Evidence-based care: What are 'we' missing?
Perhaps, proof of (what) works?
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| Blockchain Revolution |
"The mechanism for reaching consensus is critical. 'Consensus is a social process,' blogged Vitalik Buterin, pioneer of the Ethereum blockchain. Human beings are fairly good at engaging in consensus . . . without any help from algorithms." He explained that, once a system scales beyond an individual's ability to do the math, people turn to software agents. In peer-to-peer networks, the consensus algorithm divvies up the right to update the status of the network, that is, to vote on the truth. The algorithm doles out this right to a group of peers who constitute an economic set, a set that has skin in the game, so to speak. According to Buterin, what's important about this economic set is that its members are securely distributed: no single member or cartel should be able to overtake a majority, even if they had the means and incentive to do so.
To achieve consensus, the bitcoin network uses what's called a proof of work (PoW) mechanism. This may sound complicated but the idea is a simple one. Because we can't rely on the identity of the miners to select who creates the next block, we instead create a puzzle that is hard to solve (i.e., it takes a lot of work), but easy to verify (i.e., everyone else can check the answer very quickly). Participants agree that whoever solves the problem first gets to create the next block. . . . For each block they find, miners receive bitcoin as a reward." p.31.
'proof of activity' 'proof of work' 'proof of burn' 'proof of capacity' 'proof of disk' 'proof of storage' 'proof of existence' | |
'proof of asset' 'proof of storage' 'proof of stake' 'proof of property' |
our energy expenditure, and energies in the 21st century?
[See also index, p.355 'proof of a,b,c...'.]
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
