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by purerandomness 1652 days ago
> 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.
2 comments
imgabe 1652 days ago
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.
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purerandomness 1652 days ago
"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-...

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imgabe 1651 days ago
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.

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purerandomness 1651 days ago
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.

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imgabe 1651 days ago
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.

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mccorrinall 1652 days ago
If the price drops, there will be less incentive to mine. We are headed downwards anyway
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