I assume you’re aware, but for clarity: it’s not possible to sic the bitcoin network on anything, even cracking sha256, which it uses internally, due to hard-coded ASICs that incorporate specific quirks of the proof-of-work.
It seemed like the reason to use the Bitcoin network in the discussion was to form what a theoretical nation-state actor might possibly be hiding based on the traits of some thing in the physically-existent universe (instead of discussing things completely in imaginary-land).
Even as a rank-and-file senior dev, I never join companies that work on ideas I don't believe in (web3 included). I can't be productive and efficient working on stuff I despise.
I can't imagine how would it look for a founder. It's like trying to swim while being skeptical about touching water.
There have been very few companies I worked for where I "believed in" what they did in the sense of thinking they were doing something amazing and world-changing. But I "believed in" them enough to know they were doing things I found interesting and could afford to pay me.
> I can't be productive and efficient working on stuff I despise.
There's a huge amount of space between believing in something and despising that thing.
> It's like trying to swim while being skeptical about touching water.
I think being nervous about touching water when trying to swim for the first time is healthy and rational, and may even make your ultimate success more likely. I'd be much more comfortable working with a founder that had a healthy amount of skepticism than a founder who was a "true believer".
I suspect I'm purely getting trip up on language here, though, and I probably agree with your underlying sentiment.
> But I "believed in" them enough to know they were doing things I found interesting and could afford to pay me.
I think "I found interesting" might be not be quite right for most people either. If it's serving a need for the people that pay for it, or you think it can be serving a need if it continues in the direction it's going, I think that's the important part in "believing in it".
I've done work for companies where I was able to convince myself of this for short periods, but eventually had to accept the harm was greater than the good (payday loan companies. Used appropriately they aren't horrible, but they do everything in their power to make sure they aren't used appropriately), and that's when even though the work was interesting it became hard to stomach, for me at least.
Ultimately, if the service or product you're working to support is one people appreciate and come away appreciating afterwards, I think most people won't have a problem "believing in it". It might not be interesting though, so it's entirely possible believing in it isn't sufficient to keep people working there in itself.
Don't know about OP, but for me it doesn't have to be something "amazing and world changing", but it should be something that makes a positive impact on the society.
For example I work in healthcare and I think that the software that I write positively affects both doctors and patients, even though it is not about a world-changing novel idea. If I were to work for Meta though (just to make an example), I wouldn't be thrilled at the idea that I am optimizing for addiction, and even if I weren't working on the core business of the company, but instead on the latest and greatest web framework, I would be still working for a company that (in my opinion) totals a negative contribution to our society. The motivation is not the same for me.
Now, in the case of Web3 and crypto, people are usually either on the "the best thing since the discover of fire" camp, or in the "a wasteland of frauds and Ponzi schemes", so in fact the dichotomy between "believing in it" and "despising it" is not really wrong...
If you define "believe in" as "thinking they were doing something amazing and world-changing," sure. If you mean it in the more normal sense of "Think it is a worthwhile endeavor that has a reasonable chance of success," the distinction you're drawing here doesn't seem very salient.
As a senior engineer / tech lead / whatever, I have to work with product people and think heavily in the product's terms. I have to imitate various user personas, their needs, their perspectives.
If I'm trying to think on a a user's behalf, and the question "what the user might want from the service to further their best interest?" for me has answers like "discontinue immediately and uninstall the app", I can't work on making new features and improving user retention. I'm not psychopathic enough.
> space between believing in something and despising that thing.
Correct. It's the spectrum between wasting time because the business will never work, and actively and consciously helping people do things that I would rather help them stop doing. None of this spectrum is interesting to me to work on, except maybe if that were the only way to secure my family's physical survival. I try to strategically stay far from circumstances like those.
It's not the technology, of course. I have interviewed with a company that used a blockchain to track something like carbon credits and trees planted. Most web3 companies try to peddle tokens though.
> nervous about touching water when trying to swim for the first time is healthy and rational
I agree about the first time, and maybe the N-th time, until you're comfortable in it. But your goal has to be to get comfortable in water, and to master the almost-submerged motion that is swimming. If you plan to swim in the long term while avoiding contact with water and staying on the shore, it's likely unrealistic.
Roll-friggin-eyes Scotsman. You think everyone that founds a startup for, say, B2B data integration Really Believes In It? Or just that there's money to be made?
Usually you believe you can make money if you deliver value to the customer. In crypto people don't believe they deliver value, they scam or prey on fomo.
one of the problems with crypto as currency is that currency is not supposed to deliver value beyond medium of exchange and store of value at least long enough to do that.
There are absolutely people who go into B2B data integration startups with the belief that they are providing a useful service to their customers. Do you really doubt that?
I got some surprising news for you. There are people who passionately work in B2B data integration. All successful B2B startup founders i've met are very passionate about their field. Now for those founders who don't have much interest in the field they are working on - they are hardly those who you would call successful by any metric. Life is too short to waste it on things you don't care about.
I believe they believe they are helping people and the work is valuable at some level, if they are successful, yes. At the very least they aren't intrinsically opposed to the field.
If you don't believe in the work, it's just a job. Most of us have a job, which really is just low hanging money. Belief can be motivation to start something, but this wasn't something he started, either.
Not every customer can assess the quality of a product. I can judge the quality of a violin, but I can't tell you how long the compressor in a refrigerator will last.
This is why the only signal that customers used to have got removed - a refrigerator that had the same design and components for twenty years is likely well made (if it weren’t people would have found out or changed the parts).
But these are rare (one of the few I know of is Speed Queen but I suspect there are others in other industries, mainly commercial/industrial products).
Amusingly enough these work best when innovation is basically dead, so that a new one and a twenty year old one is basically the same.
Except being made well isn't the only criteria. From what I understand, speed queen uses so much water compared to a more modern machine that you could buy a new machine on the cost savings.
There are a multitude of reasons, companies no longer make products to last. Watch videos where they dissect products, you'll find machines are designed to fail after a certain amount of time. Motors that only contain a certain amount of oil and cannot be serviced.
Depends greatly on the conditions of the facility they were mining in. Heat kills these units. A professional set-up (not to be confused with a large one) will have much more mild impact on the units than a building with poor thermal considerations. Then again, high end miners will be running custom firmware which could also compromise the card lifespan.
Hard to say the number because it is difficult (but sometimes not impossible) to deduce the device from on chain data. ASICs do exist but they have not obsoleted GPUs like has happened on other projects (such as Bitcoin.)
FPGAs were never big for mining. There was like 3 months in early Bitcoin where they people seriously tried deploying them but the simple fact is they are way too expensive from manufacturer markup for mining. And if you want to make your own you’ll just end up making an ASIC instead.
People will describe technical mechanisms, but they are all pretty irrelevant since a miner rebellion would easily modify the software.
The real mechanism is that all the major players can’t accept two forks and maintain sanity. For example, Circle will have to choose which chain has a $1 peg for their USDC reserves, and they will certainly choose the chain supported by the core devs and the one the rest of the major players are selecting as well.
That leaves the rebel chain in a very compromised position. With the peg being removed many defi protocols would be in an exploitable state. Removing all those abandoned and compromised services ends up with little reason for anyone to use the chain.
To be honest, I still suspect someone will try. But it will be a mess and there will be lots of financial loss for users.
I was one of those people in prior forks. My logic was that the rebel chain would be more open for experimentation, would innovate faster, and therefore win out in the long run regardless of who was supported by Wall St. Turns out that financial backing eats innovation for breakfast. The fast-moving scrappy innovative chains are getting killed by chains that haven’t changed much since genesis except scaling back their white paper ambitions.
If that’s what you took away from my post, I must have done a poor job with it.
Firstly emergent consensus is a big part of decentralized systems. Core providers convening on a decision and supporting it is perfectly healthy. That’s quite different than a CEO saying things will be X way and everyone just having to accept it.
Additionally, my point is that people WILL likely try to have a contentious chain (as is their right in a decentralized project), but due to the maturity of Ethereum the technical consequences are much more impactful than the BTC/BCH scenario.
Appreciate your thoughtful reply here. I can tell you're excited about emergent consensus. So am I! Is there a DAO or L2 project you're particularly excited for here?
Fees are based on resource usage. In Bitcoin this is usually the total data size of inputs and outputs that are used to make the sum. This is where the issue of dust arises, when an address holds a mass quantity of low value inputs, but combing them yields a very large and therefore costly transaction.
In some other chains, like Ethereum, the accounting is ledger based. With these systems theres is no variety in input count, but it similarly scales by transaction computation so more complex contracts are more expensive.
Both networks have a fluctuating transaction cost due to congestion competition, but the “base cost” in either is totally unaffected by the value/total amount of currency.
I find it hilarious that instead of using a battle tested and widely known cryptocurrency that relies on actual cryptographic techniques, like Monero or Zcash, they’ve embraced a crypto that basically no one has heard about, no one was using, and relies on Secure Enclaves for privacy. Which are very likely backdoored by Intel and/NSA or at the very least one hack away from total compromise. SGX has had hacks already.
