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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

#291

Post by rocqua »

dawnbreez wrote: post #155
ivalm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that would destroy the network and destroy his value that he sunk into the network Isn’t the whole point that by that time he would have withdrawn from the network so he would sink it without losing anything himself.

But...if you no longer have value on the network, doesn't that mean you no longer have enough stake to control the network?

You can fork far in the past, before you cashed out. Any new entrants into the network will not be able to distinguish your fork from the real chain. You cannot be slashed for this in the real chain because you already cashed out your stake there.

This 'long range attack' is different from a 50% attack because it doesn't affect nodes that were running before the attack happened. But a situation where new entrants into the network are uncertain of the 'true' fork is not tenable in the long term.

This seems more viable for a value destruction attack than for a double spend. But value destruction can be lucrative for blackmail. It means a coalition of stakers could withdraw their stakes and state "increases the blocksize or suffer a long-range attack".

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#292

Post by lottin »

inter_netuser wrote: post #176
eftychis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Proof of Work is better because the haves buy equipment the have-nots can't buy to vote? Unless you have a citizenship based voting of some short where a single person gets a single vote and they actually vote (automatically I guess and assuming without delegating to the big whale because "I am bored") what do you think agreement via resource scarcity implies? P.S. Also lobbying...

This is a common misunderstanding. Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all. PoW is a service to the network, to create an immutable ledger. It comes with a very real nuclear option that will bankrupt miners if you misbehave and get fired by hashing algo change. It's just a boring industrial business, like smelting aluminum or iron.

> Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all.

It only buys you the right to append a block of transactions to the ledger, which is the same thing as having 100% of the votes.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#293

Post by keymone »

wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

It’s a system with feedback loops, it’ll eventually level out at some equilibrium. You didn’t provide an actual argument for why it should definitely collapse.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#294

Post by drexlspivey »

wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

> PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger.

It’s actually the opposite since the block reward goes down over time

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#295

Post by lottin »

ogogmad wrote: post #265
arcticbull wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the limit, proof of work and proof of stake converge - they are the same thing, except for the Kazakh coal that is burned in the former along the way. PoS staking is simply committing a portion of your capital to the task of validating transactions. You benefit by receiving a reward in the form of additional tokens. In a PoW system, the same exact thing can be accomplished by using your tokens to purchase a stake…

> PoW in this context is a bit worse because PoW miners can rent out their hash power maliciously without being slashed. Sounds wrong. Slashing is a means to prevent people from staking on multiple chains. In PoW, computing power is scarce, so if you allocate some compute time to one chain then you have less of it on another chain. You automatically get slashed. The difficulty in designing a PoS chain is in artificia…

Where is the difficulty in making miners expend their tokens (i.e. in a way that is irrevocable) instead of merely depositing them somewhere?

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#296

Post by rocqua »

anonporridge wrote: post #63
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…

You really don't need to trust a "friend" while bootstrapping into the network with PoW, because the proof of work is irrevocably embedded within the blockchain, and the real world cost of creating those blocks can be pretty easily estimated. So long as you have a general idea of how much hash power is being used currently for the network, or even just how efficient ASIC computing is in general at your point in histo…

It seems that PoW does not need phone a friend to compare "which of these two chains is the true one", whilst PoS does need phone a friend for that.

However, that presumes all forks are soft forks; that you are presented a correct chain; that you want the soft fork with consensus rules accepted by most miners. (If verifying with an old bitcoin client the BCH BCT split will be resolved for you without you having a say.

In summary, PoW has less need for Phone a Friend than PoS. But it still has some problems.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#297

Post by keymone »

brianolson wrote: post #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 account…

I don’t investigate every shitcoin out there, but all of them have the same flaws in general. Your particular shitcoin probably has something called voting quorum, where only a fraction of global supply is required to proceed in staking. By reducing that fraction you’re making large stake holders more and more able to overpower all others the moment they decide to become malicious.

In PoW all hashrate is always voting and security is paid for external expenditure, not something virtual within the system.

PoS is a scam and you should stop supporting it.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#298

Post by inter_netuser »

lottin wrote: post #292
inter_netuser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misunderstanding. Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all. PoW is a service to the network, to create an immutable ledger. It comes with a very real nuclear option that will bankrupt miners if you misbehave and get fired by hashing algo change. It's just a boring industrial business, like smelting aluminum or iron.

> Proof of Work does not get you any votes at all. It only buys you the right to append a block of transactions to the ledger, which is the same thing as having 100% of the votes.

You have it backwards.

Nodes decide if they will append your block to their chain.

A miner that decides to mine out of consensus blocks is just burning money, and will be on their own fork with their “100% votes” that nobody else uses.

Give it a try, spend a few million on mining equipment and then try forcing something on the network.

It’s not a democratic system, never was.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#299

Post by drclau »

wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

> Bitcoin is already approaching 1% of global electricity consumption, if it hasn't passed that point already

And this is the reason why I cannot take any climate change conversation seriously unless it includes the topic of cryptocurrencies.

Whatever the promises of cryptocurrencies were, now most (all?) degenerated into a mechanism for speculation, and effectively into a self-sustaining and self-promoting mechanism for transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. And, unfortunately, with the side effect of consuming vast amounts of energy.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#300

Post by rocqua »

supermatt wrote: post #94
xg15 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is which kind of hash you needed. For PoW, you'd have to know the hash of the start of the chain (the "genesis block") in advance to verify you downloaded the correct chain. That's true, but this hash doesn't change during operation. You could get that hash from a history book if you will. For PoS, the hash is from the end of the chain and therefore constantly changing. This means the challenge…

> For PoW, you'd have to know the hash of the start of the chain (the "genesis block") in advance to verify you downloaded the correct chain. Nope. You could fork the chain at a period of low difficulty and it would still stem from the genesis block. It would either be a short chain, or have clearly low difficulty though, so it wouldnt fool anyone knowledgeable. Im not sure how you would leverage that chain for fraud…

A while ago bitcoin clients changed from facoring the 'longest' chain to favoring the chain with the most work done on it. (To prevent long chains with low difficulty)
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