4 ms·
> Couldn't some form of proof-of-work system be used to increase the cost of sending a message without it having much of an economic impact on a casual sender?
by zrm 12y ago
> Couldn't some form of proof-of-work system be used to increase the cost of sending a message without it having much of an economic impact on a casual sender? Was that what he was alluding to with the "burning bitcoin" reference?
The idea seems to be that you provably "burn" a small amount of Bitcoin to get an identity. An innocent person can then carry on using that identity forever without doing any more computation. Meanwhile a spammer will ruin that identity's reputation almost immediately and then have to pay again to get another one.
- chii 12y agoso the war's front moves to botnets - where spammer first installs malware/virus to take over a user's machine, in order to send email _from_ that user's identity. Given that a user's machine is more easily compromised, the burned identity wouldn't cost more than current botnet acquisition.