Thanks Sentinel
I’ll print it out and have a read-through tomorrow.
By the way, I’ve had a go at summarising Nagalim’s comments on this thread:
https://discourse.peercoin-library.org/t/time-as-a-scarce-resource
This summary does not have to be the final paragraph, but I like the idea of chronology as a theme, and the idea that, whereas POW is destined to centralise, PPC is designed to distribute ever outwards. Perhaps this can be worked on as a recap and conclusion.
Blockchains determine chronology in a distributed manner. Each block comes out in succession, which determines which coins were spent first and so makes double spending impossible. Proof of Work blockchains achieve this by using computation as a scarce resource. Peercoin’s Proof of Stake uses ownership over the established timeline as the scarce resource. This is why distribution of coin ownership is important for Peercoin.
Peercoin first embedded an initial historical timeline by using Proof of Work, then used ownership of that timeline, via the holding of coins, to determine truth of chronology. Whereas Proof of Work blockchains carry the risk of increasing centralizing in their rising costs of computational power, Peercoin’s Proof of Stake can easily remain dispersed.