[Cryptography] I am not against good cryptocurrencies. I just don't think you can build one with a block chain protocol.

Karl gmkarl at gmail.com
Sat Jan 2 18:59:17 EST 2021


On 1/2/21, Greg <greg at kinostudios.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 2, 2021, at 3:30 PM, Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> Also, proof of work is the stupidest idea ever.
>>>
>>> Why do you think it’s stupid, Ben?
>>
>> I'm not Ben, but, doesn't proof of work produce
>> exponentially-increasing economic pressure for people to break leading
>> cryptographic primitives, and to not publicize their research, as
>> their financial rewards disappear if they do?
>
> Proof-of-work is a decentralized consensus protocol.
>
> The choice of cryptographic primitives is a wholly separate, unrelated
> matter.
>
> Any system that gains in value incentivizes attacks on it.
>
> Whether the attackers are white hats or black hats is also a totally
> separate, unrelated matter, having nothing to do with PoW.
>
> FWIW, any system of sufficient popularity will have a mixture of white hats
> and black hats attacking it.

It's not about black or white, it's that here the reward for secret
advances in breaking digest algorithms is being able to physically and
legally produce your own money out of thin air, and you get
exponentially more money the faster you do it.


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