Thread by @adam3us

@CointractCom @MZietzke two factors for "hashcash extended with inflation control": it was all that could easily fit in a twitter limited text profile at the time by way of explaining the connection; but also it sort of is, not literally obviously, but actually in a longer form explanation as follows:

@CointractCom @MZietzke - From 1997 when hashcash was release almost immediately multiple people made the connection to digital gold, and became fascinated with the prospect of using proof-of-work towards achieving deployable electronic cash using it,

@CointractCom @MZietzke - particularly the utility of being able to mint decentralised coins directly, without needing to go via a bank, nor having some central party print them like fiat was seen as a key step forward.

@CointractCom @MZietzke - there were many previous ideas explored Chaum (centralised), and Brands (also centralised double spend DB but offline p2p respendable in a way that worked better with tamper resistant smart-cards), Sander & TaSchma (no bank key, bulletin board based on ZPK set membership),

@CointractCom @MZietzke and Wagner's ZK MAC, Huhges homomorphically encrypted open book, Griggs sever based unlinkable (no blinding, semi-trusted), and a range of academic papers micro-optimising things we did not so much care about as practical.

@CointractCom @MZietzke - with new discussion of decentralised mined coins, this being cypherpunks there was zero discussion of should we, but immediate lets try to make it work and deploy it.
- but the stumbling block was how to control inflation which was presumed to inflate at the rate of Moore's law

@CointractCom @MZietzke many ideas were discussed:
- benchmarking machines every 6 mo, to agree an independently verifiable difficulty (me)
- bandwidth futures (Ryan Lackey)
- no difficulty but valuing scarcity with a collectible market (@nszabo4)
- federation of servers voting on difficulty (Wei Dai)

@CointractCom @MZietzke - a decentralised recipient decides for stamps (me) as used in hashcash stamps.
- the idea of decentralised p2p network broadcast, for the double spend database was there (anonymous post),
- the relevance of Lamport's Byzantine Generals Problem to broadcast consensus (@nszabo4)

@CointractCom @MZietzke - in this context for those in that discussion, a common reaction to #Bitcoin was "someone finally cracked the inflation control problem": Satoshi found a solution where difficulty could be automatically adjusted to stabilize rate of supply via an internal feedback loop.

@CointractCom @MZietzke - The feedback loop of Bitcoin's mining process simplifies and automates with similar but more direct effect the creation of coins as bundles of variable scarcity stamps, where @NickSzabo4 had proposed a collectible market.

@CointractCom @MZietzke @NickSzabo4 - Bitcoin has the clever reuse of PoW for BGP anti-sybil defense, PoW does multiple but interwoven things.
- Embedding a security simplified low level functional language for spending predicates: Bitcoin Script.
- Sound long term gold-like economics, but asymptotic fixed cap.

@CointractCom @MZietzke @NickSzabo4 - I can guarantee you if this internal feedback loop & indirectly market set difficulty (price driving hashrate) idea had been hit on, it would have been implemented
- there were multiple ecash things implemented in this period, anonymous discussion participants and code authors

@CointractCom @MZietzke @NickSzabo4 deployed or released code:
- digicash (company),
- digicash compatible protocol library (anon)
- magic money (Product Cipher)
- server model (@iang_fc, Systemics)
- credilb (@adam3us)
- uprove (Brands, Credentica)
- RPOW (@halfin)

@CointractCom @MZietzke @NickSzabo4 @iang_fc @halfin "cypherpunks write code" wasn't just a saying, but a way of life. lots of non-ecash privacy code also.
- lots of drive to ship things, hashcash itself I analysed for some time, but coded in 2 days pre-release, because I didn't want to talk about it without there being code to try