I completely agree with this assessment – the Blockchain approach, particularly the proof of work consensus model, makes sense in far fewer cases than people claim. But where it does, there is currently no alternative.
The specific combination of well-understood architectural building blocks that make up "blockchain" is very well applicable, but nearly exclusively applicable to all-around trustless global ledger accounting problem (e.g. "coins").
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For me the biggest issue with the PoW is the enormous energy consumption compared to the few benefits. What is your take on this?
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Kind of a boring answer, but banking without banks is a pretty big field, especially for those who (unlike the two of us) don’t have access to banks
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I’m wondering how many don’t have access to banks today and if they don’t have access to banks, will they have access to enough electricity and can they afford hardware powerful enough for PoW?
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The just need a smart phone to run a wallet. My guess there are potentially a few billion people.
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No. Things differ with different blockchains, but with e.g. Bitcoin, only “full nodes” (optionally) do the mining. No one runs a full node on a smartphone. PoW calculation happens in very expensive server farms these days
Apr 25, 2018 · 8:12 AM UTC
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