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>Another aspect of this is 51% attacks are recoverable for PoW, but are a permanent takeover condition for PoS networks. If a single entity ever accumulates mor

>Another aspect of this is 51% attacks are recoverable for PoW, but are a permanent takeover condition for PoS networks. If a single entity ever accumulates more than half the tokens on a PoS network, they are unassailable. This is not true. PoS has many design flavours and the one Ethereum is planning on implementing includes random selection of validators and the amount staked has no influence on the inclusion or the vote "weight". Also with PoS an attacker will always incur economic losses similar to having your mining rig burning down if you were to try to foce a bad block through. In PoW networks attackers can keep on mixing attacks with producing normal blocks and remain profitable

null0pointer 5y ago
If amount staked has no influence on inclusion or vote weight then what’s to stop a large ETH holder from splitting their wallet into several smaller wallets with the minimum staking balance and just gaining vote weight that way?
- shoulderfake 5y ago
  Because the validators are chosen randomly by the network.
  - grlass 5y ago
    Random doesn't mean unweighted. Choose a number at random from this list [5, 10, 5, 12, 8, 5].
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Not to mention that Ethereum has shown willingness to hard fork to punish/reward specific actors. If an actor pulled off a 51% attack on Ethereum I'd be surprised if there wasn't an effort to just hard fork them out of their resources.
- polyomino 5y ago
  The whole network is a political facade, EEA controls the morals of the system so they can and will do whatever they want.
- everfree 5y ago
  IIRC they have written blog posts in the past saying just as much. Without losing their stake to slashing penalties, though, the worst kind of attack 66% (not 51% iirc) can do anyways is a censorship or denial of service attack. Which is bad, but at least they can't revert transactions or double-spend like in a PoW model.

null0pointer 5y ago

If amount staked has no influence on inclusion or vote weight then what’s to stop a large ETH holder from splitting their wallet into several smaller wallets with the minimum staking balance and just gaining vote weight that way?

shoulderfake 5y ago
Because the validators are chosen randomly by the network.
- grlass 5y ago
  Random doesn't mean unweighted. Choose a number at random from this list [5, 10, 5, 12, 8, 5].

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

Not to mention that Ethereum has shown willingness to hard fork to punish/reward specific actors. If an actor pulled off a 51% attack on Ethereum I'd be surprised if there wasn't an effort to just hard fork them out of their resources.

polyomino 5y ago
The whole network is a political facade, EEA controls the morals of the system so they can and will do whatever they want.
everfree 5y ago
IIRC they have written blog posts in the past saying just as much. Without losing their stake to slashing penalties, though, the worst kind of attack 66% (not 51% iirc) can do anyways is a censorship or denial of service attack. Which is bad, but at least they can't revert transactions or double-spend like in a PoW model.