2 ms·
There is a crucial difference between decentralized and equitable. A decentralized blockchain needs some mechanism to guarantee perpetual operation in a trustle
by ipnon 5y ago
There is a crucial difference between decentralized and equitable. A decentralized blockchain needs some mechanism to guarantee perpetual operation in a trustless environment, like requiring expensive computations (proof of work) or showing you have "skin in the game" (proof of stake) in order to add transactions to the shared ledger. If you don't have such a mechanism, there's no way to tell valid from invalid transactions, and the blockchain falls apart at the seams.
What it sounds like you are suggesting is that cryptocurrencies should be equitable: everyone should have the same rights to own part of the blockchain. This isn't necessary for a decentralized, trustless, distributed transaction ledger, nor is it likely ideal. What would be the value or utility of a ledger which absolutely anyone could add to at anytime for any reason? You would need to solve 2 problems: 1) distributing the tokens fairly and evenly among every person living and yet to live, and 2) distributing henceforth unfathomably performant supercomputers to all of these token-holders-jus-sanguinis. Any analysis of either of these would very quickly approach insurmountable problems.
There are fundamental constraints to computers and computer networks that have to be addressed in order for these technologies to exist. They preclude any sort of utopian currency of heaven where everyone wins, just by the nature of our physical universe and today's understanding of computation.
- brightstep 5y agoWith regard to your first problem, it may be hard but should result in a more thoroughly decentralized system, no? And on the second, I thought PoS is orders of magnitude less compute-intensive?