Author: ZmnSCPxj 2019-07-16 23:00:02
Published on: 2019-07-16T23:00:02+00:00
The email thread discusses the benefits and drawbacks of Proof of Stake (PoS) as an alternative to Proof of Work (PoW) in terms of eco-friendliness, ethics, and security. The writer of the original email suggests that PoS could be 100% secure against all 51% history rewrite attacks with only two extra improvements required. The improvements include hardcoded checkpoints which protect the blockchain from a Long-Range attack. However, the proposal faces challenges related to trust-minimization and uncensorability requirements of Bitcoin. The use of hardcoded checkpoints is not acceptable under the trust-minimization requirement since it effectively trusts the developers and cannot be disabled-by-default. Furthermore, the suggested extra rule of connecting to a block explorer or asking a trusted source manually for the hash of the current block height is also not acceptable since it is not a trust-minimizing consensus algorithm. It is impossible to trust-minimally heal from a network split, which makes this proposal vulnerable to censorship attacks. ZmnSCPxj, who responds to the initial email, argues that the very idea of PoS is based on the assumption that unencumbered free-market payment for energy consumption is somehow not market-efficient despite the well-known phenomenon of the invisible hand. He believes that acquiring energy incurs costs, which are non-trivial under PoW and therefore provides uncensorability. On the other hand, under PoS, it is difficult to determine if some single entity controls more than 51% of stakeable coins, making it vulnerable to censorship attacks. Stake-grinding may allow a 49% staker to achieve 51%, thereby giving them the ability to censor transactions.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T20:03:08.778339+00:00