> And it is is fact possible to design a system where the expected costs will always outweigh the expected benefits, This is the key point, and also why the au

> And it is is fact possible to design a system where the expected costs will always outweigh the expected benefits, This is the key point, and also why the author's analysis is much too broad: as stated, the argument applies to all social structures in general. For example, under the author's analysis, PoW itself should not be able to exist, because if $10 of economic value is generated by the blockchain, then at least $10 of energy needs to be burned in order to keep the blockchain secure. This is wrong; it ignores the high real-world cost of dispersed attackers to acquire the (dispersed) surpluses from an attack. Yet we see that in practice social structures exist and produce net surpluses greater than their maintenance cost (in fact, these two facts are equivalent, since a social structure that did not provide an energetic surplus would not survive in dynamic equilibrium). The ability to punish rule-breakers as a large multiple of the magnitude of their attempted rule-breaking is what allows social structures (including markets) to gain the necessary leverage; otherwise there can be no surplus derived from creating structure, because to get $1 of social surplus, you need to burn $1 of surplus. Therefore, the real question is whether dPoS creates structures with higher leverage to punish cheaters than PoW.