Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: The Problem With Altcoins
by
AnonyMint
on 08/11/2013, 18:42:11 UTC
I think PoS isn't secure (explained upthread) and if I am correct, you have similar risks then.

Your points stand and my points stand. Thanks for the discussion. Any way, we can have both. That is the point of this thread. Let the market decide.
I agree.

100% consensus requires bickering and war. Competition allows peace and coexistence.

I think we have concluded that There Is No Problem With Altcoins and have refuted the OP.

You might see security issued with PoS that I don't see, but you fail to see that there are security issues with PoW aswell.

I see both as imperfect. Chocolate and vanilla. Choose one. Yes I lean towards CPU-only PoW (not Bitcoin's PoW!) as superior in my analysis so far. I am not claiming omniscience. I'll let the market decide.

It's pointless to discuss which one is better on it's own, but a combination beats them both.

I have no opinion nor analysis on that at this time. I did some reading on that coin which has that, but have forgotten if I concluded anything.

That's something bitcoin will never be able to implement, even if there were no PoS rewards.

Bitcoin won't be able to implement most everything without losing current consensus.

PoS is a way to get a decentralized "central authority" that validates a block chain. PoW will never be decentralized since only the strong have enough hashing power, on PoS everyone can participate and noone can be forced to stop doing it.

CPU-only PoW won't have that problem (if someone ever successfully creates such a coin), as I explained upthread.

Your argument is invalid, since it basically says it's impossible to waste resources at all.

No.

Waste is where there is no return. Efficiency is output divided by input.
That's an akward definition of wasting.

If I have 2 ways to finish a job and one takes 1000 times the resources than the other it is wasteful to go with anything but the efficient method. We don't have unlimited energy so we have to use it efficiently.

Agreed but you need to count all the downstream outputs, and I explained upthread how for example innovation on microhydropower has potential cascading benefits that were not in your calculation.

And the nature of free markets and knowledge creation, is that none of us can be omniscient and see all benefits from innovation.

We can't calculate what we can't see and measure. And I already provided at least one example of cascading benefits that refutes the claim of total waste, and that same innovation wouldn't be incentivized in PoS.

I am not asserting forcing people to expend resources creates innovation. First there is choice here whether to mine or not. It is a free market. Second note that innovation on energy has the potential to create more energy than was consumed by what caused the innovation.

People sending funds loose fees and interrest, but it's these people that need a safe and non reverseable network. Someone holding a wallet doesn't need that once it's in the blockchain. Why should someone else or all pay for them the efford to do the work.

You could try to rewrite this last paragraph so I can understand your point.

Once my funds are in the blockchain burried after a few 100 blocks I don't care about the network beeing safe and non reversable. It's expensive to keep it that way so people loosing the PoS rewards pay for that. Fees alone aren't enough in a late state. People rather loose profits than money, altough it's the very same.

I still don't understand. We have to pay for mining agreed. What does this have to do with PoS vs. PoW?

Blockchains don't have to be bloated. The mini-blockchain design solves that.