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Is there anywhere I can read a technical version of how proof-of-stake work? I'm still confused at what happens if you create a valid block with the Ethereum y

Is there anywhere I can read a technical version of how proof-of-stake work? I'm still confused at what happens if you create a valid block with the Ethereum you stake and then that block doesn't end up being part of the main branch.

pa7x1 4y ago
You get assigned by a random number generator to create the next block. If you fail to create it your only penalty is the opportunity cost (i.e., you miss on the reward that you would have gotten for creating one). So at any given time only one validator is going to create a block. If you create it, it's going to be included in the blockchain. If you don't create it (or you create but due to network problems fail to communicate it), then the blockchain skips a beat and someone else will create the next one. If you want a user friendly introduction I recommend you Ben Edgington's book (WIP): https://eth2book.info/altair/ https://eth2book.info/altair/ Or straight from the source: https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs
baby 4y ago
In proof of work the leader election (the thing that decides who gets to write the next page/block of the ledger) is based on how much money you can put in computing power or how big your mining pool is. The more computing power, the more lottery tickets you get to write the next block. In proof of stake, the more crypto tokens you have, the more lottery tickets you get to win the right to write the next block. In PoW the lottery is solving puzzles, that’s the energy inefficiency, in PoS the lottery is decided like a real lottery: with a random number generator (a distributed one at that, so that people agree that it was generated honestly)
- dcow 4y ago
  How do you make an honest distributed random number generator, then?
  - yiannisbot 4y ago
    You should check out drand (https://drand.love https://drand.love), which is based on threshold cryptography and the group running the network is composed of 16 independent organisations, none of which can manipulate or predict the next beacon. Beacons can be consumed from the public HTTP APIs (https://drand.love/developer/http-api/ https://drand.love/developer/http-api/). Lots of exciting features to land very soon that include Timelock Encryption, among several others. Technical explainer can be found here: https://research.protocol.ai/tutorials/resnetlab-on-tour/drand/ https://research.protocol.ai/tutorials/resnetlab-on-tour/dra... and documentation here: https://drand.love/docs/ https://drand.love/docs/
  - rufusroflpunch 4y ago
    Wondering the same thing myself. The entire problem with proof of stake is that the only thing in the digital realm that can be relied on as a source of objective truth is computation, hence proof of work. How do you get verified (true) randomness without an oracle and without a connection to the analog world (proof of work)? It would be amusing if the answer was randomness that came from a proof of work algorithm.
    - SEJeff 4y ago
      An oracle is a totally sensible approach for certain use cases, see the VRF support in chain link as an example: https://blog.chain.link/verifiable-random-function-vrf/ https://blog.chain.link/verifiable-random-function-vrf/
  - jgeralnik 4y ago
    A bunch of nodes generate random numbers and publish their hashes. After all hashes have been published all nodes reveal their random number, verify that their number actually corresponds to their hash. Xor all the numbers together and as long as at least one node was honest and generated a random number the result will be a random number. I don't recall if this is exactly what proof of work does but I think it's pretty solid.
    - 4y ago
skyfaller 4y ago
I'm not convinced proof-of-stake works at all: https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-people-promoting-it-are-scammers/ https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-... It's almost certainly better for the environment / our continued existence than proof-of-work, if we must suffer cryptocurrency, but I don't trust people who were willing to continue to engage with proof-of-work for years to create an ethical (or even functional) alternative.
- thebeastie 4y ago
  For anyone who might be concerned by the claim here; it’s really a political argument and not a technical one. Proof of stake as implemented by Ethereum makes a tradeoff which requires some small amount of trust (to identify the correct chain more quickly) which does not create a centralization risk. But this is always the way; leveraging trust where appropriate can allow great increases in efficiency, this is how society works, so you have a political spectrum where Ethereum is “responsibly pro social” and Bitcoin is still a kind of super trust less money with enormous energy costs to enable this somewhat superficial security property.

pa7x1 4y ago

You get assigned by a random number generator to create the next block. If you fail to create it your only penalty is the opportunity cost (i.e., you miss on the reward that you would have gotten for creating one). So at any given time only one validator is going to create a block. If you create it, it's going to be included in the blockchain. If you don't create it (or you create but due to network problems fail to communicate it), then the blockchain skips a beat and someone else will create the next one. If you want a user friendly introduction I recommend you Ben Edgington's book (WIP): https://eth2book.info/altair/ https://eth2book.info/altair/ Or straight from the source: https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs

baby 4y ago

In proof of work the leader election (the thing that decides who gets to write the next page/block of the ledger) is based on how much money you can put in computing power or how big your mining pool is. The more computing power, the more lottery tickets you get to write the next block. In proof of stake, the more crypto tokens you have, the more lottery tickets you get to win the right to write the next block. In PoW the lottery is solving puzzles, that’s the energy inefficiency, in PoS the lottery is decided like a real lottery: with a random number generator (a distributed one at that, so that people agree that it was generated honestly)

dcow 4y ago
How do you make an honest distributed random number generator, then?
- yiannisbot 4y ago
  You should check out drand (https://drand.love https://drand.love), which is based on threshold cryptography and the group running the network is composed of 16 independent organisations, none of which can manipulate or predict the next beacon. Beacons can be consumed from the public HTTP APIs (https://drand.love/developer/http-api/ https://drand.love/developer/http-api/). Lots of exciting features to land very soon that include Timelock Encryption, among several others. Technical explainer can be found here: https://research.protocol.ai/tutorials/resnetlab-on-tour/drand/ https://research.protocol.ai/tutorials/resnetlab-on-tour/dra... and documentation here: https://drand.love/docs/ https://drand.love/docs/
- rufusroflpunch 4y ago
  Wondering the same thing myself. The entire problem with proof of stake is that the only thing in the digital realm that can be relied on as a source of objective truth is computation, hence proof of work. How do you get verified (true) randomness without an oracle and without a connection to the analog world (proof of work)? It would be amusing if the answer was randomness that came from a proof of work algorithm.
  - SEJeff 4y ago
    An oracle is a totally sensible approach for certain use cases, see the VRF support in chain link as an example: https://blog.chain.link/verifiable-random-function-vrf/ https://blog.chain.link/verifiable-random-function-vrf/
- jgeralnik 4y ago
  A bunch of nodes generate random numbers and publish their hashes. After all hashes have been published all nodes reveal their random number, verify that their number actually corresponds to their hash. Xor all the numbers together and as long as at least one node was honest and generated a random number the result will be a random number. I don't recall if this is exactly what proof of work does but I think it's pretty solid.
  - 4y ago

skyfaller 4y ago

I'm not convinced proof-of-stake works at all: https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-people-promoting-it-are-scammers/ https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-... It's almost certainly better for the environment / our continued existence than proof-of-work, if we must suffer cryptocurrency, but I don't trust people who were willing to continue to engage with proof-of-work for years to create an ethical (or even functional) alternative.

thebeastie 4y ago
For anyone who might be concerned by the claim here; it’s really a political argument and not a technical one. Proof of stake as implemented by Ethereum makes a tradeoff which requires some small amount of trust (to identify the correct chain more quickly) which does not create a centralization risk. But this is always the way; leveraging trust where appropriate can allow great increases in efficiency, this is how society works, so you have a political spectrum where Ethereum is “responsibly pro social” and Bitcoin is still a kind of super trust less money with enormous energy costs to enable this somewhat superficial security property.