[loceng]

The counterargument is always that at some point in future the energy consumption problem will be solved, but isn't the rate of computation a or the main factor against 50%+ attacks? Else the solutions proposed seemed to relay on centralized services that don't actually play on the blockchain to reduce the actual amount of transactions and load, also then avoiding the delays - but then re-adding the supposed main issue of having a "trustless" blockchain.

[ForHackernews]

You can't "solve" the energy consumption of Bitcoin - deliberate waste is built into the Proof-of-work protocol by design.

[Apocryphon]

Makes me wonder if someone can create a cryptocurrency where the mining is for distributed computing research for achieving nuclear fusion power. Crypto-mining that does SETI@home/BOINC work.

[tal8d]

This has been wondered for years, usually by people who don't know the purpose of hashing functions. If nuclear fusion models + protein folding were easily verifiable, then there would be no point in leveraging distributed computing for them - we'd have the same level of understanding for them as we do for contrived hashing functions. If they somehow also ended up with the difficulty directionality intentionally designed for in cryptography, then that would be fine. But that is pretty unlikely, and in that event your currency is totally hacked and useless.

[Apocryphon]

It's still nice to dream of all this distributed computing activity going towards tangible real world benefits.

[tal8d]

Like a global realtime financial network that grants participants complete freedom to do as they please with their own money? Yeah.

[Apocryphon]

Every single word of that description is intangible.

[Forbo]

It exists, it's called GridCoin. It's a proof of stake currency that is distributed based on work units completed in BOINC. https://gridcoin.us/

[ece]

Or PoS Ethereum or other PoS crypto currencies can take the place of exponentially energy-hungry PoW. They explicitly deal with the 50%+ attacks in their governance too.

[loceng]

How so - by central authority changes?

[ece]

For certain cases of attacks, yes with minority forks, and by destroying the attackers stake in other cases, see the section titled "Attacks are much easier to recover from in proof of stake" here: https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html

[loceng]

So why not just have a trusted centralized authority(ies), arguably democratically elected who control the system(s), and where there isn't a transfer of wealth weighted from late adopters towards earlier adopters?

[ece]

That's another alternative, which doesn't exist yet. Ethereum PoS could be here sooner and doesn't use energy like PoW does, along with other helpful features.

[tal8d]

The counterargument has been the same for years: the present financial system consumes for more energy, to the point where people complaining about it look like they're either trying to deceive others, or they've just put so little thought into it that they should be ignored.