Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] A Small Modification to Segwit

From: Eric Voskuil <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2017 11:51:32 -0700

On 04/08/2017 11:15 AM, praxeology_guy via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> ASICBOOST causes Bitcoin's PoW to become more memory/latency
> throttled instead of raw computation throttled.
> 
> There is the equation: Power Cost + Captial Rent + Labor ~= block
> reward + fees
> 
> Capital Rent is a barrier to entry, and hence in desiring a more 
> distributed system, we would like to minimize the Capital Rent
> portion of the equation.
> 
> Resolving memory/latency throttle requires a greater Captial Rent
> than raw computation throttle.
> 
> Hence (agreeing with Luke), ASICBOOST is not desirable, even if it 
> wasn't a government enforced monopoly on mining.
> 
> Please let me know if I made a mistake.

Electric power is not an abstraction, it's the output of machines.
What you are referring to as Power Cost typically consists of a higher
rent component than computing hardware, where rent is the sharing of a
resource by multiple people. So by your reasoning you appear to have
drawn the wrong conclusion.

e