CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains (2021)

Re:CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains (2021) by wyager on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:13PM (#27945162)

I’m disappointed to see Gwern fail to appreciate why social incentivization schemes cannot be decentralized. You have to trust someone (possibly a cartel) to authenticate claims about the state of the world, and that represents a SPOF. The only proof-of-x systems that are any good are systems that can be validated non-interactively and with no trusted third parties.

You can add as many epicycles and “auditors” as you like and this won’t change the core problem.

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Re:CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains (2021) by gwern on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:20PM (#27945212)

So, how do I validate my "Bitcoin" blockchain non-interactively, trusting no one? How do I prove I have the blockchain, and I haven't downloaded one that forked some time ago? For that matter, how do I prove that no aliens around Alpha Centauri received transmissions in 2011 of Bitcoin and have been mining a blockchain a million times longer ever since?

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Re:CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains (2021) by wyager on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:28PM (#27945270)

You have extremely strong evidence that you have the right chain because artificial network partitions are implausibly expensive to maintain and very cheap to subvert.

The Alpha Centauri example is fair, and that does require a quasi-social process (everyone deciding to ignore the alien chain) to resolve. I say quasi-social because it doesn’t require any coordination or negotiation, but also isn’t fully automatic.

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Re:CO₂ Coin: Decentralized Carbon Capture Blockchains (2021) by powera on Saturday July 24, 2021 @07:42PM (#27945341)

If you haven't interacted with anyone on Earth in 10 years and don't plan to do so in the future, why do you care?

You have a blockchain, that much you can be sure of. If you want the blockchain used on Earth in 2021, you won't need to trust any specific person. If you believe everyone on Earth is lying to you, you are still hopeless and helpless.

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