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With proof-of-stake, an attacker compromising a majority of private keys results in the attacker taking control of the blockchain. The attacker could publish on

by runeks 1y ago

With proof-of-stake, an attacker compromising a majority of private keys results in the attacker taking control of the blockchain. The attacker could publish only empty blocks using this stake majority, and there'd be no way to distinguish these malicious valid blocks from actually useful blocks. This makes proof-of-stake inherently less secure than proof-of-work because for PoW blockchains, consensus is not affected by compromising private keys.

bawolff 1y ago
Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. For a smaller chain, purchasing a lot of compute sounds easier than hacking everyone's keys. Not to mention if you can hack someone's private key, surely you can hack their server farm (Fwiw, i think both have a similar level of risk, its just coming from different threats)
- sph 1y ago
  > Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. It’s easier to accumulate a lot of money than to accumulate a lot of hardware and building a nuclear plant to literally outcompete the rest of the world, no? And at that point you are no longer invisible, so the rest of the world could simply decide to ignore your monopolistic contributions to the blockchain altogether and fork.
- runeks 1y ago
  > Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. Firstly, no one is offering for sale enough compute to attack e.g. Bitcoin. Secondly, and more importantly, this would be a temporary attack, during which the blockchain in question is rendered unusable. Once an honest majority of hashing power is reestablished, everything is back to normal. But a compromise of a majority stake is a permanent compromise of a chain. No honest actor can conjure up more stake to gain an advantage over the attacker who now sits on a majority.
everfree 1y ago
I think it would be much easier for e.g. state actors to take control of a few of the world's PoW mining locations than to compromise a bunch of people's private keys.
- proxynoproxy 1y ago
  You don’t really get how mining pools work. It’s not a monolithic thing. well OK MARA is a proprietary pool, but the rest are made up of people contributing hash. If a state actor took over a pool, we could spin up another quick smart. Hash is fluid. Try that with slashing and stake lockups and others nonsense PoS invents to do a worse job.
  - everfree 1y ago
    Bitcoin is not currently mined by "people", it is mined by large specialized companies with razor-thin margins in warehouses with access to bulk ASIC purchase agreements and incredibly cheap electricity. The last time a "person" was able to mine Bitcoin at breakeven was around 2017 or so. Maybe 2020 or 2022, if you threw the dice on buying ASICs from shady companies, hired an electrician to install a new circuit, then filled your home office with 10,000W of equipment. In contrast to stake as an individual, you don't need special access to electricity or agreements or anything. Just buy tokens and run them on a mini-PC that costs less than a grand. The minimums are low due to DVT. > Try that with slashing and stake lockups I don't see how slashing is relevant to the conversation. As for lockups, it's much easier to wait a few days for stake to unlock than to try to sell a bitcoin mining ASIC. It's also less counterparty risk and a much more liquid market.
    - proxynoproxy 1y ago
      https://bitaxe.org/ https://bitaxe.org/ I guess all those plebs are just imagining mining sats at the edge. Mining isn’t just farms. And farms are not pools. You are regurgitating ETH propaganda that doesn’t match reality. what you are missing is that PoS coins are printed from nothing. The original sin. From nothing. Worth nothing. PoS is a Ponzi to dump worthless tokens on you. You can’t escape that. PoS trends to zero. I can’t believe we are still arguing this with >2T market cap for BTC and ETH has actually shrunk since it moved to PoS. It’s going in the wrong direction…
someone235 1y ago
Btw, this is one of the reasons they wanted to revert the DaoHack - they didn't want a malicious entity to hold 5% of the stake

by runeks 1y ago

bawolff 1y ago

Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. For a smaller chain, purchasing a lot of compute sounds easier than hacking everyone's keys. Not to mention if you can hack someone's private key, surely you can hack their server farm (Fwiw, i think both have a similar level of risk, its just coming from different threats)

sph 1y ago
> Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. It’s easier to accumulate a lot of money than to accumulate a lot of hardware and building a nuclear plant to literally outcompete the rest of the world, no? And at that point you are no longer invisible, so the rest of the world could simply decide to ignore your monopolistic contributions to the blockchain altogether and fork.
runeks 1y ago
> Instead, it can be attacked simply by purchasing a lot of compute. Firstly, no one is offering for sale enough compute to attack e.g. Bitcoin. Secondly, and more importantly, this would be a temporary attack, during which the blockchain in question is rendered unusable. Once an honest majority of hashing power is reestablished, everything is back to normal. But a compromise of a majority stake is a permanent compromise of a chain. No honest actor can conjure up more stake to gain an advantage over the attacker who now sits on a majority.

everfree 1y ago

I think it would be much easier for e.g. state actors to take control of a few of the world's PoW mining locations than to compromise a bunch of people's private keys.

proxynoproxy 1y ago
You don’t really get how mining pools work. It’s not a monolithic thing. well OK MARA is a proprietary pool, but the rest are made up of people contributing hash. If a state actor took over a pool, we could spin up another quick smart. Hash is fluid. Try that with slashing and stake lockups and others nonsense PoS invents to do a worse job.
- everfree 1y ago
  Bitcoin is not currently mined by "people", it is mined by large specialized companies with razor-thin margins in warehouses with access to bulk ASIC purchase agreements and incredibly cheap electricity. The last time a "person" was able to mine Bitcoin at breakeven was around 2017 or so. Maybe 2020 or 2022, if you threw the dice on buying ASICs from shady companies, hired an electrician to install a new circuit, then filled your home office with 10,000W of equipment. In contrast to stake as an individual, you don't need special access to electricity or agreements or anything. Just buy tokens and run them on a mini-PC that costs less than a grand. The minimums are low due to DVT. > Try that with slashing and stake lockups I don't see how slashing is relevant to the conversation. As for lockups, it's much easier to wait a few days for stake to unlock than to try to sell a bitcoin mining ASIC. It's also less counterparty risk and a much more liquid market.
  - proxynoproxy 1y ago
    https://bitaxe.org/ https://bitaxe.org/ I guess all those plebs are just imagining mining sats at the edge. Mining isn’t just farms. And farms are not pools. You are regurgitating ETH propaganda that doesn’t match reality. what you are missing is that PoS coins are printed from nothing. The original sin. From nothing. Worth nothing. PoS is a Ponzi to dump worthless tokens on you. You can’t escape that. PoS trends to zero. I can’t believe we are still arguing this with >2T market cap for BTC and ETH has actually shrunk since it moved to PoS. It’s going in the wrong direction…

someone235 1y ago

Btw, this is one of the reasons they wanted to revert the DaoHack - they didn't want a malicious entity to hold 5% of the stake