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Do you have any explanations of proof of stake? I've tried to read https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/ https://ethereum.org/en/dev

Do you have any explanations of proof of stake? I've tried to read https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms/pos/ https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms... and https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03052.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03052.pdf but I feel they're intentionally obfuscated. I understand proof of work very well. I tried reading the Tezos proof-of-stake scheme [0], but it seems like it has some very obvious holes that leave security gaps wide open (namely, once you get to somewhere around 50%, probably less, you can completely predict and control the PRNG outputs, giving you full capture of the network), which makes me feel like I still don't quite understand it. I won't go into whether it's exclusionary or not. That depends on your economic viewpoint. Personally, I think they're about the same -- those with the wealth control the network. And they've consistently been pushing back The Merge's launch date less than a month than the go-to date. I remember when they wanted to launch it in April 2022. And then May. And then June [1]. [0] https://tezos.gitlab.io/active/proof_of_stake.html https://tezos.gitlab.io/active/proof_of_stake.html [1] https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4345 https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4345

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Former protocol developer for Tezos here. Once you get to 33% of the stake you can stop the chain, so the idea that you could control the RNG at 50% isn’t that scary by comparison. You can only influence the RNG if you go last. That is to say, you could not completely predict or control the RNG unless you control 100% of the stake. At 50% of the stake, you go last 50% of the time, and even when you go last you don't have the ability to fully control the RNG (although you could do a pretty good job at 50%, at substantial expense to yourself). The only means anyone has of influencing the RNG is by not revealing their random contribution, which they're punished for by losing their staking rewards. (The original tezos whitepaper had a higher penalty, I believe you forfeit an additional "safety bond", but I don't know if that made it into the implementation.) The hope is that incentives like these are enough to discourage that behavior. All cryptocurrencies depend on incentives for security, in part for cases like these. But this is a particularly bad case where someone with a sub-33% stake could attack the chain. Fortunately, at <33% control of the stake, the damage you could cause from that attack is small and the attack would be very expensive, so it’s not considered a major problem. I think the worst you could do is censor some transactions for a time, and deprive some others of their staking rewards. (Although I was a protocol developer, I never worked on anything related to this, so don't take my word as gospel.)

ChadNauseam 4y ago

Former protocol developer for Tezos here. Once you get to 33% of the stake you can stop the chain, so the idea that you could control the RNG at 50% isn’t that scary by comparison. You can only influence the RNG if you go last. That is to say, you could not completely predict or control the RNG unless you control 100% of the stake. At 50% of the stake, you go last 50% of the time, and even when you go last you don't have the ability to fully control the RNG (although you could do a pretty good job at 50%, at substantial expense to yourself). The only means anyone has of influencing the RNG is by not revealing their random contribution, which they're punished for by losing their staking rewards. (The original tezos whitepaper had a higher penalty, I believe you forfeit an additional "safety bond", but I don't know if that made it into the implementation.) The hope is that incentives like these are enough to discourage that behavior. All cryptocurrencies depend on incentives for security, in part for cases like these. But this is a particularly bad case where someone with a sub-33% stake could attack the chain. Fortunately, at <33% control of the stake, the damage you could cause from that attack is small and the attack would be very expensive, so it’s not considered a major problem. I think the worst you could do is censor some transactions for a time, and deprive some others of their staking rewards. (Although I was a protocol developer, I never worked on anything related to this, so don't take my word as gospel.)