Author: befreeandopen 2021-05-25 08:22:42
Published on: 2021-05-25T08:22:42+00:00
The email thread revolves around the potential for Proof of Stake (PoS) as a consensus protocol. Some believe that PoS has the potential to increase security while reducing resource costs, while others argue that it tends towards oligopolistic control and requires a trusted means of timestamping. The energy usage in Bitcoin is also discussed, with differing opinions on whether there are ways to substantially improve it.One issue with PoS is the "nothing at stake" problem, which allows attackers to exploit the system. Punishing people who mint on shorter chains only reduces some instances of the problem, but does not solve it completely. Another way to mitigate this issue is to have "rounds" or "epochs" for which minters are pre-selected, but this introduces another problem elsewhere such as vulnerability to powerful DDOS attacks.Proof of burn is suggested to be more secure than proof-of-stake, but it also requires coins to be online when burned. This creates a conflicting requirement that the keys for large amounts of coins should be kept offline but need to be online to make the scheme secure. Large unsophisticated coin holders can put their coins in cold storage without a second thought given to the health of the underlying ledger in Bitcoin, but in PoS systems, this clean separation of responsibilities does not exist. Proof-of-SquareSpace is an example of a UTXO based PoS coin based on Ouroboros Praos with an inbuilt on-chain delegation system, which has certain disadvantages including the association of every UTXO to an account, ruining one of the main privacy advantages of the UTXO model. It is important to note that while specific attacks may be prevented in PoS through certain modifications, they may introduce another problem elsewhere and there is no solution to the "nothing at stake" problem without critical tradeoffs.Overall, while there are differing opinions on the feasibility of PoS for Bitcoin, many agree that further research and experimentation is needed. However, some argue that for Bitcoin to succeed as a "digital gold" like system, simplicity and avoiding extraneous responsibilities for the holder of the coin is vital. Proof-of-Stake makes everything too exciting and poses bad technical tradeoffs.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T20:52:54.658584+00:00