I bought some burst today. But after looking at it burst a little more it should have been made three years ago. Its actually a step backwards. But its here so its innovative, but it shouldn't get this much attention cause we have graphic cards which perform better, with better security. And nothing run by a pc is eco or more eco friendlier than another, cause its still using power plus I don't think everyone is going to turn off all there rigs. I could go on more about viruses, hacks, and hard drive failure but I bought some so I want to make good with my purchase. But If we can get pc fans to start mining with our gpu's, hard drives, that's innovative. You might as well invest into western digital with all the new hard drive purchases esp if they make hard drives for mining like we have seen with motherboards.
Here's the kicker for why POC mining is attractive:
With a GPU, say, a R9 290x, you are pulling at least 300W for the card to run. The card itself costs around $550, and on $0.15/kWh pricing, it would cost $394.20 to run at full load yearly. This means after a bit over a year, your costs are split 50/50 between hardware and electricity, assuming you didn't invest in additional cooling and cooling upkeep. If all mining went south, you could sell your card, but you take a loss on that electricity. However, if you were mining with a hard drive which costs $7/year to run for a $300 drive, then if everything goes south, you can recoup a large portion of your investment. Most hard drives have a minimum of 2 years of warranty.
Additionally, the amount of network security possible from POC given the same amount of capital invested into mining as with POW is much higher, as the majority of that money goes towards actual hardware, and miners have very little reason (very little maintenance cost) to keep their hard drive rigs running. In comparison, miners may shut off GPU rigs when they produce too much heat, or consume more electricity than they pay for.
Hard drive mining is more eco-friendly. Each dollar invested into mining requires far less power to run, and each thus each 'dollar of security' (because what protects cryptocurrency networks is the cost to perform a 51% attack) requires less power, and less upkeep. Graphics cards don't 'perform better'; it's comparing apples to oranges. The reason Bitcoin is so secure is because it has significant amounts of hardware behind it--and that hardware costs money. Keep in mind, there aren't really the equivalent of ASICs for storage. The best TB/dollar storage is tape storage, which would be impractical for BURST mining, considering all the seeking involved. Considering only hardware practical for mining, consumer hardware is king--enterprise hardware has higher $/TB costs. It doesn't matter how many kH, MH, GH, TH, PH... a network has, it matters how much money it costs to acquire hardware to provide that much hashing power. I could create a coin which had a hashing function so simple that a GPU could run 20GH/s, but that doesn't make it any more secure. Network security is a cat-and-mouse-game, and all that matters is the cost for a third-party to deploy hardware in enough quantity to provide more than 50% of the network's computational power. If my coin has 20GH/s on a R9 290x, then for each R9 290x they deploy, they get that hash rate too.
