Popular hashing algorithms have historically managed 10-15 years of intense use before flaws are found in the algorithm. This chart suggests SHA-256 is already aging: http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html If history is any guide, any long-term cryptocurrency/blockchain will need the cryptography updated every decade or so.
On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 1:36 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 17 January 2018 at 23:31, Jefferson Carpenter via bitcoin-dev > <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Bitcoin's difficulty will be maxed out within about 400 years, by Moore's >> law. (After that - supposing the software does not crash when difficulty >> overflows - block time will start decreasing, and it will not take long >> before blocks are mined faster than photons can be sent across the planet). >> >> Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency today, as the first mover: the >> perfectly fair worldwide game of inventing the cryptocurrency has been >> played and won. However, unfortunately, it has a built-in end date: about >> 400 years from now. After that, it won't necessarily be clear what the >> dominant cryptocurrency is. It might be a lot like VHS vs Betamax, and a >> lot of people could lose a lot of money. It seems to me, this could be >> mitigated by planning today for what we are going to do when Bitcoin finally >> breaks 400 years from now. >> >> Are there any distinct plans today for migrating to a PoW supporting an >> even higher difficulty? > > > Crypto algorithms have a lifetime, and consensus is no different. > > Is it likely to be more than a few years? Yes. > > Is likely to be less than a few hundred years. Yes. > > Every algorithm involves trade offs and it's the job of a thoughtful dev > team to examine those trade offs and come to a consensus optimal solution. > > This field is only 9 years old, and there is a large amount of R & D in this > area. So we can evaluate what seems to working better and what seems to be > working worse, transfer that to BIPs, create code, test it, try to achieve > consensus. The normal path that has served free software projects well. > >> >> _______________________________________________ >> bitcoin-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > > > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > -- Glen K. Peterson (828) 393-0081 _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
