What is the drawback of PoS ?

[stwenhao]

Your question is one that someone who wasn't here for 2016-2017 would ask.

Well, I was not here for 2016-2017. I started buying Bitcoin in 2018, maybe 2019.

Developers drew the line saying 1mb was the limit (look up all the shady stuff that surrounded the NY Agreement) and basically forced these businesses to fork the network or lose their entire investment of time and money, which they did to grow Bitcoin and was wildly appreciated at the time.

What happened, should stay in the past. Now we know that new features can be introduced with no forks at all, even no soft-fork is needed, you can read more about it here: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2022-June/020532.html. Of course, sidechains can also solve "coin merging" problem, but I think not many altcoiners want to for example merge BTC and BCH into a single coin again, so there is no need for that yet. But it is just a matter of proportions, any altcoin can reach a peg again, if they don't want to do that, they are free to stay unpegged, just they should not be surprised that their coins will be left behind the heaviest chain, if they designed it to be a competition, instead of reusing the strongest source of SHA-256d hashes, no matter where it will be produced. They could do a soft-fork or no-fork back then, big blocks are different from small blocks only by the time when each tranaction is included. They could get it protected by Merged Mining (and commitments could protect them from chain reorganizations), and have their transactions included later, it was that simple. I guess people were just unaware of possible technical solutions that always existed, from the first released version. And they still are, including me, it is a continuous process of learning, what is possible.

so they eliminated that risk by issuing their own altcoins

Now they could issue their own sidechains. No permission is needed, coins can be created by signing on-chain coins, and destroyed by moving them. Nothing else is really needed, the rest is about making it convenient, and protecting mainchain coins with the right output scripts, to allow moving them if (and only if) each and every owner of that coin agreed to move back to the mainchain.

It was a perfectly reasonable response that was met with extreme hate, as Bitcoiners wanted their coin to be the only game in town, and for them to have to do nothing but hold it to get rich.

Pure speculation with no usage will lead us nowhere. If people want to speculate, or if they want to never use their coins, they should have that choice. Holding coins forever is like owning something on OP_RETURN. You can do that, but it won't be useful. You need money to pay for goods and services, the whole value can be created from real usage and real features. Of course it can be created artificially, but then it will vanish over time. And I don't want to make things that will be worthless after few years, I want to make a system I would want to also use, from the perspective of some non-miner and non-developer, who will have no power, and will just want to write some applications for existing coins. It should be still useful in that case, because it is all about control, and to make it decentralized, the creator should have no control over the network, even if it will be based on Proof of Stake.

[LegendaryK]

@PoW supporters aka Bitcoin Cultist

No one is creating any new PoW tech coins.
Because they all know PoW is dying.

How many BTC did any of you mine today?
Odds are zero because you can't afford the fiat to complete in the centralized PoW network.
You can't even afford to take part in the dying mining tech you love so much.  

@tadamichi
Anyone that can't understand how rolling blackouts will cause increase forking in a PoW mining network,
well go find someone that has ~3 days to waste explaining things to you like you are an idiot, because you are.  


Merge Mining  
https://publications.sba-research.org/publications/201709%20-%20AJudmayer%20-%20CBT_Merged_Mining_camera_ready_final.pdf

Introduction of New Attack Vectors The advantage of merged mining is that miners
are no longer forced to choose between mining one cryptocurrency or another. However,
its biggest strength can also be viewed as a potential attack vector [27].
The ability to generate blocks for the merge-mined child blockchains at almost no additional cost,
apart from maintaining a client node, allows misbehaving miners to carry out attacks
without risking financial losses in both the parent and other child blockchains.
Such an attack was carried out by the Eligius mining pool in 2012.
Without their explicit consent, its miners were coerced to participate in an attack led by the pool operator,
ultimately stalling the operation of the fledgling cryptocurrency CoiledCoin by mining empty blocks.
This attack serves as the predominant example for highlighting threats posed by merged mining on child cryptocurrencies:
the miners of the pool did not suffer any financial loss and, as it appears, were not even aware of the attack, as all actions
were performed solely by the operator.

Kind of shows what happens when a PoW Pool operator decides to screw the centralized PoW network.  

Now all the BTC cultist , repeat to themselves
that can't happen to btc, that can't happen to btc, that can't happen to btc, that can't happen to btc,
now go pet your purple unicorn and take your Xanax.
 

[garlonicon]

How many BTC did any of you mine today?

Around one satoshi per day, because I can do that on my CPU. Of course I mined it inside LN channel with a friend, during testing decentralized mining, so you wouldn't see that on-chain. And I can ask the same question, when it comes to the Proof of Stake: how many blocks you reached by signing something? One? Less than one, by signing messages in some centralized pool? How many altcoins you gained for staking today? And do you really have them, or maybe you just handled your coins somewhere in a custodial way, on some centralized exchange, and got nice numbers displayed on some web page? Do you receive your coins in some decentralized way, or maybe there are the same kind of centralized pools for staking, like there are for mining?

[tadamichi]

@PoW supporters aka Bitcoin Cultist

No one is creating any new PoW tech coins.
Because they all know PoW is dying.

Are you a parrot by any chance?

How many BTC did any of you mine today?
Odds are zero because you can't afford the fiat to complete in the centralized PoW network.
You can't even afford to take part in the dying mining tech you love so much.  

Zero and yet Bitcoin is more decentralized than any other coin. It would be foolish to deny this. This whole argument is also flawed, because it’s not just about affording, any profitable business operation can get enough funding, but it’s also about time, space, location, access to energy and willingness to do this.

@tadamichi
Anyone that can't understand how rolling blackouts will cause increase forking in a PoW mining network,
well go find someone that has ~3 days to waste explaining things to you like you are an idiot, because you are.  

I don’t need and explanation of what happens to the chain, im asking you how many blackouts you’re expecting in different countries at the same time and how much loss in hash power you’re expecting. Because then we actually know what your fears are based on.

Kind of shows what happens when a PoW Pool operator decides to screw the centralized PoW network.  Wink

I forgot that PoS staking pools are free from any abuse potential and nothing ever happened there. *cough*

[stwenhao]

Without their explicit consent, its miners were coerced to participate in an attack led by the pool operator, ultimately stalling the operation of the fledgling cryptocurrency CoiledCoin by mining empty blocks.

But you know that the popular way of implementing Merged Mining is not what Satoshi intended? NameCoin made the same mistake: there should be one chain of block headers with the heaviest Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, or Proof of Something, and each Merge-Mined chain should receive a fraction of coins proportional to the whole power of all chains. In this way, attacking any altcoin by reaching 51% power, 51% coins, or 51% something is possible if (and only if) you have a majority on all chains together. And of course people didn't implement Merged Mining in that way. Also, when it comes to Proof of Stake, there is an alternative called Merged Signing. And guess what: people are still unaware of that, and they still think that creating new coins will make the whole situation better, but nobody gave any reason, why it is needed to create new coins at all, instead of signing existing coins from other chains, and build new protocols on top of that.

[LegendaryK]

How many BTC did any of you mine today?

Around one satoshi per day, because I can do that on my CPU. Of course I mined it inside LN channel with a friend, during testing decentralized mining, so you wouldn't see that on-chain. And I can ask the same question, when it comes to the Proof of Stake: how many blocks you reached by signing something? One? Less than one, by signing messages in some centralized pool? How many altcoins you gained for staking today? And do you really have them, or maybe you just handled your coins somewhere in a custodial way, on some centralized exchange, and got nice numbers displayed on some web page? Do you receive your coins in some decentralized way, or maybe there are the same kind of centralized pools for staking, like there are for mining?

 
You claim to mine PoW bitcoin on an OFFCHAIN network.  
By that mindset, any bank that lends out BTC is a miner.  Nope!
Dude, it is not onchain, so it is not mining.
Even in that LN nonsense , you are losing more in energy costs, than if you just turned your LN node off and used the fiat to buy btc.
Wasteful hobby, but you're not mining,
call back when you have a warehouse full of asics and on the verge of bankruptcy because of utility bills like the regular PoW miners.  


Cardano pays 2.6% yearly on my total every 3 days.
When Compounding makes it a little higher, and I have no external energy costs.
I have no issue using a Cardano pool, because unlike btc PoW pools where only 4 guys control over 51%,
Cardano has over 3000 staking Pools to choose from, with program coded safeguards that prevent things
like => BTC PoW has less than 20 pools with the top 4 pool operators controlling over 51%.
And yes , if I wanted too, I could stake my Cardano without a pool.

How many BTC did any of you mine today?

Zero

Exactly you have no say whatsoever in PoW consensus,
you might as well stick with a bank.  

@tadamichi
Anyone that can't understand how rolling blackouts will cause increase forking in a PoW mining network,
well go find someone that has ~3 days to waste explaining things to you like you are an idiot, because you are.  

I don’t need and explanation of what happens to the chain, im asking you how many blackouts you’re expecting in different countries at the same time and how much loss in hash power you’re expecting.

Apparently you do,  
1. rolling blackouts won't happen all over the world at the same time, that is why they are rolling,
    public school education, huh.
2. Those top 4 mining pool operators that secure your centralized PoW BTC and limit forking and orphans due to their centralized control.
    Will lose their over 51% dominance throughout a 24 hours period, meaning those other poor bastards pools % will be higher for brief times,
    and unlike the top 4 colluding to protect btc, the poor bastards pools just want to earn and sell, so they may or may not include the transaction history
    for any orphan blocks, they overtake during their however brief dominance, and once the power is back in the hand of the top 4 colluding pool operators
    they may overwrite hours of blocks to regain their centralized control of new btc and the transaction history.  
    
 (Yeah I know you still don't get it. Which is why I won't waste 3 days on you.)    

[garlonicon]

Dude, it is not onchain, so it is not mining.

I could say in the same way about signing: "Dude, it is not onchain, so it is not staking". But seriously, you can mine anything. That means, we can reintroduce mining on Proof of Stake coins if we will be forced to do that. For example, we can mine transactions, like this: 000000000fdf0c619cd8e0d512c7e2c0da5a5808e60f12f1e0d01522d2986a51.

call back when you have a warehouse full of asics and on the verge of bankruptcy because of utility bills

Maybe I will reach a warehouse one day, for now, I have only my CPUs. But it could be also beneficial to the network, scraping bytes here and there can be used to compress things, and that makes it cheaper to push later on-chain. So, even by scraping signatures on CPUs, you can still get some satoshis.

And yes , if I wanted too, I could stake my Cardano without a pool.

But you don't, and that means, you only care about getting paid, you don't check what is really signed, and if you really agree on that. So, it has the same centralization issues, because mining is not enforced directly in a P2P way, so it is not decentralized.

[LegendaryK]

Dude, it is not onchain, so it is not mining.

I could say in the same way about signing: "Dude, it is not onchain, so it is not staking". But seriously, you can mine anything. That means, we can reintroduce mining on Proof of Stake coins if we will be forced to do that. For example, we can mine transactions, like this: 000000000fdf0c619cd8e0d512c7e2c0da5a5808e60f12f1e0d01522d2986a51.

call back when you have a warehouse full of asics and on the verge of bankruptcy because of utility bills

Maybe I will reach a warehouse one day, for now, I have only my CPUs. But it could be also beneficial to the network, scraping bytes here and there can be used to compress things, and that makes it cheaper to push later on-chain. So, even by scraping signatures on CPUs, you can still get some satoshis.

And yes , if I wanted too, I could stake my Cardano without a pool.

But you don't, and that means, you only care about getting paid, you don't check what is really signed, and if you really agree on that. So, it has the same centralization issues, because mining is not enforced directly in a P2P way, so it is not decentralized.

PoS coins Stake.

PoW mining is for dummies that can't understand input costs, but can find Venture Capitalist to float them some fiat.
VC money is now drying up fast, thanks to baby boomer retirements.

Dude , that LN nonsense is costing you more than just buying btc outright.
Poorer it can make you , not richer.  

My PoS coins participate in the network security,
I decide where they are placed and how they are used , or even if I just stored them and did not stake them.
Those are my choices.
And no Cardano does not have the centralization issues of PoW BTC.
1. Cardano lowers the stake if a pool gets too large, to prevent issues like BTC 4 mining pool operator that have over 51%.
2. Cardano has over 3000 staking pools, BTC less than 20 mining pools.


You can't participate in PoW mining at all, so pretending you have any choice is ridiculous.

[tadamichi]

Exactly you have no say whatsoever in PoW consensus,
you might as well stick with a bank.  

My node is enforcing consensus rules 24/7/365 but nice try, i decide what changes go onto my node, and which not. Everyone is free to submit proposals to core anytime they want, if they wanna improve something. No mining is necessary to have influence on rules in Bitcoin. Its not a dictatorship by miners or devs.

@tadamichi
Anyone that can't understand how rolling blackouts will cause increase forking in a PoW mining network,
well go find someone that has ~3 days to waste explaining things to you like you are an idiot, because you are.  

Apparently you do,  
1. rolling blackouts won't happen all over the world at the same time, that is why they are rolling,
    public school education, huh.

Dont explain me anything. Since you’re an energy expert im just asking you, when will we see the blackouts? Which days, what time? At what time in which countries? How much of each of their energy supplies will be affected, and exactly when? Just give me a list of all 195 countries, because im sure you already calculated this and don’t just act from your feelings you got from media articles.

[LegendaryK]

BTC Cultists Delusion,
There are no new PoW coins, because BTC is best.
I mine PoW onchain Bitcoins on LN offchain network.
My non-mining nodes controls and secure PoW bitcoin.
PoW mining does not waste energy or cause power grid failures.
Government PoW mining Bans are Fud.

BTC cultists are so devoid of intellect, that actual reality escapes them.
Reality
There are no new PoW coins, because the whole rest of the world know PoW is a dying tech.
Mining can only occur onchain.
Non-mining nodes don't do jack to secure a network, turn them all off , and no one will notice. Only Mining nodes can secure a PoW network.
Numerous Countries are banning PoW mining, and the list is growing, the US is only ~2½ years away from doing to same.

What Bitcoin Cultist don't get,
Proof of Stake has moved on, and could care less what happens to Proof of Waste.
Proof of Stake has solved how to keep pools from becoming centralized
Proof of Stake has solved the energy efficiency issue.
Proof of Stake has solved transaction finality.

So to avoid having anymore clueless bitcoin cultists waste any more of my time.
Wasting money, energy, & time seems to be all PoW supporters know how to do.

I shall leave you to praise your dying BTC PoW fantasies, unabated.
 
 

 

[tadamichi]

BTC Cultists Delusion,
There are no new PoW coins, because BTC is best. (They can’t compete for limited hash power worldwide against Bitcoin)
I mine PoW onchain Bitcoins on LN offchain network. (He meant it’s possible to earn sats without asics on lightning, an analogy to getting mining rewards)
My non-mining nodes controls and secure PoW bitcoin.  (My full node enforces consensus rules)
PoW mining does not waste energy or cause power grid failures.  (Exactly, and high energy usage != waste)
Government PoW mining Bans are Fud.  (Thinking mining will stop because of this is fud)

Nice try to put everything out of context.

Non-mining nodes don't do jack to secure a network, turn them all off , and no one will notice.

Now you outed yourself, this is hilarious.

What Bitcoin Cultist don't get,
Proof of Stake has moved on, and could care less what happens to Proof of Waste.
Proof of Stake has solved how to keep pools from becoming centralized
Proof of Stake has solved the energy efficiency issue.
Proof of Stake has solved transaction finality.

So to avoid having anymore clueless bitcoin cultists waste any more of my time.
Wasting money, energy, & time seems to be all PoW supporters know how to do.

I shall leave you to praise your dying BTC PoW fantasies, unabated.
 

Honestly, with the outing you just made, i dont think this is a big loss for Bitcoin, more like a blessing.

[KualaBit]

@PoW supporters aka Bitcoin Cultist

No one is creating any new PoW tech coins.
Because they all know PoW is dying.

Not that PoW is dying, POS is cost-efficient in scamming people.  That is one of the best reasons why many prefer POS than PoW

In a money-grab developer's mind: why bother with PoW when they can use PoS to mine 100% of the coins and sell them to unsuspecting investors.  If you happen to see the pattern of new projects today, there are lots selling their pre-mined coins/token here and there.

[pooya87]

In fact if satoshi or others that were present at the beginning of bitcoin had decided that they would mine large amounts to dump them later bitcoin could have very easily become a shitcoin too. It is only because satoshi disappeared and locked most of the early coins forever that bitcoin did not become a shitcoin.

That only works for altcoins because they are useless so people who buy them are only buying them while they are pumping and when they dump they all abandon it effectively killing the altcoin. This is never true about bitcoin simply because bitcoin is useful so even if the price dropped and those who wished to become rich overnight sold their bitcoins, bitcoin will sill remain useful and people will continue buying it.
In other words even if the imaginary big wealth of Satoshi were sold, bitcoin would continue being useful and people bring the price back up.

[NotATether]

3) Proof of Work clearly separate miners (those who own equipment) from whales (those who have coins). In Proof of Stake, whales control the network. That means, in Proof of Stake, the whole network can be ruled by some exchange, just because it is popular, and users deposited a lot of coins there.

That actually is the same as in 1). Is it really realistic that an exchange would control like 51% of tokens? I am assuming a fully mature system here.

Yes. Imagine for a second you lauch some coin, that gets about $1 billion market cap. Exchanges list it, and its price goes up, but there is one exchange in particular where more trading activity is done than the others (through leveraged buying options) until the exchange holds a little more than $500 million of the coin's supply, or about half. Then it can effectively censor transactions it is legally compelled to censor (or perhaps even wants to).

[BusinessChain]

Thanks for your discussion.

Here are my three take-aways on why PoS is inferior to PoW:

1. PoS requires no decentralized, scarce real world ressource for mining. This means that there is no inherent incentive for the network topology to decentralize itself. This is in stark contrast to PoW where new miners need to find new geografic locations in order to tap new energy sources.

2. In PoS, voting power distribution is volatile and uncertain, since voting power is tied to virtual tokens which can be transfered almost intantly an with very little cost. Again, this is in stark contrast to Bitcoin where it is extremely costly and difficult to relocate a mining facility. This means that in Bitcoin the network topology is much more stable.

3.In PoS, because there is virtually no cost to mine, existing miners will have extremly high profit margin, increasing their staking power even further. This is a positive feedback loop which escalates the power of those who already have alot thereof. In Bitcoin, it requires big capital investment, knowledge and communal support to run a mining facility. This means that not necessarily the richest miners will be successfull, but the best (i.e. most efficient, most skilled, most innovativ etc.).

[n0nce]

If PoW Tech were superior , then the majority of new coins would be using it.

How is 'ease of spinning up a new coin' a qualifier for evaluating the quality of a consensus mechanism?

If you're looking for an alternative to PoW, your main qualifier shouldn't be 'how easy is it to create more coins', but 'how secure is it and does it achieve consensus'. Everything else comes after that.

I think everyone agrees that it's hard to make new coins that are based on PoW; in fact, for some people it's even too much effort building a whole new PoS blockchain, so some coins of your sacred 'CoinMarketCap top 10 list' don't even have their own blockchain. Does that make them better? Should Bitcoin also not have its own blockchain and become an Ethereum token?

Also in the old days there were a shitload of new PoW coins, and how did they do, well they died. 

I've got a newsflash for you: PoS existed back then, too, and died already back then. It's just that enough time has passed that people have forgotten about it and that enough new people joined the market who never heard about PoS before. This gave developers the opportunity to 're-introduce' it as something new and revolutionary, partly aided by the premise of being more environmentally friendly that is right now en vogue, and allows them to control the whole network and most importantly becoming rich overnight due to pre-mine and owning a large portion of the 'shares'.

How many BTC did any of you mine today?
Odds are zero because you can't afford the fiat to complete in the centralized PoW network.
You can't even afford to take part in the dying mining tech you love so much. 

I can afford it! And it can be bought for BTC, as well.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5403168.0

It costs roughly $500 for 'hashboard only' version.

You can't participate in PoW mining at all, so pretending you have any choice is ridiculous.

LOL you really believe that? Look up Bitcoin home mining on Twitter.

Don't beat your utility bill, Eat your utility bill!

A quick thread on a home mining project that will profitably heat a home this winter. This immersion rig heats water & augments the home furnace

#bitcoinmining #bitcoin #cryptocurrecy @CoinDesk
  @BitcoinBrains
 @SGBarbour

THIS IS TRUE DECENTRALIZATION

Pleb mining pic thread.

I hear ppl say home mining is dead, but then I see pics like these. I love how innovative our mining community is even during hash at ATH the stacking sats game is strong!

#Bitcoin
#blockchain
#BTC



[...]

When looking at the above linked search term, I found something relating to blackouts; @LegendaryK since you're so worried about them.

Anyone that can't understand how rolling blackouts will cause increase forking in a PoW mining network

The Texas-based #Bitcoin mining facility @RiotBlockchain
 got a text earlier this year during intense weather, “The power grid needs support. Please curtail now.”

The company then immediately shut down their machines and provided their power to 20,000 additional Texan homes.

[LegendaryK]

@n0nce

I was done with this topic,
however when you put out something so stupid  that it will cost others their hard earned money,
that deserves a quick reply to offset the home miner nonsense.
https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B07YGP1ZGR?reviewerType=all_reviews

Jim W.
2.0 out of 5 stars Don’t buy
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
Owned for a month. Nice design and cool product but once I did the math, it would take years to earn enough just pay it off (over $430 with taxes)! Litecoin mining just can’t be done to make anything on this device. I ran it for a month straight 24/7 and made $.50. Shortly after, I bought a antminer L3++ which mines at 500mh/s (keep in mind this Apollo does about 120mh/s) and even the antminer didn’t produce enough to make a profit. With the price of electricity here being .24/kWh these devices aren’t made for you to make money. Another thing i didn’t like about this was that the manufacturer forces you to “donate” 1% of your hashing power back to them! What a joke. Device doesn’t run unless you agree to the “donation” scam. Back to Amazon it goes.

dcon
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money.. do your research
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2019
Do the math people.. there are simple easy to use websites.. stop feeding the pockets of these people that sell products that are 1-2 years outdated.. you will LOSE money, at minimum $0.12 per day.. and that doesn't take into account purchase price. Do your research.. if you want to mine.. but probably better to just "invest" buy low sell high.. lot less complicated. Again.. this miner is not nearly powerful nor efficient enough to EVER make money, what you spend on it will be completely lost and you will LOSE more money each day. Just go to whattomine and enter in details.

https://www.coinbureau.com/analysis/make-money-mining-bitcoin/

many Bitcoin miners have discovered the hard way that they end up paying more for electricity than they receive in Bitcoin rewards

Now feel free to continue your insane waste of money, but anyone buying a btc or ltc PoW miner,
just realize you might as well flush that money down the toilet, as their is only loss no profit.

As far as Texas,
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/crypto-could-strain-texas-faulty-power-grid-ercot-issues-warnings-summer-heat-14120691

Texans were asked to conserve energy during a warm spell last month, and this summer could break temperature records. Now, just a day into June, many Texans are already praying that the state’s power grid can handle the heat

Texans are being asked to turn their ACs off, so the miners can keep running, don't expect that to last too long, before the rage toward the miners creates a ban.
Thinking that PoW miners that waste electricity will be able to increase it for others, is something only a btc cultists would believe.
If a PoW miners draws down the energy resources for a state for years and turns off for 1 day to avoid the energy price hikes he was about to receive, you want to claim the energy hog produced energy, so insane, it is not even laughable.

*Now where were we, :
I shall leave you to praise your dying BTC PoW fantasies, unabated.*

[NotATether]

Texans are being asked to turn their ACs off, so the miners can keep running, don't expect that to last too long, before the rage toward the miners creates a ban.
Thinking that PoW miners that waste electricity will be able to increase it for others, is something only a btc cultists would believe.
If a PoW miners draws down the energy resources for a state for years and turns off for 1 day to avoid the energy price hikes he was about to receive, you want to claim the energy hog produced energy, so insane, it is not even laughable.

There's an easy solution for that: Don't mine in Texas. Mine in the midwest, and then its basically a cat-and-mouse game with governors at that point.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I shall leave you to praise your dying BTC PoW fantasies

Please do. Leave this place, and that might make my day. You're the only person who recognizes fantasies. You don't want arguments, because they don't want you either. You've made it clear you put authorities above everything, but this is not how we work in here. We don't convince with "you're dumb enough to keep something that will definitely die". Your only argument was the blackouts, that has been debunked repeatedly; you're just too gormless to accept it.

Get your obnoxious, smarty-ass persona and get the hell out of here.

[tadamichi]

Thanks for your discussion.

Here are my three take-aways on why PoS is inferior to PoW:

1. PoS requires no decentralized, scarce real world ressource for mining. This means that there is no inherent incentive for the network topology to decentralize itself. This is in stark contrast to PoW where new miners need to find new geografic locations in order to tap new energy sources.

2. In PoS, voting power distribution is volatile and uncertain, since voting power is tied to virtual tokens which can be transfered almost intantly an with very little cost. Again, this is in stark contrast to Bitcoin where it is extremely costly and difficult to relocate a mining facility. This means that in Bitcoin the network topology is much more stable.

3.In PoS, because there is virtually no cost to mine, existing miners will have extremly high profit margin, increasing their staking power even further. This is a positive feedback loop which escalates the power of those who already have alot thereof. In Bitcoin, it requires big capital investment, knowledge and communal support to run a mining facility. This means that not necessarily the richest miners will be successfull, but the best (i.e. most efficient, most skilled, most innovativ etc.).

I also like to look at technologies in practice and if their approach could even work, under the assumption that this technology would have taken over the world. Even tho this is a little theoretical.

I think we have to assume that a technology like PoS or PoW has to work under extreme wealth inequality, because that’s how the world is. I think there’s a fundamental economical flaw in staking, because it has to lock up capital. There’s PoS coins where more than 70% of the supply is locked up, bringing it out of the circulation. It just lays there and grows without any economic benefit or impact.

Which leaves just 30% of the supply in circulation for the economy to use. Another problem is that most of the world doesn’t have any significant savings, or the possibility to build them. Even in rich countries the majority is starting to live from paycheck to paycheck. This creates a problem, because if 70% of a coins supply, in the hands of a few people, can hit the economy anytime, we could see massively planned inflationary events and take overs of real industries, by people who could afford to just let their money lay around and then bring huge parts of the economy in more and more small hands, at their will. The economic attack vector is there and we see similar impacts with money printing in fiat, this could carry over to PoS in a similar fashion, because most of the world can’t lock up their capital, and inflationary events could prevent regular people from being able to do it even more. There will never be corrections in this system, because it’s impossible for them to loose any money while staking, there’s no entrepreneurial risk, they will forever stay at the top and gain more and more power automatically. So i think the centralisation issue will not just be an technical one, but also spread over the economy.

PoW in combination with a fixed supply works differently(under the assumption it would have taken over the world). There is no locked up capital that can grow over time. People will have to use their capital in economic activities to even make any gains, which is always tied to market risks and competition. The big capital can be lost if they mess up or don’t satisfy the market. It will always bring in a certain risk. And it will be best for all coins to be in circulation, instead of just sitting there forever. Many potential economic attack vectors won’t even occur, leading to a much more stable and fair economy(it won’t be an Eldorado for the rich). It won’t just be a lot of work to create new blocks, but it will also take a lot of work and beating the competition to succeed at the economy or growing capital.

It’s remarkable how the philosophies behind them, carry over to other things.