Author: Erik Aronesty 2021-05-21 20:54:57
Published on: 2021-05-21T20:54:57+00:00
The context discusses the potential of switching the consensus protocol and hash function for proof of work in Bitcoin. It is mentioned that a hard fork is necessary to prevent miners with leftover ASICs from "tricking" old nodes into following another chain. However, a hard fork is a high bar and should only be done if something is very broken to justify it. Proof-of-burn is considered quantum-safe as long as the underlying chain is secure. A transitionary period where both consensus mechanisms are used to mine is suggested, which could take several years to give miners time to manage the logistics of switching over. During this period, there would need to be a manually determined estimate of equivalence hard coded into the software. The idea is to have a smooth switch over from 100% of blocks created by the old mechanism to 0%, then to 75%/25%, 50/50, and eventually 0%/100%. However, the risk of miners not cooperating and attempting to unfairly increase their share exists.It is also stated that a soft fork could be possible but may require a different approach. In terms of switching to a different PoW algorithm, it was explained that the same argument applies to try a soft fork, and it needs to be treated as a hard fork to ensure everyone follows the same chain. Finally, it was discussed that a soft-fork could only ramp up the PoW difficulty by mining more than one block every ten minutes. However, the proof-of-burn scheme would have its way of preventing burners from mining blocks too fast.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T20:17:04.038789+00:00