Exactly, and imagine the credibility of a 'fork team' who on one hand is trying to sell their fork as the 'new Bitcoin' that will 'replace it' (flippening), while at the same time being based (thus reliant) on the real BTC blockchain through merged mining. Nobody would take them seriously.
There is a binary decision which chain to mine, that doesn't exist in PoS.
It is partially true. There is a binary decision which chain to mine, because you have to choose your previous block hash of your block header that you are trying to mine. But if Merged Mining is active, then you can reuse the same header on both chains.
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You're not wrong, but I said already that all these ideas are restricted solely to merged mining, which I see as unlikely. At least for any
'We are the new Bitcoin' type of altcoin. Those usually don't want any connection to BTC whatsoever (most definitely no merged mining).
I mean, imagine every miner who claims fork-coins magically being handed an ASIC (for each of the ASICs they own) for the fork chain. The thought is hilarious to me!
But that is what happens in a PoS fork.
That's a great analogy.
PoS really is a PoS haha.
Although see tromp's reply below. I didn't realise, but it seems like Casper might address this?
But then you could still mix your staked coins and start again? (as pointed out by n0nce)Exactly; BlackHatCoiner reminded me of this. Just mix or otherwise 'exchange' the coins, like selling on one exchange and buying the same amount on another one.
Only thing holding you back is that usually in PoS there's a mechanism to 'apply' for validator status. That's right; you can't just spin up a miner, you need to ask for permission. It makes sense for validators to reject it since it reduces their proportional stake, but that's a different point.
They
could in theory realize that someone just exited from the validator pool, those coins were sold on an exchange and then someone applied as validator with the exact same amount of coins. Blockchain analysis type of stuff. That's the only issue I see with BlackHatCoiner's idea; but any such countermeasure can easily be circumvented.
You could just split the amount and spin up 2 validators of 'half the size' (e.g. 16ETH, 16ETH while you previously had one 32ETH stake).
In theory, if you validate on the chain that Vitalik doesn't like, he will destroy your 32ETH on the good-boy Vitalik chain.
You know, compared to ASICs, that allow you to go with whatever is currently more profitable and switch (back) at any time if you want it (freedom), if you don't behave like a good boy, Vitalik will steal your funds in PoS.
Imagine you mined BCH for a while and when Satoshi found out, he came knocking to your door and took away your mining gear. Same shit.
AFAIK, staking on the not "good-boy Vitalik chain" is not a slashable offence by itself, but staking twice for the same block height is.
Or are you saying that Vitalik will just implore everyone to slash your coins by posting on Twitter asking for social consensus? *shudder*
Oh I don't think they can slash any of your ETH-old if you used your fork-ETH-new to stake, while not staking in ETH-old.
But if you do stake the 'original' and 'forked' coins both, you essentially vote on both chains and that's punished.
Though if I read it right, a few months ago at least, the code for slashing wasn't even implemented yet?
[correct me if I'm wrong] (Or maybe there was no code for withdrawing your stake, that's also possible. Both bad if you ask me.)
Bitcoin holders also determine the voting power. Whenever there is a hard fork, if a majority of Bitcoin holders (which receive equivalent of coins on the new chain) decide this is a hostile takeover, they would dump the coins into the market, reducing the incentive of miners to mine on the new chain. So holders also have a big say in what goes on in Bitcoin, but the dynamics between holders and miners make it safer than PoS which is just not safe.
It can be an indirect effect in case of an intentional hard fork, but Bitcoin holders technically have no voting power whatsoever. They cannot vote for protocol changes for instance, like nodes, miners or stakers can. So calling market-selling a forkcoin 'voting power' is very misleading to say the least.
Someone could grab your signature from the other chain (which includes the block height), and post it as evidence that you submitted two votes for the same block height, resulting in your balance being slashed.
But, it can't know that I'm voting or just spending my money, unless they forbid me from using other forks, which doesn't make sense because chains are independent and don't interact. Centralized blockchains (which is a contradictory term anyway) could be coded likewise though, no doubt.
I do think it can know that you're voting, by just running two nodes and checking the other blockchain. A vote is definitely different from a simple spend, otherwise how can anyone (on any chain) know you voted in the first place?
I believe ETH does it through smart contracts, and your stake is even locked for some amount of time.