Topic: PoS vs PoW (Read 4379 times)

Vitalik Buterin explains the difference between PoS and PoW.

https://coincodex.tv/videos/496/vitalik-buterin-explains-the-difference-between-proof-of-stake-and-proof-of-work

all the china pool's hashrate sums up already far more than 51%...so..for those who said how POW so good so better so best blablabla..you guys should give up bitcoin now.

Coins come from recycled transaction fees, and your chance to generate a block is proportional to the stake you owned at a given time.

so my understanding and correct me if wrong
Proof of work performance has to do with the mining hardware one got
 and with proof of stake the more coins you hold the more you can produce???

what i don't really understand is how you actually generate coins with proof of stake...based on what???

PoS is emulation of modern fiat currencies.
People who has majority of funds can dictate everything and make any changes in the "algorithms".

In my opinion, a POS is just eco-friendly emulation POW. In the case of real need to spend a hacker could double spending in both systems, but it is too costly to be justified.

Because its not true? After you purchase all the mining gear, producing a block costs the entire network 25 BTC. So if you want to double spend, you have to outpace the network producing blocks, which is very expensive.


If I give you a loan which has a handling fee of X and an daily interest rate of Y, this is a very different cost model to a loan with just a handling fee. So, a cost is not equal to a cost. Same thing applies here.


You don't need to buy a majority stake in a POS coin - every bit of stake you own gives you constant probability of producing a block, and therefore a double spend. The more stake, the higher that constant value is.

It seems you are fixated on "producing a block after you own the stake costs nothing"

Why cant the same logic be used for "producing a block after you own the mining gear costs nothing"?

I dont understand why it is such an important thing where you draw the line of incurring costs. Regardless of when the cost is incurred, it is  still a cost.

So the one advantage PoW has over PoS is that once PoS is 51% attacked, then it cant escape, while a PoW being 51% attacked is a temporary problem.

OK, so if somebody buys up half a PoS coin, then he can create whatever blocks he wants from then onward without any incremental cost. However, who in their right mind would spend multiples of marketcap, just so they can create new blocks without cost?

You seem to ignore the PoS characteristic of getting people who have more of it being more vested in it and less likely to attack it.

To put in perspective, if BTC was a PoS coin, it would probably take billions to get to a controlling stake. And for all that cost, it is not clear that even millions could be made and if any sort of attack is made from the controlling stake, the value will drop far in excess of any gains from an attack.

So I will give to you the point that once a PoS is controlled, it will be a permanent thing and PoW has an advantage here. However, I do not see it as any practical problem as it does not make economic sense to conduct such a financial attack

OK my bad, to produce a block, not to validate. You still haven't answered my question though. Are all POS devs wrong then, even Vitalik even though he claims that he has solved a NaS problem. Will he then be putting his whole Ethereum project, that got 18 millions of investment  in danger, when he's implementing POS? I mean, can he be that wrong?

Not just him, but the NXT devs, all devs of the POS coins. I took Ethereum example, since the people have trusted them with 18 millions, nevertheless.

E.g. your investment losing value

Can you give an example?

You buy BTC/NXT/BLAH to acquire your stake, yes... But producing a block after you own the stake costs nothing.

What if producing a block is expensive due to opportunity costs (implicit costs are also "expensive", right)?

would you consider BTC a limited resource?
it is the BTC that is the resource needed to buy the stake that creates the PoS blocks.

In a sense, PoS could not exist before PoW.

It needs to be expensive to produce a block, not to validate one.

OK, then after you, all POS coins are doomed and only POW has future, since it needs to be expensive to validate block in order to be secure.

I don't know have you had an opportunity to read this explanation, but Vitalik claims that you are not right.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/

I am not an expert, and correct me if I am wrong please.

Thanks!

If producing a block has no cost, then neither does attacking the chain - that is the key problem with POS, and is the thing which causes NaS to exist in the first place. Just fixing NaS doesn't address the key problem. It's like sticking another bandaid on a broken system, IMO.

Do you mind expending your explanation? This is very interesting topic to me.
Are you trying to say that his claims that he solved NaS problem permanently are not right?

Unless you expend some limited resource when producing a block, you have not addressed the key problem with POS.

We often hear that the POS is less secure than POW because of the Nothing at Stake problematic. At least, this is the only reasoning against the POS by the POW people. Well this and the initial distribution problem, but I don't really see this as problem at all.

We can all see that the Ethereum will switch much sooner to POS than expected, in about a year, while their network will stall and switch will be unavoidable in about 16 months, the latest.

Vitalik claims that he has solved this Nothing at Stake problem!!
What are your thoughts about this?
Thanks!