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Why not move to proof of stake? Proof of Work mining used in bitcon to secure the network as originally proposed in Nakomoto's paper has huge energy requirement

Why not move to proof of stake? Proof of Work mining used in bitcon to secure the network as originally proposed in Nakomoto's paper has huge energy requirements. The result is large energy hungry mines as shown by the article. In addition, there is a centralization of governance by the miners. One such example of a long running proof of stake is Peercoin. Peercoin is a legit energy-efficient contender to Bitcoin. It's one of the first publicly known implementations of proof of stake has been around for close to 5 years now. Peercoin is energy-efficient and runs on raspberry pis. It's been running successfully for years now. https://peercoin.net/ https://peercoin.net/ There are also academic proof of stake chains which virtually eliminate the chance of forks, such as algorand. https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341

runeks 9y ago
> Why not move to proof of stake? Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself. > Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article. Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary.
- peercoin 9y ago
  > Why not move to proof of stake? >> Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself. I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on? In addition to existing proof of stake systems which have been running for years now, there exist several papers with rigorous formal proofs. Including Turing Award winner Silvio Micali's algorand. Refute his paper. You will became very famous overnight. https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341 > Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article. >> Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary. I assume this is trolling or extreme nitpicking. Securing the network in proof of work requires that the majority of computing power is held by honest miners.
  - runeks 9y ago
    > I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on? Proof-of-stake (PoS) doesn't solve the fundamental problem that we need to reach consensus on one, single history of transactions. All PoS does is enable us to say whether a new block is valid, but that's not important. The important part is that everyone else in the network agree that this is the new block (and not some other valid block). Valid blockchains are easy to create, the valid blockchain isn't. Defining a valid block as a function of some preceding blocks is simple. The challenge is to incentivize a decentralized network to come to complete agreement on one, single version of all people's balances. Collusion is a huge risk factor here (rewrite blockchain to assign the balance of the five most wealthiest accounts to everyone else), and PoS does nothing to mitigate that. In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money.
    - peercoin 9y ago
      >> In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money. Replace exploit with malicious miner and it's not clear why proof of work is better than proof of stake.
      - runeks 9y ago
        An honest mining majority is a hard requirement of Bitcoin. But proof-of-stake doesn't solve the problem of collusion -- it's even more susceptible to it since it's so easy to recreate valid-looking chains. With Bitcoin, two or more competing chains will at least be visible (two distinct chains with a lot of work), whereas they're everywhere in PoS and the main chain is qualitatively no different from any other valid chain (of which we can create thousands quickly).

runeks 9y ago

> Why not move to proof of stake? Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself. > Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article. Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary.

peercoin 9y ago
> Why not move to proof of stake? >> Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself. I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on? In addition to existing proof of stake systems which have been running for years now, there exist several papers with rigorous formal proofs. Including Turing Award winner Silvio Micali's algorand. Refute his paper. You will became very famous overnight. https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341 > Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article. >> Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary. I assume this is trolling or extreme nitpicking. Securing the network in proof of work requires that the majority of computing power is held by honest miners.
- runeks 9y ago
  > I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on? Proof-of-stake (PoS) doesn't solve the fundamental problem that we need to reach consensus on one, single history of transactions. All PoS does is enable us to say whether a new block is valid, but that's not important. The important part is that everyone else in the network agree that this is the new block (and not some other valid block). Valid blockchains are easy to create, the valid blockchain isn't. Defining a valid block as a function of some preceding blocks is simple. The challenge is to incentivize a decentralized network to come to complete agreement on one, single version of all people's balances. Collusion is a huge risk factor here (rewrite blockchain to assign the balance of the five most wealthiest accounts to everyone else), and PoS does nothing to mitigate that. In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money.
  - peercoin 9y ago
    >> In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money. Replace exploit with malicious miner and it's not clear why proof of work is better than proof of stake.
    - runeks 9y ago
      An honest mining majority is a hard requirement of Bitcoin. But proof-of-stake doesn't solve the problem of collusion -- it's even more susceptible to it since it's so easy to recreate valid-looking chains. With Bitcoin, two or more competing chains will at least be visible (two distinct chains with a lot of work), whereas they're everywhere in PoS and the main chain is qualitatively no different from any other valid chain (of which we can create thousands quickly).