Proof of stake coin --- The pros and cons?

[cryptowho]

The truth about them?

Well.. Could some one share their knowledge? I read once that the POS doesn't really work (i think BTXpress posted about it being faulty once)

I like the idea of them. So i genuinely want to know all the pros and cons about them ?  Please share these with me


NOTE: This post is addressed in general. Please don't take the opportunity to promote your POS coin. Try to steer away form naming the coins name.

[markm]

A couple of approaches to doing Proof of Stake were worked out once upon a time, but no one actually built them.

Then Sunny King popped up out of the blue, proud not to have read any of the existing research and discussions, with his own thing he made up himself.

Someone pointed out it was utterly broken, he claimed to have fixed it, and everyone has run off ever since cloning that and propagating gosh knows how many utterly insecure blockchains.

Still no one has coded either of the methods that had been come up with that were thought to possibly be able to actually work.

-MarkM-

[eightspaces]

pos works nicely, there are a couple of examples.

[markm]

Oh it has been a profitable scam, sure. Some of them are even propped up by a centralised privileged node system, a little reminscent of Solidcoin except for using just one central node instead of several of them, so even more centralsied that Solidcoin in effect.

But it seems we are headed toward the usual fanboi crap of "destroy our coin else we refuse to admit it is vulnerable"...

-MarkM-

[cryptowho]

A couple of approaches to doing Proof of Stake were worked out once upon a time, but no one actually built them.

Then Sunny King popped up out of the blue, proud not to have read any of the existing research and discussions, with his own thing he made up himself.

Someone pointed out it was utterly broken, he claimed to have fixed it, and everyone has run off ever since cloning that and propagating gosh knows how many utterly insecure blockchains.

Still no one has coded either of the methods that had been come up with that were thought to possibly be able to actually work.

-MarkM-

Thank you for your input.  i am trying to read more into POS. If you have time to spare,could you go into more details ? All the older members say POS is not secure.

[cryptowho]

Bump time?

Bump time!

i am reading this thread . about POW/POS https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=551861.0

[cryptowho]

 

y u no POSt

[TrollboxChamp]

pos works nicely, there are a couple of examples.

Faircoin is killing it currently. Multipool just came online in last 2 days and already 125MH

http://fair-coin.info/multipool

[Ryota]

POS promotes savings, not spending and it's not good as a currency but good for speculation...
Coins 100% POS are a bullshit, miners play a important role, without them, you won't build a big community around them.

[Ximp]

Oh it has been a profitable scam, sure. Some of them are even propped up by a centralised privileged node system, a little reminscent of Solidcoin except for using just one central node instead of several of them, so even more centralsied that Solidcoin in effect.

But it seems we are headed toward the usual fanboi crap of "destroy our coin else we refuse to admit it is vulnerable"...

-MarkM-

Interesting, is Blackcoin vulnerable?

[cryptowho]

POS promotes savings, not spending and it's not good as a currency but good for speculation...
Coins 100% POS are a bullshit, miners play a important role, without them, you won't build a big community around them.

good point. but very general. greed is a main factor to both miner and stakers. 

[Kalizar]

[r0ach]

PoS is generally secure because many of the complaints about it even from people like Gavin such as "the problem with proof of stake is there's nothing at stake", means that everyone who owns lots of coins would need to be running their own custom client to stake multiple chains at once.  This goes against the game theory principles that Bitcoin itself relies on for security.  People with an investment in something aren't going to overwhelmingly go out and run software to try and devalue their investment on purpose by decreasing security of the network.

Satoshi himself already relies on the idea of the "honest miner", roughly meaning that the majority of miners on the network will remain honest.

Some of them are even propped up by a centralised privileged node system

This is why the community Whitecoin takeover is going for decentralized nodes and pruning based off that system as main goals with a funding plan to do so:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=589857.msg6466570

[ChuckOne]

I like the idea of them. So i genuinely want to know all the pros and cons about them ?  Please share these with me

*Disclamer*: Below, I mean PoS in the real sense like done in Nxt and its clones. Not in the sense of PeerCoin and its clones.


Pros:
1) using energy to do the crypto party in cryptocurrencies, not wasting energy
2) all advantages (low-level hardware, less centralization etc.) as a result of 1)

Cons:
1) second to market, PoW was first
2) Average Joe does not care

Misconception:
1) you need to buy a lot of stake to earn coins during PoS forging/minting/mining => you need to by expensive mining hardware as well these days in order to mine profitably

[Kalizar]

A PoS coin is susceptible to an attack, just like PoW. However, the means of performing the attack would be much simpler. The main weakness comes from most coin holders do not (and will probably never) stake their coins in the long run.

If there are 100 coins in circulation(for example) and only 4 coins staked, that would only require 5 staked coins to perform an attack. That is how a PoS attack would be performed, having over 51% of the staked coins.

Meanwhile, PoW requires 51% of the network hash. This makes it much more impractical to destroy a coin. Neither attacks have been successfully performed to destroy a coin, but PoS attacks would be much easier.

[OC19850520]

POS promotes savings, not spending and it's not good as a currency but good for speculation...
Coins 100% POS are a bullshit, miners play a important role, without them, you won't build a big community around them.

I think POS promotes spending because of never ending inflation. Especially for most users who cant have computer on 24/7.

[ChuckOne]

A PoS coin is susceptible to an attack, just like PoW. However, the means of performing the attack would be much simpler. The main weakness comes from most coin holders do not (and will probably never) stake their coins in the long run.

If there are 100 coins in circulation(for example) and only 4 coins staked, that would only require 5 staked coins to perform an attack. That is how a PoS attack would be performed, having over 51% of the staked coins.

Meanwhile, PoW requires 51% of the network hash. This makes it much more impractical to destroy a coin. Neither attacks have been successfully performed to destroy a coin, but PoS attacks would be much easier.

What is the purpose in destroying a PoS if creating (i.e. forking) is cheap as well?

[ChuckOne]

I think POS promotes spending because of never ending inflation. Especially for most users who cant have computer on 24/7.

Who says that PoS needs to be inflationary?

[altcoinherald]

A couple of approaches to doing Proof of Stake were worked out once upon a time, but no one actually built them.

Then Sunny King popped up out of the blue, proud not to have read any of the existing research and discussions, with his own thing he made up himself.

Someone pointed out it was utterly broken, he claimed to have fixed it, and everyone has run off ever since cloning that and propagating gosh knows how many utterly insecure blockchains.

Still no one has coded either of the methods that had been come up with that were thought to possibly be able to actually work.

-MarkM-

Do you think the recent cloners know this? Is that why they're speeding up the mining process so much?

[Kalizar]

A PoS coin is susceptible to an attack, just like PoW. However, the means of performing the attack would be much simpler. The main weakness comes from most coin holders do not (and will probably never) stake their coins in the long run.

If there are 100 coins in circulation(for example) and only 4 coins staked, that would only require 5 staked coins to perform an attack. That is how a PoS attack would be performed, having over 51% of the staked coins.

Meanwhile, PoW requires 51% of the network hash. This makes it much more impractical to destroy a coin. Neither attacks have been successfully performed to destroy a coin, but PoS attacks would be much easier.

What is the purpose in destroying a PoS if creating (i.e. forking) is cheap as well?

The same reason someone would accumulate enough hash power to destroy/steal coins. It's much easier, having a fat wallet, to buy a bunch of coins and stake them.