Author: Keagan McClelland 2021-03-05 21:11:02
Published on: 2021-03-05T21:11:02+00:00
The context is about the importance of the uselessness of work for the security model and how making work useful could degrade the network's security by providing an avenue for actors to submit a proof of work without any stake. Furthermore, proposing a hard fork in the hashing algorithm would invalidate the capital expenditure made by mining entities and disincentivize future capital expenditure into mining hardware that may compute more useful proofs of work. This would put the entire network at risk and no entity would be tying their interests to the Bitcoin network. Developers could also be bribed by entities with vested interests in deciding what the new useful proof of work should be. In another email chain, Andrew proposes a cryptography proposal that can help with efficiency and tackle problems such as NP-Completeness or Halting which could make the BTC network vulnerable in the future. He wants to propose a document and asks for the preferred format. In response, Devrandom discusses the negative externalities of energy expenditure and suggests that it will soon go away due to the move towards renewables.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T19:12:01.169390+00:00