That's an appeal to authority and an attempt to shut down inquisitive thought and investigation.
Imo, this goes against the spirit of HN.
A better response might have been to point out that the level of POW is reactive. If there are no attacks ongoing it will use little to no resources. If it's effective, the attacks will largely stop (no point in attempting an attack that won't work) and so paradoxically this can potentially provide its benefit without actually having much usage.
If it works out that way the benefit vs costs are very good for pretty much any way of evaluating the costs. This is the kind of nuanced thinking that you'd expect from smart people, as the prior poster suggested (and, in fact, is pointed out in the design document).
That's the whole point.
Everything has drawbacks. It's always a tradeoff in software. You want a really simple interface? Now you can't do complex things. And so on.
Instead of complaining loudly, why not be the change you want to see? Proof of CPU makes you hot? How about proof of RAM? How about about something else, which you thought of yourself, which is a great idea, which you shared with their team, which they would eagerly accept as a superior solution to proof of work?
If this is the case and in practice PoW is never required, then your rant is moot, and instead it is interesting that this effect occurs.
The premise here is that if Bitcoin mining uses an energy source that inherently captures carbon or methane, then it's "carbon negative?" This ignores the fact that the energy budget is shared. We could just as well use that same energy for something else currently on carbon-based sources. So, energy is still being wasted on crypto speculation - you've just fudged the total energy budget calculations by pretending it doesn't apply here.
Burning methane has positive effects on global warming since methane is way way waaaaaaay worse than CO2. Taking care of landfills that are largely untouched, just spewing methane is a good thing. If Bitcoin ends up having a net-negative effect on global warming, how is that a bad thing?
You're assuming that all energy sources are well-connected to a grid that can handle the electricity that is generated, that's not the case at all. You can't "use that same energy for something else currently on carbon-based sources" without major infrastructure costs.
See for example what Ercot has to say about Bitcoin mining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKnRfDeFgr0
Also, batteries don't help when the electricity is in the middle of nowhere and not connected to the grid.
With the proof of work, I think the assumption is that a legitimate user will be willing to accept a sufficient delay to make botnet DoS attack impossible.
The counter argument might be that the botnet can generate arbitrarily hard proof of work, but this isn't true. Assuming some fixed capacity by the botnet, and that the botnet needs to send some amount of requests per time in order for the attack to be effective (e.g., if they only send one proof of work request per minute, then the "bid" for the rest of the time is quite low), then there's some maximum effective "price" based on the capacity of the botnet past which a user is guaranteed access.
For example say a botnet has access to a million compute nodes, so they have 1 million proof of work seconds per second.
If there's a service which can serve 1000 requests per second, then the average proof of work seconds they have per request is 1000 seconds of proof, so as long as the user is able to provide 17 minutes of proof of work, they can get access. In reality, the user's hardware is likely more capable than the attacker's botnet (which is probably IoT devices etc.,) so the ratio is more favorable.
I find it amusing that this approach is pretty on brand for onion services, as an invisible hand type market solution from what I'd consider to be a fairly libertarian leaning group.
It's not even impossible for increased consumption to lower carbon emissions, because to meet the higher peak demand you may need to add more generating capacity. When the new capacity is renewables or nuclear then it adds no carbon emissions during peak usage times and allows for a reduction in carbon emissions whenever the grid is at less than full capacity by assigning the remaining load to the new plants and spinning down the legacy fossil fuel ones that would otherwise have been used.
Remember that this PoW proposal is a market. If the server has unconsumed cycles (eg. Is not saturated), the POW spot price can remain 0. The server only needs to set a PoW price after the server’s resources near saturation. For the same reason auctions end because nobody is willing to pay infinity dollars, clients can forego PoW and can opt to check back in on the server later when costs subside.
> It isn't interesting. It's the most egregious example of conspicuous consumption on the planet.
This cannot be overstated. PoW needs to die. It is a lazy implementation that just sounds clever but is nothing of the sort. It kills our habitat. It has to go.
Every watt spent doing anything, period, right? Like using your computer to send comments on HN?
Or streaming video? Or any one of a million things that humans do which aren't strictly necessary for survival but we do them anyway?
The tirade against PoW is absurd. It's useful, get over it.
Plus, PoW is nothing but wasted, needless computation. Computing is not free. Every watt spent doing anything PoW is just that much more intensification of our current climate crisis.
As someone with temps of 109 with heat index of 120 coming in the next few days, with all due respect, fuck anyone who proposes PoW is a good idea for anything.
It isn't interesting. It's the most egregious example of conspicuous consumption on the planet.