
Some transcripts from the Scaling Bitcoin workshops - kanzure
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011862.html
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boothead
I've seen a lot of noise that blockchain is going to be a huge disruption for
everything recently (yeah I know people have been saying it for a while - I
may have been asleep). What would people recommend as the best resource for a)
evaluating whether the hype is valid and b) as a technical overview?

~~~
vog
If the hype is merely about Bitcoin itself as an alternative currency, then
simply forget it. That's just some aftershocks of people joining the party
lately.

However, if you are talking about Blockchain technology and applications
beyond currency and gambling, there may be something onto it. For example,
check out Ethereum:

[https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

This allows you to enforce and reward contracts in a very flexible and
completely decentral fashion. Also, "agreeing on one truth/history" has been
replaced from "power of work" (arms race to burn energy resources) to a more
subtle decentral reputation system. This is more about finding consensus among
the network participants as intelligent individuals, rather than who's able to
invest more energy/hardware resources more quickly.

Creative stuff like Ethereum has not just the potential to replace payments,
but enables companies that are totally differently structured than what we
find today. If that's for better or worse, I'm not sure.

But if there's any justified hype about Bitcoin, it's about emerging projects
like that - not about Bitcoin itself.

~~~
VMG
Proof-of-Stake is nothing new, and it has serious problems:
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake).
There are good reasons why Bitcoin uses "wasteful" proof-of-work.

Bitcoin is the only Blockchain implementation that has gained any kind of
traction, and that is due to the incentive model working out. People just
don't like it because it challenges their economic worldview.

~~~
vog
_> Proof-of-Stake is nothing new, and it has serious problems:
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake)
_

Would you mind pointing to the relevant sections?

I wasn't able find criticism about Proof-of-Stake there. Instead, the
beginning describes the problems with Proof-of-Work (which Proof-of-Stake
tries to address). The large middle part describes some systems which mix both
PoW and PoS.

 _> People just don't like it because it challenges their economic worldview_

Not sure how this is relevant to the discussion about Bitcoin hypes and
Ethereum.

In particular, I don't see why the people who implemented Ethereum shouldn't
like Bitcoin. And even if they do dislike Bitcoin, I'm pretty sure this is not
because it challenges their economic worldview, as Ethereum challenges the
common economic worldview even more.

~~~
mrb
Perhaps the parent wanted to link to Wikipedia (not the Bitcoin Wiki) where
the criticism is more concise: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-
stake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake)

 _" One problem is usually called the "nothing at stake" problem, where (in
the case of a consensus failure) block-generators have nothing to lose by
voting for multiple blockchain-histories, which prevents the consensus from
ever resolving"_

