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rapt
rapt
7:43 AM
@DavidSchwartz "aren't equivalent at all", "completely intractable", "completely unsolvable". I don't know what your background is, but it could help if you used a more mathematically accurate language.
Both are cases of propagation and synchronization of data across a network and reaching consensus.
If you have a solution for one, you have a solution for the other.
If the amount of data to be transfered is a concern, it's trivial to streamline the algorithm or work out a slightly different one. The algorithm I proposed was very rudimentary.
 
 
7 hours later…
David Schwartz
David Schwartz
3:04 PM
It really is this simple: Unless there's something that is scarce, one attacker can have an unlimited amount of anything. Either you have some exception to this argument or you have something that is scarce that an attacker can't get too much of. Which is it?
 
rapt
rapt
3:32 PM
@DavidSchwartz Do you see lack of scarcity in systems without PoW?
 
 
7 hours later…
immibis
immibis
10:58 PM
@rapt Which systems? PoS uses the bitcoins themselves to create scarcity.
PoB also uses the bitcoins themselves to create scarcity, in a different way.
There are hash algorithms designed to be memory-intensive instead of compute-intensive. The scarcity is the memory you have to buy instead of the CPUs/ASICs you have to buy. This is considered an improvement because: A) memory mostly takes up space, not energy (a kilowatt of memory is an insane amount), and B) CPU memory is just as good as ASIC memory, so you don't get a "bulk discount" for switching to ASICs.
Suppose mining was based on something non-scarce, like requiring a majority of nodes to be honest. As an attacker I can probably start a million nodes in a couple minutes. What then?
 

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