4 ms·

Not all PoW mining were created equal, monero for instance uses a pow algorithm that was designed to be resistant to ASIC mining.

mrguyorama 4y ago
All proof of work is just a proxy to proof of capital. As long as having more money and hardware gets you more mined "stuff", then all the power will go to those who start with more resources. "One <thing you can buy a million of>, one vote" just means you can buy more votes.
- kelthuzad 4y ago
  for xmr it's 1 cpu = 1 vote, that's the lowest barrier I can imagine. furthermore owning more capital is not really a big deal since the tokens are fungible, thus no censorship of lower net worth individuals is possible on the protocol level
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    As long as the protocols are controlled by a majority of miners choosing the chain, being able to buy votes is a problem. Devaluing my "owned" currency by forking a new chain with your preferred outcomes, or refusing to implement useful features because it would make it harder for your miners to make a profit are both things detrimental to the ecosystem as a whole and me as an individual and are impossible to prevent as long as you can just buy more votes. More capital means more control over the network, period. This applies to any blockchain that uses miner consensus to decide anything, and also applies to any blockchain that is forkable at all.
    - kelthuzad 4y ago
      you are missing a crucial factor in your viewpoint, owning the majority of any such assets is not even desirable crossing a certain threshold, since it then becomes a liability - who are you going to sell those assets to when distrusts increases due to certain actions? any distrust will fundamentally be detrimental to one's own self interest due to value destruction. furthermore, I heavily doubt it's even a realistic argument that a single high net worth individual could ever compete with a globally sized competition where it's easy to vote via: 1 cpu = 1 vote mechanism. it would be much easier with the traditional asics mining because the high net worth individual could have the money and means to buy up all the asics or produce them himself, but with the ease of availability of cpus, I heavily doubt that it's the same ball game.

mrguyorama 4y ago

All proof of work is just a proxy to proof of capital. As long as having more money and hardware gets you more mined "stuff", then all the power will go to those who start with more resources. "One <thing you can buy a million of>, one vote" just means you can buy more votes.

kelthuzad 4y ago
for xmr it's 1 cpu = 1 vote, that's the lowest barrier I can imagine. furthermore owning more capital is not really a big deal since the tokens are fungible, thus no censorship of lower net worth individuals is possible on the protocol level
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  As long as the protocols are controlled by a majority of miners choosing the chain, being able to buy votes is a problem. Devaluing my "owned" currency by forking a new chain with your preferred outcomes, or refusing to implement useful features because it would make it harder for your miners to make a profit are both things detrimental to the ecosystem as a whole and me as an individual and are impossible to prevent as long as you can just buy more votes. More capital means more control over the network, period. This applies to any blockchain that uses miner consensus to decide anything, and also applies to any blockchain that is forkable at all.
  - kelthuzad 4y ago
    you are missing a crucial factor in your viewpoint, owning the majority of any such assets is not even desirable crossing a certain threshold, since it then becomes a liability - who are you going to sell those assets to when distrusts increases due to certain actions? any distrust will fundamentally be detrimental to one's own self interest due to value destruction. furthermore, I heavily doubt it's even a realistic argument that a single high net worth individual could ever compete with a globally sized competition where it's easy to vote via: 1 cpu = 1 vote mechanism. it would be much easier with the traditional asics mining because the high net worth individual could have the money and means to buy up all the asics or produce them himself, but with the ease of availability of cpus, I heavily doubt that it's the same ball game.