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Have the problems with proof of stake been solved? As I recall, there was an argument that proof of stake didn't prevent forks very well, since people could hed
by vintermann 10y ago
Have the problems with proof of stake been solved? As I recall, there was an argument that proof of stake didn't prevent forks very well, since people could hedge their bets and stake for both ends of the fork, and there would be no downside to doing so.
- DennisP 10y agoThat's the "nothing at stake" problem. The Ethereum team claims to have solved it. I'm no expert but the basic idea is that stakers bet on which block will become part of the chain, and the block that does is the one that gets the most bets. Stakers start with small bets and progress to larger ones as the bets converge. If you make a large bet on a block that doesn't get included, you can lose substantial stake. What makes this possible is GHOST, which makes the blockchain aware of forks instead of just the final linear chain. (That's already part of Ethereum, and is what enables the 15 second block times.) There's more information at blog.ethereum.org.