It is an open question though what an better alternative would be. Proof of Stake comes with it’s own set of problems and is pretty much the opposite of what the original cryptocurrency idea was all about, and proof of time/space is nearly as wasteful as proof of work.
How is proof of stake as wasteful as proof of work? The main issue is electricity / energy use that scales up as the network does with proof of work systems, because validating transactions require intensive CPU work.
Proof of work isn’t even close to what original cryptocurrency is about because whoever controls the mining pools controls the blockchain. If you are going to give control of the blockchain to whoever owns crypto vs. whoever owns the most compute, I would think the former is closer to the original idea. I don’t know too many details but I think DPoS looks promising. There’s probably no perfect approach though.
The original idea of crypto-currencies was they anyone could participate in the infrastructure. Proof of Work allowed this for many years on pretty standard PCs. Yes today there are the huge mining pools, but that is still better then an oligarchic system of who got in the earliest and was best at manipulating the system since then aka Proof of Stake (which is ironically exactly how normal money in capitalist society works).
Maybe it worked for a little while, but it clearly doesn’t anymore, and there is no real solution to make POW and co. sustainable, either environmentally or in terms of control of the infrastructure.
Then again, POS gave us NFTs and shit like that.
Basically, trying to improve cryptos is trying to polish a turd either way.
It is an open question though what an better alternative would be. Proof of Stake comes with it’s own set of problems and is pretty much the opposite of what the original cryptocurrency idea was all about, and proof of time/space is nearly as wasteful as proof of work.
How is proof of stake as wasteful as proof of work? The main issue is electricity / energy use that scales up as the network does with proof of work systems, because validating transactions require intensive CPU work.
I said “proof of time/space” is nearly as wasteful, see Filecoin.
ohh my bad, I hadn’t even heard of that lol. I’ll check it out.
Proof of work isn’t even close to what original cryptocurrency is about because whoever controls the mining pools controls the blockchain. If you are going to give control of the blockchain to whoever owns crypto vs. whoever owns the most compute, I would think the former is closer to the original idea. I don’t know too many details but I think DPoS looks promising. There’s probably no perfect approach though.
The original idea of crypto-currencies was they anyone could participate in the infrastructure. Proof of Work allowed this for many years on pretty standard PCs. Yes today there are the huge mining pools, but that is still better then an oligarchic system of who got in the earliest and was best at manipulating the system since then aka Proof of Stake (which is ironically exactly how normal money in capitalist society works).
Maybe it worked for a little while, but it clearly doesn’t anymore, and there is no real solution to make POW and co. sustainable, either environmentally or in terms of control of the infrastructure.
Then again, POS gave us NFTs and shit like that.
Basically, trying to improve cryptos is trying to polish a turd either way.