Bitcoin mining efficiency and Botnets

[Cathal Garvey]

> Moore is dead, long live Moore (in 3d volume integration
> of molecular components, coming in a couple decades).

Well, I'm no singulatarian, but I do think it's naive to expect
something as complex and immutable as a block-chain based currency of
*any design* to last longer than a decade (or even half that) these
days, before needing replacement. What you should aim for is relative
stability in that term, not the "long term", so that you can transition
gently to updated 'coins as they emerge to tackle new technology.

Thankfully we do generally get good advance notice of new technologies.
We know that there's progress in Quantum, but we know its not there
yet. We know there are proof of concept DNA computers, but for now
there's no conceivable architecture for a general-purpose DNA computer;
each must be built for the mathematical task to hand (although that
doesn't rule out a mental genius creating a sha256-hashing DNA computer
and brute-forcing through nigh-infinite parallelism).

So; design your coins to last as long as they're likely to last. Don't
expect or desire them to outlast that. Given the leverage a currency
has on an economy, you could even regard a new 'coin as a "budget plan"
for the next few years, though god help you if you get it wrong. :)

On Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:37:44 +0200
Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 01:25:21PM +0100, Cathal Garvey wrote:
> 
> > So yea, Litecoin's nearly there. Maybe we can make a CPU-hash, maybe
> 
> Make something requiring huge LUTs, and in-memory access. 
> That is not ASICable or FPGAble.
> 
> > not. But at least we can make a hash that either guarantees GPU-only
> > for a few years, or one that's hardcoded to match Moore's Law so
> > it'll always stay ahead of the curve (bearing in mind Bunnie's
> > plausible suggestion that Moore's Law is levelling off:
> > http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1863 )
> 
> Doubling rate is now 3 years by end of this year instead
> of 18 months, according to AMD. 
> 
> Moore is dead, long live Moore (in 3d volume integration
> of molecular components, coming in a couple decades).

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