Proof of capacity is a relatively new mining protocol currently in use by only one cryptocurrency (Burstcoin).
It has often been touted as the mining algorithm that can help solve the energy crisis that we face with PoW mining. It can also allow for greater decentralisation that PoS mining.
Proof of Capacity mining makes use of hard drives to precompute solutions that are stored until the consensus round.
https://www.coinbureau.com/education/proof-of-capacity-explained/Do you guys think that it can actually scale? Any views on the possibility of further coins using the algorithms?
A couple issues have deterred me from moving my farm in this direction.
1) The coins (I believe Storj also may be POC) do not seem to have a particular unique use case, and are hinging value on the "green" POC argument--we will see if this leads to appreciating valuation or wide-spread adoption. I suppose it might.
2) Because of 1, ROI is long and no one is in the mood for that with the GPU market lately to timing is not good right now for POC adoption
[There is a counter argument that it is, if you think it is the way of the future and snatch up hundreds of terrabytes of hard drives before price goes up]
3) I don't think it will help decentralize b/c wealthy people people will simply buy massive loads of hard drives, just like there are giant private GPU mining farms--anything can become overconcentrated like this
4) GPU mining may become more energy efficient, and I have yet to see electricity consumption comparisons with other high-energy things considered "good"--just in terms of data centers, all I heard 2 years ago on CNBC was "Cloud this" and "cloud that"--how do they think all these servers and their cooling systems are powered? And data centers arguably spend their electricity on many things more frivolous than the fundamental ideals of crypto, like storing billions upon billions of selfies. And the electricity consumed in December by everyone's christmas lights etc. And what about the distributed AI and machine learning using everyone's devices--we think it is more noble but it could just be corporate marketeers refining advertising algorithms on your cuda cores or CPU.
It may be that in comparison to other "accepted" energy-hungry institutions mining uses orders of magnitude more electricity. But maybe not. Ultimately though I don't know anyone who doesn't want to improve the energy issue--the question is just whether HDD mining is the way.