PoW!!! Cryptocurrency, Mjolnir, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Why It Sucks to be Goku
If only we could validate our crypto with the power of friendship!
The main promise of crypto is not to create money, nor even to be used as money, but to accurately and precisely keep track of money—while safeguarding your personal information and privacy.
Sometimes this means finding errors or mistakes. But usually, this means preventing intentional attacks.
Banks are great at bookkeeping. We may worry about transaction fees, not getting great customer service, or defaulting on a loan, but we’re usually pretty certain that—like them or not—our bank balances will be where they should be.
In case of fraud, banks will talk to other banks, and they’ll track and cancel the transaction.
But banks aren’t doing this for free. And, since they usually have your personal information, they know a lot about you and what you buy. And they can sell that information to the good folks at SuperEvilSoullessConglomerate.com (or .org).
Oh. And they can fail anyway. Remember?
Is there a better solution?
Well, there is a simpler one. Absolute monarchy.
If you cheat the kingdom, the king will get pissed and chop off your head. One of the primary advantages of having a monarch is having a low tech, compelling deterrent to various shenanigans. Counterfeit money? I’m taking your title, your land, your horses, and I’m chopping off your head—and my wife's head too, because why not?
All done defending the kingdom! Who's up for some tiramisu?*
But dictatorships are their own sort of buzzkill. Corruption happens, palms get greased, and the head-chopping rarely stops at protecting the banking system.
In the end, you may not feel overly motivated to go forward with opening your dressy-casual, Asian-inspired gastropub.
Enter cryptocurrencies. The promise of currencies is to permit secure transactions, yet requiring neither dictators nor centralized banks. If you eat lunch at a Burger King, no one chops off your head, or tells anyone that the person over there with the double-beef Whopper also collects My Little Pony.
In some ways, cryptocurrencies resemble banks. They record transactions in what are essentially giant bookkeeping ledgers, or “blockchains.” Bitcoin has one ledger/blockchain, Ethereum has another ledger/blockchain, and so on.
Each page of this ledger/blockchain is called a “block.” Adding more transactions to the ledger/blockchain requires adding more pages/blocks.
However, unlike your bank records, no one entity owns or safeguards the information in the blockchain.
Anyone can add a block to the blockchain. And "miners" are rewarded the cryptocurrency each time they do so. Adding a block to the Bitcoin blockchain earns the miner 6.25 Bitcoins (worth, as of now, roughly $40,000 each).
So, what's to stop the blockchain from being flooded with bogus blocks, duplications, and good, old-fashioned cheating?
In the Marvel universe, anyone can lift Thor’s mighty Mjolnir—if they be worthy.
Yes, Thor can usually lift it, but not because he is Thor, Son of Odin, Prince of Asgard. That would make him closer to a second-generation bank executive.
Thor can only lift Mjolnir when he is worthy. When he falters, the hammer rejects him. And, guess what? Captain America can lift it, too.
Validation is not based upon lineage, but worthiness.
Here, Mjolnir shows all the qualities of an ideal blockchain validation device (notwithstanding a couple of successful hacking attempts at the end).
Unfortunately, dwarven-made Uru hammers are in short supply.
So, cryptocurrencies must devise their own tests of worthiness.
The most widespread method of measuring worthiness is Proof of Work (PoW), used by both Bitcoin and Ethereum. Before adding a block to a blockchain, an entity must solve a very complex puzzle (the “crypto” part of cryptocurrency), usually through brute force computing.
It’s not as dramatic as hoisting a magic hammer, but it’s pretty difficult and takes a lot of power. Furthermore, like Mjolnir and Thor, this worthiness must be proven with each transaction.
And, this effort makes the adding the next page to the ledger—the next block to the blockchain—more difficult.
Theoretically, the blockchain becomes more secure over time—but it’s also why PoW receives so much criticism.
Let’s move from Marvel’s Thor to Dragon Ball’s Goku. Goku starts out as this kid who wants to be the strongest fighter. Fair enough. So does everyone in Dragon Ball.
So then, what sets Goku apart—makes him worthy?
How about Kaio-Ken? Achieving Kaio-Ken is the result of Goku’s intense training, and it dwarfs the power of even Goku’s teacher. It was the most powerful martial arts state Goku—or anyone else—could achieve.
Until Vegeta could do it, too. So then, what sets Goku apart—makes him worthy?
How about Super Saiyan? Achieving Super Saiyan is the result of Goku’s intense training, and it dwarfs the power of even Kaio-Ken. It was the most powerful martial arts state Goku—or anyone else—could achieve.
Until Vegeta could do it, too. So then, what sets Goku apart—makes him worthy?
How about Super Saiyan 2 which dwarfs the power of even Super Saiyan 1? Or Super Saiyan 3? Or Super Saiyan God? Or Super Saiyan Blue?
Here, the folks at Geekdom101 discuss the practical issues with "power creep" in the Dragon Ball Universe.
With each power-up, Goku’s rivals become more powerful, as well. In fact, power creep has shifted the entire Dragon Ball franchise from planetary to galactic to ridiculous scales.
In the latest series, Dragon Ball Super, Goku found himself in a tournament whose outcome affected the survival of eight separate universes.
To pass this trial, Goku attained “Ultra Instinct,” his latest (for now) power-up. While achieving this, Goku basically created a galaxy.
Still trying to be the strongest fighter. Still needing to prove it.
Of course, for his next challenge, Goku must become even stronger.
Thank the mangaka that Goku just needs to train harder, believe in himself, and draw upon the power of friendship.
But cryptocurrency can’t do that. As Proof of Work demands solving ever-more-complex puzzles, expanding the blockchain is not using the power of friendship. It's just using power.
Currently, validating a single Bitcoin transaction takes as much electricity as a single-family house does in half a year.
Have you ever bought a burger with your crypto? I haven't.
What happens when everyone actually uses Bitcoin to grab lunch at McDonalds? And at Walmart? And Amazon?
If only we could validate our crypto with the power of friendship!
Some cryptocurrencies are ditching the Proof of Work strategy. Cardano uses a strategy called Proof of Stake for its blockchain, while others are using Proof of Burn. Each has its good points, but none are perfect.
And though I would like to hope for a quick and easy fix, I suspect that proving worthiness will become far more complex—with outcomes more humbling—than many cryptocurrency architects realize.
After all, they are trying to teach machines to answer what even our greatest poets have failed to do:
How to be certain that a suitor's heart is true.
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Next Week: Chopin, Liszt, Lind: Music Beginning, Music Ending, What We’ve Lost, and What We Keep for All Time
Cover: da-kuk/Collection:E+/Getty Images
* By After Hans Holbein the Younger - eAHC0d0WiemXSA at Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21878559