Bitcoin is literally tokenized proof of work
Discussion
Yep, but tokenized proof of work is money, not work itself. What you are talking is literally proof of stake.
Isn't it equivalent at the end? If your PoW spam protection is sha256, aren't the spammers losing very real potential to make money?
In that case, what is the difference between demanding a 10 sats payment and demanding PoW that would have earned 10 sats in a mining pool?
Yep. For spammers, it's quite literally the same. But paying is easier. They are spending regardless. The key here is that real Spammers (not the kid running a script in his computer) only exist because it works: they have profits from their spam.
Very good point, protocols where spamming isn't profitable (i.e spammers can only harm but not really profit) should think about PoW differently.
Even just harming. People pay to harm others. It's a business model like any other.
Yes but that model is never sustainable when the victim manages to survive. For example DDoS don't last forever, it disrupts but not kill. If that wasn't the case there would be a one time price for killing Bit torrent or Tor or Nostr, but if your network can't be killed out right, the value of DDoS is much lower.
Sometimes the goal is to just temporarily disrupt anyway. Its just like suying people without any grounds. The goal is to make them waste time, money and attention, not to actually win.
Yes but my point is, the value of that is substantially less than taking over something... For example, it is always possible to disrupt Bitcoin but because the cost of taking it over forever or for long term is astronomical, we see way less attempts of disruption at all.
I only say that because I am working on a decentralised registry of short names, so the distinction between taking over a name Vs just disrupting the system is very important and very much on my mind at the moment
How long for me and my cheap Android phone to get to those 10 sats, chugging along at whatever kilohashes per second?
Bitcoin cannot qualify as tokenized proof-of-work either way.
Blocks earlier in the chain did less work, while earning more sats per piece of work.
That's what tokenization does. It locks in the price of time in that time. That's why a tokenized thing is not the thing itself. The value was locked in the past and that alone significantly changes incentives.