sunset proof-of-work
June 3 Update: blog.coinbase.com/fact-check-is-bitcoin-mining-environmentally-unfriendly
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I’ve been maintaining a list of the top green ones. And I think a big portion of the crypto community wants to push the entire industry green.
But what to do about our BTC fathercoin that created the industry? Satoshi Nakamoto what should we do?
I see two paths:
Accept the fact that humans are going to run their electricity needs to infinity no matter what, so get creative, solve your energy needs with nuclear or rodin coils or whatever big new energy breakthrough must happen, but do it already! And maybe Bitcoin is only helping spur on this must happen innovation.
Disagree with path 1 and say no, we got the message already, we are working on solving our energy needs but wasting GPU/CPU cycles all day every day? That’s not helping that’s just pushing us closer and closer to the edge.
I think Satoshi Nakamoto would say path 2, path 2! Like “sorry everyone I made a huge mistake in the original code. I think we should somehow transition everyone off BTC and on to _________.”
Blank. But, what is blank? And yet, path 1, um, the path we are currently on, feels so wrong. It feels like “Drill, baby, drill” and I know a huge portion of the crypto community wants to be green.
I think we need a clear path for current BTC and DOGE and well, you guessed it, every “old” proof-of-work thing we created onto some new chain, keeping the original owners. And then, we have to sunset proof-of-work.
And then it has to become… I don’t want to say “illegal” to keep running proof of work stuff but, hmm, you see the dilemma. You can’t pass a law for the whole world. We have to disincentivize running them.
That will be challenging but it would help the industry and this cause to “pick one”.
And that opens an interesting discussion about… yeah ETH. The list I’m maintaining specifically says “List of contenders for what will be the proof-of-stake blockchain other than ETH 2.0” because, as far as I can tell, Charles Hoskinson left ETH and moved on to ADA so; should we all?
But Silvio Micali is rather impressive, too. Hey don’t forget about the tangle!
I guess we’re not picking one, but shall we say ten?