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A comment on Tarsnap Support for Bitcoin Ending April First.

Re:Tarsnap Support for Bitcoin Ending April First by remcob on Sunday January 28, 2018 @03:33PM (#16253303)
It's notable that Colin Percival pioneered memory-hard key derivations functions with Scrypt for tarsnap. Scrypt became the proof-of-work function for asic-resistant cryptocurrencies suchs as Litecoin and influenced Ethereum's ethHash. (Besides many other applications).

In this post Colin casually speaks out against proof-of-work, without taking any credit for his significant indirect influence on it.

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Re:Tarsnap Support for Bitcoin Ending April First by cperciva on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:49AM (#16255778)
I can't exactly take credit for litecoin (and others) using scrypt, given that they did it without my knowledge, endorsement, or advice. (If they had talked to me I would have pointed out that limiting scrypt to using 1 MB of RAM eliminated the entire point of scrypt.)
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Re:Tarsnap Support for Bitcoin Ending April First by pdemporg on Sunday January 28, 2018 @07:55PM (#16254598)
That is interesting - I guess by using scrypt for passwords you're encouraging crackers not to bother brute forcing (it isn't worth your time), wheras in a cryptocurrency you're actively encouraging that behaviour? Well spotted.
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