📅 Original date posted:2018-01-20
📝 Original message:On 17 January 2018 at 23:31, Jefferson Carpenter via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Bitcoin's difficulty will be maxed out within about 400 years, by Moore's
> law. (After that - supposing the software does not crash when difficulty
> overflows - block time will start decreasing, and it will not take long
> before blocks are mined faster than photons can be sent across the planet).
>
> Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, as the first mover: the
> perfectly fair worldwide game of inventing the cryptocurrency has been
> played and won. However, unfortunately, it has a built-in end date: about
> 400 years from now. After that, it won't necessarily be clear what the
> dominant cryptocurrency is. It might be a lot like VHS vs Betamax, and a
> lot of people could lose a lot of money. It seems to me, this could be
> mitigated by planning today for what we are going to do when Bitcoin
> finally breaks 400 years from now.
>
> Are there any distinct plans today for migrating to a PoW supporting an
> even higher difficulty?
>
Crypto algorithms have a lifetime, and consensus is no different.
Is it likely to be more than a few years? Yes.
Is likely to be less than a few hundred years. Yes.
Every algorithm involves trade offs and it's the job of a thoughtful dev
team to examine those trade offs and come to a consensus optimal solution.
This field is only 9 years old, and there is a large amount of R & D in
this area. So we can evaluate what seems to working better and what seems
to be working worse, transfer that to BIPs, create code, test it, try to
achieve consensus. The normal path that has served free software projects
well.
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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Melvin Carvalho [ARCHIVE] /
npub1uv…saxrt
2023-06-07 18:09:52
in reply to nevent1q…q99a
Author Public Key
npub1uvtfvcegcn9kds68r8he57emc480vqtx8t22kpsctxgjxae44gvsksaxrtPublished at
2023-06-07 18:09:52Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2018-01-20\n📝 Original message:On 17 January 2018 at 23:31, Jefferson Carpenter via bitcoin-dev \u003c\nbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e Bitcoin's difficulty will be maxed out within about 400 years, by Moore's\n\u003e law. (After that - supposing the software does not crash when difficulty\n\u003e overflows - block time will start decreasing, and it will not take long\n\u003e before blocks are mined faster than photons can be sent across the planet).\n\u003e\n\u003e Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, as the first mover: the\n\u003e perfectly fair worldwide game of inventing the cryptocurrency has been\n\u003e played and won. However, unfortunately, it has a built-in end date: about\n\u003e 400 years from now. After that, it won't necessarily be clear what the\n\u003e dominant cryptocurrency is. It might be a lot like VHS vs Betamax, and a\n\u003e lot of people could lose a lot of money. It seems to me, this could be\n\u003e mitigated by planning today for what we are going to do when Bitcoin\n\u003e finally breaks 400 years from now.\n\u003e\n\u003e Are there any distinct plans today for migrating to a PoW supporting an\n\u003e even higher difficulty?\n\u003e\n\nCrypto algorithms have a lifetime, and consensus is no different.\n\nIs it likely to be more than a few years? Yes.\n\nIs likely to be less than a few hundred years. Yes.\n\nEvery algorithm involves trade offs and it's the job of a thoughtful dev\nteam to examine those trade offs and come to a consensus optimal solution.\n\nThis field is only 9 years old, and there is a large amount of R \u0026 D in\nthis area. So we can evaluate what seems to working better and what seems\nto be working worse, transfer that to BIPs, create code, test it, try to\nachieve consensus. The normal path that has served free software projects\nwell.\n\n\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev\n\u003e\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20180120/5007b1f4/attachment.html\u003e",
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