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If you'd read the article till the end, perhaps you'd understand where the author is coming from: PoS systems aren't getting hacked today because they aren't tr

If you'd read the article till the end, perhaps you'd understand where the author is coming from: PoS systems aren't getting hacked today because they aren't truly decentralised. You can't have decentralisation and security with POS, you have to choose one of these. All the projects currently active have chosen security for obvious reasons - they control the majority of validators to make sure nobody steals, and are just fancy centralised mints.

darawk 5y ago
Except that they are though...You can go run a validator on Eth or Cardano right now.
- akrymski 5y ago
  Sure, but if the majority of validators are actually run by the project owners it's effectively centralised. And it's easy to maintain this control if you have the majority of coins to stake. It's not Sybil resistant for this reason - all validators could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.
  - dorgo 5y ago
    >all validators could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing. all bitcoin miners could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.... >it's effectively centralised so your argument is not that it is not possible to have security AND decentralisation with POS, but that it currently is not the case, right?
    - akrymski 5y ago
      > all bitcoin miners could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.... Sure, it's entirely possible that BTC is also centralised and controlled by wales. I was merely suggesting that the reason PoS systems haven't been hacked (much) yet is because the validators are controlled by project owners, so they are really centralised payment systems in disguise. There's a difference though: buying initial stake in PoS may be similar to buying an ASIC in PoW, but mining a chain has a real cost (electricity) in PoW. In PoS there's no cost to mining, so validators have an incentive to stake all possible forks. There's no way to have consensus on the correct chain, because real resources haven't gone into building one up.

darawk 5y ago

Except that they are though...You can go run a validator on Eth or Cardano right now.

akrymski 5y ago
Sure, but if the majority of validators are actually run by the project owners it's effectively centralised. And it's easy to maintain this control if you have the majority of coins to stake. It's not Sybil resistant for this reason - all validators could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.
- dorgo 5y ago
  >all validators could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing. all bitcoin miners could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.... >it's effectively centralised so your argument is not that it is not possible to have security AND decentralisation with POS, but that it currently is not the case, right?
  - akrymski 5y ago
    > all bitcoin miners could be owned by one person and you would have no way of knowing.... Sure, it's entirely possible that BTC is also centralised and controlled by wales. I was merely suggesting that the reason PoS systems haven't been hacked (much) yet is because the validators are controlled by project owners, so they are really centralised payment systems in disguise. There's a difference though: buying initial stake in PoS may be similar to buying an ASIC in PoW, but mining a chain has a real cost (electricity) in PoW. In PoS there's no cost to mining, so validators have an incentive to stake all possible forks. There's no way to have consensus on the correct chain, because real resources haven't gone into building one up.