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Message: <blockquote data-quote="flowerysong" data-source="post: 9381466" data-attributes="member: 7046111">This is a common misconception, but it's not actually true. The way it works is that the network incentivizes adding more computational power by rewarding the computer that extends the chain, and dynamically adjusts the difficulty of extending the chain to roughly match the amount of power available. It doesn't get harder to extend a PoW blockchain over time, it gets harder as people try harder. Conversely it gets easier if people try less hard; the only way for it to grind to a halt is for the available computing power to drop precipitously. Technically it needs to go all the way to zero to halt, since a single computer will eventually be able to extend the chain even if the person running it (who now has full control over the network) doesn't manually adjust the difficulty early, but a sudden 99.2% drop would probably be enough to consider it temporarily grindingly halted.Well, that is a hill, because no one has ever come up with a reasonable non-scam use case for blockchain that can't be done better without it.Your proposed use case was a distributed ledger: unfortunately that's a thing that already exists, doesn't require a blockchain, and works better when you don't use a blockchain.The only demonstrated business use for a blockchain is to attract investors and clients, and selling people on a technology that isn't a good fit for any known problems can reasonably be viewed as a scam.</blockquote>

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