[Cryptography] Yet another way to create Blockchain misery

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 12:04 PM Joshua Marpet <Joshua.Marpet at guardedrisk.com>
wrote:

> One problem. The miners have moved out of Russia, and many miners
> (machines) are being moved out of China now. I have been privy to
> discussions about many many many containers of miners "stuck" on ships and
> docks here in the US, and many many many data centers being taken over for
> mining. To be clear, I don't disagree with your points. (Well, I think PoW
> interesting as a concept, but implementing it on the scale it's at is
> terrifying in so many ways.)
>

Some of the miners are being moved. But some is not all.

Setting up data centers takes time and capital. Getting electric power is
not trivial even in the US. My maker space is closed and not likely to open
up for another 12 weeks as they wait for a 600A three phase hook up. Which
is really bizarre and pathetic given that I have 400A (single phase) into
my house and they have 52,500 SF of space sitting idle.

When we were building data centers for VeriSign, the size of our facility
was usually limited by the available power. 15GW is 14,000,000 Amps at
110V. That is a lot of 600A three phase hook ups.

I know Texas is trying to welcome miners with open arms. The state with the
worst grid wants to take on... Mining in third world countries where they
can't keep the lights on as it is... seems unlikely to work. Of course a
small group of people with an intense ideological fixation is going to bend
reality to fit their facts but right now, the electricity capacity in every
country is stretched as a result of Putin's designs on Ukraine and that
factor is only going to become more volatile as the government in formerly
Putin's Kazakhstan falls.

I note that the prices of GPUs have recently crashed and it is now possible
to buy an nVidia 3090 for a mere 95% markup on recommended retail. Methinks
the cryptomining world is entering a world of pain and unhappiness.

We will know the mob has taken over when the EMP attacks start...


Any party that has a majority of the active mining capacity can play a
range of games to maintain their control. They can mine a hundred blocks
ahead and only release blocks to trump claims by rival miners. If your
objective is to stall the chain, the optimum strategy is to wait until a
rival faction has made a claim and then release as many blocks as you need
from your stash to erase them. You time the release of blocks so as to
manipulate the work factor in your favor so that the only way a rival can
seize control is to also mine multiple blocks ahead and stash them. But you
join the other mining co-ops...
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