Yes POS is not permission less , unlike pow you need to have coin to participate, it's less anonymous, and a step away from the principle of decentralisation, permission less etc
This is by far the dumbest argument against PoS.
PoW is not permissionless either. Once a PoW coin gets big enough for ASICs to be profitable, then BAM- their permission cherry gets popped. You need to get permission from sellers of the coin, ASIC companies, or have millions of dollars around to develop your own ASIC. Even if it is the latter (or the latter latter), you need to get permission from a chip foundry.
Even still, the permission versus permissionless argument is further silly.
All cryptocurrencies, whether PoS or PoW, ultimately need permission from ISPs, regulatory bodies, and governments.
PoS coins have been around for over three years now. Throughout the entire history of PoS coins, there hasn't been a single instance where someone has not been able to become a stakeholder of any PoS coin if they wanted to. Permission has always been attainable. There is always someone looking to exit their position. Whether it be to invest in other alt coins, taking profits, sticking to their stop loss, needing FIAT for real world purchases, an unexpected expense or emergency, etc...
Furthermore, PoS coins are not inherently less anonymous. There are ways of getting ahold of coins that are quite anonymous, such as exchanges that do not enforce KYC policies, registering a burn account on a forum and purchasing coins through escrow, utilizing a VPN and/or TOR, and using an exchange on the deep web are all examples. And... I don't think you meant this, but after you have the coins, PoS cryptocurrencies can be just as anonymous as PoW cryptocurrencies, as the same anonymization techniques can be applied.
PoW is not any more decentralized either by any means. It may start off that way, but eventually all PoW cryptocurrencies tend towards centralization due to the economies of scale that ASICs bring. That is... if the are successful enough to get to that point, but who really wants to invest in a cryptocurrency that would be unsuccessful anyways?
Yet, this thread is not meant to be a PoW vs PoS debate. It intended to be a think tank as to different ways deflationary cryptocurrencies can be conceived, mainly as far as maintaining consensus. If you want to debate PoS v PoW, then I kindly ask you to start another thread, but all of this has been debated ad nauseum for years. You aren't bringing any new arguments to the table really, and a lot of people find the above arguments you bring up against PoS as not being a big deal- valid or not. IMO, most of them are not valid.
I'm not implying POS or centralisaton, or trusted node is a bad thing
But with POW, anyone who is entirely exterior to the network can use ASIC or other to gain control over the network, or distrupt it.
With POS only people who have coins can do this.
Mining doesn't require any form of identification or interaction on the network prior to be able to mine a block, POS does.
With POS the power over the blockchain can be changed arbitrarily by coin holders, aka everyone can give his coin to someone, or if the POS is computed from a separated token separate from the coin, it can become exactly like a permission system, except permission cannot be revoked once granted unless you have the private key to the addr. A POS coin could easily be made to work exactly like a private network.
With POW anyone can always get ASIC or mining hardware and gain control over the blockchain, no matter who has the coin, even if there might be economics argument against this, it's still more permissionless, even a total collusion of all the network user or operator don't have more power than anonymous unidentified miners.
It's not mainly about pos/pow argument, but on how the consensus is reached on the network, which is the main point of the proof of XX that has to be valid for all the network, and the system of reward either it's from staking or mining stem directly from this problematic of trustlessness , with POS you automatically rely on stake holders, and there is not other form of power on the network.
Would you really trust a POS coin where all stake holder are anonymous hiding over tor ?
Ultimately the logic resolve to trusting stake holders, which is why it's also easier from computing power perspective because the proof of validity of block do not come from this. The security come from the fact that you rely on stake holder to keep the chain valid for everyone.
With pow, as there is a whole economic of its own with it, with it's own reward/risk, you only have to know that the person is complying to the pow protocol, and participate in the mining economic with the reward/risk associated with it, no matter who they are, if they have interest in the coin at all, they could just be mining for a random coin on a multi pool, but their economic interest is always to produce block that will be accepted by the user of the network, no matter if they are user of the network themselves.
It's why it's completely permissionless. Either POW centralized or not in the end doesn't matter because it still mean the miner are participating in the reward/risk economy imposed by the protocol, and you don't have to know anything else about them, and they don't have to be user of the network at all for their proof to be meaningful for all the node on the network.
The whole point of reward for proof is to emit blocks with a proof that is enough for all node to accept the block as valid. I'm just comparing the two system to see what the reward is really for in the two case, and it's a different economic and trust logic behind.
But i'm not saying POS are bad or worst, it's just to compare the logic of the two system of proof and economic of reward/risk involved with it.
With POS it's all about trusting stake holders, but it works well too, i'm not saying it's bad or 'less secure' than pow or anything, this logic works, but the logic is not based on the idea of permissionless / trustlessness at core.
As far as i know anyway most POS coin turn to low reward after relatively short time, because anyway in the end the reward/risk economy become useless, as the risk involved with staking a block is low, and the need for reward is low too because stake holder are naturally incited to mine valid blocks even if they don't win anything out of it, and the risk involved with staking is low.
The logic is less into the reward/risk game involved with proving anything through the network protocol level, and there is not a lot of new coin emission either. So it become more like a private network. Even if permission can still be moved around by any stake holder.
But i'm just pointing at what the reward are for in the two schema, and why what matter with it is to be able to produce blocks that will be accepted by everyone, that's the only thing it's made for.
What matter is what the miner or staker prove by submiting this blocks and getting the reward from it.
It's not only about inflation/coin emission or the coin being deflationary or not, it's about what the staker/miner prove by submiting this block to the network in sort that it will be accepted by everyone.
Let say, with simple collecting of tx free, any node can process any tx randomly from the network, without any proof of work, and each node can produce different blocks with different tx, then what ?
How do you say which node has to the good next block for all the other nodes ?
How do you now from 10 differents block with different tx which tx are the good ones ?
The problem is not validating the transactions, but that there is naturally easily a way for all node to know which block will be good between different ones produced by different nodes.
