12/ SHA256 is the hash function that backs Bitcoin PoW mining. SHA256 protects the ledger from being rewritten. One hash in (to mine), one hash out (to revert). This is what gives Bitcoin its immutability property.
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13/ It’s amazing when you think about it. Hash operations dedicate their entire existence to the purpose of securing the ledger! Rarely anything in the real world has 100% dedication & efficiency. (e.g.: contrast that with gasoline & the combustion engine).
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14/ In reality, it is probably not 100% but something close to it. Because irreversibility relies on the hashed results being uniformly random (just like when you roll a dice), and algorithms can’t truly simulate real-world randomness.
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15/ Luckily for us, hash functions such as SHA256 have shown to be sufficiently random, aka “pseudorandom”. SHA256 has been reviewed & stress-tested for years, and has a rich research literature behind it. So it's not something we have to be too concerned about (yet).
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16/ Fundamentally, I believe the idea of “attaching energy” to blocks is the right one & probably the only way to simulate immutability virtually.
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Hugo Nguyen Retweeted Hugo Nguyen
17/ Using energy burnt to back a block allows us to view immutability objectively. Whereas any non-energy-based method ultimately requires someone’s subjective interpretation of immutability.https://twitter.com/hugohanoi/status/953346280134029312 …
Hugo Nguyen added,
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18/ By attaching energy to a block, we give it “form”, allowing it to have real weight & consequences in the physical world. We can also think of PoW as the link that brings a bunch of 0s & 1s into life.
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19/ In other words, PoW is the bridge between the digital & the physical.
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20/ Compare that to some cryptokitties that someone creates, modifies & removes as they see fit. Their uniqueness & existence are neither guaranteed nor reliable.
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21/ Even if the current variant of PoW fails, I’m confident that there will be other ways of attaching energy to a block.
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22/ In conclusion, PoW’s application in blockchains might prove to be far more significant & wide reaching than what it was originally invented for.
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23/ PoW gives us immutability, which gives us uncensorable money, which could potentially change how society organizes itself ( read
@NickSzabo4 ‘s wonderful essay on social scalability for more on that: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html … ).8 replies 14 retweets 81 likesShow this threadThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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