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EPFL Researchers Invent Low-Cost Alternative to Bitcoin:
The cryptocurrency Bitcoin is limited by its astronomical electricity consumption and outsized carbon footprint. A nearly zero-energy alternative sounds too good to be true, but as School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) Professor Rachid Guerraoui explains, it all comes down to our understanding of what makes transactions secure.
To explain why the system developed in his Distributed Computing Lab (DCL) represents a paradigm shift in how we think about cryptocurrencies -- and about digital trust in general -- Professor Rachid Guerraoui uses a legal metaphor: all players in this new system are "innocent until proven guilty."
This is in contrast to the traditional Bitcoin model first described in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto, which relies on solving a difficult problem called "consensus" to guarantee the security of transactions. In this model, everyone in a distributed system must agree on the validity of all transactions to prevent malicious players from cheating -- for example, by spending the same digital tokens twice (double-spending). In order to prove their honesty and achieve consensus, players must execute complex -- and energy-intensive -- computing tasks that are then verified by the other players.
But in their new system, Guerraoui and his colleagues flip the assumption that all players are potential cheaters on its head.
What do you guys think? Will this replace Bitcoin?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday October 01 2019, @06:15PM
It's not that oil is scarce - Venezuela has loads of it. They just wrecked their economy to the point that they can no longer dependably produce it in quantity, so they have to exchange what little they can produce for things like oil byproducts, such as the dilutants they need to keep their oilfields pumping. Scarcity of oil doesn't enter into it - broken refineries and broke state oil company is all it took.
Cryptocurrency is just another form of fiat currency, one more step removed from reality than traditional fiat currency, which is removed from the reality of gold and silver., which only have value if you have a use for them - otherwise they too are just another form of fiat currency.
On the practical side, bullets are already a means of exchange and acquiring wealth. Like every time someone points a gun and says "your money/car/bling for your life." Perhaps, if the US won't pass meaningful arms regulation, the solution that will arise from the current situation tending to its ultimate resolution will be arming everyone, mutually assured destruction, and vast depopulation as everyone shoots everyone else in an endless loop of retaliation for previous shoot. Bullets will be the true medium of exchange (and change) in such a dystopian future. The NRA and their bought and paid politicians would like that.
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