[imgabe]

New technologies start out less efficient than existing technologies. Early cars were less efficient than horses. Early computers were less efficient than a room full of people doing math by hand (when you account for the time building, programming and debugging the computer before anyone knew how to do those things).

That doesn't mean we shouldn't ever develop anything new. The clunky inefficient phase is a necessary step to figure out how to get to the sleek, efficient phase. It's a nonlinear process. The slope is pretty flat at the beginning of the exponential. Shortsighted people often mistake this for failure.

[purerandomness]

> New technologies start out less efficient than existing technologies

For PoW to work, they necessarily must be inefficient, there is no future possible where they become more efficient. Inefficiency is a necessity for them to exist.

[imgabe]

PoS is coming. There may be other developments too. Betting against humans figuring out how to do something they want to do is rarely a good idea in the long run.

[purerandomness]

"Proof of stake is a scam and the people promoting it are scammers" [0]

> humans figuring out how to do something they want to do

Humans don't want tulips that much (or monkey GIFs, or Amway toothpaste, or whatever the scheme du jour is). They want to get rich quick, and to show off their status to their peer group.

If collecting tulips however is destroying the planet, you and I have a responsibility to make this scheme unfeasible.

[0] https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-...

[imgabe]

Humans don't want to destroy the planet. Humans also want a peer-to-peer banking system. They'll find a way to make it happen without destroying the planet.

I'm not going to pretend I'm expert enough to tell if that blog post is right or not. Vitalik Buterin and a lot of other very well informed people seem to disagree. I suppose we'll find out. As someone mentioned in the comments when that was posted, if you think you have a way to double-spend on a Proof-of-Stake system, then go onto one of the many existing PoS chains and prove it. Talk is cheap.

[purerandomness]

I hope we'll have a peer-to-peer banking system one day, but as it turns out, the current approach, just as the approaches before, falls short on multiple levels.

> Vitalik Buterin [...] seem to disagree

Vitalik is quoted twice in this blog post to drive the entire point home, you can quickly Ctrl+F for his name.

[imgabe]

Yes, he's quoted where he explains why he thinks the issue the blog post is talking about is not a problem.

Like, I said, I'm not going to pretend I fully understand all the math and everything behind it because I don't. If it doesn't work, prove it. Otherwise you can look at the trillions of dollars worth of value being moved around the world right now on blockchain networks and you can surmise that the current approach is very much working.

[mccorrinall]

If the price drops, there will be less incentive to mine. We are headed downwards anyway