Author: Erik Aronesty 2021-06-01 16:33:29
Published on: 2021-06-01T16:33:29+00:00
The first discussion revolves around the concept of Proof of Burn (PoB) and its comparison with Proof of Stake (PoS). The writer is skeptical of PoB and believes that it suffers from similar problems as PoS. They highlight concerns such as the lack of definition of the heaviest chain and difficulty adjustment, the "nothing at stake" problem, and trivial attacks by wealthy attackers. However, the writer acknowledges that PoB has some advantages over PoS, such as sunk costs/lost investment and the fact that "hashpower" is "offline" and cannot be seized.In another discussion about the security of Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol, one participant claims that it is critically insecure due to the "nothing at stake" problem. They argue that an attacker can violate the linearity of stakers' power by using a technique they describe. The other participant argues that punishments can be introduced to solve the nothing at stake problem, disproving the claim that all possible PoS protocols are insecure. However, the first participant disagrees, stating that punishments introduce additional complexity and that the optimal scenario with all existing coins participating is theoretical, rarely occurring in practice. Another conversation discusses the security issues with proof-of-stake (PoS) and the potential solutions for it. One of the main concerns is the "nothing at stake" problem, where miners have an incentive to mine on every chain in the event of a fork, resulting in an unstable system controlled by powerful entities. The conversation also covers proof-of-burn (PoB) as a potential solution that eliminates this weakness as the burn investment is always "at stake", and any redaction can result in a loss-of-burn. In an email exchange on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Lloyd Fournier argued that Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is not suitable for a global settlement layer in a pure digital asset like Bitcoin, which is striving to be "digital gold". He explained that PoS gives responsibilities to coin holders that they may not want or be able to handle. In contrast, unsophisticated Bitcoin holders can put their coins in cold storage without affecting the underlying consensus. The conversation revolves around Bitcoin's energy usage and the possibility of doing better in the future. There is a debate over the resilience of Proof of Stake (PoS) versus Proof of Work (PoW). While PoS has a failure threshold of 1/3, some designs should exceed that up to nearly 50%. On the other hand, PoW is not resilient up to the 1/2 threshold as an attacker does not need to obtain all the hash power but only needs to accumulate 50% of it.VDFs (Verifiable Delay Functions) have a weakness in that they are not inherently progress-free, making them inherently progress-requiring. This means that miners can potentially get into a winner-takes-all situation by focusing on improving the amount of energy pumped into VDF circuitry. Overclocking and freezing the circuitry could give one miner an advantage over others, leading to increased competition and energy consumption.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T21:17:13.790551+00:00