Rental Attacks Mean Blockchains Must Evolve or Die | Hacker News Reader

Rental Attacks Mean Blockchains Must Evolve or Die

techcrunch-com.cdn.ampproject.org

11 pointsvasilipupkin10 comments

Can the URL of this be changed to a non-AMP page?

what's the difference? here is the techcrunch url

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/22/rental-attacks-mean-that-b...

This article has it completely backwards. As is often the case, (just as Paul Krugman gets basic tech facts wrong) tech people often don't understand economics.

This has ALWAYS been the problem with "ASIC resistant" coins. "ASIC Resistant" just means that you can rent an AWS instance to attack the coin because any generic CPU or GPU will work.

Bitcoin isn't safe just because it's big. It's safe because Bitcoin mining hardware has no purpose other than to mine Bitcoin. Which means the economics are such that Bitcoin mining is only profitable on the fully amortized lifetime cost of the miner, not on the marginal rental cost.

(That's because competition between miners drives the difficulty so high that marginal revenues fall until they equal long-term marginal costs, which are (land rent + labor + fully amortized hardware + electricity))

ASIC driven Proof-of-Work is fine as long as your coin's POW is unique. Only by forcing miners to make a 3-5 year investment in mining hardware can you align the long term incentives of miners and end-users.

I can't parse what you are saying, sorry. The point author is making is, if bitcoin mining asics were available to rent or buy at some cost X, if the mining fees are too low, it may be more profitable to attack than to mine

So much work and waste. By design it tends towards a specialized group controlling the system. Large miners just replace bankers and it cost more to do anything.

Whats the point of this stuff again?

it's an alternative currency, it's point is exactly the same as any other currency. What's the point of euros ? why can't they just use dollars like we do.

The point of Euros and Dollars is so a nation or group of nations has democratic power over their own monetary policy. Bitcoin originally presented the idea of a never changing monetary policy but as forks have come and gone and power is beginning to concentrate in career miners that no longer seems to be the case.

power doesn't concentrate in miners any more than power concentrates in those who create the paper to make euros or dollars.

It's funny, that they mention PoS as a solution, when in PoS there's no incentive whatsoever for participants to not mine whatever forks they are offered to.

slashing conditions

Reply on news.ycombinator.com