Sovereign Individual on Nostr: “Telling time takes work” It is often said that #Bitcoin is mined by solving ...
“Telling time takes work”
It is often said that #Bitcoin is mined by solving complex maths problem. While it is easy to convey, it does miss the point somewhat.
#Bitcoin is not produced or created, and the whole ordeal is not really about solving particular math problem. Also, the math isn’t particularly complex. What is complex is “telling the time in a decentralized system”.
As outlined in the whitepaper, the Proof of Work system (i.e. Mining) is a way to implement a “distributed timestamp server”.
When I first learnt about how #Bitcoin works, I also thought that Proof of Work is inefficient and wasteful.
Soo, I started to shift my perspective on #Bitcoin’s energy consumtion. It seems that POW is still widely misunderstood today in the year 15AB.
Since, the problem to be solved in POW are made up, many people seem to believe that it is useless work. And many people believe that the focus is purely on computation and concluded it there.
But, #Bitcoin isn’t about computation. It is about independently agreeing on the order of things.
Proof of Work is a system in which everyone can validate what happened and in what order it happened.
This independent validation is what leads to consensus - “an individual agreement by multiple parties about who owns what”.
In a radically decentralized environment, we don’t have the luxury of absolute time. Any clock would introduce a trusted third party, a central point in the system, which had to be relied upon and could be attached.
Timing is the root problem and #Satoshi understood it.
#Satoshi solved this problem brilliantly by implementing a decentralized clock via Proof of Work Blockchain.
Everyone agrees beforehand that the chain with the most cumulative work is the source of truth, It is per definition what actually happened.
This agreement is what is now known as “Nakamoto Consensus”
#Bitcoin
It is often said that #Bitcoin is mined by solving complex maths problem. While it is easy to convey, it does miss the point somewhat.
#Bitcoin is not produced or created, and the whole ordeal is not really about solving particular math problem. Also, the math isn’t particularly complex. What is complex is “telling the time in a decentralized system”.
As outlined in the whitepaper, the Proof of Work system (i.e. Mining) is a way to implement a “distributed timestamp server”.
When I first learnt about how #Bitcoin works, I also thought that Proof of Work is inefficient and wasteful.
Soo, I started to shift my perspective on #Bitcoin’s energy consumtion. It seems that POW is still widely misunderstood today in the year 15AB.
Since, the problem to be solved in POW are made up, many people seem to believe that it is useless work. And many people believe that the focus is purely on computation and concluded it there.
But, #Bitcoin isn’t about computation. It is about independently agreeing on the order of things.
Proof of Work is a system in which everyone can validate what happened and in what order it happened.
This independent validation is what leads to consensus - “an individual agreement by multiple parties about who owns what”.
In a radically decentralized environment, we don’t have the luxury of absolute time. Any clock would introduce a trusted third party, a central point in the system, which had to be relied upon and could be attached.
Timing is the root problem and #Satoshi understood it.
#Satoshi solved this problem brilliantly by implementing a decentralized clock via Proof of Work Blockchain.
Everyone agrees beforehand that the chain with the most cumulative work is the source of truth, It is per definition what actually happened.
This agreement is what is now known as “Nakamoto Consensus”
#Bitcoin