Bitcoin code is not set in stone. Basically whatever the majority of miners uses as a protocol is bitcoin.
It feels like it's set in stone, because there are no development or even open discussions on important aspects, like the one I brought forward in my previous post. It's ignored and everyone are just enjoying getting rich with abusing the hype. Litecoin and other altcoins also use the "bitcoin protocol", and because of that, they are suffering from the same problems.
If there were some responsible people around, then someone would say: "Hey, stop this wasteful nonsense! let's figure it out how to build a network that actually makes sense!".
Let me guess: you are all for proof of stake /nxt/ripple etc. [edit] just to clarify, ripple of course does not use PoS, I just mentioned it as some alternative
It is really good that cryptocurrencies are diversifying and exploring new options.
At the end of the day you want to be 100% sure that it works. A fundamental flaw in mining would instantly vaporize bitcoin.
These alternative approaches are young and when the time comes proven new alternatives to mining should be contemplated.
Just to get you thinking: Mining is based on the premise that you can't deterministically predict when the next block is mined. This is really important to weaken potential attacks
Peercoin actually does a really smart thing by interleaving "traditional" mining with stake mining. That way the next stake addresses are chosen in a more random way to avoid potential predictions
I have not looked at nxt code so I can't comment there.
Imagine for instance what would happen if you computed the next stake address through a hash of the curernt block including transactions.
An attacker could try and permute the transaction queue until he finds a hash that is one of his addresses. That way he essentially takes control of all stake mining
New alternatives will come but this does not happen over night. Proof of work is a really solid method despite its flaws with large pooled mining
