[Megathread] The long-known PoW vs. PoS debate

[mikeywith]

That's laughable. Using that kind of debate, they're obviously nitpicking.

The "energy-wasting" argument just lacks so many things, and it's used as the first offense against PoW, especially on the "go green" side of things, what the majority of people fail to realize is that PoW can actually help reduce carbon emissions to a great degree, for over a century nobody has ever found a better way to deal with uncombusted natural gas (methane) which is 80 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, gas flaring has been the only option ever since and it's also pretty bad for the environment.

The vast majority of oil extraction sites are located in places where no electricity is actually needed so that gas has to be vented into the air or otherwise flared, the only thing that lets you effectively and efficiently utilize that "otherwise wasted gas" is PoW, all you have to do is bring your mining gears near the extraction sites, and you can achieve a few things.

1-Reduce air pollution
2-Offer more jobs
3-Extract more value
4-Make the blockchain more secured
5-Make life more difficult for other miners who rely on resources with a high carbon footprint like coal

And this isn't just a "theory", people are already doing that, what ExxonMobil is doing in North Dakota is a great example of how PoW can be good for the environment.

[1713993943]

1713993943

[1713993943]

1713993943

[n0nce]

~

Really cool to have someone with long-term mining experience join in to this topic!
There were a few new insights for me as well in your replies

Also, the argument you make about the majority of top coins being PoS makes PoS better isn't exactly a perfect argument, the number of coins is irrelevant, I can create 1000 PoW coins or otherwise PoS in a few hours, that won't change a thing, you need to look at the value of the market, if you combine the market cap of all PoW coins vs PoS you will see that market has chosen PoW contrary to your claim.

There do exist some big market cap coins, but that's easily possible e.g. if you sell 1 coin for $1 to your buddy and then generate a million of them, you have a 1 million dollar market cap coin in a matter of seconds.
This video comes to mind; it's off-topic, but I found it hilarious! It's not too far off from what happens with many cryptocurrencies.
I Became The World’s Richest Man For 7 Minutes

[werghb4562]

PoW miners face enormous costs and head aches in moving your PoW operation, not to mention the hardship of getting an industrial energy contract in the new country.
Takes weeks especially, if caught off guard about the ban.

PoS stakers can just move their laptop, or move their coins to a pool outside the country, at almost zero cost and within 2 hours all finished.

However if they wished, a PoS Staker can hide in any country and never be discovered since the energy efficiently hides them from all electric utilities.
PoW miners however, draw more power than residential use, and the electric utilities can pinpoint their location at a minute's notice.

A global pow ban with fantasy land effectiveness would cause the difficulty to drop to a level where laptops can mine if needed.

Another example:
Say you are in the Ukraine, and a missile just destroyed your warehouse full of PoW mining ASICS.  You are officially now done and bankrupt.
However say your PoS Staking Laptop was destroyed.
PoS Stakers can go buy any cheap $500 laptop, restore their coins from their encrypted offsite backup and be back up and running in 12 hours.

In survival situations, those that are versatile and adaptable are better able to survive than those unwilling or unable to adapt to a changing environment.

Why are you insinuating that bitcoin can't adapt to a loss of hashrate? You are aware that bitcoin difficulty can drop right?

China did ban PoW mining.    Fact
PoW Miners did leave China.  Fact

There are still bitcoin miners in china.

PoS is energy efficient, higher onchain transaction capacity, more decentralized, greater adaptability, and able to achieve transaction finality.
All of the above is fact , not conjecture , which is why there are so few PoW coins left and getting less by the day, because even the developers who look at the code more than everyone else and the ones with high IQs are switching.

The Marketplace has already chosen PoS as the superior technology , PoW has been a dead man walking for years.
Which I pointed out here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5387588.msg59381537#msg59381537

The real reason why pos is more popular with the shitcoin scammers is because premined proof of stake is the holy grail of scams.

[pooya87]

I believe if we ask any serious developer which technically gives superior security assurances between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the answer would always be Proof of Work.

It depends on who you ask. For example Vitalik is also a serious developer but he is serious about making more money so he will tell you PoS as he has been brainwashing people to convince them the upcoming fork of his shitcoin is a good one and not at all helping him profit from 72 million premined ether

[Wind_FURY]

That's laughable. Using that kind of debate, they're obviously nitpicking.

The "energy-wasting" argument just lacks so many things, and it's used as the first offense against PoW, especially on the "go green" side of things, what the majority of people fail to realize is that PoW can actually help reduce carbon emissions to a great degree, for over a century nobody has ever found a better way to deal with uncombusted natural gas (methane) which is 80 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide, gas flaring has been the only option ever since and it's also pretty bad for the environment.

The vast majority of oil extraction sites are located in places where no electricity is actually needed so that gas has to be vented into the air or otherwise flared, the only thing that lets you effectively and efficiently utilize that "otherwise wasted gas" is PoW, all you have to do is bring your mining gears near the extraction sites, and you can achieve a few things.

1-Reduce air pollution
2-Offer more jobs
3-Extract more value
4-Make the blockchain more secured
5-Make life more difficult for other miners who rely on resources with a high carbon footprint like coal

And this isn't just a "theory", people are already doing that, what ExxonMobil is doing in North Dakota is a great example of how PoW can be good for the environment.

I would ignore their nitpick, and avoid debating about the "climate" altogether. They would only troll you the moment they know that they're opinions are simply wrong.

BUT they should understand that it's not about "the climate". Because if it truly was, why haven't government entites given large subsidies for renewable energy producers? They can let the miners make renewable energy producers more profitable by letting the them buy excess production. Why attack Bitcoin? Because "bad"for them.

I believe if we ask any serious developer which technically gives superior security assurances between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, the answer would always be Proof of Work.

It depends on who you ask. For example Vitalik is also a serious developer but he is serious about making more money so he will tell you PoS as he has been brainwashing people to convince them the upcoming fork of his shitcoin is a good one and not at all helping him profit from 72 million premined ether

OG Bitcoin developers don't take him as a "serious developer". They won't say it, but I believe they take him as a scammer.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

[n0nce]

BUT they should understand that it's not about "the climate". Because if it truly was, why haven't government entites given large subsidies for renewable energy producers? They can let the miners make renewable energy producers more profitable by letting the them buy excess production. Why attack Bitcoin? Because "bad"for them.

I mean if you want to know if governments care about the environment, it's quickly verified by comparing their 'climate budget' against 'other budgets'.
It's also pretty trivial to understand that if you're really trying to transition to renewables as quickly as possible, you have to oversize the renewable energy plants to account for variance in sunlight / sun hours and in the weather in general, to make sure you won't have periods with too little energy. When the power plants do all run on 100% though, you'll have tons of excess energy that will go to waste. Using ASICs as a variable load that can convert that extra energy back into money would certainly help building oversized renewable energy plants, by making them much more profitable.

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

The ASICs 'being physical' is one of my favourite points against PoS. It's much easier to buy half of a currency's tokens or steal them through a hack, while driving around the world and breaking into supervised buildings and hauling around tons of stolen electronics without being caught seems pretty unreasonable. Also just buying 50% of ASICs is never going to happen, at least not quickly. Then you'll have to set them all up and sell them back after your attack.

Instead, even if you buy PoS tokens, you can use the stake for an attack, and sell them back right after. It might even work with a loan of 1 day, if someone grants it to you.

It's also worth noting that hacking a token requires hacking a single smart contract; that's a single point of failure. Whereas stealing all Bitcoin miners would require all security systems of all mining facilities in the world to fail, as well as all police and law enforcement agents around those buildings.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Also just buying 50% of ASICs is never going to happen, at least not quickly. Then you'll have to set them all up and sell them back after your attack.

Exactly, this can take a very long time. Not to mention that if a nutty billionaire attempted to attack the network that way, he had to spend a lot of time trying to gain access to all that hardware which would reveal their malicious activity and ill-intentioned behavior.

On the other hand, a person can buy half the coins relatively quickly and leave no one able to figure it out.

[Wind_FURY]

I thought of another reason: What if a hacker abuses their position to increase their gains or manipulate the network? Take for instance incidents with exchanges or organizations where the hackers get away with the money; we observe those once in a while.

It's definitely more difficult to steal the ASICs by breaking into the miners' houses. 

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain. It can be that exchanges can cartelize, and form a cabal, using coins not withrawn by their real owners to be staked by the exchanges themselves.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain.

Which brings us to the other problem: Inability to produce consensus.

[n0nce]

Or it doesn't have to be hack, because if a hacker steals 51% of the total supply in circulation, that would give their developers and holders a reason to hard fork and roll back the chain.

Which brings us to the other problem: Inability to produce consensus.

Yup, there is no 'longest chain' in PoS. It is equally as viable that those developers who claim an attack is going on, are the ones actually attacking the network, rolling back to their advantage, as an actual attack going on. The whole concept of there being 'the dEvElOpErS' with some sort of authority over the whole thing is one of the biggest red flags.
Sure, Bitcoin also has developers and they're definitely essential, but the way they are treated / talked about in pretty much any altcoin community (as also evidenced by altcoiners talking about Bitcoin) already shows that they do have much higher impact on those currencies and projects.

Like, everyone valuing 'Vitaliks opinion' so much, is not something I see in Bitcoin with the community questioning 'What does MarcoFalke think about this or that?' for instance.

[Kiara Sessyoin]

Community Alert: Ronin Validators Compromised

There has been a security breach on the Ronin Network. On March 23rd, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised resulting in 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC being drained from the Ronin bridge in two transactions (1 and 2). The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals. We discovered the attack this morning after a report from a user being unable to withdraw 5k ETH from the bridge.

Sky Mavis is here for the long term and will continue to build.

Key Points
• The Ronin bridge has been exploited for 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5M USDC.
• The Ronin bridge and Katana Dex have been halted until we are sure that the network is safe to resume activity.
• We are working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers, and our investors to make sure all funds are recovered or reimbursed. All of the AXS, RON, and SLP on Ronin are safe right now.

https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/community-alert-ronin-validators?s=w

This is the announcement from Skymavis addressing the recent $500+ million hack in ronin sidechain that made headlines recently.

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

[n0nce]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

[Kiara Sessyoin]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

That is something that we can't control now. if the investors still trust on the company they will not leave.

Back to the topic, the hacker managed to gain access to 5 out 9 validator nodes and used that nodes to validate fake withdrawals to bridge resulted of draining the funds. Now, the reason why i see this is a dangerous flaw to POS blockchains is because POS uses majority vote system to validate a transaction block now if the hacker manages to get access to majority of validator nodes theoretically, this would bring the whole blockchain down theoretically. Of course the developers will ramp up the security of their cryptocurrencies but the recent hack shows this is possible.

[pooya87]

Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

For the same reason a large number of people are investing in other shitcoins like ethereum that did exactly the same (roll back) and have full control of their chain due to serious centralization. They don't care about things like immutability as long as their bets on the price has a chance of giving them a profit.

[n0nce]

This is why POW is superior than POS. This shows POS blockchains has a dangerous flaw, the validators are vulnerable to attacks like this. This is impossible to happen in POW blockchains.

I don't believe PoS was the issue here, but that it was simply a bug in their smart contract. However, the shocking part is them wanting to reimburse stolen funds.
This automatically shows they're able to print tokens if needed, which means they have total uncontested control over coin issuance and also shows their willingness to devalue all (bag)holders' portfolios due to a mistake in their own code. Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

That is something that we can't control now. if the investors still trust on the company they will not leave.

Back to the topic, the hacker managed to gain access to 5 out 9 validator nodes and used that nodes to validate fake withdrawals to bridge resulted of draining the funds. Now, the reason why i see this is a dangerous flaw to POS blockchains is because POS uses majority vote system to validate a transaction block now if the hacker manages to get access to majority of validator nodes theoretically, this would bring the whole blockchain down theoretically. Of course the developers will ramp up the security of their cryptocurrencies but the recent hack shows this is possible.

First of all: 9 validator nodes? Honestly? And thinking people believe this stuff is decentralized.. 'DeFi' and 'blockchain' are meaningless with 9 nodes.

Okay, so if it was not a bug in the contract, it just falls under what BlackHatCoiner mentioned: it's easy to acquire (honestly or not) a majority in PoS systems compared to gaining 51%+ on a PoW system. Then it's indeed a great example of the uncontested superiority of PoW.

Why would anyone ever invest into this crap again after seeing what the team is willing and able to do just like that?

For the same reason a large number of people are investing in other shitcoins like ethereum that did exactly the same (roll back) and have full control of their chain due to serious centralization. They don't care about things like immutability as long as their bets on the price has a chance of giving them a profit.

That's a good point. I am not sure they do realize / know about this stuff being so insecure. Like, do they even realize that shitcoin security is way lower than Bitcoins? Would they still invest if they knew this? Probably they just don't care and only want the 'quick easy money', sigh.

[Flexystar]

Wow I did not know so many things go into POW as compared to the POS. I am not sure why but kinda feels like POS is like rich man’s magic wand. They get it done with the money, swing the votes and confirm the identity. On the other hand POW salient features are more or less public. If you want it then prove it, work for it and it’s your. I think I am pretty sure what I want now, it’s POW.

By the way my vote is as a common man, I’m not that much into technical problems of crypto currency. I have always read and understood them as end user with basic information about it. May be such vote is indeed needed as crypto is made for all types of people. 

[JayJuanGee]

Wow I did not know so many things go into POW as compared to the POS. I am not sure why but kinda feels like POS is like rich man’s magic wand. They get it done with the money, swing the votes and confirm the identity. On the other hand POW salient features are more or less public. If you want it then prove it, work for it and it’s your. I think I am pretty sure what I want now, it’s POW.

By the way my vote is as a common man, I’m not that much into technical problems of crypto currency. I have always read and understood them as end user with basic information about it. May be such vote is indeed needed as crypto is made for all types of people. 

You do seem to be saying a lot of gobbledy-gook, Flexystar.  Of course, public opinion and your vote does have some kind of role at least in terms of how you think and into what you choose to invest your time and your money.

In some sense, this whole thread is a BIG ASS waste of time because there should not really be any need for getting into this line of discussion in the event that any of us might come to understand that POW is a central aspect of bitcoin's building upon an idea and causing a paradigm shifting invention of a combination of concepts - one of the central components has POW intertwined - so in that sense, taking away POW would cause bitcoin to become nothing new, nothing innovative and surely NOT the paradigm shifting contribution that it already is and will likely continue to be because various status quo powers that be can fight POW with ideas, misinformation and even engage in various kinds of physical attacks, yet one of the powers of such a considerable break through innovation, bitcoin cannot be uninvented, even if the powers that be (status quo financial and governing elite) were to engage in such a fight to push bitcoin underground.

In other words, Flexystar, it seems to me that the main vote that you have would concern the extent to which you choose to allocate your time and your finances towards bitcoin and making sure that you incorporate it into your life and continue to attempt to learn about it.  For sure, I am not even proclaiming to be any kind of expert or even to understand some of the technical differences between POW and POS or even various other information pieces or developments that occur related to bitcoin.  Even if something new might be proclaimed to be helpful to bitcoin (and built upon bitcoin) it is not always going to be clear  whether that new thing might be an attack vector rather than actually being helpful to bitcoin.

Another thing is that each of us have our own specialties and limitations, so any way that we choose to balance our bitcoin participation in regards to investing into bitcoin with our time and money,  we surely might not understand what kinds of struck balances might be in our own interest and if we might need to spend more (or less) time and money in one direction or another.  So, in some sense threads like this can be helpful regarding attempting to better understand something like POW versus POS and even to identify some of the real misleading bullshit going on with various POS projects - as several members have pointed out some of that nonsense.. which can be helpful to see, but maybe some of us do not want to spend much time investigating into such nonsense, but we can still see some of the investigative efforts that some other members have made in making such comparisons between POW and POS systems.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bump.

#9 on CMK: Tera Luna is a version of PoS

This didn't age well. 

[n0nce]

Bump.

#9 on CMK: Tera Luna is a version of PoS

This didn't age well. 

It was quite predictable! A newbie mistake that people like LegendaryK make is to assume the 'Coinmarketcap rating' has always been the way it is now. You have to stick around for a few years to understand that projects like Terra Luna pop up, bring in a good amount of money, then due to insanely huge market caps make it into the top 10 and a short while later, crash to zero. Their place is immediately scooped up by the next scam and so it goes on.
That's why long-time Bitcoiners stop caring about these rankings; because while it seems like there are many coins 'on Bitcoin's heels', they're actually rather insignificant little pump-and-dump scams that come and go, without even getting close to something like rivaling Bitcoin.

This sub-10-minute video is mostly a joke, but it actually illustrates what I'm trying to say pretty well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHfJRON3b-w

The young man creates a company with 10 billion shares and sells a single one for 50£, while holding on to the rest of the shares, which on paper means his company is worth 500 billion British pounds. In most of these scamcoin projects, the founders sell a bunch of coins, but create insanely huge amounts of them - the number 21 million pales in comparison - which leads to humongous market capitalizations. Most of the coins remain in the hands of the founders, who drop them on the market as soon as the project gains some traction.