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The point I was trying to make is that bitcoin achieves very specific decentralization and security properties, properties which your system trades off. Your co

• jaekwon 12y ago
  I would say that the security properties are different, with pros and cons for both. For clarification, Tendermint has strong security independent of external factors, while Bitcoin has simplicity but it is always vulnerable to an external attack -- this is what makes all PoW altcoins vulnerable. Tendermint has pretty strong consensus guarantees, but when it's broken, it's broken and requires manual recovery. Bitcoin has weaker consensus guarantees, as any blockchain fork could become a winner in the future (esp true if large miners form cartels), but it's not brittle and in the case of a fork, the winner can be determined (even for inactive participants) by shoving more work onto it. Finally, Tendermint does require clients to "hook-on" to the correct blockchain fork by a priori knowing a recent correct blockhash before syncing, which is easy to do in practice and only needed after a period of long inactivity. But the problem is the same problem, and I would counter that the security is if anything stronger than that of Bitcoin. Ever since I studied pre-existing literature on consensus, I no longer see Bitcoin as you probably see it today.