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Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

yanmaani.github.io

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Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#101

Post by jollybean »

thesausageking wrote: post #25
CraftingLinks wrote: post #19

Can't wait for the day all PoW mining activities are declared illegal. To be honest, I don't understand why it hasn't been banned already. Sweden has recently called for a EU wide ban because it identified PoW mining as a threat to transition their economy to renewable energy. https://www.fi.se/en/published/presentations/2021/crypto-ass...

Should we also ban clothes dryers, Christmas lights, porn, and video games? Each of those uses significantly more energy than Bitcion. If not, who gets to decide what a "good" use of electricity is?

"who gets to decide what a "good" use of electricity is?"

Our legislators and regulators, because that's their job.

Just like we ban heroin, regulate over the counter drugs, and tax alcohol.

Mining BTC is a waste of everyone's time.

Electricity production is partly socialized - and - we're literally facing a kind of global crisis.

Ban it, and let the Cryto Warriers figure out other, better ways (of which there are numerous) for allocating magic numbers.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#102

Post by pshc »

anonporridge wrote: post #75
pshc wrote: post #34

Is this FUD from Bitcoin maximalists? > That key is valid to sign any number of versions of, let’s say, block #200, and there is no objective, system-internal standard for which version is legitimate, other than “the one that was published first”. The real block #200 will have hundreds of attestations courtesy of randomly-selected validators, each of those signatures attesting to its validity and finality.

Attestations don't have a real world economic cost that can be validated trustlessly within the system. If you compromise or coerce enough validators, you can rewrite the history for no cost. That's what PoW provides that PoS just doesn't. Immutability. In fact, I would argue that one of the most important products of bitcoin, is providing the hardest, most immutable database human civilization has ever created. We c…

I have to say I appreciate your transparency in directly Bitcoin shilling.

> If you compromise or coerce enough validators, you can rewrite the history for no cost.

If you can. You would need to compromise thousands of randomly selected validators just to forge one block. That impossible task nonwithstanding, the validators are selected with maybe five minutes’ warning.

PoW doesn’t even offer absolute immutability, it’s just longest fork wins. Which is secure because of the economics, not because of a notion of perfect immutability.

Likewise, ETH2 provides a definition of finality that’s backed by economics.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#103

Post by darcys22 »

He lost me at the part where he thinks you can sign messages after withdrawing your stake.

The whole point of proof of stake is that you can only sign blocks or messages while you have something staked. When you withdraw you are no longer allowed to sign anything.

He also didnt need to spend 1000 words going on about the history of bitcoin and proof of work.

This is literally just a filler piece with a provocative clickbait title to stir up the anti cryptocurrency folks here

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#105

Post by yanmaani »

yuliyp wrote: post #73
crazypython wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.crypto51.app/ To execute a double spend, you the one sending the transaction and the miner must coordinate. For large transactions, it is recommended to wait for six confirmations. (six blocks that agree with the transaction and have not been 51%ed.) The 1 hour 51% cost of Bitcoin is 1.9m$. However, you would need much more time than that to find six consecutive blocks alone, without the help of the netwo…

I don't see how more confirmations makes it exponenrially harder to mount a 51% attack: you just need to be mining faster privately than the remaining community until you (a) have a lead, and (b) have maintained that lead for the confirmation window.

There's luck involved too. In the limiting case, imagine you have 0.001% of the network hash rate and need a 1 block lead. This can happen every now and then, but getting a 2 block lead is basically impossible.

The exact formula is given in the Bitcoin whitepaper https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf>, see page 6 and on.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#106

Post by [deleted] »

EGreg wrote: post #89
thesausageking wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should we also ban clothes dryers, Christmas lights, porn, and video games? Each of those uses significantly more energy than Bitcion. If not, who gets to decide what a "good" use of electricity is?

It’s actually rather straightforward. If the amount of throughput and everything else remains constant while more and more computers are in a zero-sum arms race to waste electricity to solve a useless hash problem, then it is by definition not useful except for “securing the network”. And if you can secure a network some other way, then it definitely becomes better by any arbitrary order of magnitude, assuming your u…

[deleted]

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#108

Post by janeroe »

duped wrote: post #51
rank0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because if you’re not decentralized, then you don’t need a blockchain.

The gold standard was decentralized. Over a century of monetary policy has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with political or economic goals.

> Over a century of monetary policy has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with political or economic goals.

Or rather it has shown that decentralization isn't aligned with the political or economic goals of those who conceive the monetary policy.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#109

Post by ricardolopes »

comex wrote: post #56
crazypython wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in Proof of Stake is a lawsuit could force the distributor of the software to change the hash to one where coins weren’t stolen. As most developers are not pseudonymous, this poses a threat to the honesty of the system. You mention “POW forks”, but Bitcoin’s POW has never been hard forked: you’d need to trust a Bitcoin expert to tell you if it was a good idea.

> The difference in Proof of Stake is a lawsuit could force the distributor of the software to change the hash to one where coins weren’t stolen. And with proof of work a lawsuit could force the distributor to change the consensus rule so that a particular transaction is invalid - just as Ethereum did voluntarily with the original DAO. > You mention “POW forks”, but Bitcoin’s POW has never been hard forked Instead it…

Changing consensus rules requires coordinating a fork. This requires coordinating developers, miners and node operators. That may fly in pseudo decentralised chains where the community accepts whatever the leader says so, and even so, at high risk. In bitcoin, for instance, where there is no leader, this would never be a viable scenario.

Soft forks don't force you to download and run new clients just to be able to use the network, which is an important difference. You can use your existing client, you just don't have the new features and don't run validations on them.

The greatest risk on soft forks is that chain split you mention. That's why any reasonable soft fork deployment requires a long time window with a large majority of hashrate signaling support (like 95%).

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#110

Post by jacklizhui »

josnyder wrote: post #8

PoW systems rely on the "phone a friend method" as well. When you download a Bitcoin client from a "friend", you are trusting them to honestly introduce you to the network. If you fall asleep for a period of years, you have to trust your friends to honestly inform you of all of the PoW forks and policy changes that have occurred over that interval. The only difference is that PoS blockchain clients must be bundled wi…

Trusting trustlessness is the paper you want to consult with

https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/cbit-4-2.pdf

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