proof-of-work

Part 3 of 5. New bitcoins exist because computers race to win a lottery-style puzzle, and the prize is the right to add the next page.

Litecoin copied Bitcoin's code, swapped its proof-of-work and rescaled three figures by four, then its creator divested his entire holding, citing his own influence over the price.

Monero forked away from a currency whose founders had quietly mined 82 percent of its supply, then built a ledger that hides what Bitcoin's discloses and an emission with no final block.

Proof of work vs proof of stake, scored axis by axis with dated numbers: market cap, track record, energy, attack cost, decentralization, speed and new-chain adoption, with DPoS and PoA beside them.

Hal Finney's RPOW system, a 2004 prototype for reusable proof-of-work tokens, gains posthumous recognition as one of Bitcoin's most important precursors.

Ethereum's first CEO, removed in 2014, who built Cardano on the opposite design choices. His verdict on Bitcoin moved from "worth a Turing prize" to "a religion, not an ecosystem".

Two-time fintech founder (E-Loan, Prosper) who co-founded the company that built the XRP Ledger in 2012. In 2021 he called Bitcoin's proof-of-work a technology the industry should retire.

Charlie Lee launched Litecoin on October 13, 2011 as a Bitcoin-codebase fork with Scrypt PoW, 2.5-minute blocks, and 84 M cap. He framed it as 'silver to Bitcoin's gold'.

Nick Szabo's May 2011 blog post on why digital cash took eleven years to get from bit gold (1998) to Bitcoin (2009). It names libtech as the private list where bit gold and b-money grew in parallel.

In earlier answers compiled for Malmi, Satoshi weighs Bitcoin's energy use against banking's costs and names the tension between economic liberty and conservation.

Satoshi explains micropayments can be safely accepted immediately, describes how merchants detect double-spends, and clarifies that proof-of-work difficulty is hardcoded rather than transmitted.

Satoshi's standalone bitcoin.org explanation of the Byzantine Generals problem, using a proof-of-work chain to make the generals agree on a plan.

Satoshi explains Bitcoin's proof-of-work mining, halving schedule, and fixed supply to Joerg Baach and Sepp Hasslberger, comparing it to a precious metal with predetermined supply and varying value.

Finney's RPOW FAQ: how RPOW differs from hashcash and ecash, why the central server is a crucial element rather than a bottleneck, and why the IBM 4758 was the only possible platform.

Finney's rpow.net home page: RPOW lets hashcash tokens be reused in sequence, runs on an IBM 4758 whose attestation lets anyone verify the code, and could serve as a form of Nick Szabo's bit gold.

Satoshi responds to Hal Finney's botnet/pay-per-send point, proposing that fake mailboxes could 'reverse-spam' spammers by harvesting their POW tokens. He also describes e-gold's 'dusting' problem.

Security consultant at Periwinkle who joined the cryptography list discussion of Bitcoin in January 2009, ironically observing that botnet-controlled machines are among the most secure on the network.

Trammell shares his IP for Satoshi to send coins, says proof-hashes is open for posting, names the challenge of getting people to value bitcoins, and compares mining to a roulette wheel.

Trammell asks what prevents the most powerful node from generating the majority of bitcoins — one of the earliest questions about mining centralization.

Trammell tells Satoshi about his proof-hashes Google Group, gives feedback on the credit field display, says he is running v0.1.1 and will upgrade, and offers to help test new features.

How Bitcoin nodes agree on a single chain: SHA-256d proof of work, the difficulty adjustment algorithm, block validation rules, fork resolution, and probabilistic finality.

James Donald tied the issue he pressed Satoshi on to the 1982 Byzantine Generals Problem. Satoshi said Bitcoin solved it in a network anyone could join, and explained it with a king's wi-fi password.

Eight pages posted to a mailing list on October 31, 2008 — a report on a working system that had been 18 months in the making. It met silence first, then doubts about scale.

Bitcoin v0.1 reuses one cypherpunk primitive (PoW from Hashcash), borrows general CS components (Merkle trees, linked timestamping, ECDSA), and synthesizes the rest (UTXO, mining, 21M cap, P2P).

Satoshi thanks Adam Back for the b-money reference and reveals he was not previously aware of Wei Dai's proposal. Historically significant line: 'my ideas start from exactly that point.'

Satoshi thanks Adam Back for the b-money reference, admits he was unaware of Wei Dai's proposal, and explains his system's new contribution: proof-of-work as a distributed timestamp server.

British cryptographer and cypherpunk (born 1970) who invented Hashcash (1997). The first known person Satoshi contacted about Bitcoin (August 20, 2008). Co-founded Blockstream in 2014.

On his Unenumerated blog, Nick Szabo asks for help implementing bit gold, his 1998 design. No one responds. Six and a half months later, Satoshi publishes a whitepaper that never mentions bit gold.

Computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer (1964-) who conceived Bit Gold (1998) and coined the term smart contracts.

Szabo lays out bit gold: unforgeably costly bits made from proof of work, securely timestamped, chained so each piece sets the next challenge, and owned by position in a distributed title registry.

Adam Back replies to Wei Dai on Cypherpunks, identifying seven monetary-design issues in b-money and proposing Hashcash as the minting mechanism — a substantive analysis ten years before Bitcoin.

Adam Back's reply enumerating seven monetary-design issues in b-money and proposing Hashcash as its minting mechanism: "to create value you burn CPU time, just like with hashcash."

Adam Back announces Hashcash to the Cypherpunks list — a proof-of-work postage scheme against spam, pitched as a stopgap until digicash spread or a fallback if it failed.