Author: Kenshiro [] 2019-07-19 10:24:59
Published on: 2019-07-19T10:24:59+00:00
The discussion revolves around the vulnerability of 51% attack and how it can be avoided in PoS (Proof of Stake) implementation. The idea of shorting coins to perform a censorship attack is put forth, where the coin value drops due to reduced utility and the attacker reaps the rewards of the short option prepared beforehand. It is argued that PoS offers no defense against the primary threat to permissionless money. In PoS, once a miner achieves necessary stake, it can censor indefinitely, which is a significant difference from PoW (Proof of Work). Two possible situations are discussed where the first case involves creating blocks in the main chain and censoring only in one's 90% of blocks while censored transactions are included in the other 10% of blocks, whereas the second case involves stopping the creation of blocks in the main chain to force others to follow the evil chain and censor everything. The proposal of being non-linear on the size of the stake is deemed unfavorable since if one has 51% of the coins, putting them in a single stake UTXO can potentially get 99.999% of the blocks. Finally, the discussion concludes by stating that PoW is necessary, and fee-based confirmation is essential to overpowered the censor, and the correct solution is to support the development and deployment of better poolminer protocols.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T20:05:16.600122+00:00