High power consumption is critical to the security of many cryptocurrencies: to compromise them an attacker would need to spend as much power as the rest of the system combined. And this mechanism works: major cryptocurrencies have demonstrated unprecedented resilience, despite no lack of incentive to violate their security and steal money. But is the security threshold not exaggerated? Why is power consumption at the rate of Austria the right amount? Maybe half of that is sufficient? Or a quarter? Arguably, the adverse ecological effects of superfluous expenditure imply that we should target a lower expenditure rate, to achieve Just Enough Security.
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