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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

#131
> Proof of stake is a scam. When I say that, I mean that proof of stake is (1) claimed to be a consensus system, and (2) constitutionally incapable of actually producing a consensus.

Ok. Go break one of the many existing systems that operates using proof of stake then. If you've done this, you should be leading your article with it. If you haven't, you shouldn't be speaking.

Proof of stake is not some theoretical thing being proposed in the abstract. Many systems operate on it as we speak.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#132
post #73

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.

That's called Selfish mminign but the prob is to be faster than the network!

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#133
(my day job is developer on Proof-of-Stake Algorand block chain, I'm a developer, this may not be polished official PR) Article's theory about malicious old blocks doesn't hold up. Let's say I start a new node and verify history since the beginning. Somewhere along the line I'm connected to a malicious node which hands me a fictionalized block. It would need to have been signed by not just one but about 30-45 accounts _which had stake at that time_. Proof-of-Stake attacks aren't about having 51% of the CPU that overwhelms a Proof-of-Work system, but about having 60-70% of the _value_ in the network. So, if Warren Buffet comes along and wants to spam our network, I guess he could, but that would destroy the network and destroy his value that he sunk into the network. _That_ is a guardrail for PoS systems as much as any crypto or consensus-protocol element (and the algorithms are right, original article misunderstands them).

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#134
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a recent ETH2 block: https://beaconcha.in/block/2604970#votes It was voted for by 8000+ validators. Many of them have been validating since beacon chain genesis a year ago. There are like 260k validators active right now. I find it highly unlikely some entity is going to come along and try to pretend their alternate history, with a whole new set of hundreds of thousands of validators (which wouldn’t be support…

Are those 8k/260k individuals, or could they all be Syble?

Whoever the 260k are (and I know some of them) if they’re all one entity, they would have had to stake eight million ETH and counting into the ETH2 deposit contract.

The 8k are randomly selected from this pool of 260k validators via RanDAO every 12 seconds.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#135
post #131

> Proof of stake is a scam. When I say that, I mean that proof of stake is (1) claimed to be a consensus system, and (2) constitutionally incapable of actually producing a consensus. Ok. Go break one of the many existing systems that operates using proof of stake then. If you've done this, you should be leading your article with it. If you haven't, you shouldn't be speaking. Proof of stake is not some theoretical thi…

you didn't read the article to the end, did you?

about 40% in:

"Because of all the arguments above, we can safely conclude that this threat of an attacker building up a fork from arbitrarily long range is unfortunately fundamental, and in all non-degenerate implementations the issue is fatal to a proof of stake algorithm’s success in the proof of work security model. However, we can get around this fundamental barrier with a slight, but nevertheless fundamental, change in the security model." —Vitalik Buterin, saying the quiet part out loud

Security model in PoS = trust the rich. Some like having masters, whatever floats your boat.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#136
The author takes issue with the Phone-a-friend-consensus (PFC) for establishing base consensus. I disagree with his objection for two reasons:

1. For all consensus systems, at least a vast majority will rely on PFC for base consensus since they will not personally audit the client software they download, and thus will rely on PFC to determine which software distribution channel to trust to download the client software from. In other words, there is in practice no pure PFC-free consensus protocol, to be taking such a hard stance on Proof of Stake for its reliance on it.

2. The Schelling Point PFC in Proof of Stake will always be the real order of transactions, and therefore PFC will be highly reliable. Cases like Bitcoin's block size hard limit dispute, and Ethereum's DAO hack rollback dispute, dealt with something other than order of transactions, and in both cases, the dispute was severe enough to lead to a hard fork - which jettisonning PFC can't protect against - regardless.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#137
post #131

> Proof of stake is a scam. When I say that, I mean that proof of stake is (1) claimed to be a consensus system, and (2) constitutionally incapable of actually producing a consensus. Ok. Go break one of the many existing systems that operates using proof of stake then. If you've done this, you should be leading your article with it. If you haven't, you shouldn't be speaking. Proof of stake is not some theoretical thi…

Ethereum is literally broken, look it up

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#138
post #131

> Proof of stake is a scam. When I say that, I mean that proof of stake is (1) claimed to be a consensus system, and (2) constitutionally incapable of actually producing a consensus. Ok. Go break one of the many existing systems that operates using proof of stake then. If you've done this, you should be leading your article with it. If you haven't, you shouldn't be speaking. Proof of stake is not some theoretical thi…

you didn't read the article to the end, did you? about 40% in: "Because of all the arguments above, we can safely conclude that this threat of an attacker building up a fork from arbitrarily long range is unfortunately fundamental, and in all non-degenerate implementations the issue is fatal to a proof of stake algorithm’s success in the proof of work security model. However, we can get around this fundamental barrie…

> you didn't read the article to the end, did you?

I skimmed it. It made no serious arguments. If it had a serious argument, it would have exploited one of the many existing proof of stake systems.

> Security model in PoS = trust the rich. Some like having masters, whatever floats your boat.

You mean...exactly like PoW mining?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#139
post #131

> Proof of stake is a scam. When I say that, I mean that proof of stake is (1) claimed to be a consensus system, and (2) constitutionally incapable of actually producing a consensus. Ok. Go break one of the many existing systems that operates using proof of stake then. If you've done this, you should be leading your article with it. If you haven't, you shouldn't be speaking. Proof of stake is not some theoretical thi…

Ethereum is literally broken, look it up

Sure, go steal all the money in curve. I'll wait.
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