Author: R E Broadley 2021-05-09 11:30:53
Published on: 2021-05-09T11:30:53+00:00
The debate about the energy usage of bitcoin mining continues as a lurker on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, SatoshiSingh, proposes implementing proof of stake (PoS) for bitcoin mining in the future, which would require a hard fork. Eric Martindale, founder and CEO of Fabric, Inc., responds by arguing that PoS is untested and incompatible with Bitcoin's objective to be a trustless digital cash because it requires other trade-offs such as the "security vs. liveness" guarantee, which could globally halt digital cash to ensure its security. Furthermore, PoS incentivizes the accumulation of wealth within a small set of actors, which goes against Bitcoin's objective of protecting the rights of every individual to hold and preserve their own value without trusting any third party. Martindale also argues that PoW is more resilient than PoS because it can withstand up to a 1/2 threshold whereas PoS is only resilient to a 1/3rd of the network demonstrating a Byzantine Fault. Finally, he claims that entrusting the health of the network to the "economic elite" is the paramount evil with respect to Bitcoin's objectives.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T21:09:44.281853+00:00