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This is the prevailing theory but in practice I'm not sure it will work. Ethereum forked early on due to someone stealing some money from The DAO. In reality th

This is the prevailing theory but in practice I'm not sure it will work. Ethereum forked early on due to someone stealing some money from The DAO. In reality the exchanges/large corporate owners will be the ones doing network validation, and they will be the ones most easily leaned on by their respective governments. If a government(s) says "you need to veer off this version of Ethereum and run your own", the chain will fork. It looks to me that proof of stake defends against small time actors, not activist shareholders or government regulation.

rglullis 4y ago
> If a government(s) says "you need to veer off this version of Ethereum and run your own. Which governments, saying to whom? And how would they enforce it? What would be the consequences for those that didn't comply?
- f38zf5vdt 4y ago
  They can use the classic decentralized conflict resolution method, proof of violence.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    The governments doing that don't need any excuse.
yellowapple 4y ago
> This is the prevailing theory but in practice I'm not sure it will work. There are other proof-of-stake blockchains other than Ethereum, and for those it has indeed worked quite well in practice.
operator-name 4y ago
Ethereum's fork was at the social layer, and whatever om chain consensus mechanisms cannot prevent that. Even with the fork, ETC still exists to this day. The difference with slashing is that forking is no longer "free" as each fork penalises members who only support the other fork. Let's consider your example in PoW and PoS with slashing. In PoW both chains would continue and miners can freely switch - their funds are also duplicated. In PoS those that support each chain will eventually be locked in, and penalised if the other chain "wins". This doesn't prevent all (or effectively enough) stakers being coerced/forced by a powerful enough entity, but that's a social problem that no consensus algorithm can resolve - just as if effectively everyone was a bad actor.

rglullis 4y ago

> If a government(s) says "you need to veer off this version of Ethereum and run your own. Which governments, saying to whom? And how would they enforce it? What would be the consequences for those that didn't comply?

f38zf5vdt 4y ago
They can use the classic decentralized conflict resolution method, proof of violence.
- rglullis 4y ago
  The governments doing that don't need any excuse.

yellowapple 4y ago

> This is the prevailing theory but in practice I'm not sure it will work. There are other proof-of-stake blockchains other than Ethereum, and for those it has indeed worked quite well in practice.

operator-name 4y ago

Ethereum's fork was at the social layer, and whatever om chain consensus mechanisms cannot prevent that. Even with the fork, ETC still exists to this day. The difference with slashing is that forking is no longer "free" as each fork penalises members who only support the other fork. Let's consider your example in PoW and PoS with slashing. In PoW both chains would continue and miners can freely switch - their funds are also duplicated. In PoS those that support each chain will eventually be locked in, and penalised if the other chain "wins". This doesn't prevent all (or effectively enough) stakers being coerced/forced by a powerful enough entity, but that's a social problem that no consensus algorithm can resolve - just as if effectively everyone was a bad actor.