Wait a minute. When a poor person mines with actual work, they are receiving "charity", but when a rich person mines using hardware while they are actually doing something else, it is "work"?
Lol. I never said that exactly. I hate ASICs for opposite reasons, and prefer CPU/GPU mined coins since they are an equilibrium of the two extremes.
All methods of PoW/PoS are different.
Investing in an ASIC mined coin is effectively agreeing to the rich taxing the poor and the middle class. The reward is incentive enough for all to participate, but the rich receive massive efficiency boosts due to the economies of scale ASICs bring and the high costs associated with their development.
CPU/GPU mining is a decent equilibrium between the two extremes. The rewards are also incentive enough for everyone to participate, but the rich receive no benefit on the efficiency of the PoW because GPUs/CPUs cost them the same amount of money as they cost a poor person. Yet,
there is no such thing as an ASIC-proof coin, and these too will eventually be mined by ASICs if the risk/reward is enough for it to become economically feasible. So, although these coins start out more fair, just like Bitcoin/Litecoin did, they end with the rich taxing the poor and middle class too.
I stand by my reasoning that investing in a Captcha PoW mined coin is effectively giving to charity, as the reward for the PoW is only big enough for the poorest of people to participate. It is the opposite of ASIC mined coins... instead of the rich taxing the poor, the poor tax the middle class and the rich, because the poor receive the lionshare of the inflation/transaction fees.
PoS and all of its variants end up with the rich taxing the poor too. With the PoS coins that pay X percent per annum for staked coins, the rich tax the poor more and more over time due to compounding interest when the rich reinvest their earnings. They become more and more likely over time to find the next block and process transactions. Especially considering the rich don't need the money or earnings, whereas the poor and middle class are less likely to reinvest the interest, or may even have to withdrawal it all at times due to unforeseen circumstances. dPoS also suffers from the rich taxing the poor, as with dPoS the rich have more voting power which they can use to vote in their own witnesses/delegates to process transactions and receive newly minted coins.
The bolded is why I am interested in alternative consensus algorithms. PoS/PoW and all of their variants are great experiments that are much needed by the cryptocurrency community, because all forms of currently existing PoW/PoS consensus algorithms are broken in one way or another (with many other issues other than this issue alone). Every consensus mechanism has its pros and its cons, and there are no perfect ones whether it be a PoW or PoS variant. There are tradeoffs with all PoS and PoW variants. However, I believe that by continuing to experiment with and brainstorming new consensus algorithms, that we will continue to improve upon currently existing consensus algorithms. Ideally, an improved consensus algorithm would benefit everyone equally- the rich, the poor, and the middle class. It is just a very complicated problem to solve.
