| EDIT: A better response than mine had already been posted by the time I finished writing mine. As such you may wish to skip reading my response. However, I'll let my response remain here anyway. /EDIT 1) I'm not sure why this would have a power cost significantly comparable to bitcoin. This seems like the power use would be akin to using a computer which uses power inefficiently, which doesn't seem terrible. It seems inevitable that a system that serves the same purpose would take more resources, seeing as the computation has to be done in multiple places, and as such, a relatively small constant factor doesn't sound terrible (not sure how one could hope for better. ). It is not as if the programs which are written to run in web browsers now would have been written to allow as much inefficiency in equivalent desktop programs 14 years ago, right? Does not sending an encrypted message to someone take a constant factor more time to send than it would to send it plaintext? (referring to time it takes to send and receive, not the time during actual transit) 2) It uses a blockchain (bitcoin's) to store some data, but that would just store some transactions, and from what I can tell it shouldn't significantly increase the electricity required by the bitcoin network? I guess it could contribute to blockchain size (I'm not sure how much data needs to be stored for the commitments. re: "one true blockchain" : I assume that if this were to be adopted in such numbers, either some scalability things would be added to bitcoin, or this or something like this would be transferred to some other more scalable blockchain, using something like hypercube chains or something like that. A program running using a system like this would be fine using just one of the subchains, and the people using it would mostly only have to keep track of that subchain (and I guess the chain that ties the subchains together), so because more subchains can be added whenever they are needed, the size of the subchain being used would presumably not grow at unacceptable rates. notes: I do not own any bitcoin. The only cryptocurrency I own any of is testnet ether, which is for a testnet. Additionally I have not made any wagers about the success of any cryptography technologies, and am not employed in any cryptography related field. I don't think I have any financial incentives to promote any particular view about any given cryptography technology. |