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by sidstling
2839 days ago
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Don’t modern mining pools work exactly like coin voting? The entry level is buying hardware instead of digital tokens, but it’s not like proof of work is a democratic process anymore either where every small timer has as much to say anymore. It’s also a little weird to read about economics from cryptcurrencies that you still can’t use to buy beer. |
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Participants of modern mining pools for all coins are arguably just in it for the money (and likely have subsidized or below average electricity rates).
Proof of work isn't a democratic process at all. The "math problem" that the miners are solving is providing a hash of the next published block of transactions (plus some other things). The protocol doesn't check every miner's solution and democratically choose the correct set of transactions to publish based on consensus. Instead, it's a lottery - it's just that it isn't economically cost effective to "buy lottery tickets" that attempt to publish an essentially alternate "history" to the blockchain.
There are multiple ways to buy beer using cryptocurrency - physical debit cards that draw from a deposited cryptocurrency balance at time of purchase using the current exchange rate, for instance. Kind of like how it works when you use your EU debit card to pay for a beer in the US using euros.