This series continues to translate the original white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto to plain language. The goal is to have easily shared content, and send new people directly to nostr to read it. The original content will be posted, with the plain language below.
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IP address - Internet Protocol, a number that reveals the location of a computer or device
4. Proof-of-Work Paragraph 3
The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains. To modify a past block, an attacker would have to redo the proof-of-work of the block and all blocks after it and then catch up with and surpass the work of the honest nodes. We will show later that the probability of a slower attacker catching up diminishes exponentially as subsequent blocks are added.
Plain Language
Imagine we're all in a big group, and we need to decide something together. Instead of each person having one vote, we use a special way called proof-of-work to vote. Each person's vote is based on how much work the computer can do. The vote is not based on the IP address (location) of the computer. IP addresses can be easily manipulated.
For example, if someone has 20 computers in one building, with one Internet connection, they have one IP address. If someone has one computer, at a location with an Internet connection, they also have one IP address. With this system, the 2 people are equal, and that is not what proof-of-work is about. The person with more computing power is contributing more to the network, so they get 20 votes. The person with one computer is contributing less to the network, so they get a single vote.
If someone tries to cheat by pretending to be many people with different computer addresses, proof-of-work helps stop them. It's like saying, "one computer, one vote." The decision we all agree on is the one that comes with the longest chain of proven work.
Imagine building a tower made of building blocks, and each block represents the work done by a computer. If most of the computers are doing their job honestly, our tower (or chain) grows the fastest. If someone wants to change something we did in the past, they have to redo all the work done by all the computers and build an even taller tower. Very difficult to catch up and beat the honest computers.
So, proof-of-work makes sure that if most of the computers are being honest, our decisions are safe and hard to change. The more blocks we add to our tower, the less likely it is that someone trying to cheat can catch up with us.
The block height at the time of this writing is 825,310 and the blockchain is about 540GB in size.
Check block height here:
https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/block/00000000000000000003d61a48a55bcc1d7aaa2ccb5eb9268f1458bbecc6c9d7/
Check blockchain size here:
https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_blockchain_size
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