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> crypto is a cancer. Proof of Work is a cancer. The two are heavily intertwined, but they are not technically mutual terms. Proof of Work needs to be stopped,

• ta988 5y ago
  We had the promise that this would change many years ago, I doubt it will change for many years to come.
  • rekoil 5y ago
    As of right now the Ethereum foundation are still projecting ~Q2 2022 for full Proof of Stake.
• buran77 5y ago
  PoW(hatever) is a cancer as long as the "Whatever" doesn't have any value behind it, it doesn't bring value to society because it's guaranteed to take resources without leaving anything useful behind. It incentivizes people to abuse anything at hand to obtain proof of that otherwise worthless "Whatever". Whether it's "work" or "space" or "time" then someone will always look to abuse others to obtain more proof without it creating any value. Unlike money (generically) PoWhatever cryptocurrencies aren't backed by anything anyone can define as valuable. Proof of Housing_built, Proof of Goods_transported, Proof of Music_created, Proof of Space_flights all create real value. Proof of Work where the work is without doubt useless in itself and an absolute net loss for society can't result in anything practically valuable. At best it results in a very wasteful Ponzi scheme. Imagine something as innocent as "proof of clapping hands", you may get some reward for holding a record but it's otherwise completely useless. That at least only affects you and your hands, even if a waste of time that doesn't seem to bring anything of value - joy or other practical benefits. What if someone could abuse you and force you to clap at the cost of lost productivity at work, health issues, etc. and the result of that work is... nothing?
  • nightski 5y ago
    But at the end of the day, you can only imagine proof of clapping hands because yes that example is useless. But proof of work is not useless, hence we don't have to imagine it. Distributed consensus is useful to many people at this point.
    • mirntyfirty 5y ago
      How many people? How useful? What is the distribution of that useful amongst those people? At what cost does this useful stop being useful?
    • buran77 5y ago
      > you can only imagine proof of clapping hands because yes that example is useless. People do it all the time, it must have something. But no practical value. But let's not argue for the sake of arguing. It's like saying Ponzi schemes are good otherwise so many people wouldn't be into them. Or any example of things so many people do that have no value and we'd really rather they stopped. Proof of Whatever is just about gobbling up some resource (sometimes with incredibly high cost for society in general) for some artificially driven value but of no practical positive consequences to almost anyone in the world. Except for the few that are incentivized to make it look more valuable because they've invested and its actual value never changed. It's still a solution waiting for a problem. And before you argue more, the computer and internet you're using to post your opinions were created with far less waste and provide far more value. If they go away tomorrow the world will suffer a lot, society will literally regress decades. If proof of waste goes away the "investors" in the pyramid will suffer for being tricked and the rest of the world wouldn't bat an eye.
  • danuker 5y ago
    The supposed usefulness of the work sacrificed in proof-of-work is to prevent Sybil attacks on the network. An attacker can spawn millions of virtual nodes, yet they will never hijack consensus because of the objectively-measurable resource sacrifice. While there may be too much reward for this sacrifice currently, the idea is a sound one.
• ganzuul 5y ago
  There is one non-profit token based on BOINC that uses scientific computation as PoW. Their self-awareness with regards to their influence is impressive.
  • AgentME 5y ago
    Gridcoin (the cryptocurrency you're referring to) doesn't actually use the scientific computation as proof-of-work. It's built on proof-of-stake. It just also happens to have minting set up so new coins go to people doing scientific computation, in a process that superficially resembles proof-of-work mining. The paying-people-to-do-scientific-computation part is purely something extra and isn't strictly necessary in its design to make it work as a cryptocurrency. (It's kind of splitting hairs, but I see gridcoin brought up a lot by people arguing stuff like "Proof of stake isn't the answer. Proof of work is still good, we just need more useful proof of work" which is a big misunderstanding of it. Useful scientific computation generally doesn't work as proof-of-work and is not an example of it even in the context of Gridcoin. Only specific kinds of computation can work for proof-of-work, and the computation being useful in other contexts actually harms its usefulness for proof-of-work because it can allow the computation for 51% attacks to be subsidized by the other uses of the computation.)
    • ganzuul 5y ago
      Point taken. Duplication of effort could be argued is proof of work but perhaps that is splitting hairs.
• AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  When working with hard/physical assets, one needs no proof of anything. The existence of the asset is the proof. To me, there needs to be an effective counterbalance to the need for "proof" in the first place, otherwise we are simply prolonging the petrodollar's capability to exist in a world that is clearly quite ready to abandon it.
  • quickthrowman 5y ago
    > When working with hard/physical assets, one needs no proof of anything. The existence of the asset is the proof. Counterpoint: Real Property
• tomc1985 5y ago
  No, rampant transactionalization/financialization is the cancer. Rent-seeking leeches trying to extract money out of previously neutral activity, growing unchecked. The very definition of cancer.