Author: Jeremy 2021-05-07 23:19:48
Published on: 2021-05-07T23:19:48+00:00
A member of the Bitcoin-dev mailing list asked for opinions on implementing proof-of-stake (PoS) for Bitcoin mining in the future due to concerns about the energy usage of Bitcoin mining. While some mining is done with renewable resources, the impact is still high. PoS tends towards oligopolistic control and has security issues that make it a bad substitute for proof-of-work (PoW) with respect to equivocation. The writer personally believes that exploring non-PoW means of consensus long term is okay but PoS is not a substitute. The writer suggests that if someone truly has a novel solution for Byzantine Generals, it would be a major contribution to not just Bitcoin but the field of computer science as a whole. However, Bitcoin PoW has specific properties that may or may not be desirable around fairness that might be difficult to ensure in other systems, so there is probably more to the puzzle than just consensus. If PoS turns out to be good after battle testing, it could be considered for Bitcoin, but it would invoke a lot of controversies and a hard fork.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T21:17:48.783505+00:00