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There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transact

There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.

hacknat 6y ago
I do think Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin eventually in usage. In some ways it already has. Ethereum's transaction fees are set to drop like a rock over the next few years, and so many useful things are built on it already.
- burkaman 6y ago
  Doesn't Ethereum have the same environmental issues?
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    Ethereum is supposedly changing over to proof of stake, but it's been a years long process
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Right now it has >$5 billion staked and >100,000 validators on the PoS network. What remains is to transition the rest of the network and eliminate miners, which is a relatively simple process.
      - neither_color 6y ago
        >eliminate miners Yes please. Ive been trying for weeks to buy a gpu.
    - BTCOG 6y ago
      Love that username! XD Yes, Ethereum has been working towards several long-tail projects for years. I think it's more important to distinguish that nothing good or important has come of Ethereum though, and that it is NOT money, and it is not a safe currency. The blockchain is fraught with front-ran txs, the mining is very centralized, and all projects atop ETH suffer dependency on it's success. The blockchain is growing very large which leads to further centralization on very expensive customized equipment. DeFi is a buzzword that means little but "super alpha experimental money leveraging tools" and financial instruments on the cutting edge. Ethereum is Dave & Busters tokens in comparison to Bitcoin being real money.
      - capableweb 6y ago
        > more important to distinguish that nothing good or important has come of Ethereum though I mean, Ethereum has the second largest marketcap of all cryptocurrencies and it feels like 80% of the research & development either comes from Ethereum directly or close-by ecosystems. To say that Ethereum is Dave & Busters tokens when compared to Bitcoin is funny, since every single cryptocurrency is magic internet money anyway.
  - meddlepal 6y ago
    Not once Proof of Stake is adopted next year (hopefully).
  - gnrlst 6y ago
    Yes. Ethereum 2.0 "promises" to fix most of them though. We'll see.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    They're moving toward PoS, which should help with that: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...
    - Ceezy 6y ago
      They are talking about POS in ethereum since years.
      - ChrisClark 6y ago
        And now the PoS chain has already launched and been working great. Next step is just to move the PoW chain to it. But they are definitely going slowly and safely. And it is definitely a slow process. :(
      - kristofferR 6y ago
        Yeah, duh, it's not like it's a small project: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1333922620857745408/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/133392262085774540... It's pretty bad that Bitcoin still hasn't started working on it.
      - bouncycastle 6y ago
        Their mainnet PoS network went live last december. The aim is to turn off PoW next year.
      - wcoenen 6y ago
        The recent activation of the beacon chain (and ether staking on it) means that they're committed to proof of stake now. All currently staked ether would be stranded otherwise. https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/docking/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/docking/
      - tarsinge 6y ago
        The v2 POS is live, but the complete migration of the v1 chain will take one or two years: https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/
  - jweir 6y ago
    Come on - you’d say the same thing about the freeway that plowed through some wonderful neighborhoods and blights us with noise and pollution. It’s all good. Cars are going electric, Ethereum is going to become efficient - problem solved. /s
  - serverholic 6y ago
    Ethereum is already transitioning to proof-of-stake which has a number of benefits including much lower power usage. I'm so tired of people equating bitcoin with all cryptocurrencies.
  - throwaway4good 6y ago
    Worse as it is specifically designed to run on GPUs. They would like to switch to proof of stake and plan to do so next year.
- coldpie 6y ago
  What usage? Isn't bitcoin used only for speculation, and a bit of crime on the side? I'm not aware of any usage for bitcoin that isn't purely commodity trading (with zero actual underlying value) or scams.
  - flatline 6y ago
    Ethereum has had a few other interesting, non-black-market uses over the years. DeFi, game assets, NFTs, etc. And the technology has actually evolved. Bitcoin is just...still bitcoin.
    - BTCOG 6y ago
      These are all bubble scams.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    A significant % of Bitcoin hasn't moved in years, people seem to be using it as a store of value. Crime usage is magnitude smaller than traditional currencies (source Citi's Bitcoin on the tipping point report).
    - earthtolazlo 6y ago
      The same Citi report that confused percentages with basis points in reporting that 13% of credit card charges are fraudulent? https://www.ft.com/content/8553aba7-8beb-4b48-9287-be6a08065444 https://www.ft.com/content/8553aba7-8beb-4b48-9287-be6a08065...
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    Bitcoin is used daily for paying real people money across the internet. You are in fact speculating on it's uses.
  - Zamicol 6y ago
    I know someone who just took out a loan on Ethereum to buy a house. That's its usage. https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ Every one of those "apps" is usage on Ethereum, everything from trading (Uniswap, think of it as a Coinbase competitor), loans (Maker), to mutual fund like assets (Yearn). It's hard to convey in a few words how much better buying a house using Maker/Eth was compared to going to a bank. Everything about the process smashes the traditional system.
- bingbong70 6y ago
  ETH wasn't designed to be a store of value, there is no max supply and the emission rate is higher than even Vitalik predicted/expected... storing your money in ETH is generally a bad idea.
  - yokem55 6y ago
    They are changing the transaction fee pricing system though to a model that 'burns' (dumps to /dev/null) part of the transaction fee when there is congestion. Exactly how much will be burned is hotly debated, but it will put a damper on the inflation side from block/staking rewards.
mavhc 6y ago
Which proof of stake systems currently exist and work well?
- asknthrow2020 6y ago
  NEO, Dash, QTUM, Algorand
- cies 6y ago
  Cardano and Polkadot iirc.
  - akudha 6y ago
    If I want to learn blockchain, would these two be good projects to start with?
    - Pungsnigel 6y ago
      I started with a combination of crypto basics + bitcoin and Cardano. The combination was great imo.
      - akudha 6y ago
        Do you work in the blockchain space now? Is there a way I can get in touch with you?
    - gnrlst 6y ago
      Might also want to research Nano as a pure P2P currency. Cardano and Dot are more focused around smart contracts.
  - qertoip 6y ago
    Cardano is still being ran by the company/foundation behind it. It is yet to transition to actual PoS.
- donsupreme 6y ago
  Nano
dbolgheroni 6y ago
Care to give some examples?
runarberg 6y ago
Could anyone explain to me how proof of stake works (as opposed to proof of work), and how it is better? Has proof of stake been proven to be as robust as proof of work? EDIT: The wikipedia article is easy to find[1]. However it is really short, looks incomplete, and has a lot of “citation needed” after each point. So I would rather ask on HN. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake
- jetpackjoe 6y ago
  In short, "validators" (which replace miners) put up some crypto, and in return get to validate transactions. If a validator approves a fraudulent transaction (as determined by other validators), they lose their stake.
- thedudeabides5 6y ago
  Kind of funny the goal of crypto was a total new, decentralized, democratic system, and what we end up (to solve the scale issue), is yet another class system where you can vote only in proportion to your wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification
  - jetpackjoe 6y ago
    This, I find, to be the biggest flaw with crypto in general.
  - rodiger 6y ago
    Mining isn't exactly a fair shake either... at least in PoS more network participants are even able to "vote". Staking better aligns incentives when compared to mining and most other alternatives.
  - mattwilsonn888 6y ago
    This is a massive and common misunderstanding. Publishing a block is NOT voting on its validity. Every node, regardless of stake accrued 'votes' (the correct word is 'chooses') independently of the validity of blocks just like in Bitcoin. Blockchains that allow protocol changes via votes are an option, and how you quantify votes is a parameter, but PoS is not tied to being a government token, and 'votes' on forks (its really not a vote as both protocols exist after a fork) are made by large and small holders alike. It has nothing to do with amount of currency owned.
nelsontodd 6y ago
With bitcoin, you are paying for security. I know if I send you a bitcoin transaction there is a high probability it won't be reverted in our lifetime, possibly ever. I'm not a maxi but these new projects don't have that guarantee yet; likely they never will.
- jetpackjoe 6y ago
  Proof of stake crypto currencies are just as secure.
  - deweller 6y ago
    Proof of stake is a different security model. It may work but it has not been proven in a $1 trillion high stakes environment yet.
    - bouncycastle 6y ago
      They work under the same assumption as PoW - that the majority of those participating in consensus will be honest. PoS also offers something PoW does not: absolute finality, https://medium.com/mechanism-labs/finality-in-blockchain-consensus-d1f83c120a9a https://medium.com/mechanism-labs/finality-in-blockchain-con... Additionally, PoS attackers can have their stake slashed, so they may never attack again. However, you can't slash PoW attackers, once attacked, they will just keep on coming back (no matter how many times you change the hashing algorithm)
      - yunvme 6y ago
        And you need to bootstrap your PoS system by enriching a bunch of insiders so that they can validate your transactions. PoS systems are unfit for being the decentralized digital store of value. Bitcoin has the most fair launch any cryptocurrency can ever have. There is no alternative for Bitcoin's use case.
        bouncycastle 6y ago
wbobeirne 6y ago
What defines a currency being "better" than another? Is it number of transactions? Is it acceptance among merchants? Is it low fees? Is it stability in purchasing power? Is it likelihood that there will be a fatal flaw in the system that causes financial loss? Every project has its own strengths and weaknesses, but it's hard to argue that Bitcoin isn't the best on many of those measures. It's all about which of them you as an individual value most.
- gnrlst 6y ago
  All the features mentioned above. For example: - transaction times - energy consumption - scalability (BTC currently does 7tx/s) - security (BTC is getting more centralized over time, increasing the risk of a majority takeover.) - fewer fees as possible (ideally 0) BTC only has first mover advantage, and security...for now.
  - wyldfire 6y ago
    I'm a big fan of bitcoin and a few altcoins, including some PoS. But I feel like you are understating bitcoin's security. It has been very well tested and has a large bounty - both in its market cap and value of transactions that have not been susceptible to any double-spend attacks. Other coins might sound good on paper -- adding new features but introducing serious design errors that have yet to be discovered because they're not a big enough target.
    - gnrlst 6y ago
      You're right. But security today does not guarantee security tomorrow in a landscape where mining incentivizes economies of scale. The more mining power converges (as it is already doing), the more likely for a fewer entities to collude. While it may not be in their interest given their investment in the project, who says that a government or malicious actor might not?
  - devmunchies 6y ago
    another is privacy. Bitcoin is not private. Monero is exclusively private and ZCash is opt-in private.
knuthsat 6y ago
Unfortunately, there really aren't that many better. Full transaction privacy (addresses not visible to public + amounts not visible to public) does not exist in any of the top 10. + offline transactions should be possible (allowing sync with the chain whenever), but also I do not think any have that. A good crypto-currency is like cash, with a nice physical gauge theory (allowing offline transactions) guaranteeing security + any transaction processing rate. Every single cryptocurrency now is still a research project first.
- DennisP 6y ago
  I'm having trouble seeing how you could have offline transactions that prevent doublespending. Could you expand on "nice physical gauge theory (allowing offline transactions)?" If you have a good idea here, it might be possible to implement as a second layer on a chain with smart contracts.
  - knuthsat 6y ago
    I'm aware of approaches similar to this: https://gist.github.com/DavidBurkett/32e33835b03f9101666690b7d6185203 https://gist.github.com/DavidBurkett/32e33835b03f9101666690b... describing offline transactions.
    - dlubarov 6y ago
      That title might be misleading; the doc is just about generating transactions without the sender and recipient needing to engage in an interactive protocol. It doesn't address double spending.
      - DennisP 6y ago
        Ah, so this is a thing just because mimblewimble's private transactions are interactive. Regular blockchain transactions are already non-interactive.
pmarreck 6y ago
Actually, isn't it the case that the first to market often fails, and it's really the second or third to market that usually has the better investment opportunity?
BTCOG 6y ago
Instead, it shows your lack of knowledge on safety and security of a Proof of Work blockchain with the network effect behind it, vs Proof of Stake which is flawed and insecure all in general.
dathinab 6y ago
It's not just about a currency usage network effect but also about speculative investments and alternative ways to "store" money. Depending on this you can compare it more with stocks without a company behind the stock or gold which for arbitrary reasons can't be used in manufacturing. Without this and usage for criminal purposes bitcoin would be worth a fraction of it's current worth and as such likely not worth mining for. This also means IMHO that Bitcoin as currency not just already failed, but did so pretty hard. As a non currency speculative investment/mony parking product it didn't fail. But it wasn't meant to be such a think. Furthermore the massive environmental problems it introduce by having a high such a absurd high need of energy and other economical problems (drain of currently limited chips without producing "general" economic benefits, usage for criminal activities if combined with mixers etc.) makes it a highly flawed product. It should be noted that this is Bitcoin specific. Other cryptocurrencies have this problem much less by neither having absurd high energy costs, nor having absurd high purely speculation/money parking based prices. Sure there will always be some drain of energy and some drain of chips and some usage for criminal activity. It's just that for Bitcoin thinks have gotten out of balance and besides availability through the network effect there is no reason to use Bitcoins for normal (legal) payments. It's just too costly, slow and price unstable (due to speculative investments always forming a bubble) to be used for normal payments IMHO. Exceptions can be countries with a "broken" economy, but even then other crypto currencies would be normally preferable as far as I know.
- TheCondor 6y ago
  < Without this and usage for criminal purposes bitcoin would be worth a fraction of it's current worth and as such likely not worth mining for. Is there anything definitive on this? I've heard/read that less than 3% of bitcoin was used for illegal purposes but I don't know if they include tax evasion in that.
Shorel 6y ago
This is actually something that Bjarne Stroustrup addressed when talking about C++: There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. In the case of cryptocurrencies, as soon as a cryptocurrency has any important percentage of use, these transactions are not confirmed in seconds anymore, and transaction fees starts to grow up. No one is really using PoS right now, so let's wait and see if this solution actually works when Ethereum officially switches.
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  You're spot on. The ETH fans love to wax poetic about PoS and how it's always around the corner and coming soon. It's been that way for ages. Lightning Network is similar. It's been perpetually 6 months away for years. Frankly, I'll be impressed if the current power structure within PoW cryptos doesn't find any way to hamstring PoS, mostly because they have a vested interest in keeping everything the way it is now.
  - Zamicol 6y ago
    Eth 2.0 is running right now. It is 100% PoS.
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      I don't see anyone really using it though. That's the thing. Which makes me wonder if it's really ready.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Well, yeah, the Beacon chain is running but shards is not live nor is the docking of Ethereum mainnet and Eth 2.0, so of course people are not really interested in building on it yet, it's barely in production. Once the two chains work together, I'm sure there will be an explosion of activity. But until then, we can't really say that Ethereum is 100% PoS, although one pre-alpha project is.
  - jerry1979 6y ago
saalweachter 6y ago
You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone. Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. The problem with a digital currency, of course, is that when you hand someone a sequence of bits, they don't go away from you, so you can hand that same sequence of bits to another person. The "solution" people came up with to this problem was to not solve the problem, and instead solve a different problem, how to have a distributed ledger. Which is like, neat and all. But also infuriating. We don't have crypto-currencies, we just have crypto-banks.
- darkwater 6y ago
  > The problem with a digital currency, of course, is that when you hand someone a sequence of bits, they don't go away from you, so you can hand that same sequence of bits to another person. > The "solution" people came up with to this problem was to not solve the problem, and instead solve a different problem, how to have a distributed ledger. And what would be, at least intuitively, a solution to the "you can copy bits, give them away but also keep a valid copy for yourself" problem which is a problem for currency but also the default way digital information work? If you had access to a near-perfect money printing machine, you would have just the same problem, we are just "saved" by the implementation difficulty. Just the same as with the ledger approach.
- jtsiskin 6y ago
  You can do that with the lightning network. The problem is double spend. With cash, it’s hard to copy. With anything electronic, it’s trivial to copy. That’s why it has to be a ledger. Notice visa requires internet connection as wel
- Jleagle 6y ago
  I'm not an export but i can print off a wallet key and give it to someone, on paper or usb. Sure i can give that same wallet to someone else but it's pretty quick to check the value of a wallet before accepting it. Why do you even need physical cash? I can carry my countries currency around with me easily enough but i generally don't bother as i don't ever need to.
dnmllr_ 6y ago
The fact that network and first to market effects are so strong in crypto is an indication that the market doesn't actually value things like proof-of-work or faster transactions or smaller fees. Sure, there are a small number of enthusiasts and professionals who do, but they don't make a market. Most of the people involved just want to buy a worthless asset and trade it to somebody who will pay more for that worthless asset. The bitcoin brand is the most import feature for that use case.
- BTCOG 6y ago
  It is an indication that in a free market, people are able to choose what works best while the forks and knockoffs prove that nobody believes in them, or that they are unsafe networks.
la_fayette 6y ago
Nothing proven yet in large usecases...
saul_goodman 6y ago
Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven problem was the threat of government shutdown by a police raid of your servers, this is what killed E-gold and other predecessors. The blockchain solved the problem of having your central ledger being shutdown by the cops/IRS/etc. by decentralizing it and of course Bitcoin also solved a ton of other problems as well to make it an actual viable electronic cash transaction system. This is why it took off, not just because "it was the first to market". It wasn't, but it solved all of the real-world blockers that had killed all other attempts before it. Don't forget that we don't know for certain who "Satoshi" was and for good reason, he knew he'd have a target painted on his back by the government. He was incredibly smart to conceal his identity. As a side-bar, a major role of money is to allow the government to easily collect taxes from their citizens and so governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment. Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. While the early crypto-is-cash people are annoyed by this, it was the only possible outcome in a match between the government and crypto currency that doesn't end in outright warfare on crypto. Now that digital currencies have moved from theoretical to a proven model people can move on to solving newer problems rather than just getting it off the ground. Now we have privacy coins which attempt to solve the problems of getting anonymous transactions among other desirable features. But wait there's more, now that we don't have to prove that electronic cash is a workable system we have decentralized finance coins now. If people thought the government hated bitcoin, just wait until the banking system realizes defi is coming.
- choward 6y ago
  > governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? > Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. They still doesn't mean you can pay taxes with it.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Yeah, I think bitcoin has been completely surpassed technologically speaking. Monero in particular solved almost all of bitcoin's problems yet still can't compete with it in popularity.
- Covzire 6y ago
  Isn't litecoin also better than bitcoin on the technical side, with very few changes? I think Monero failed at the name. Bitcoin's name is self defining to some degree which I think helped make it gain a lot of popularity. It's also impersonal, bits and coins, there's no real branding there to get twisted up with. When people first hear "bitcoin" they already have constructs in their head about bits and coins and it elicits free advertisement as the imagination tries to create a working theory on what a bitcoin is. Monero makes me think of some kind of failed sports car nobody has ever heard of. I'm not counting it out, but if it's really better on the technical side then it needs some prominent evangelists spreading its use.
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    Litecoin is literally a fork of Bitcoin with the hashing algo switched to Scrypt and made by Charlie Lee (which was hardened against ASICs mining) with a 4x supply release, and which ironically became mined primarily by custom Scrypt ASICs only. Whatever in the world would make you say "Isn't Litecoin better than Bitcoin?"
    - Covzire 6y ago
      One of the purposes for it was to allow faster and cheaper transactions which it arguably does.
- BTCOG 6y ago
  XMR has the Bitcoin core devs developing for it and it has nothing technologically "surpassing" Bitcoin. Bulletproofs for Monero were written by GMaxwell. Do all people on HackerNews outside of my own bubble also constantly speak about things from a position like they know things when they clearly know nothing of the subject matter?
olalonde 6y ago
Another armchair cryptographer on HN who has no idea what they're talking about... somehow this is acceptable when it comes to Bitcoin. I feel like I'm being charitable here but what exists are other cryptocurrencies which trade-off security and/or decentralization in favor of some other properties. Regarding proof-of-stake for example, I'll defer to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25007874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25007874
- toomim 6y ago
  This attitude that people who disagree with you are stupid or don't know cryptography about is part of the problem, and why people still buy into BTC when there are technologically far-superior coins out there. So you just demonstrated the problem that the OP was talking about.
  - olalonde 6y ago
    My point was that OP's point and yours, "there are technologically far-superior coins out there", is not true by any stretch of the imagination. Pardon my attitude but this is getting out of hand on HN lately. It seems the idea that you shouldn't authoritatively comment on subjects you are barely familiar with goes out of the window when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. If you disagree, I'd invite you to cite some respected cryptographers and researchers who have made such claim.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    Theres a lot of people on here who have no idea what they're talking about but make claims there is a better coin. Theres always a tradeoff they dont fully comprehend.
- runeks 6y ago
  In addition to technical difference between cryptocurrencies, there’s also a difference in financial properties of the token itself, e.g. liquidity. Liquidity refers to how much the price moves when buying from or selling into the market. For example, you can sell roughly 5 million USD worth of litecoin on the Bitfinex exchange until you push down the price by 0.5%, but for Bitcoin this figure is roughly 500 million USD (~100 times greater). The greater the liquidity of a currency the less value is lost when exchanging back and forth between it and e.g. USD. [1] https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=BTCUSD https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=BTCUSD [2] https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=LTCUSD https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=LTCUSD
yunvme 6y ago
This isn't true. You don't understand Bitcoin. Proof of work is the only way to secure a decentralized system like Bitcoin's. Proof of stake requires trust in a group of validators. An oligopoly of sorts. A proof of stake system is unfit for a decentralized store of value. Alternatives to Bitcoin enriched a central group of people. Bitcoin's distribution was "fair". There is no replicating it. Picture bitcoin in its final state, where central banks trade in and out of Bitcoin to weaken or strengthen their respective currencies. Bitcoin is the only solution, and other cryptocurrency is fit for the task.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Surely proof of work also requires trust in a group of miners, trusting that 51% of them don't collude? As mining complexity grows, surely this problem is only exasperated, since you need a bigger investment to be able to mine effectively, which would presumably result in an even smaller group of more powerful miners?
  - qertoip 6y ago
    So far Bitcoin mining is getting increasingly decentralized in practice - from China to Iran to US to Venezuela.
debbiedowner 6y ago
Why is proof of work so much more popular than proof of stake?
- Zamicol 6y ago
  Because PoW is easier to implement correctly than PoS. PoW can be as simple as checking a hash (in addition to the basic block rules). PoS has a lot more rules, for example Eth has a lot of PoS rules and includes features like slashing which improve economic securities. https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-of-stake/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-o... When rules aren't by implemented correctly it causes situations like Bitcoin's 2013 fork https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork
- qertoip 6y ago
  Because PoS effectively means a handful of exchanges run the coin. This is far worse than a handful of mining pools, because pools depend on many more individual hash power providers.
qertoip 6y ago
No, they are not better, because they are easy to change, and so it is easy to change monetary policy "for better", or make the coin "more compliant". Bitcoin value is that it is extremely hard to change, especially when it comes to fundamental properties, like 21m hard cap. You can actually rely on Bitcoin's monetary policy to be fixed forever.
jasonlaramburu 6y ago
Bitcoin’s excessive energy consumption is a feature, not a bug, designed to deter a 51% attack. It will only get worse as the price of BTC increases. If we reach an era of nearly free energy, the price of BTC will fall.
level09 6y ago
Those are not better. Bitcoin offers too many things, trading off decentralization and security for speed is not exactly a better solution. Moreover, those "better" solutions are mostly operated and promoted by founders with questionable profit incentives, they also control the rules of those crypto-currencies. Bitcoin shines due to its fixed Rules, unknown founder, best incentive structure.

hacknat 6y ago

I do think Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin eventually in usage. In some ways it already has. Ethereum's transaction fees are set to drop like a rock over the next few years, and so many useful things are built on it already.

burkaman 6y ago
Doesn't Ethereum have the same environmental issues?
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Ethereum is supposedly changing over to proof of stake, but it's been a years long process
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Right now it has >$5 billion staked and >100,000 validators on the PoS network. What remains is to transition the rest of the network and eliminate miners, which is a relatively simple process.
    - neither_color 6y ago
      >eliminate miners Yes please. Ive been trying for weeks to buy a gpu.
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    Love that username! XD Yes, Ethereum has been working towards several long-tail projects for years. I think it's more important to distinguish that nothing good or important has come of Ethereum though, and that it is NOT money, and it is not a safe currency. The blockchain is fraught with front-ran txs, the mining is very centralized, and all projects atop ETH suffer dependency on it's success. The blockchain is growing very large which leads to further centralization on very expensive customized equipment. DeFi is a buzzword that means little but "super alpha experimental money leveraging tools" and financial instruments on the cutting edge. Ethereum is Dave & Busters tokens in comparison to Bitcoin being real money.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      > more important to distinguish that nothing good or important has come of Ethereum though I mean, Ethereum has the second largest marketcap of all cryptocurrencies and it feels like 80% of the research & development either comes from Ethereum directly or close-by ecosystems. To say that Ethereum is Dave & Busters tokens when compared to Bitcoin is funny, since every single cryptocurrency is magic internet money anyway.
- meddlepal 6y ago
  Not once Proof of Stake is adopted next year (hopefully).
- gnrlst 6y ago
  Yes. Ethereum 2.0 "promises" to fix most of them though. We'll see.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  They're moving toward PoS, which should help with that: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...
  - Ceezy 6y ago
    They are talking about POS in ethereum since years.
    - ChrisClark 6y ago
      And now the PoS chain has already launched and been working great. Next step is just to move the PoW chain to it. But they are definitely going slowly and safely. And it is definitely a slow process. :(
    - kristofferR 6y ago
      Yeah, duh, it's not like it's a small project: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1333922620857745408/photo/1 https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/133392262085774540... It's pretty bad that Bitcoin still hasn't started working on it.
    - bouncycastle 6y ago
      Their mainnet PoS network went live last december. The aim is to turn off PoW next year.
    - wcoenen 6y ago
      The recent activation of the beacon chain (and ether staking on it) means that they're committed to proof of stake now. All currently staked ether would be stranded otherwise. https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/docking/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/docking/
    - tarsinge 6y ago
      The v2 POS is live, but the complete migration of the v1 chain will take one or two years: https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/
- jweir 6y ago
  Come on - you’d say the same thing about the freeway that plowed through some wonderful neighborhoods and blights us with noise and pollution. It’s all good. Cars are going electric, Ethereum is going to become efficient - problem solved. /s
- serverholic 6y ago
  Ethereum is already transitioning to proof-of-stake which has a number of benefits including much lower power usage. I'm so tired of people equating bitcoin with all cryptocurrencies.
- throwaway4good 6y ago
  Worse as it is specifically designed to run on GPUs. They would like to switch to proof of stake and plan to do so next year.
coldpie 6y ago
What usage? Isn't bitcoin used only for speculation, and a bit of crime on the side? I'm not aware of any usage for bitcoin that isn't purely commodity trading (with zero actual underlying value) or scams.
- flatline 6y ago
  Ethereum has had a few other interesting, non-black-market uses over the years. DeFi, game assets, NFTs, etc. And the technology has actually evolved. Bitcoin is just...still bitcoin.
  - BTCOG 6y ago
    These are all bubble scams.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  A significant % of Bitcoin hasn't moved in years, people seem to be using it as a store of value. Crime usage is magnitude smaller than traditional currencies (source Citi's Bitcoin on the tipping point report).
  - earthtolazlo 6y ago
    The same Citi report that confused percentages with basis points in reporting that 13% of credit card charges are fraudulent? https://www.ft.com/content/8553aba7-8beb-4b48-9287-be6a08065444 https://www.ft.com/content/8553aba7-8beb-4b48-9287-be6a08065...
- BTCOG 6y ago
  Bitcoin is used daily for paying real people money across the internet. You are in fact speculating on it's uses.
- Zamicol 6y ago
  I know someone who just took out a loan on Ethereum to buy a house. That's its usage. https://defipulse.com/ https://defipulse.com/ Every one of those "apps" is usage on Ethereum, everything from trading (Uniswap, think of it as a Coinbase competitor), loans (Maker), to mutual fund like assets (Yearn). It's hard to convey in a few words how much better buying a house using Maker/Eth was compared to going to a bank. Everything about the process smashes the traditional system.
bingbong70 6y ago
ETH wasn't designed to be a store of value, there is no max supply and the emission rate is higher than even Vitalik predicted/expected... storing your money in ETH is generally a bad idea.
- yokem55 6y ago
  They are changing the transaction fee pricing system though to a model that 'burns' (dumps to /dev/null) part of the transaction fee when there is congestion. Exactly how much will be burned is hotly debated, but it will put a damper on the inflation side from block/staking rewards.

mavhc 6y ago

Which proof of stake systems currently exist and work well?

asknthrow2020 6y ago
NEO, Dash, QTUM, Algorand
cies 6y ago
Cardano and Polkadot iirc.
- akudha 6y ago
  If I want to learn blockchain, would these two be good projects to start with?
  - Pungsnigel 6y ago
    I started with a combination of crypto basics + bitcoin and Cardano. The combination was great imo.
    - akudha 6y ago
      Do you work in the blockchain space now? Is there a way I can get in touch with you?
  - gnrlst 6y ago
    Might also want to research Nano as a pure P2P currency. Cardano and Dot are more focused around smart contracts.
- qertoip 6y ago
  Cardano is still being ran by the company/foundation behind it. It is yet to transition to actual PoS.
donsupreme 6y ago
Nano

dbolgheroni 6y ago

Care to give some examples?

runarberg 6y ago

Could anyone explain to me how proof of stake works (as opposed to proof of work), and how it is better? Has proof of stake been proven to be as robust as proof of work? EDIT: The wikipedia article is easy to find[1]. However it is really short, looks incomplete, and has a lot of “citation needed” after each point. So I would rather ask on HN. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

jetpackjoe 6y ago
In short, "validators" (which replace miners) put up some crypto, and in return get to validate transactions. If a validator approves a fraudulent transaction (as determined by other validators), they lose their stake.
thedudeabides5 6y ago
Kind of funny the goal of crypto was a total new, decentralized, democratic system, and what we end up (to solve the scale issue), is yet another class system where you can vote only in proportion to your wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification
- jetpackjoe 6y ago
  This, I find, to be the biggest flaw with crypto in general.
- rodiger 6y ago
  Mining isn't exactly a fair shake either... at least in PoS more network participants are even able to "vote". Staking better aligns incentives when compared to mining and most other alternatives.
- mattwilsonn888 6y ago
  This is a massive and common misunderstanding. Publishing a block is NOT voting on its validity. Every node, regardless of stake accrued 'votes' (the correct word is 'chooses') independently of the validity of blocks just like in Bitcoin. Blockchains that allow protocol changes via votes are an option, and how you quantify votes is a parameter, but PoS is not tied to being a government token, and 'votes' on forks (its really not a vote as both protocols exist after a fork) are made by large and small holders alike. It has nothing to do with amount of currency owned.

nelsontodd 6y ago

With bitcoin, you are paying for security. I know if I send you a bitcoin transaction there is a high probability it won't be reverted in our lifetime, possibly ever. I'm not a maxi but these new projects don't have that guarantee yet; likely they never will.

jetpackjoe 6y ago
Proof of stake crypto currencies are just as secure.
- deweller 6y ago
  Proof of stake is a different security model. It may work but it has not been proven in a $1 trillion high stakes environment yet.
  - bouncycastle 6y ago
    They work under the same assumption as PoW - that the majority of those participating in consensus will be honest. PoS also offers something PoW does not: absolute finality, https://medium.com/mechanism-labs/finality-in-blockchain-consensus-d1f83c120a9a https://medium.com/mechanism-labs/finality-in-blockchain-con... Additionally, PoS attackers can have their stake slashed, so they may never attack again. However, you can't slash PoW attackers, once attacked, they will just keep on coming back (no matter how many times you change the hashing algorithm)
    - yunvme 6y ago
      And you need to bootstrap your PoS system by enriching a bunch of insiders so that they can validate your transactions. PoS systems are unfit for being the decentralized digital store of value. Bitcoin has the most fair launch any cryptocurrency can ever have. There is no alternative for Bitcoin's use case.
      - bouncycastle 6y ago

wbobeirne 6y ago

What defines a currency being "better" than another? Is it number of transactions? Is it acceptance among merchants? Is it low fees? Is it stability in purchasing power? Is it likelihood that there will be a fatal flaw in the system that causes financial loss? Every project has its own strengths and weaknesses, but it's hard to argue that Bitcoin isn't the best on many of those measures. It's all about which of them you as an individual value most.

gnrlst 6y ago
All the features mentioned above. For example: - transaction times - energy consumption - scalability (BTC currently does 7tx/s) - security (BTC is getting more centralized over time, increasing the risk of a majority takeover.) - fewer fees as possible (ideally 0) BTC only has first mover advantage, and security...for now.
- wyldfire 6y ago
  I'm a big fan of bitcoin and a few altcoins, including some PoS. But I feel like you are understating bitcoin's security. It has been very well tested and has a large bounty - both in its market cap and value of transactions that have not been susceptible to any double-spend attacks. Other coins might sound good on paper -- adding new features but introducing serious design errors that have yet to be discovered because they're not a big enough target.
  - gnrlst 6y ago
    You're right. But security today does not guarantee security tomorrow in a landscape where mining incentivizes economies of scale. The more mining power converges (as it is already doing), the more likely for a fewer entities to collude. While it may not be in their interest given their investment in the project, who says that a government or malicious actor might not?
- devmunchies 6y ago
  another is privacy. Bitcoin is not private. Monero is exclusively private and ZCash is opt-in private.

knuthsat 6y ago

Unfortunately, there really aren't that many better. Full transaction privacy (addresses not visible to public + amounts not visible to public) does not exist in any of the top 10. + offline transactions should be possible (allowing sync with the chain whenever), but also I do not think any have that. A good crypto-currency is like cash, with a nice physical gauge theory (allowing offline transactions) guaranteeing security + any transaction processing rate. Every single cryptocurrency now is still a research project first.

DennisP 6y ago
I'm having trouble seeing how you could have offline transactions that prevent doublespending. Could you expand on "nice physical gauge theory (allowing offline transactions)?" If you have a good idea here, it might be possible to implement as a second layer on a chain with smart contracts.
- knuthsat 6y ago
  I'm aware of approaches similar to this: https://gist.github.com/DavidBurkett/32e33835b03f9101666690b7d6185203 https://gist.github.com/DavidBurkett/32e33835b03f9101666690b... describing offline transactions.
  - dlubarov 6y ago
    That title might be misleading; the doc is just about generating transactions without the sender and recipient needing to engage in an interactive protocol. It doesn't address double spending.
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Ah, so this is a thing just because mimblewimble's private transactions are interactive. Regular blockchain transactions are already non-interactive.

pmarreck 6y ago

Actually, isn't it the case that the first to market often fails, and it's really the second or third to market that usually has the better investment opportunity?

BTCOG 6y ago

Instead, it shows your lack of knowledge on safety and security of a Proof of Work blockchain with the network effect behind it, vs Proof of Stake which is flawed and insecure all in general.

dathinab 6y ago

It's not just about a currency usage network effect but also about speculative investments and alternative ways to "store" money. Depending on this you can compare it more with stocks without a company behind the stock or gold which for arbitrary reasons can't be used in manufacturing. Without this and usage for criminal purposes bitcoin would be worth a fraction of it's current worth and as such likely not worth mining for. This also means IMHO that Bitcoin as currency not just already failed, but did so pretty hard. As a non currency speculative investment/mony parking product it didn't fail. But it wasn't meant to be such a think. Furthermore the massive environmental problems it introduce by having a high such a absurd high need of energy and other economical problems (drain of currently limited chips without producing "general" economic benefits, usage for criminal activities if combined with mixers etc.) makes it a highly flawed product. It should be noted that this is Bitcoin specific. Other cryptocurrencies have this problem much less by neither having absurd high energy costs, nor having absurd high purely speculation/money parking based prices. Sure there will always be some drain of energy and some drain of chips and some usage for criminal activity. It's just that for Bitcoin thinks have gotten out of balance and besides availability through the network effect there is no reason to use Bitcoins for normal (legal) payments. It's just too costly, slow and price unstable (due to speculative investments always forming a bubble) to be used for normal payments IMHO. Exceptions can be countries with a "broken" economy, but even then other crypto currencies would be normally preferable as far as I know.

TheCondor 6y ago
< Without this and usage for criminal purposes bitcoin would be worth a fraction of it's current worth and as such likely not worth mining for. Is there anything definitive on this? I've heard/read that less than 3% of bitcoin was used for illegal purposes but I don't know if they include tax evasion in that.

Shorel 6y ago

This is actually something that Bjarne Stroustrup addressed when talking about C++: There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. In the case of cryptocurrencies, as soon as a cryptocurrency has any important percentage of use, these transactions are not confirmed in seconds anymore, and transaction fees starts to grow up. No one is really using PoS right now, so let's wait and see if this solution actually works when Ethereum officially switches.

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
You're spot on. The ETH fans love to wax poetic about PoS and how it's always around the corner and coming soon. It's been that way for ages. Lightning Network is similar. It's been perpetually 6 months away for years. Frankly, I'll be impressed if the current power structure within PoW cryptos doesn't find any way to hamstring PoS, mostly because they have a vested interest in keeping everything the way it is now.
- Zamicol 6y ago
  Eth 2.0 is running right now. It is 100% PoS.
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    I don't see anyone really using it though. That's the thing. Which makes me wonder if it's really ready.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Well, yeah, the Beacon chain is running but shards is not live nor is the docking of Ethereum mainnet and Eth 2.0, so of course people are not really interested in building on it yet, it's barely in production. Once the two chains work together, I'm sure there will be an explosion of activity. But until then, we can't really say that Ethereum is 100% PoS, although one pre-alpha project is.
- jerry1979 6y ago

saalweachter 6y ago

You know what actually bothers me the most about all crypto-currencies? None of them are actually money, like in the paper-or-gold-coin sense. They're all ledgers. The thing about money is that I can hand it to someone. Possession of the money is possession of the money and third parties don't need to get involved in every transaction. I can hand someone dollars and take a sandwich and walk away, transaction done. The problem with a digital currency, of course, is that when you hand someone a sequence of bits, they don't go away from you, so you can hand that same sequence of bits to another person. The "solution" people came up with to this problem was to not solve the problem, and instead solve a different problem, how to have a distributed ledger. Which is like, neat and all. But also infuriating. We don't have crypto-currencies, we just have crypto-banks.

darkwater 6y ago
> The problem with a digital currency, of course, is that when you hand someone a sequence of bits, they don't go away from you, so you can hand that same sequence of bits to another person. > The "solution" people came up with to this problem was to not solve the problem, and instead solve a different problem, how to have a distributed ledger. And what would be, at least intuitively, a solution to the "you can copy bits, give them away but also keep a valid copy for yourself" problem which is a problem for currency but also the default way digital information work? If you had access to a near-perfect money printing machine, you would have just the same problem, we are just "saved" by the implementation difficulty. Just the same as with the ledger approach.
jtsiskin 6y ago
You can do that with the lightning network. The problem is double spend. With cash, it’s hard to copy. With anything electronic, it’s trivial to copy. That’s why it has to be a ledger. Notice visa requires internet connection as wel
Jleagle 6y ago
I'm not an export but i can print off a wallet key and give it to someone, on paper or usb. Sure i can give that same wallet to someone else but it's pretty quick to check the value of a wallet before accepting it. Why do you even need physical cash? I can carry my countries currency around with me easily enough but i generally don't bother as i don't ever need to.

dnmllr_ 6y ago

The fact that network and first to market effects are so strong in crypto is an indication that the market doesn't actually value things like proof-of-work or faster transactions or smaller fees. Sure, there are a small number of enthusiasts and professionals who do, but they don't make a market. Most of the people involved just want to buy a worthless asset and trade it to somebody who will pay more for that worthless asset. The bitcoin brand is the most import feature for that use case.

BTCOG 6y ago
It is an indication that in a free market, people are able to choose what works best while the forks and knockoffs prove that nobody believes in them, or that they are unsafe networks.

la_fayette 6y ago

Nothing proven yet in large usecases...

saul_goodman 6y ago

Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven problem was the threat of government shutdown by a police raid of your servers, this is what killed E-gold and other predecessors. The blockchain solved the problem of having your central ledger being shutdown by the cops/IRS/etc. by decentralizing it and of course Bitcoin also solved a ton of other problems as well to make it an actual viable electronic cash transaction system. This is why it took off, not just because "it was the first to market". It wasn't, but it solved all of the real-world blockers that had killed all other attempts before it. Don't forget that we don't know for certain who "Satoshi" was and for good reason, he knew he'd have a target painted on his back by the government. He was incredibly smart to conceal his identity. As a side-bar, a major role of money is to allow the government to easily collect taxes from their citizens and so governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment. Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. While the early crypto-is-cash people are annoyed by this, it was the only possible outcome in a match between the government and crypto currency that doesn't end in outright warfare on crypto. Now that digital currencies have moved from theoretical to a proven model people can move on to solving newer problems rather than just getting it off the ground. Now we have privacy coins which attempt to solve the problems of getting anonymous transactions among other desirable features. But wait there's more, now that we don't have to prove that electronic cash is a workable system we have decentralized finance coins now. If people thought the government hated bitcoin, just wait until the banking system realizes defi is coming.

choward 6y ago
> governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? > Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. They still doesn't mean you can pay taxes with it.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Yeah, I think bitcoin has been completely surpassed technologically speaking. Monero in particular solved almost all of bitcoin's problems yet still can't compete with it in popularity.

Covzire 6y ago
Isn't litecoin also better than bitcoin on the technical side, with very few changes? I think Monero failed at the name. Bitcoin's name is self defining to some degree which I think helped make it gain a lot of popularity. It's also impersonal, bits and coins, there's no real branding there to get twisted up with. When people first hear "bitcoin" they already have constructs in their head about bits and coins and it elicits free advertisement as the imagination tries to create a working theory on what a bitcoin is. Monero makes me think of some kind of failed sports car nobody has ever heard of. I'm not counting it out, but if it's really better on the technical side then it needs some prominent evangelists spreading its use.
- BTCOG 6y ago
  Litecoin is literally a fork of Bitcoin with the hashing algo switched to Scrypt and made by Charlie Lee (which was hardened against ASICs mining) with a 4x supply release, and which ironically became mined primarily by custom Scrypt ASICs only. Whatever in the world would make you say "Isn't Litecoin better than Bitcoin?"
  - Covzire 6y ago
    One of the purposes for it was to allow faster and cheaper transactions which it arguably does.
BTCOG 6y ago
XMR has the Bitcoin core devs developing for it and it has nothing technologically "surpassing" Bitcoin. Bulletproofs for Monero were written by GMaxwell. Do all people on HackerNews outside of my own bubble also constantly speak about things from a position like they know things when they clearly know nothing of the subject matter?

olalonde 6y ago

Another armchair cryptographer on HN who has no idea what they're talking about... somehow this is acceptable when it comes to Bitcoin. I feel like I'm being charitable here but what exists are other cryptocurrencies which trade-off security and/or decentralization in favor of some other properties. Regarding proof-of-stake for example, I'll defer to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25007874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25007874

toomim 6y ago
This attitude that people who disagree with you are stupid or don't know cryptography about is part of the problem, and why people still buy into BTC when there are technologically far-superior coins out there. So you just demonstrated the problem that the OP was talking about.
- olalonde 6y ago
  My point was that OP's point and yours, "there are technologically far-superior coins out there", is not true by any stretch of the imagination. Pardon my attitude but this is getting out of hand on HN lately. It seems the idea that you shouldn't authoritatively comment on subjects you are barely familiar with goes out of the window when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. If you disagree, I'd invite you to cite some respected cryptographers and researchers who have made such claim.
- trident5000 6y ago
  Theres a lot of people on here who have no idea what they're talking about but make claims there is a better coin. Theres always a tradeoff they dont fully comprehend.
runeks 6y ago
In addition to technical difference between cryptocurrencies, there’s also a difference in financial properties of the token itself, e.g. liquidity. Liquidity refers to how much the price moves when buying from or selling into the market. For example, you can sell roughly 5 million USD worth of litecoin on the Bitfinex exchange until you push down the price by 0.5%, but for Bitcoin this figure is roughly 500 million USD (~100 times greater). The greater the liquidity of a currency the less value is lost when exchanging back and forth between it and e.g. USD. [1] https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=BTCUSD https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=BTCUSD [2] https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=LTCUSD https://www.bitfinex.com/order-book/?pair=LTCUSD

yunvme 6y ago

This isn't true. You don't understand Bitcoin. Proof of work is the only way to secure a decentralized system like Bitcoin's. Proof of stake requires trust in a group of validators. An oligopoly of sorts. A proof of stake system is unfit for a decentralized store of value. Alternatives to Bitcoin enriched a central group of people. Bitcoin's distribution was "fair". There is no replicating it. Picture bitcoin in its final state, where central banks trade in and out of Bitcoin to weaken or strengthen their respective currencies. Bitcoin is the only solution, and other cryptocurrency is fit for the task.

GordonS 6y ago
Surely proof of work also requires trust in a group of miners, trusting that 51% of them don't collude? As mining complexity grows, surely this problem is only exasperated, since you need a bigger investment to be able to mine effectively, which would presumably result in an even smaller group of more powerful miners?
- qertoip 6y ago
  So far Bitcoin mining is getting increasingly decentralized in practice - from China to Iran to US to Venezuela.

debbiedowner 6y ago

Why is proof of work so much more popular than proof of stake?

Zamicol 6y ago
Because PoW is easier to implement correctly than PoS. PoW can be as simple as checking a hash (in addition to the basic block rules). PoS has a lot more rules, for example Eth has a lot of PoS rules and includes features like slashing which improve economic securities. https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-of-stake/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/proof-o... When rules aren't by implemented correctly it causes situations like Bitcoin's 2013 fork https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork
qertoip 6y ago
Because PoS effectively means a handful of exchanges run the coin. This is far worse than a handful of mining pools, because pools depend on many more individual hash power providers.

qertoip 6y ago

No, they are not better, because they are easy to change, and so it is easy to change monetary policy "for better", or make the coin "more compliant". Bitcoin value is that it is extremely hard to change, especially when it comes to fundamental properties, like 21m hard cap. You can actually rely on Bitcoin's monetary policy to be fixed forever.

jasonlaramburu 6y ago

Bitcoin’s excessive energy consumption is a feature, not a bug, designed to deter a 51% attack. It will only get worse as the price of BTC increases. If we reach an era of nearly free energy, the price of BTC will fall.

level09 6y ago

Those are not better. Bitcoin offers too many things, trading off decentralization and security for speed is not exactly a better solution. Moreover, those "better" solutions are mostly operated and promoted by founders with questionable profit incentives, they also control the rules of those crypto-currencies. Bitcoin shines due to its fixed Rules, unknown founder, best incentive structure.