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Not sure where bitcoin got dragged into the conversation. Also not sure how BTC becomes less efficient by design. The hardware BTC is mined on has improved expo

by x86x87 3y ago

Not sure where bitcoin got dragged into the conversation. Also not sure how BTC becomes less efficient by design. The hardware BTC is mined on has improved exponentially over time moving from general purpose cpus to gpus to custom asics.

ta988 3y ago
But what's the relation between that efficiency and the number of hashes computed? My understanding was that difficulty is increasing with efficiency so you end up having to try harder to get a block mined successfully.
- x86x87 3y ago
  The difficulty gets periodically adjusted to generate a block roughly every 10 minutes. It's not really about efficiency as it's about computing power and available miners. If it's not economically beneficial to mine (costs more than reward) miners will stop mining leading to the difficulty decreasing which in turns makes it profitable to mine again.
serf 3y ago
>Also not sure how BTC becomes less efficient by design. one of the major key principles behind bitcoin is that the hashing becomes more difficult over time. hardware can't constantly keep parity with difficulty. [0]: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty
- anonym29 3y ago
  This is not technically correct, only practically correct. Hashing does not irreversibly become more difficult as a function of time, it becomes more or less difficult as a function of total network hashrate. Now, there has been a strong positive correlation between time and total network hashrate, so for all practical purposes, difficulty has (and likely will continue to) increase over time. That said, if half of all miners went offline overnight, block times would approximately double, and the next difficulty rebalabce would go dramatically lower in an effort to maintain 20 minute block times.
- x86x87 3y ago
  That's not how it works. It actually adjusts to the available computing power. This is builtin to the protocol.
AxelLuktarGott 3y ago
The point of mining is that you don't want new blocks too often because it would create too many forks in your chain. The "difficulty" in mining is by design, if we make better hardware that can generate hashes more quickly then we need to make the valid hashes more rare to keep the property that new blocks are reasonably spaced out.
anonporridge 3y ago
The entire innovation of Proof of Work (that made bitcoin a success where predecessors failed) is that it is costly in real world energy to corrupt the network. e.g. you can't bullshit your way into finding this number, 000000000000000000024394a1f3cb1a0c16e601a2bd5910635bb2468d2ba316, without expending a huge amount of energy, while you can verify very quickly how many guesses it statistically took to find it. An attacker can't just use words to spin a manipulative narrative, or cut of the head of an organization with a targeted attack. They actually have to commit massive numbers of joules and bit flips. And if an attacker actually acquires that much control over mining power, suddenly they realize they're too heavily invested in the network to want to harm it. In the age of increasing generative AI, proof that you have some tie to real world cost is an increasingly valuable trait.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Fantastic thread: https://twitter.com/LucasNuzzi/status/1758232805882970562 https://twitter.com/LucasNuzzi/status/1758232805882970562

by x86x87 3y ago

ta988 3y ago

But what's the relation between that efficiency and the number of hashes computed? My understanding was that difficulty is increasing with efficiency so you end up having to try harder to get a block mined successfully.

x86x87 3y ago
The difficulty gets periodically adjusted to generate a block roughly every 10 minutes. It's not really about efficiency as it's about computing power and available miners. If it's not economically beneficial to mine (costs more than reward) miners will stop mining leading to the difficulty decreasing which in turns makes it profitable to mine again.

serf 3y ago

>Also not sure how BTC becomes less efficient by design. one of the major key principles behind bitcoin is that the hashing becomes more difficult over time. hardware can't constantly keep parity with difficulty. [0]: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/difficulty

anonym29 3y ago
This is not technically correct, only practically correct. Hashing does not irreversibly become more difficult as a function of time, it becomes more or less difficult as a function of total network hashrate. Now, there has been a strong positive correlation between time and total network hashrate, so for all practical purposes, difficulty has (and likely will continue to) increase over time. That said, if half of all miners went offline overnight, block times would approximately double, and the next difficulty rebalabce would go dramatically lower in an effort to maintain 20 minute block times.
x86x87 3y ago
That's not how it works. It actually adjusts to the available computing power. This is builtin to the protocol.

AxelLuktarGott 3y ago

The point of mining is that you don't want new blocks too often because it would create too many forks in your chain. The "difficulty" in mining is by design, if we make better hardware that can generate hashes more quickly then we need to make the valid hashes more rare to keep the property that new blocks are reasonably spaced out.

anonporridge 3y ago

The entire innovation of Proof of Work (that made bitcoin a success where predecessors failed) is that it is costly in real world energy to corrupt the network. e.g. you can't bullshit your way into finding this number, 000000000000000000024394a1f3cb1a0c16e601a2bd5910635bb2468d2ba316, without expending a huge amount of energy, while you can verify very quickly how many guesses it statistically took to find it. An attacker can't just use words to spin a manipulative narrative, or cut of the head of an organization with a targeted attack. They actually have to commit massive numbers of joules and bit flips. And if an attacker actually acquires that much control over mining power, suddenly they realize they're too heavily invested in the network to want to harm it. In the age of increasing generative AI, proof that you have some tie to real world cost is an increasingly valuable trait.

latchkey 3y ago
Fantastic thread: https://twitter.com/LucasNuzzi/status/1758232805882970562 https://twitter.com/LucasNuzzi/status/1758232805882970562