this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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It doesn't require that much computing power, that's just a variable that gets set.
If the difficulty were set lower, one average computer could easily handle it.
One variable, on 200 000 computers simultaneously.
Every time a transaction is made.
Which also means that the more blockchain gets used, the more expensive, slow and power hungry it becomes. It is doomed to fail and never be in worldwide use.
Compare it to something like AI, which gets exponentially better the more people use it. The same trajectory as the internet.
https://venturebeat.com/ai/meta-engineer-only-two-nuclear-power-plants-needed-to-fuel-ai-inference-next-year/
Which is why people are so horny for chains using proof of stake instead of proof of work
How does proof of stake not become more expensive, slow, and power hungry the more people use it?
In PoS the constraint on mining is proportional to the amount of tokens you own. Not the electricity/computational power you have.
Tokens are confiscated if you mine dishonestly.
The more people who use proof of stake blockchains the more power it will require, same as the more people who visit CNN.com or the more people who turn on a light bulb, but it's not nearly as much as proof of work.
The difference between proof of work and proof of stake is that the first one in order to function requires showing that someone did a bunch of processing on their computer. By attaching a financial cost (literally expending energy) to mining new coins, PoW helps avoid someone fraudulently taking over the network and issuing as many new coins as they want.
Proof of stake works by people who already hold coins putting some of them up as a kind of collateral, so it's nowhere near as processing intensive.
Oh sweet. Let's just set the difficulty lower, then.
But then every jabrony would be able to make money.
So, in other words, it does require that much computing power.
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