passport to mine a second one. - Make it so that 51% of the countries have to collude in order to run a double spend. Now think about the advantages: - No Botnets mining it. - Potentially many more "small" miners (individuals). Not huge mining farms somewhere in China or Island.

by janmo 5y ago

dandanua 5y ago

You don't need PoW mining or any sophisticated consensus at all if you use tamper-proof hardware. Here is my proposal of using FIDO keys https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26214175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26214175

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SheinhardtWigCo 5y ago
> tamper-proof hardware Does not exist. FIDO keys are merely tamper resistant.
- dandanua 5y ago
  There is a market of secure microchips and it's evolving. Of course, there are no 100% secure solutions, but we're heading towards practical security. There are no full-proof solutions for anything in life. Even Bitcoin is not full-proof. You just need to capture coordinators of a couple of mining pools. I believe collecting those in China will be enough to gain 51% control.

pornel 5y ago

That's trusting private keys of passport-issuing governments and makers of the NFC chips. If you can trust an authority like that, then you don't even need a blockchain. The whole scheme will fall apart as soon as value of cheating will be higher than the cost of equipment needed to extract keys from a passport.

janmo 5y ago
That's of concern but solutions to these problems have been discussed in the original post. This includes: - Have a custom difficulty for every single passport so that it wont be profitable to extract the private key. Let's say a passport has already mined a block, then it will be twice as difficult for that same passport to mine a second one. - Make it so that 51% of the countries have to collude in order to run a double spend. Now think about the advantages: - No Botnets mining it. - Potentially many more "small" miners (individuals). Not huge mining farms somewhere in China or Island.