BREAKDOWN: A 101 Guide to Ethereum's ProgPOW Controversy
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2020
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last Friday on Ethereum’s core developer call, the devs agreed to push forward a controversial anti-ASICs consensus algorithm switch known as ProgPoW.
The broader Ethereum community was not pleased, and has spent the last week debating both ProgPoW itself as well as the way decisions in the community get made.
In this 101-guide to the controversy, @nlw breaks down:
- What is ProgPoW
- The history of the debate
- Arguments for and against
- Who falls on what side and why
- The implications of ProgPoW for DeFi
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW. |
| 0:15.0 | The Breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk. Welcome back to the breakdown. |
| 0:22.2 | It is Thursday, February 27th. |
| 0:24.2 | And today we are going to break down the debate around Prague proof of work, Prague P-O-W in Ethereum. |
| 0:32.6 | So a couple caveats before we jump in. |
| 0:36.1 | The first is that I am coming at this from something of an |
| 0:39.5 | outside observer's perspective. I have not been involved in any of these debates. Ethereum is |
| 0:45.0 | very interesting to me, but it's not a community that I'm deeply interwoven in or anything |
| 0:49.6 | like that. And the way that I have tried to make sense of it is by just reading the perspectives of a lot of |
| 0:55.7 | different people from across the community, representing different interests within the community |
| 1:01.0 | to try to put this together. So really important that this is not a kind of inside observer, |
| 1:06.4 | it's an outside observer. What I want to try to do with this is go through and present this in such a way |
| 1:12.0 | that someone who is in my similar shoes, right, who's not in the Ethereum community, or who even |
| 1:17.4 | just hasn't been really paying attention very much, can make sense of what the conversation is, |
| 1:22.7 | why it matters to different groups, where different groups stand, what the context of the most recent |
| 1:29.2 | part of this debate is, and where things stand today and what might happen next. So that's the |
| 1:35.0 | goal. I hope that this is useful and enjoyable. So let's dive in. So first up, what is Prague P.O.W. |
| 1:43.0 | Other than a hashtag that you're probably seeing all over Twitter, Prague P.O.W, other than a hashtag that you're probably seeing all over Twitter. |
| 1:46.5 | Prague-P-O-W stands for programmatic proof of work, and the idea is that it is a different consensus algorithm |
| 1:53.8 | from the current consensus algorithm for Ethereum that would be specifically designed to combat ASICs and favor GPUs. |
| 2:02.0 | So let's talk about these terms a little bit. |
| 2:04.6 | A GPU is just your average processing chip that anyone would be using in their normal |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CoinDesk, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of CoinDesk and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.