3 ms·

51% attacks aren't just a single actor dictating blocks, but the threat of a cartel of large stakeholders cooperating to attain 51% of vote power

derefr 4y ago
Yes, and? This is orthogonal to PoW vs PoS. In either case, you can treat the resulting cartel as "a single party" for purposes of modelling them. It's also not really a scenario worth considering. In order to cooperate, the miners/validators need to have full alignment on their goals. Which is very unlikely for Sybil attacks, which almost always destroy systemic economic value — including the value held by the attackers. You might be able to find e.g. a government who wants to do a Sybil attack to accomplish goal X, and are willing to burn down $N billion dollars of their own staked assets to do so; but can you find a bunch of other governments or large corporations who also want to accomplish that same goal X more than they want their own stake-value? And who can be trusted to coordinate and not leak the plan? A Sybil attack is basically like a bank heist where the attacker(s) have to pull up to the bank in their own personal aircraft carriers (destroying said aircraft carriers in the process, from the hull damage of sliding along several city streets), without anyone realizing they're coming. You can maybe theoretically do it as one entity with full internal goal-alignment. It's much harder to do it as multiple entities.
- scottiebarnes 4y ago
  One relevant question is which system allows for the pooling of resources easier. In PoW you have mining pools, and a member changing pools is trivial as changing an address. In PoS you have large organizations like Coinbase running staking for users. Don't know how withdrawls will work, but that could be a very significant amount of eth. Coinbase would have to vote a certain way to comply with laws.
  - derefr 4y ago
    From the Coinbase User Agreement (https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/united_states#staking-services https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/united_states#...): > 1.4. Governance and Voting. For certain Digital Assets, the underlying protocols offer stakers the ability to vote on matters related to the governance of protocol-level issues. Coinbase may or may not support voting for such assets, and may cease supporting voting at any time in its discretion. Coinbase will comply with your instruction to vote your Supported Digital Assets to the extent Coinbase or its affiliate supports voting for such Supported Digital Assets. In certain cases, Coinbase may vote on your behalf where Coinbase or the applicable protocol does not support delegated voting; in those instances, Coinbase will vote with the protocol’s recommendation. But what about jurisdictions that compel them to vote in certain ways? From the Coinbase page on Eth2 staking (https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/coinbase-earn/eth-2-0-staking https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/co...): > To be eligible to stake ETH, you must: [...] Live in a jurisdiction eligible for ETH staking. > Which regions are eligible for ETH staking? [...] United States (excluding Hawaii & New York) In other words: they're just not going to offer the service in any place that compels them to vote a certain way. I presume most delegatable validators have chosen a similar option: avoiding the problem entirely by not taking anyone's money if they're from those jurisdictions. Just as most ICOs in 2017, when the US didn't have regulatory clarity on crypto being a security or not, just avoided the problem entirely by preventing (direct) sales to US-market investors.
    - coralreef 4y ago
      But what happens if/when a large amount of user ETH gets staked in a single country, in a few entities? End users don’t have the motive or skills to move their ETH to platforms or systems that better protect decentralization. The downsides of PoS is worth exploring.

derefr 4y ago

Yes, and? This is orthogonal to PoW vs PoS. In either case, you can treat the resulting cartel as "a single party" for purposes of modelling them. It's also not really a scenario worth considering. In order to cooperate, the miners/validators need to have full alignment on their goals. Which is very unlikely for Sybil attacks, which almost always destroy systemic economic value — including the value held by the attackers. You might be able to find e.g. a government who wants to do a Sybil attack to accomplish goal X, and are willing to burn down $N billion dollars of their own staked assets to do so; but can you find a bunch of other governments or large corporations who also want to accomplish that same goal X more than they want their own stake-value? And who can be trusted to coordinate and not leak the plan? A Sybil attack is basically like a bank heist where the attacker(s) have to pull up to the bank in their own personal aircraft carriers (destroying said aircraft carriers in the process, from the hull damage of sliding along several city streets), without anyone realizing they're coming. You can maybe theoretically do it as one entity with full internal goal-alignment. It's much harder to do it as multiple entities.

scottiebarnes 4y ago
One relevant question is which system allows for the pooling of resources easier. In PoW you have mining pools, and a member changing pools is trivial as changing an address. In PoS you have large organizations like Coinbase running staking for users. Don't know how withdrawls will work, but that could be a very significant amount of eth. Coinbase would have to vote a certain way to comply with laws.
- derefr 4y ago
  From the Coinbase User Agreement (https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/united_states#staking-services https://www.coinbase.com/legal/user_agreement/united_states#...): > 1.4. Governance and Voting. For certain Digital Assets, the underlying protocols offer stakers the ability to vote on matters related to the governance of protocol-level issues. Coinbase may or may not support voting for such assets, and may cease supporting voting at any time in its discretion. Coinbase will comply with your instruction to vote your Supported Digital Assets to the extent Coinbase or its affiliate supports voting for such Supported Digital Assets. In certain cases, Coinbase may vote on your behalf where Coinbase or the applicable protocol does not support delegated voting; in those instances, Coinbase will vote with the protocol’s recommendation. But what about jurisdictions that compel them to vote in certain ways? From the Coinbase page on Eth2 staking (https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/coinbase-earn/eth-2-0-staking https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/co...): > To be eligible to stake ETH, you must: [...] Live in a jurisdiction eligible for ETH staking. > Which regions are eligible for ETH staking? [...] United States (excluding Hawaii & New York) In other words: they're just not going to offer the service in any place that compels them to vote a certain way. I presume most delegatable validators have chosen a similar option: avoiding the problem entirely by not taking anyone's money if they're from those jurisdictions. Just as most ICOs in 2017, when the US didn't have regulatory clarity on crypto being a security or not, just avoided the problem entirely by preventing (direct) sales to US-market investors.
  - coralreef 4y ago
    But what happens if/when a large amount of user ETH gets staked in a single country, in a few entities? End users don’t have the motive or skills to move their ETH to platforms or systems that better protect decentralization. The downsides of PoS is worth exploring.