Chris Odom: Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work Will Win Over All Other Consensus Systems and AltcoinsDuring a recent panel discussion on the future of Bitcoin at the Bitcoin Investor Conference in Las Vegas, Stash Founder and Open Transactions Creator Chris Odom shared his view on where Bitcoin, as a technology, could end up over the next ten years. While most people were expecting an answer related to bitcoin’s future value or the proliferation of bitcoin wallets, Odom decided to focus on Bitcoin’s use of proof-of-work. In his eyes, this is an innovation that will not be defeated by any other method for gaining consensus in a decentralized system.
[Read More: Chris Odom Explains Why Monetas is Not Based in the United States]
Proof-of-Work as a Physical Hard Limit
During his remarks on proof-of-work, Chris Odom indicated that this function for deterring denial of service and other spam attacks may be a hard limit for consensus systems. The Stash founder discussed how other methods for coming to consensus in a decentralized manner always seem to come with problems:
“It seems to me that proof-of-work is actually a hard limit — like a physical hard limit, like the speed of light or the uncertainty principle or something like that because when you look at other consensus systems, they [only] look great in theory. I’ve actually built one myself before, just on my own time. They look great in theory, and they basically work properly, but then there’s always these niggling little attacks. And whenever you work through the effort of solving those attacks, you always arrive back at proof-of-work.”
Proof-of-stake is often viewed as a possible alternative to proof-of-work, but the vast majority of Bitcoin developers do not think such a system could ever work as well as what Bitcoin uses right now. Multiple papers have been written on the problems associated with proof-of-stake, although Ethereum plans to eventually implement their own proposal for a workable proof-of-stake system.
http://insidebitcoins.com/news/chris-odom-bitcoins-proof-of-work-will-win-over-all-other-consensus-systems-and-altcoins/36062
