Good morning Zac, > VDFs might enable more constant block times, for instance by having a > two-step PoW: > > 1. Use a VDF that takes say 9 minutes to resolve (VDF being subject to > difficulty adjustments similar to the as-is). As per the property of VDFs, > miners are able show proof of work. > > 2. Use current PoW mechanism with lower difficulty so finding a block takes 1 > minute on average, again subject to as-is difficulty adjustments. > > As a result, variation in block times will be greatly reduced.
As I understand it, another weakness of VDFs is that they are not inherently progress-free (their sequential nature prevents that; they are inherently progress-requiring). Thus, a miner which focuses on improving the amount of energy that it can pump into the VDF circuitry (by overclocking and freezing the circuitry), could potentially get into a winner-takes-all situation, possibly leading to even *worse* competition and even *more* energy consumption. After all, if you can start mining 0.1s faster than the competition, that is a 0.1s advantage where *only you* can mine *in the entire world*. Regards, ZmnSCPxj _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
