Please correct me if I am wrong...
[POW]
Proof of work acts as a limiter on the ability of someone to post a message over a broadcast channel.
- It serves to deter SPAM.
- By making it more expensive to send a message, it acts as a way to reduce the number of messages sent over a channel, reducing the bandwidth+storage costs of each node.
The POW difficulty need not be static but could adapt dynamically in an effort to constrain the bandwidth + storage requirements of each node to some fixed level
- One could have different POW requirements for each channel
I would discourage the use of the word "channel" because it's vague and conflicts with "chan," or "shared address," a decentralized multiparty communication method.
Proof of work acts as a limiter on the ability of someone to send
any type of message, period. This includes under-the-hood messages like pubkey messages.
It serves to deter FLOODING. Spam should be handled client-side, for example by using Thunderbird.
By making it more expensive to send a message, it acts as a way to reduce the number of messages sent
over a channel over the p2p network, reducing the bandwidth+storage costs of each node
and protecting the network from flooding-based DoS attacks.
One could have different POW requirements for each
channel mailing list, address, or stream.
Question about streams, there's only 1 now. When are more added?
When the devs decide on how best to implement streams, then implement them. See
stream discussion index.