Since block 0, people have been arguing and debating the utility and security of Proof of Work and what exactly makes it so special.
The biggest controversial aspect of Proof of Work is its apparent wasteful use of energy, leading to questions of whether we can achieve the same result with more energy-efficient systems. That is, can we achieve: security, consensus, immutability, and decentralization without all the expensive energy usage?
Over time, alternative systems, such as Proof of Stake, appear to have answered this question positively. After all, they seem to be holding up fine, right? So what was so special about Proof of Work? Why do the work?
I'm here to explain how most people have entirely missed the point on Proof of Work.
Proof of Work is not about security:
We can ignore the longest chain.
Example: "it's a malicious attack, ignore it!"
(if we can ignore the longest chain "for free" what was the expensive energy waste for?)
It's not about consensus:
We can subjectively follow whichever chain we like.
Example: "PoW longest chain is relevant only inside our rules! which are the best!"
If that chain splits, then the consensus splits. So PoW is in consensus until it is not. So why the work?
PoW is not needed for "fork choice". A new node will not become "confused" because in the real world, there are many people online observing what is happing and humans are sufficiently capable of maintaining robust and decentralized reputation-based social networks; perfectly capable of guiding you to the correct fork (based on your ideology).
People join consensus and break consensus regardless of PoW or "longest chain". Nobody is getting confused about the chains. That is a myth. So why the hard work?
It's not about solving double spending:
We can use alternative systems to select a leader and follow his perspective.
Example: Proof of stake leader selection algorithms.
Also, chain splits due to politics create two systems that together track double-spending. Choosing one and saying "that is the real one" is subjective and political.
Saying chain A is the "real one" because it is objectively the longest is also subjective. Why does "longest" = correct? Who says? why?? Why cannot it just be ignored? What if it's defined as invalid? Who gets to define that?
It's not about immutability:
We can abandon PoW, change the system, and then change data/history records. (because what system is the valid tracker of "the data" can be subjectively-collectively decided by people)
Example: Ethereum, DAO reorg event, PoW to PoS change -> "PoW is obsolete! history record should be maintained by coin holders and community!"
PoW is not immutable if it is possible to later ignore it. What system tracks the transaction history is a concept inside our brains (it is a convention). It is not locked into any chain or technology. It is only immutable so long as we decide it is so.
And it's not about decentralization:
Bitcoin is an open, competitive, economic game. Just like with any industry, there are winners and losers. There will always be more winners than losers which creates a "centralized" small group of winners relative to the rest. This leads to economies of scale and it's why mining becomes a game run by a few big players.
Full nodes (who just store the chain and validate for themselves) follow this same pattern. Some are more important than others. Some are exchanges and big businesses. Social hierarchy will always influence what chain we end up supporting. Societies form hierarchical structures and Bitcoin does not change that. There is no equality amongst us.
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It is much much more than that...
Proof of Work is about sacrifice and commitment. It's about building the most powerful, strong, recognizable, significant, famous, sacrificed for, valuable, fought over, contentious, competed for, and important record of history, in all of history.
Yes, Proof of Work is energy expensive. So you either follow everyone's sacrifice, what you know everyone cares about, or you are building in the sand, only to have what you built washed away into irrelevance and forgotten eventually.
PoS chains are sand castles. Longest (heaviest) Proof of Work chain is the Cathedral. It has a strong, difficult-to-build, mathematical structure that signifies its significance and truth.
Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno
It's true, building a sand castle is more energy-efficient. That's why it's not important. That's why zero-work/2nd-place chains are not important.
Whose sand castle is this? Probably was not important anyway...
Bitcoin is not about decentralization, it's about independence, it's a global collective-competitive sacrifice to create a financial history book with the strongest signal-of-importance that nobody can control and everyone contributes towards.
Everyone builds on everyone else's proven highest preference. It is a game where every player is independent and the scoreboard is independent of anything or anyone in particular. Sacrifice is the only needed ticket. Energy is the currency of choice. Unity of commitments is the collective reward.
Easy is infinite, difficult is scarce, we build what is hard so everyone cares. Only top gun gets to list; there are no points for second place for those who resist. Natural selection will pick the winner from the best. That's why Bitcoin will never rest.
By sacrificing, nodes also signal their health, honesty, and long-term commitment to the network. Dishonest nodes cannot survive long because malicious chains cost money to produce but can be ignored for free; eventually, they run out of resources. A node must provide economic value to survive: It's an evolutionary process that produces healthy-strong nodes and a chain worth sacrificing for.
In other words, Bitcoin is so independent, that it's actually running us. We are like the software in its natural-selection evolutionary game. We are the inputs of this machine. The output is a unifying attractive signal of past sacrifices and commitments. Proof of work is ultimately an attractive meta-psychological mechanism to get people to agree to follow a single story of history that is engraved in collective energy sacrifice.
(Energy sacrifice = importance, significance, and meaning = attraction = everyone is attracted to follow a single story of events)
He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification (Romans 4:25)
Proof of Work is about sacrificing for our inability to unite so we can justify building on each other's commitments.
Proof of Work, therefore, has no limits on scope, no limits on perspective, and no limits on context. In the end, It will always signal a choice no matter what we believe:
[double spends = double perspectives = double rules]
Because of this, it cannot and will never "die". It is guaranteed to win because it will keep forking until it is successful. People will keep feeding it because if they don't build on the most significant story, somebody else will. Somebody else will get to write history.
The only winning move then is to play. That is why Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it.
This is not a rule. It is a law of human psychology:
This is where everyone has gotten it so completely wrong. Proof of Work's security is based on psychology and nothing else. Even the most secure system, is vulnerable to the simple act of not using, turning it off, or abandoning it later on.
If the security is a function of everyone following a rule, we may as well of have had a rule saying "everyone must not attack or fork the network". That's not security, that is just words on paper. In PoW, longest chain is psychology. People follow it because it has an attractive signal of importance and significance.
All other systems that don't use work such as PoS, are 100% social network-based security regardless of how their systems work. Their "security mechanics" are pseudoscience. They are not bound by anything but themselves. It's just them... deciding. People on the outside care about them like they care about abounded sand castles on the beach on a rainy day.
In contrast, when we hear on the news how Bitcoin uses the "energy of an entire country!", that controversy, that noise, is precisely the point! That right there is the security of Proof of Work. Everyone sees the sacrifice and asks what is this chain doing that could possibly be worth sacrificing all that energy for?
Why is THIS CHAIN so important?
...and now, "longest" can no longer be ignored.
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At its core, Proof of Work stops us from pressing the "off button" because there is no off button because sacrifice has meaning; that is the name of the Bitcoin game. This is what makes it the most secure and independently uncontrollable system ever invented. It's not a computer program, it's a human program, we follow what is meaningful; so it is.
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