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Comment by jallen_dot_dev | Hacker News Reader

I'm still confused about what advantage is gained by having the validator be a deep-space probe. How do we know whoever built/launched the probe didn't put in a back door, or can change the software by transmitting a special code, etc.

Also what currency does the system use, if it's a new one how is it originally (fairly) issued to people?

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The back door angle isn't hard to solve, just have the launchers manufacture 1,000 identical probes, then let the community randomly choose one to launch. The others can be checked for back doors. The launchers would have to balance the chance of getting caught against the chance of launching a clean probe, and the bigger the number the better the odds are on both sides.

It does rather seem that the default answer with anything cryptocurrency is to waste vast amounts of energy with replication.

Its called a tradeoff.

There is this obsession with speed and efficiency in computing. The tradeoff for a secure decentralized system anyone can use and audit is that its slow and inefficient. There are real benefits to adopting systems like this for some tasks and problems we face - like transparency in political and economic systems.

And this is an unacceptable tradeoff when we are facing a climate change crisis, unless the energy cost can be greatly reduced.

Interesting idea. I was going to ask how we know they didn't perform some sleight of hand at the last moment with a secret 1,001st probe. But I guess if we can confirm that the private key is securely and randomly generated we can verify the validator's public key once it's in orbit. OK, let's do this.

All you need is a copy of private key to compromise such system and generate and sign fake transactions. You could never be sure it has not been made.

The private key could be generated after the probe leaves Earth, via a process where many competing parties contribute seeding information.

Hence, barring deep compromises of the hardware, it will have never existed on Earth - only in the deep "Trusted Platform Module" (TPM) of the off-planet hardware.

Alternatively, set things up so that you can use the same public key as used by the signing probes as the target address on another block chain. Dump $1B into the target address.

As long as the money remains untouched, you can be fairly confident that no one has the private key.

> what advantage is gained by having the validator be a deep-space probe

It's a (very!) scarce resource, and therefore if lots of people want it -- like for instance, if it's the base of a "currency" system -- they'll assign a lot of value to it. Just like craptocurrencies[1] get their percieved value from the necessary resource they're based on being scarce. In their case it's "proof of work", i.e. showing that you've squandered fucktons of computing resources on finding some magic number; in Stross' suggestion, it's the fact that space probes are few and hard to reach.

It even has the most famous trait of the Bitcoin algorithm, ever increasing scarcity, built in: with Bitcoin it takes ever longer to mine those magic numbers; in Stross' suggestion, it's the fact that space probes take ever longer to reach as they move away from Earth. (Though, hm, wait a minute: Come to think of it, as long as the probe can get signals, it should be able to reply to it the same number of them, although not in the same time? Replies should arrive back at about the same rate, only with ever longer latency. But maybe he meant that signal attenuation over these literally astronomical distances will slow down comms, Idunno.)

But, anyway: His "Spacecoin" will only have any value if enough people think / trust that it does -- just like craptocurrencies. That's what's so hilarious about those: Their fanbois rant and rave against ordinary currencies and deprecatingly call them "fiat"[2], and never seem to realise that their own nirvana-thing... is just as "fiat" as anything else. ALL currencies are. (Yes, including gold.)

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[1]: Thank you, user "Pigeon": http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2021/05/because-...

[2]: I wonder, BTW, if the reason they're so in love with using that as a pejorative is partially based on old "folk wisdom" seeing the Italian car brand as atrociously low-quality?

I don't think it's well established that people value Bitcoin for the proof of work.

Most of the money in it probably doesn't even understand it at a superficial level.

Most of the money it is from people who have no idea what it is, don't plan to use it for transactions, just think the price in dollars/euros/whatever will go up.

No, most people probably value it for the same reasons any other silly tulip-mania arises: They see the market value rise and rise, other people seem to value it, it's "the hot new thing", and "it's so cool tech, very advanced".

But the ones who got the ball rolling -- a (rather weird IMO) intersection between tech nerds and "currency skeptics" / "anti-fiaters" certainly saw (or convinced themselves that they saw) that as its UVP.

Sad, really: If only they'd latched on to South Pacific seashells or something, anything else, instead... Heck, what's wrong with leaves, eh? Crypto-"currencies" are a typical Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B scheme.

I think a huge portion of the people that 'got the ball rolling' were in on the grift.

They didn't do it for the proof of work.

They did it for the money!

Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B scheme

Careful there, those Ship B folks were our ancestors.

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