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> the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing I've been following Stephen Diehl and he seems to have a greater understanding than most, e

> the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing I've been following Stephen Diehl and he seems to have a greater understanding than most, even if he is consistently bearish on the technology and I'm not always in agreement. I don't see the issue you are having: adjective: plutocratic relating to or characterized by government by the wealthy. Proof of stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency.

drdeca 5y ago
>> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic [...] > The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. > PoS is not meant to increase scalability carlosdp isn't saying "because PoS isn't plutocratic, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold", Rather, carlosdp is saying that "because PoS isn't the thing being proposed for scaling, but is instead for different things, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold".
- Traster 5y ago
  I don't see how increasing efficiency is seriously distinct from increasing scalability? It seems to me that efficiency is a solution to scalability.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    scalability is about things like "how many transactions per second you can handle", efficiency (in this context) is more about e.g. "how much is the cost of electricity used (and other such costs), divided by how many transactions". You cannot increase number of transactions by just increasing the amount of electricity; it doesn't work that way. If an intervention reduces the amount of electricity used without changing the amount of transactions that can happen, that increases the efficiency, but this does not thereby increase scalability. So, something which reduces electricity use and hardware use, but doesn't substantially influence the amount of transactions that can go through, improves efficiency, but doesn't improve scalability.

drdeca 5y ago

>> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic [...] > The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. > PoS is not meant to increase scalability carlosdp isn't saying "because PoS isn't plutocratic, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold", Rather, carlosdp is saying that "because PoS isn't the thing being proposed for scaling, but is instead for different things, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold".

Traster 5y ago
I don't see how increasing efficiency is seriously distinct from increasing scalability? It seems to me that efficiency is a solution to scalability.
- drdeca 5y ago
  scalability is about things like "how many transactions per second you can handle", efficiency (in this context) is more about e.g. "how much is the cost of electricity used (and other such costs), divided by how many transactions". You cannot increase number of transactions by just increasing the amount of electricity; it doesn't work that way. If an intervention reduces the amount of electricity used without changing the amount of transactions that can happen, that increases the efficiency, but this does not thereby increase scalability. So, something which reduces electricity use and hardware use, but doesn't substantially influence the amount of transactions that can go through, improves efficiency, but doesn't improve scalability.