Byzcoin is interesting but like Bitcoin its security model depends on massively decentralized mining.
Mining is a function of turning electricity into coins. Since coin generation rate is fixed through a difficulty adjustment, mining becomes a winner-take-all game where only those miners with the lowest electricity costs can effectively compete. Thus the system collapses quickly into a mining oligarchy.
What does Byzcoin propose to resolve the as-yet unresolved problem of mining centralization, which is fundamental to the success of any of these coins?
Any proof-of-work based system has this problem, especially when the PoW is outsourceable.
However, I believe you are missing the point of Byzcoin,
which is that if there is a set of decentralised miners we can still get the strongly consistent, final guarantees of Byzantine agreement in a scalable way.
ByzCoin has PoW to be Bitcoin compatible, but it can change to PoS or PoA or even permissioned systems (e.g hyperledger).
Comments
Byzcoin is interesting but like Bitcoin its security model depends on massively decentralized mining.
Mining is a function of turning electricity into coins. Since coin generation rate is fixed through a difficulty adjustment, mining becomes a winner-take-all game where only those miners with the lowest electricity costs can effectively compete. Thus the system collapses quickly into a mining oligarchy.
What does Byzcoin propose to resolve the as-yet unresolved problem of mining centralization, which is fundamental to the success of any of these coins?
Any proof-of-work based system has this problem, especially when the PoW is outsourceable. However, I believe you are missing the point of Byzcoin, which is that if there is a set of decentralised miners we can still get the strongly consistent, final guarantees of Byzantine agreement in a scalable way.
ByzCoin has PoW to be Bitcoin compatible, but it can change to PoS or PoA or even permissioned systems (e.g hyperledger).