> As should be every other modern western comfort and privilege.
Seems to me like gambling, speculation, and proof of waste all perfectly fit the definition of "comfort and privilege".
> Maybe after the world is done taking care of the truly impactful stuff we can revisit this proof of work debate.
It's crazy how much we can agree on!
The only problem is, PoW is considered harmful even by the larger crypto community, to the point where alternatives were not only considered, but also implemented (e.g. PoS). I'm more than willing to reconsider PoW's merits at a later time (as you suggest), under the condition that all ongoing PoW schemes are paused until we're done dealing with these more important things. I think it's a perfectly reasonable compromise.
> The only problem is, PoW is considered harmful even by the larger crypto community, to the point where alternatives were not only considered, but also implemented (e.g. PoS).
I have nothing against proof of stake, I think it's fine but inherently less decentralized than proof of work. The whole idea was that anyone with a computer could participate and be rewarded for contributing to the decentralization of the network. In order to actually participate in ETH proof of stake validation, you need to own 32 ETH. That excludes vast amounts of people including myself.
It's a tradeoff and I'm not entirely sure it's worth it. Compared to the current status quo of huge centralized BTC mining operations it certainly looks attractive. There are better proof of work implementations though like Monero which better guarantee 1 CPU = 1 vote. I'm not ready to write it off yet.
Seems to me like gambling, speculation, and proof of waste all perfectly fit the definition of "comfort and privilege".
> Maybe after the world is done taking care of the truly impactful stuff we can revisit this proof of work debate.
It's crazy how much we can agree on!
The only problem is, PoW is considered harmful even by the larger crypto community, to the point where alternatives were not only considered, but also implemented (e.g. PoS). I'm more than willing to reconsider PoW's merits at a later time (as you suggest), under the condition that all ongoing PoW schemes are paused until we're done dealing with these more important things. I think it's a perfectly reasonable compromise.