[hashcash] Re: status of hashcash version 1?

John Honan wrote:

Eric S. Johansson wrote:


I've been having a think about hardware costs in the whole spammer profitability model. Surely hardware costs must be included in the calculations. If the spammer wants to double the number of emails he can stamp and send per day, he just doubles the number of machines he has. So, how profitable would a spammer be sitting in a room with say, 20 high end machines doing minting? - But he will have to invest money in these machines, which is why I think hardware spend should be included in profitability calcs - Unless I'm misunderstanding this.

stamps are a rate limiting mechanism. Therefore, for every machine a spammer purchases, he increases his rate of production by however many stamps that given machine can generate. The cost of actual hardware is amortized over its lifetime. therefore, the hardware based cost of stamps generated over time becomes increasingly cheap without even taking into account Moore's Law. At the end of the year, the cost per stamp is vanishingly small.

A continuing cost is the cost of system administration. Now the chances of a spammer hiring a fully paid and compensated European/American employee is also vanishingly small therefore the cost of ongoing operation is, I suspect, minimal but not insignificant.

but if you look at the cost to the spammer simply by decreasing volume of messages, you'll see that the rate limiting aspect of stamps to be the dominant economic effect in hitting spammers as well as commercial advertisers.

---eric

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