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The whole "proof of work" concept regarding crypto is a sham. Normally, the expenditure of energy produces tangible products or services. In the case of crypto

The whole "proof of work" concept regarding crypto is a sham. Normally, the expenditure of energy produces tangible products or services. In the case of crypto currency, massive amounts of heat is wasted to produce a number with questionable "value". I just can't wrap my head around this.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago
I've been thinking for a while that proof of work should be replaced with some other type of real work, such as training a Neural Net, but that runs into major issues after thinking about if for more than a second. Hopefully though, someone much smarter than me can figure something out
- ratsmack 4y ago
  The "value" must be produced outside of the crypto system then moved into the system as a value store. I don't know how this is not an obvious concept.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
    Thats one of the very obvious drawbacks.. Money is a store of value, but crypto just tries to 'be' the value, which doesn't go well, because well it's not valuable at all
tromp 4y ago
It produces objective immutability of the transaction history.
- 8note 4y ago
  Isn't it subjective immutability? Your transaction might disappear from the history if the view changes to have some other branch be the accepted one
  - tromp 4y ago
    The PoW on top of a tx produces immutability in the sense of a minimum cost imposed on a rewriting of that tx. If no attacker is willing to bear that cost, then the objective longest chain rule (i.e. most cumulative difficulty) will preserve the history up to that tx. Without PoW you have no objective way to determine the true history.
- SrslyJosh 4y ago
  It's a terrible way of doing that, and it isn't even necessary to produce an immutable record of transactions. Seriously, spend some time thinking about other models for distributed transaction records. Blockchains are designed the way they are to prevent governance and oversight, meaning, if someone scams you or steals from you, there's no way to get your money back. "No backsies" is the most fundamental principle of their design.
10amxn10 4y ago

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

I've been thinking for a while that proof of work should be replaced with some other type of real work, such as training a Neural Net, but that runs into major issues after thinking about if for more than a second. Hopefully though, someone much smarter than me can figure something out

ratsmack 4y ago
The "value" must be produced outside of the crypto system then moved into the system as a value store. I don't know how this is not an obvious concept.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  Thats one of the very obvious drawbacks.. Money is a store of value, but crypto just tries to 'be' the value, which doesn't go well, because well it's not valuable at all

tromp 4y ago

It produces objective immutability of the transaction history.

8note 4y ago
Isn't it subjective immutability? Your transaction might disappear from the history if the view changes to have some other branch be the accepted one
- tromp 4y ago
  The PoW on top of a tx produces immutability in the sense of a minimum cost imposed on a rewriting of that tx. If no attacker is willing to bear that cost, then the objective longest chain rule (i.e. most cumulative difficulty) will preserve the history up to that tx. Without PoW you have no objective way to determine the true history.
SrslyJosh 4y ago
It's a terrible way of doing that, and it isn't even necessary to produce an immutable record of transactions. Seriously, spend some time thinking about other models for distributed transaction records. Blockchains are designed the way they are to prevent governance and oversight, meaning, if someone scams you or steals from you, there's no way to get your money back. "No backsies" is the most fundamental principle of their design.

10amxn10 4y ago