Author: Melvin Carvalho 2018-01-20 18:36:09
Published on: 2018-01-20T18:36:09+00:00
The bitcoin algorithm will reach its maximum difficulty within 400 years according to Moore's law, after which the block time will decrease causing blocks to be mined faster than photons can travel across the planet. While Bitcoin is currently the dominant cryptocurrency due to being the first mover and winning the game of inventing cryptocurrency, it has a built-in end date that may result in a shift towards other cryptocurrencies. In order to mitigate this potential issue, planning for the future could be done today. There are no distinct plans for migrating to a PoW supporting an even higher difficulty; however, the field is only 9 years old and there is a large amount of R&D in this area. Therefore, evaluating what works and what doesn't, transferring it to BIPs, creating code, testing it, and achieving consensus is the normal path that has served free software projects well. The lifetime of crypto algorithms, including consensus, involves trade-offs and it's the job of a dev team to examine those trade-offs and come up with an optimal solution.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:55:04.514281+00:00