Bitcoin’s energy footprint less than expected finds new study
Studies on the environmental impact of Bitcoin have been polarizing - suggesting that mining is either a catastrophic waste of energy or of no concern at all. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
Industry leaders launch alliance to promote proof-of-stake
Industry heavyweights have joined forces to promote the awareness of proof-of-stake consensus protocols under an umbrella organization the ‘Proof of Stake Alliance.’
Bitcoin mining is largely eco-friendly says report
A report by CoinShares is providing new insight into the state of the bitcoin mining industry. Among one of the most interesting findings in the paper is that the global bitcoin mining sector is largely environmentally friendly due to the widespread use of renewable energy.
New bank report takes aim at ‘Proof of Work’
In a new working paper from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), principal economist Raphael Auer takes aim at bitcoin’s backbone, claiming that Proof-of-Work is a fatally flawed system.
This weekend’s Bitcoin debate could be a classic
Macro hedge fund manager Erik Townsend and economist and Bitcoin maximalist Tuur Demeester go head to head in a debate in this weekend's episode of The Investor Podcast.
PoW vs PoS — the debate defined
Often overlooked in any discussion about cryptocurrencies, is the critical importance of consensus algorithms and how fundamental they are to the application and potential of any blockchain coin or token.While nobody disagrees with the general concept of consensus agreement being fundamental to the legitimacy of a blockchain, debate continues, however, around what is the best process by which to achieve that consensus.
SpreadCoin – Whitepaper
In proof-of-work cryptocurrencies new coins are generated by the network through the process of mining. One of the purposes of mining is to protect network from double spending attacks and history rewriting. Miners generate new blocks and check contents of the blocks generated by other peers for conformation to the network rules. However,many miners now delegate all the checking work crucial to cryptocurrency security to pools. This means that pool operators do not have any large hashing power but have control over generation of new blocks. This brings unnecessary centralization to otherwise decentralized system. Controlling more than 50% of mining power allows to perform double-spending attacks with 100% chance of success but even with less than 50% control it is possible to perform attacks which have chances to succeed1. The core idea of SpreadCoin is to prevent creation of pools and thus make mining more decentralized and the whole system more secure.
Peer-to-peer private cryptographic currency with integrated Tor hidden services
Neutrino is a private cryptographic currency based on Litecoin,a variation of Bitcoin that replaces the SHA256 hashing algorithm with Scrypt for proof-of-work. Tor,an open-source software for enabling online anonymity and resisting censorship,is directly integrated into the core protocol as a hidden service,enabling nodes in the network to communicate anonymously. The resulting distributed network is highly resistant to third party eavesdropping and censorship. Neutrino is implementing Mixcoin in 2014 to ensure transactional privacy on top of the identity privacy provided by Tor.
A Cryptocurrency Operated File Storage Network
Filecoin is a distributed electronic currency similar to Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoinâs computation-only proof-of-work,Filecoinâs proof-of-work function includes a proof-of-retrievability component,which re- quires nodes to prove they store a particular file. The Filecoin network forms an entirely distributed file storage system,whose nodes are incentivized to store as much of the entire networkâs data as they can. The currency is awarded for storing files,and is transferred in transactions,as in Bitcoin. Files are added to the network by spending currency. This produces strong monetary incentives for individuals to join and work for the network. In the course of ordinary operation of the Filecoin network,nodes contribute useful work in the form of storage and distribution of valuable data.
Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake
A peer-to-peer crypto-currency design derived from Satoshi Nakamotoâs Bitcoin. Proof-of-stake replaces proof-of-work to provide most of the network security. Under this hybrid design proof-of-work mainly provides initial minting and is largely non-essential in the long run. Security level of the network is not dependent on energy consumption in the long term thus providing an energy- efficient and more cost-competitive peer-to-peer crypto-currency. Proof-of-stake is based on coin age and generated by each node via a hashing scheme bearing similarity to Bitcoinâs but over limited search space. Block chain history and transaction settlement are further protected by a centrally broadcasted checkpoint mechanism.
